Hi, Working on a "celebrity likeness" for M3 and am wondering what method is best for making face morphs... Dial Twiddling withing Poser? Using an external modeling application and importing morph target? Or what? I've always just relied on dial twiddling but have never been able to achieve the desired results. Advice and input will be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Gerard

You have 2 options use the face shaping morphs (easiest) or use magnets (Hardest) I recomend using the face shaping morphs, face flat, nose long, etc. Magnets allow you to do more exact things but to shape the head propely you need about 8-12 magnets to shape the main aspects of the head. And it takes a bit to get use to using them. If you have poser 5 or 6 you can load just the shaping morphs for the head, no expressions and then use the Morp Puddy tool. To shape just click and drag, you don't even need to know what morphs you are using just pull and push with the mouse the software will figure out what morphs would apply to your actions. It is my favorite method. I even went as far to create a V2 head with just the shaping morphs so it could be used this way, using P5's remove morph method.

OH this part sucks and I forgot to mention it. If using morph puddy it is best to set all the limits for the morphs at -1 min and 1 max. This means going wthrough all of them one at a time and setting them. This can take all night. But once it is done save the figure as "M3 Face amker" os some such thing and it will be a perminate tool for creating custom heads. Just save the face to the Expressions library and then you can apply it to any M3 character.

The best method is doing it an external program, such as Zbrush. Someone (Dodger, maybe?) suggested making the face morph three times, then combining them (as three separate dials in Poser), in order to get the most realistic results.

The easiest method is dial-spinning. In addition to the DAZ morphs, I use the Brom and M3 Head Sculpture morph packs (brokered at DAZ). However, re-distributing the custom morph becomes a problem then.

You can also combine the methods, mixing some custom morphs with the dials.

One thing - no matter how good your morph is, it won't look right without the right texture. (That's the advantage of the Face Room, or Facegen - it creates a custom texture from photos, to go with the morphs.) Choose your texture carefully.

Poser Six is a big help: First: Load V3 or M3 and inject all head morphs. Second: Apply a texture best suited to the person you are morphing. When in doubt, V3 High-Res Daz Standard is a good way to start. Third: Load a one-sided square. Change it's specular color to black and make it transparency 40%. Set it's materials for a 2-d image map, and select a good-res source image that features the person you are trying to morph in a face-on, expressionless pose. Change the sqaure's dimensions to match the source image. Fourth: Move and scale the one-sided square so that it is just in front of your model and the head sizes and positions are about the same. Choose a reference point, such as the nostrils. Fifth: Use all stock morphs until you get something fairly close. Sixth: Check progress with a render. Disappointing. This is to be expected. This is the "Alan Alda" phase. I typically have to go back and cut all my morph values in half, to tame down over-compensation and such. Then, I will go in the reverse order and tweak. Seventh: Check progress. Disappointing. This is to be expected. Stock morphs will only get you so far. Now it's time for magnets. (I use a set of "Universal magic Mags" on the head for symmetric/simultaneous morphing. UMMs are available here in RO marketplace. Also available, Universal head shop for those who only want to work on the head.) Eighth: After spending six hours with magnets, render, and be excited! It looks perfect! Immediately rush a render off to RO gallery or this forum to show off. Ninth: Wake up the next morning, and wonder what the hell you were thinking, it looks bloody awful. Tenth: Repeat process about 24 times over the course of 3 to 6 months, depending on how much free time you have. Every so often, export something that is almost good as a morph target and start a-fresh. Over time, you will have many versions (I name them by date) that you can start to load onto a blank cr2 and mix them together for the ultimate. I will post some examples here in this thread. -WTB

LMAO WTB That is probably how it goes.

Peachez, shown here, is in about phase 2.5 and is my most recent project.

A collaborative effort with RogueElement. Buffy Morph goes waaaay back, first character I ever did when V3 came out. (I assume you know what she looks like)

My favorite, *endless* time over many, many months spent on her, tweaking every little detail and effing around with texture maps and nodes and stuff. Still, even the best likenesses are never truly done. I will always continue to tweak and tweak and tweak until she's perfect from every possible angle. Expressions are ultimately what kills you. You may have the neutral face flawless, but as soon as you dial up some smile, it's all trashed. Sometimes just moving a light will ruin a likeness too. That's the MOST frustrating aspect of this sort of endeavor.

LOL at "My Way"!. Hits so very close to home, especially the -- wake up the next morning and wonder what the hell you were thinking -- part.

If you use M3, you can use both the standard morphs and some extra ones made by Achilles at Daz (Head Sculpture Pack or something). This way you'll have a lot more options for morphing the facial structure. HTH.

Second to most recent character attempt, Molly. Seen here, not too bad, but only due to opening the pz3 and going "Oh, yes, there it is then, gotta do this and this and this..." When I go back later and check other angles, it will be a disaster, trust me. I've been working on Molly for some time and can't get her right.

The ability to capture a likeness of a real person has always been the biggest draw and challenge for me in using Poser. Much akin to the search for the Holy Grail, morphing ELs is a path loaded with pitfalls, heartache and ultimately disappointment. All hope is not lost, however, and occasionally you will end up with results that satisfy. Be patient, have a pure heart (had to throw in that cliche, although I doubt that really applies here) and perservere. Never delete anything, as you may wake up one night in a cold sweat, realizing that version 3-28-04b is actually spot-on, and further versions were really just teaking the project into disarray. Most of your problems will be in the brow area. It seems that Millenium Models and their texture makers have little to no idea how real human being's eyebrows are placed and where they arch. Try 1 million different eyebrow trans maps rather than trying to morph it out. Use Head maps that are eyebrow-free and stick to the outer brow maps. If you need to morph the brow, you can do that by creating a new group with just the eyebrow material and then telling your magnets to only effect that group. This will avoid crinkled forehead. Watch out around the mouth with magnets, you might get everything perfect only to find that when you open smile, you have a victim of British Dentistry on your hands. Teeth are almost impossible to fix once destroyed. If you can hack a Cr2, I stronly encourage you to add slave dials for eye placement and control, as you will find that over time your eyes will eventually get out of place. Good source pics are the key, and all the better if they are ridiculous high-res and well-lit so you may use them in texture creation/modification as well (especially those pesky brows). Unfortunately, it is my experience that in your search for source pics you will find: The Model is closing his/her eyes The Model has her jaw agape The Model has hair on her face exactly where you don't want it The Model is making a stupid expression The Model was lit by a blind man Whoever posted the pics to the internet thought that a 1024X768 image would be best compressed at 14k The photographer really likes blur 99.9% of pics are useless in both morphing and texture work. Morphing M3 is extremely difficult. I haven't tried it yet, but if I were to work on a Male Morph i would take David, strip his morphs out, and morph-manage M3's morph channels back in and start from there. If you want to use Steph Petite or Laura or some other non-v3 model (and I think you do, unless you're working on Amazons) do the work on V3 then transfer two things to the other model: The completed Morph Target(s) and 1 morph target to make that character's face back into V3. Good luck, and if you have any further questions, I will answer them here for the benefit of all who might be interested. -WTB

Another thing to take into consideration is the hair style. A different hair style can make a tremendous difference in how the person looks.

Awesome clones WTB! That Molly (the person and the clone) has a amazing face. What do you add to the cr2 to add slave dials for eye placement? I end up having to reposition my clone's eyes everytime I apply a preset pose. Thanks!

Excellent write-up WTB. I personally use ZBrush, because it gives far more control over the shaping process in 3 dimensions. Using your method - you can get an excellent front-on likeness, however I found once you try and get the profile matching too, the std morphs change the front-on shape too - so you get in this horrible cyclical dial adjustment spiral. The attacted was done in ZB2, and you can see both front-on and profiles are heading in the right direction... You can also see there are details in this morph that are not possible using the std morphs - like the fine mouth shaping, nose bending and the deep furrowed eyes. Of course using ZB comes at a cost (it's more expensive than Poser).

.

Body 0 EyeTranZRight Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeTranYRight Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeTranXRight Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeScaleRight Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeTranZLeft Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeTranYLeft Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeTranXLeft Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeScaleLeft Spline 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeUpDown Linear -0.9600 65 Body 0 EyeSideSide Linear -0.6000 65 Body 0 EyeUDSS1 Linear 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeUDSS2 Linear 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeTranZ Linear -0.5400 65 Body 0 EyeTranXSplit Linear 1.0800 65 Body 0 EyeTranY Linear 4.2200 65 Body 0 EyeScale Linear 0.0000 65 Body 0 EyeRotYSplit Linear 0.0000 65 ------------------- These are my Slave Dials, which I put under "Body" UDSS1 and 2 are "Up/Down and Side/Side" which come in handy You can create these channels in cr2edit by copying existing body morphs and then renaming them. The hard part is adding the code to each eye I have a pz2 to add the code easily if you have those body morphs in place, but alas I have nowhere to host. Other pz2's exist in freestuff I think to do similar things, but I believe none are as all-inclusive as mine. The joy is this: You can lock the eyes, so poses will never screw them up ever again. It won't lock the slave dials from affecting them. Molly does have that certain something, doesn't she? Hairstyle sure is important, that's for sure. I can't find any hair model that will foot the bill for Molly. I need hair where the bangs are pulled back and Under the rest of the length. (That's her standard style). As far as I know, no poser hair exists. I messed around with Zbrush a bit back in the day, wasn't too thrilled but have been away for god knows how many updates and versions, so maybe it's time? That's Tom Cruise, I'm certain, yet I'd love to see a side-by-side on that because I keep looking at it going...what is it that's not quite cruisey about it? Brows leap to mind, I seem to envision TC with thicker brows. The nose in profile rubs me the wrong way, but this may be a memory flaw on my part. Totally excellent, either way and your brain must be cloned and shared for all so that we may all have such great looking textures/nodes/etc. lol Again, I am reminded of how difficult it is to put a good EL into poses and actions. A character comes to life in how they express facially, and no matter how good your character is in default, you're probably going to wet 'em in frustration once you try to raise a brow or open a lip. Once you realize that every possible expression you can concieve will have to be morphed individually for each character, well...it's overwhelming. There's no magic "Unismile" that works on every individual character. When I imagine my imaginary critics, I imagine their number one complaint with my gallery is that my characters lack expression. This is why lol. Still, the quest goes on. -WTB

Wow you guys!! WTB & face_off!! Awesome work!! I did a bit of dial twiddling and as usual I'm not impressed with my results... A friend wants a Poser pic of Brandon Lee as he appeared in The Crow (really, don't ask me why!! Weirdness) and this is what I came up with... went from a few different pics but the small one here mostly. I think I'm gonna look into ZBrush as I have zero skill with the morph dials! I've been modeling in Max for a while but anything organic that I do in max does not look organic so I'm loathe to try face morph modeling in max. Thanks all for all the awesome input!! This has turned into an extremely educational thread!!! Gerard

p.s. face_off... how easy or complicated is it getting unimesh characters into ZBrush to begin morphing??

Well if you put the above profile shot up against Tom (which I haven't - since of course I didn't model it on him), you'd probably find that Tom's nose is actually bigger. And yes - the eyebrows could be bushier. As for expressions....they are pretty good on the above morph (it's Hunter from DAZ). I suspect ZBrushed morphs handle DAZ expression morphs much better than dial morphed shapes, since I could control the vertex positions pretty well with the ZBrush morph - and there are other tricks.....like I made up a texturemap which is all white, but with black lines for the major facial features and lines, so while morphing, it's possible to ensure parts of the face (polys) don't end of where they shouldn't. The biggest issue with ZB is that you only have the perspective camera, and you can't control it's focal length, so version 1 of Hunter looked exactly like T....errr looked exactly right, but then imported into Poser he looked out of proportion (with the camera f-len at 100). Took 24 interations of ZB into Poser to get it right.

ghelmer....if you use ZB2, expect a significant learning curve - it's not like any other modelling program out there. I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth the significant investment, but I use it all the time - it's been well worth it. Getting poser content in and out is ok if you know the steps (I curver of the eyes, head and neck from the original DAZ obj's with Compose, and use uvmapper to save and reapply groups).

Thanks WTB! I'll give that CR2 editing a try.

Cool thread. I admit I spend 99% of time doing custom faces. LOL. William_the_Bloody, you're write-up of the process is so true! But I don't spend months on a project, I spend YEARS on a project! I did likenesses when I first got into Poser, but now I'm doing something even more challenging, interpeting anime characters into realistic 3D characters, (and doing subjective likenesses avoids ethic issues of celebrity likenesses imho). The Mean and Ugly morphs at Daz are also very useful to me as well as using UMT to transfer V3 and David morphs to M3. The process goes like this: I first come up with who I would cast in a live action version of the anime, create a likeness morph, sometimes combine likenesses to create a person who doesn't exist but retains the facial characteristics that define the character, and then I asain-ize them if they aren't asain to begin with, (sometimes I have to correct gender. I have used female likeness for a Bishie and then had to mascilize). Last step is artistic tweaking until the face is pleasant looking and unquie from all other faces. Then test the face with fans to gauge reaction. Repeat the entire process many, many times.... My Inuyasha is 65% River Pheonix. Sesshomaru is 50% Cate Blanchett. The preview image is rendered with no texture maps and only the M3 tr for eyebrows and lashes. bB

I am having a problem with the Zbrush to Poser. I have the zscript that sets things right before exporting from Zbrush, I load the sculpted figure back into Poser and spawn the props then export each one as a morph target. When I load the Vic3 character and apply the morph targets one by one...when I set the value to 1, they come all apart in pieces. I must be missing something somewhere. Any suggestions? I tried doing the reverse normals on import and that didn't help either. TIA for any help.

Brom. Don't forget Brom! It's Capsces' morph pack for M3, available at DAZ. M3 is not hard to morph, when you have that pack. It's fantastic. I also use the two freebie morphs (by Lyrra, I think) in Free Stuff. They round the M3's sharp jaw. And the M3 Head Sculpture Kit by Achilles, also at DAZ. It gives you fine control over the shape of the eyes, brows, chin, etc.

WTB: your Peachez is rather good - needs a but more width at the cheekbones, methinks. Face feels too long. SMG - Very nice. Inna - looking good, needs softer lines (I know, that's a tough one, lol) - but a question: who on earth is she? Looks sort of familiar. Unspeakably gorgeous.... Molly - OMG what a face. Sheez.... and a very, very difficult one to morph. Face_off: Nice likeness of Orlando Bloom ;o) No, it's Chevy Chase, isn't it? Looking good. :] Fish

Dansel. This is a little IT, but it sounds like your vertex order is being changed. What is the "zscript that sets things right"?

Hi face_off...thanks. The Zscript is called XFlipExport and is done by Pixolator and is in this thread about half way down the page. Thank you for answering.

http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=12210

Damsel, you must start of with a mesh in ZB2 that is the DAZ original OBJ, rather than a mesh exported from Poser. Poser export scrabbles the vertex order.

You mean the mesh from the geometries folder? If that's the case, I certainly have been doing it wrong. No one mentioned that or I missed it compeletely. :-) Thank you!

Message edited on: 05/03/2005 17:59

FishNose- Thanks :) Will try to shorten peachez's head a bit and see what happens. I get that "too long" feeling too, yet I feel this may be an illusion caused by not having a suitable hair piece for her. Inna is a model from www.met-art.com where she has appeared in some gazillion sets (not enough, IMO) Softer lines, at this point, are virtually impossible lol. Molly is coming along, but still lacks something. -WTB

Damsel...this was mentioned somewhere on ZbrushCentral - but an easy mistake to make. If you use AutoGroups in ZB, apply the uvs and groups from the original mesh using uvmapper prior to importing into Poser.

Message edited on: 05/03/2005 19:06

Okay thank you face_off. I really appreciate the help! I tried it using the .obj from the geometries folder and that worked. :-) I will use uvmapper also. It was driving me nuts. ;-)

Okay, back for more posting. :D

WTB,

your faces are awsome! =D

face_off,

I'm not a Cruise fan, but how could I pass up Hunter? I have no will power. LOL. If PixelLogic gets $400 from me, it's all your fault. ;)

ghelmer,

Your Brandon Lee is a nice start. I think the eye area needs the most work, the chin looks good. Truth be told, I was toying around with the idea of doing a Brandon Lee too! I really like his East-meets-West facial features. The Crow was one of my favorite movies from the 90s too.

Anyhoo, to help you out, here's a little more of my working process and advice. If you haven't already, get as many good Brandon Lee reference photos as you can find or download.

Here's a quick google link:
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22brandon+lee%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

Before you try to match M3's head with a face in a photo, understand the target face first. This is very important and will help you transend errors in the camera's lens, the printed/scanned image, and M3's face. Look for things like: What is the basic face shape? Where are the cheekbones? What kind of brow? etc. Once you understand your target face, that's when you're ready to begin. I use alot of Physiognomy terms to keep track of facial characteristics because for me, it's an easy way to quickly identify and remember facial features. I use terms like: "Sword Brow" "Monkey Lips" "Fire Face" and "Wolf Eyes."

Then, have a front picture and profile picture ready to help guide you. I also refer back to the 3/4 view for more accuracy, and eyeball other angles too. If you have a worm eye-view photo that will help you in amazing ways on the nose and the nostrils. Start with dial spinning first. (You can do magnets later to refine.) But note that sometimes the effect you are looking for can be done in several ways by different combinations of dial spinning. You have to troubleshoot which one will be best for you.

I use the animation palette to combine different attempts on the same face. Sometimes, I will take the best part of each try to create a new, better face. And sometimes I just average all attempts until I get a face that's not hidious looking! LOL.

Once you have it, do lots of test renders. then walk away from it for week. When you look at again, you'll see errors you were "blind" to before because working too close to "the face" will cloud your objectivity.

The Brom morphs will help your Brandon Lee in the eye area. Put some puffiness around the eyes, bring the eye depth forward, thin the lower face a bit, make the cheekbones wider, the nostrils wider, the "mustache" area wider, and add temples.

Hope that helps! Good luck! =)

bB

Message edited on: 05/03/2005 20:41