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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Dec 23 7:38 pm)
Subject: Will V4 ever be better than a C-movie actress?
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I thinkl the biggest issues are injecting all the morph++ morphs, and then exporing them and seeing what they all do.
There's a LOT in there, and many people never ever bother to pose the eyes...
Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.
OP is correct, V4's expressions are hopeless. SMILEX smiles, cripes! The problem seems to be that all of her expressions are designed around V4 never being morphed at all. They don't even look good with V4's stock character morphs.
Sorry, second poster, it's a nice expression you have there but it still looks Tex Avery cartoonish.
I think a big part of the problem is spherical falloff zones for morphing tools like magnets and even a lot of 3-D modelling programs. Basically, you have to use balls to move everthing, and there has to be a gradual slope of effect otherwise everthing gets jaggy. This often means that you end up affecting things you'd rather not affect, like cheeks in a smile or a nose crinkle.
What you want are muscle shaped zones, so that you could simulate the effect of facial muscles twitching. Ideally, a model would have facial muscles built-in and you would control expressions that way.
Having no jaw joint also creates a lot of problems IMO. All open-mouth morphs suck beyond all capacity to understand and make me want to hurl shoes through my monitors.
I could go on, but to sum up...
Me too.
At first I thought her expressions were better than V3's simply because she could smile and show her teeth (yeah Im a simpleton so sue me). But lately I'm starting to think my initial impression was wrong. V4's expressions look (for the lack of a better word) rigid and forced. The "happy" face works OK and the arrogant cold supermodel thing with puckered lips is convincing, but she is no Miki2. Miki2 is a lot more natural. V4 may bend better than Beckham but she needs better expressions. Do the elite morphs remedy this?
-Morbo will now introduce the candidates - Puny Human Number One,
Puny Human Number Two, and Morbo's good friend Richard Nixon.
-Life can be hilariously cruel
Now you could add a whole bunch of bones to the face to create the morphs you want. That would be like musle shaped zones. I remember creating some of my first mouth morphs like that.
Not that the normal user would take the time or even want to do that but some of us like doing these kind of things just because we can.
"Do the elite morphs remedy this?"
No, they make it worse. IMHO.
Yes that way or you could UVMapper to export out the UV's then add all the bones and groups you want to the head create your morphs then export out and load it into UVMapper again and import the saved UV's back to the figure and save as new figure. Should load as a new morph just fine.
May still be easier to use something like Zbrush or Modo or what ever Modeling app of choice. But my first morphs were done like that because I had better control than with magnets.
I wish I could find the original thread on how I learned the trick. It was sometime in 2001?
i forgot all about zbrush. maybe i should take a crack at some face expression morphs for V4. i made a few emotive facial morphs for The Girl in zbrush that look really good i think. not clue when i'll have time but i should see if that would help.
yes V4 can do suprised ok... she can also do "happy" if you set it exactly to 1.0. and she can do blank. that's 3 expressions though i need a lot more hehe.
of course, she isn't TOTALLY hopeless or i couldn't use her at all.. i just think there's tons of room for improvement when it comes to the face expressions
If you are using Poser there's the Ultramorphs II set from RDNA which are great for fine tuning.
It also has a python script to randomise faces so you will always end up with something unique.
The first set is more a set of character morphs but the second set is the one for fiddling :)
They DO NOT work in Daz Studio though.
V4
Maps by MaskEdit
Lighting by Mec4D: HDRI/exr
Render engine: Poser7 Firefly
jrdonohue.com/snowgirl/snowgirl1.jpg
jrdonohue.com/snowgirl/snowgirl2.jpg
jrdonohue.com/snowgirl/snowgirl3.jpg
Desaturated and stylized:
jrdonohue.com/snowgirl/snowgirl1bw.jpg
jrdonohue.com/snowgirl/snowgirl2bw.jpg
jrdonohue.com/snowgirl/snowgirl3bw.jpg
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Purrdey do you (or anyone) have those morphs from RDNA? It appears that a lot of the morphs are redundant of the Daz Morphs++ would you argree or not? In otherwords, is that a product intended for people who would then not need Morphs++?
Second, do you need Package 1 if you are going to utilize the randomizer?
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I got best results using both ++ and pack two together, I haven't tried them without the ++ as you need those for the body anyway.
This was one I came up with just trying to get a more realistic mouth and nose, it's a mixture of all morphs, base, ++ and the ultra pack 2.
I'm with Purrdey on this.
Do people create expression using the face morphs? Or do they restrict themselves to the multi-morph-engaging morphforms like "happy" "sad" "angry" that come with V4?
I would agree that that short list of emotion-labeled dials does not give very good results. But I never use them. I adust each part of the face with the larger list of face morphs for areas, such as Lower Face, Mouth, Eyes, etc.
I also use the "GirlName" morphs for faces. You know some Eva, a little Kirsten etc.
That's where you get control. And that's why an addition of another morph pak such as the RDNA set would/could add to that power.
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Sorry Purrdey if that sounded blunt, was not meant that way. I was asking a question.
Yes face morphs can help with expressions but only so far and quite often they do strange things to the mesh when mixed.
I still think a multi boned head would be the best way to get better expressions and muscular movement to the face. But, how many bones are to many. We were discussing this very thought in the rebel figures thread. Better control vs ease of use.
Me, better control, the majority of hobby users, ease of use/done for them. Daz proves that quite often. How many times have you had to hack and slash and sacrifice a live chicken to be able to do what you want with V4 because in Daz's infinite wisdom made a "Posing Figure for Dummies". As long as you use thier software with it.
I agree the more morphs the better, though I would rather have better morphs.
mainly im interested in expression morphs... smile, snarl, nostril flare, eye squint, stuff like that.
combining these in any way other than just "hinting" at an expression- in other words trying to convey extreme happiness, sadness, rage, etc, seems to knock V4 right out of whatever character she is at the moment (ie the FACIAL morph defined character) and make her look like a cartoon.
so it sounds like in my case the RDNA morphs wouldn't help; i need the character of her face to remain the same; i just wish it was as easy and realistic to give her emotion as it was for V3 :(
Quote - but with bones, don't you have to have joints?
i wonder if there has been a control rig like that, in other systems, and why would it be better than morphs.
This is commonly done in the 'big boy' apps, and it's better because (when a face is rigged well) you are not limited by anything other than the quality of the rig; with morph targets, you're stuck with whatever morph targets you have, and in the case of a high poly model, like any Poser model, making custom morph targets is much more painful in very dense areas like the face.
Yeah a multigroup head is a real pain for morph creation, because you also need ERC tied together for full head morphs, and the thought of adjusting all the falloff zones for say a 10 group face gives me nightmares, and I revel in more intracate rigging product creation.
Some things make sense to do, and others don't, and knowing poser's rigging limitations, a multigroup face is probably pushing past useability and practicality.
Maybe one or two additional groups might help, but they wouldn;t really be much assistance anyway for expression control.
Plus we always DO have magnets and the morphing brush in poser now, so you can tweak morphs even further with just a little more work already.
Hmm... maybe magnets would be a good alternative for facial expressions or control?
Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.
Magnets are not really any more or less use in this sense imo; you have the same spherical falloff zone limitations already mentioned. The difficult part in any case is giving the appearance of skin sliding parallel to the bone underneath it without distorting the shape or volume too much - since the face's skin is not very conveniently arranged with respect to those spherical falloff zones, it's not going to be a very fun project (good luck).
hmmmm....
I am currently getting my feet wet with Character Animation (CA) in 3DSMax.
In that program, you have the fully powerful MaxBones approach, which I would imagine is the path that contains the idea of bones/joints/rig for the face.
However, you also have BiPed (Character Studio). It's a much simpler control rig. I purchased a fully rigged BiPed character from Turbo Squid and satisfied myself that I could achieve a wonderful and powerful workflow for moving the character around and applying translation/rotation in a very simple way. As a matter of fact, I am in love with it; it surpasses anything else I've tried for direct manipulation of human model such as Poser, D|S or Carrara, and trials I took in other software, as well.
What about facial animation and expression plus lip sync? With BiPed it is not about bones. It is about mesh deformation thru morph modifiers. Within Max itself there are good tools for this, but I have not penetrated them too much yet, because this plugin is has called me with emphasis:
LipService with LBrush by Joe Alter
http://lbrusn.com
Joe is the creator of "Shave and a Haircut" the stand-alone hair/fur system, which is now integreated into and included with 3DSMax.
LBrush combines subdivision, sculpting, painting and morph creation. You put these tools right at the heart of your CA workflow. It's like having a purpose-built ZBrush right there, right at the place you need it, to scuplt and paint the face as needed and when needed.
It feels to me like the LBrush work flow is the grown-up version of the way I work in Poser: use the shaping dials to get as close as you can to the look you want, then activate the MorphBrushTool to create one or more custom 'shapings' that become dials. Then, animate the expresion and viseme morphs.
To me, this is the intuitive way to go. Certainly I would and should like to know more about the bones/rig approach.
By the way, in my trial of Modo I saw that while Modo does not yet have rigging/translation of rig it does have this subdivide/sculpt/paint/manipulate workflow already up and functioning. There is a fantastic demo video for it, don't have time this morning to find the link. When Modo gets full CA plus hair/cloth, you combine it with their brush/sculpt engine and the powerful render engine....Modo could become seriously serious.
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Quote - To me, this is the intuitive way to go. Certainly I would and should like to know more about the bones/rig approach.
The face rig approach to expressions has several advantages over the morph based one, the main one being that it decouples your expressions from your mesh. This way you just have to build a decent face rig once, and after that anytime you need to have the expressions on an actual character, you just put this rig in a character's face, without having to recreate all the morphs from scratch everytime. eg in poser terms, imagine a 'unirig' that can be applied to all figures in the poserverse, that instantly gives them expressions and facial morphs and that can be used with BVH files besides. It's the same idea as using bones in the body rather then sculpting each pose by hand and has a lot of the same pros and cons.
Also note that for realistic and complex facial work, you need proper skin sliding, squash and stretch, skin dynamics etc. All of these things require that the mesh actually 'float' over an underlying structure of muscle and bone and not be moving directly with a morph. So you have no choice but to do facial rigs that control the structure which in turn controls the skin.
Quote - When Modo gets full CA plus hair/cloth, you combine it with their brush/sculpt engine and the powerful render engine....Modo could become seriously serious.
Modo's main problem is that it's stuck with the same people who never managed to give Lightwave decent animation, so God only knows what they're gonna do with Modo. They'v always been modelling and rendering guys, and this is why Modo is pretty good at those. For the rest, i wouldn't hold my breath.
gareee i doubt modo will ever aspire to be one of the complex maya-level apps. That's not what I meant.
What I meant was, for the artist-animator with one license or a small studio, Modo if/when complete with soft-body dynamics, cloth, hair and rigged figures, will be ideal, especially as the price will probably be less than $1500, compared with Max at $3500 and Maya at $7000. Point taken that they are modeling guys and might not come up with great CA.
For instance, I do not need 70% of what Max can do. But I can find no other solution for my workflow, with power, at a lower price. I need first class hair and cloth, plus CA, and great render power. As many will attest, I have been fiddling around for several years trying to avoid going to the Big Apps, but I have now surrendered. At least I found a vendor to sell me the license for $3200 instead of $3500.
ghonma the point I just made more or less applies to what you said. I followed your explanation and get it. But I would say there is a huge window between the primitive animation tool set in Poser and Maya/Max /XSI deployed with the sliding skin, rigged face and workgroup requirements you are citing.
For myself personally, I am in that window; Character Studio with LBrush being fed by props, assets, human mesh and texture maps from the PoserDazDom world. This is such a leap up for me it seems like a mountaintop. It remains to be seen if I hit a wall with power to animate expressions. Good to know I can then go up the ladder.
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P.S. maybe someday I'll gave such a cryng need that I'll license FaceRobot for $100,000!
If you're interested in morph based expression work, then i suggest getting a book called 'Stop staring' by Jason Osipa which is pretty much the bible of the method:
http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Staring-Facial-Modeling-Animation/dp/0782141293
Parts of it are quite technical (and you can ignore those if you want) but it also has a lot of discussion of how exactly we 'read' expressions and how to recreate the subtle signs in your own characters.
that book sounds perfect for me, because I go by the ghost of emotion across the face. Thanks for the tip.
this animation is mocap for the first half, hand keyed after she stops skipping.
V4
Poser 7
lo-res render (not final) and not dynamic hair
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Here's a new facial mocap syistem that is quite interesting. Reminds me of FaceRobot. I think this sys is "joint" oriented.
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4617
:: og ::
That's a neat demo, but the rig is allowed to deform the jawbone and chin kind of way too much in that example. That's a big $$$ application besides. Take a look at these guys' tools, used with great results in Mass Effect (at least for the main characters' face animations, some of the minor characters aren't that good)
patorak, can you drive it with .bvh?
What about a low-cost facial mocap system custom built for this rig?
NOTE: While I'm sincerely interested in these technologies, I remain dedicated to the idea that hand key of morphs, with no sliding skin or anything, can be extrememly effective in conveying STORY thru stylized animation, if the hand-key artist has been trained in or has raw ability in the capturing of the essence of human emotion.
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You know what I'd like? A really inexpensive glove for Poser that pushes near-realtime capture of hand/finger rotation/translation. Not the location/movement of the hand in space; just the translations/rotations of wrist/finger joints relative to a reference point in the forearm.
To be effective it would have to capture full fps, at least 30 datapoint gathers per second, because finger gestures can be lickity split and you'd want the ease in/outs to be driven by the data capture.
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Ideally you'd want some way of exactly capturing the mesh prior to mocap. Like, you'd start with a bucket of a polymer, the actor would dip one hand, it would firm up into an exact mold of the hand. There would then be some way of capturing the exact shape and have it drive a mesh, or the deformation of an already existing hand mesh, inside of which the rig that must respond to the mocap fits or can easily be adjusted to fit.
Since a hand is small enough, the mold, or perhaps just the actual actor's hand itself, might be captured with a desktop 3D laser scanner. They are not very good, I have heard, however, at scanning complex shapes such as a hand.
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Actually, i think the actor should just dip his/her hand into a bucket of custom-grown nano-sand grains that all instantly report their position down to the molecular level of xyz. That would give you the empty space in the bucket by inverse. That digital information drives a hand mesh.
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I like the hand/glove idea and heck it can even be done with tech we have today, eg this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU
is using the Nintendo Wii's motion sensing remote to do all sorts of cool tricks with detecting motion in real space. There is no reason why you couldn't set up something similar for 3D use as well. It may not have as fine a control as a dedicated glove but i can easily see using this idea to do performance capture.
Yes, for closer shots, but for longer shots, it is the whole combination and if the body and hands don't work with the facial expression, it suffers. Or so It seems to me.
But then again, all of us here having this conversation are not the normal audience. We tend to break these things down because we study the how and cause effect. Where the normal audience just watches it as is.
How many people notice how many times a character blinks.
I do, but I guess I'm not normal.
I like the glove idea too.
If you want to substitute an real actress, nothing will be "forgiven". You may not need an AAA performance, but at least everything has to be believable - and getting small hand movement believable, subtle changes in balance too, walking, running, standing - if you want to do that believable, you will need a really good animator, and loads of time. If the body does not do subtle movements to support the expression in the face, then most people will see through it instantly.
A ship in port is safe;
but that is not what ships are built for.
Sail out to sea and do new things.
-"Amazing
Grace" Hopper
Avatar image of me done by Chidori.
i beg to disagree. Audiences forgive a lot in animation. Now, if you obviously try, but do a poor job, that sticks out and they frown. But if you signal to the audience that you are not attempting to bring absolute verismilitude with a certain aspect of movement, such as highly subtle hand motion, they will not mind.
For goodness sake the (and I am NOT a fan) entire 'South Park" thing has NO body/arm motion, right?
So, the barest minimum is mouth movement. Not even full facial, but at least mouth.
It is not really a hot point, but my contention is that the first thing audiences expect is some sorth of mouth, then facial correspondence. I can not think of one case of animation with dialog where other movments were animated -- on a sliding scale of realism -- but no facial animation was attempted.
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I can not think of one case of animation with dialog where other movments were animated -- on a sliding scale of realism -- but no facial animation was attempted.
There was this sci-fi cartoon series back in the late50s, early 60s (maybe? I think) that had zero facial animation but used films of real mouths imposed on the static animation; and yes, it was highly, highly weird. For the life of me, I cant remember the name of the show, but there ya are.
docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider
Some old 60's-era Marvel cartoons were barely animated -- almost to the point of being narrated comic strips......as in this Iron Man example. Warning: the sound track on this one sounds like an old TV with a bad speaker, turned up too loud.
Quote - now a narrated strip or story....that is different. The audience will accept no facial animation, because it becomes clear the narator is voicing the dialog "once removed" as it were.
I am experimenting with this idea now myself.
I've seen it done well in the past. Often as an included part of a documentary presentation.
As a side note -- personally, I tend to prefer illustrated stories over comics. Illustrated stories come off as less cartoon-like, with more emphasis on the text (re: on the story). The images become the spice, rather than the entrée.
There is a difference from 2D and 3D. 2D you can get away with less as in South Park example. But then again, that is a style of it's own and not the norm in 2D.Could you imagine trying to watch Shrek done that way. Yes there are a couple that don't use as much body, Cars, Finding Nemo, but they are not the norm either.
Shrek as a good example. Fantastic facial expressions. but also different rigged meshes for different distances. The farther the scene shot the less rigged and lower poly the face is and the body movement takes over. It's those body movements that help make it look alive.
I never said that facial expressions weren't the main focus. I'm saying that body motion enhances it all. On a distance shot, you can blur the face and still convey the mood/expression with just body movement. Shrek is a great exaple of that. They put a lot of time into the body movements.
Spiderman, Space ghost were a couple I remember as a kid that used more body than facial. Maybe the masks had something to do with that. Transformers, PowerRangers, yes, I too am amazed they still make that one. These make the same point for body movement as using South Park for facial.
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I love V4... use her almost daily for work. But one thing is true about her- beautiful as she is, you will notice EVERY SINGLE product that has ever been created for her features the same facial expression in the promo ads- the blank, somewhat puckered lips supermodel face.
Now this was also the case with V3 but not quite as much.. why? because the V3 facial morphs could be used to make lots of expressions for her without turning her face into silly putty. Not so with V4, her expression morphs turn her from near-photo-realistic-goddess to cartoon character.
Has anyone designed NEW expression morphs for her or heard of any in the works? I would love to know if there is anything like that out there... I haven't been able to find anything but coaxing V4 into any convincing emotion other than blank stare is an almost impossible task and fatigue is setting in!
thanks,
Darkworld