Quote - > Quote - 3) Pre-plan your points and lay them on your reference on photoshop. Also helps to pre-figure out the shape of the head and ears's placement. You will get a texture map with points drawn on it if you do this, but I only use the map as a guide for creating my own texture map, so this is no problem for me.

How do you get a texture map without the points?  Can you substitute the 'unpointed' image somewhere or at some other time?

Quote - 4) If your dot placements are bad you will know immediately because FaceShop will not have the head lined-up to match your reference. Click the back button and try again. (This is why it's important to refigure out where the ears are! The ears are usually the difference in the head's rotations and tilt)

I'm not sure about the ears.  I have an image with both ears clearly visible and the geometry head was basically a left-right mirror of the image.  In this case, the person in the photo doesn't have an exactly symmetrical face left-right (esp. the nose) and the nose may have caused FS a bit of confusion more than the ears.  :)  Unfortunately, facial symmetry is more a rare occurrence than asymmetry.

My own note: It is difficult to get good photos of a face in nice orthogonal and emotionless 'poses' unless you happen to have someone present to sit and let you take photos of them.  Here's where it would be great to have a way to do the ImageModeler approach and take a set of photos and correlate feature points between them.  Now you have a means to extrapolate the 3D surface more adequately despite the odd angles.  Maybe a future feature perhaps?

Very intuitive note!
We are working on the next version of FaceShop where the whole business with dots is changing and will have a depper impact. It will also simplify the process a great dela.
Pls. stay tuned.
Laslo