A lot of things are needed to create a nice image: good lights, good POV, gamma correction (yes, I've read all Bagginsbill's remainders!) etc. etc...

One of the hardest things to do correctly for me are expressions. Creating a good smile, a surprised face, an angry villain or a happy face is never simple.

Pre-built expression packs? If they come with a specific character, they seem to work well only with that character (and not even always). If they are "generic V4 expressions", they seem to work well only with the unmorphed mesh. When a character morph is applied, usually they become "ugly faces" and nothing more.

I am trying to understand the subtle relationships between face dials and "perceived expression" of the character. Sometimes a slight change in a dial is enough to change completely the expression. An "happy" morph set full throttle to "1" usually is horrible.

Are expressions definitely character-dependant as they seem? Is there a common pathway? Some characters seem to change expressions better than others (like in real life, anyway). What are your experiences with expressions?

Giorgio

IMO, expression packs should really be a base for building up your models final facial morph.  You are correct, some packs completely overwrite your hard work forcing you to restart your project.  Others are just not enough to be realistic.  I usually start the basics and work my way up tweaking settings as I go.  The best source of learning how to create expressions are photographic images.  Your own photo album will contain every possible expression imaginable because they are frank and unposed.  Also look in your local newspapers and magazines.  Some powerful expressions can be created from those photos any day.

Expressions are hard!

which is why 99% of the poser images in the gallery have no expressions.....

The old adage says that it takes 64 muscles to frown. My problem is that it seems to take 64 careful dial spinnings for a frown... and I not even sure which they are and how much to move them!  :biggrin:   <--- this one would be a good morph

You can try using the Poser 7 Morph Putty tool with only the expression morphs and a few others like 'mouth narrow' selected. Also right clicking on a dial presents the option to split the morph into left and right dials but I find magnets useful for creating asymmetery. In the Antonia thread there is discussion of 'sag' nodes in the shader to simulate the effect tilting the head has on the features but this can be achieved in part with magnets. I think the face looks unanatural without the inherent asymmetery combined with the asymmetery caused by gravity with the tilt of the head... the amount need be very small. I think the standard figures have serious expression problems and unfortunatly it is the toon figures that have the most developed expression morphs.

BTW Ockham has a script in Freestuff that sets the 'sensitivity' of all the dials in a Poser scene on the fly.... very useful. I do still images but the animation slider can be used to tone down morphs to intermediate settings... you can get interesting results to study by applying a face pose... pulling the animation slider to the other end and applying a new face pose and then sliding back to view the intermediate frames... you may need to turn off animation on your lights and cameras. The Expression Magic products which are face pose setting libraries with previews can be very interesting to study also,

I rarely find the "built in " emotion dials useful. If I want the character to look surprised, for example, I would not go to the "surprised!"  dial that you can find in Poser figures and the Daz figures  morphs ++, these dials cause too much movement all over the face..... I find it better, for example,to lift the eyelids very very slightly with an eyelid only dial , or a magnet,  and I would do the same for the eyebrows- slight lift with an eyebrow ony dial or a mag. You would be *surprised
*(ha ha ) how much better that subtle look is than the built in emotion dials

Quote - The old adage says that it takes 64 muscles to frown. My problem is that it seems to take 64 careful dial spinnings for a frown... and I not even sure which they are and how much to move them!  :biggrin:   <--- this one would be a good morph

I think there-in lies the problem.  A human face is a lot more flexible than a Poser figure.
A Poser face just doesn't have the the polys to bend properly enough to simulate a
human face all that realistically. Especially a very exaggerated expression.  And if
you try to create a character, and then try to give it expressions, forget about it.

Quote - ..Are expressions definitely character-dependant as they seem? Is there a common pathway? Some characters seem to change expressions better than others (like in real life, anyway). What are your experiences with expressions?Giorgio

Expressions are just morphs to the mesh.  You are correct in that they look better for the character they were designed for.  They do!  That's because they were designed for that mesh.

When you have a face morph, it's a different looking mesh.  However, it still moves according to the instructions in the expression morph.

Let's say that vertice #345.32324.55443 is supposed to move upwards .4534325 units in a "smile" expression on Victoria 4.  Well, the new face morph has that particular vertice located .983732 units from its default position.  But, it will still move .4534324 units when the "smile" expression is chosen.  That doesn't work very well if that particular vertice is making up a portion of the nose of the new face morph instead of the mouth.  (of course, if V4 uses muscle and expression groups assigned on the fly dicated by new morph meshes that I am not aware of.. then, I'm completely wrong..)

IMO, the only way to really get a good expression morph is to tweak the settings by hand and, in some cases, directly manipulate the mesh.  I also think that more face morph creators should include specialized morph dials for expressions.  For instance, Aery Soul's Alice comes with a set of expressions specifically built for Alice since she is a radically different looking mesh morph than V4's standard appearance.  This is the way it should be for some generic expression morphs in custom characers.  I don't expect character creators to redo every expression.  But, some very basic starting point morphs (like smile, frown, etc) should be included if using standard V4 expression morphs won't yield appropriate results with the new character.

Yet I have seen some very good expressions in the galleries.

It's true that many renders (including mine!) are expressionless puppets with empty eyes, but it IS possible to bring life to them.

But while there are many tutorials on lights, cameras, and so on, it's hard to find something about expressions. Maybe because each character is a different story?

Giorgio

*But while there are many tutorials on lights, cameras, and so on, it's hard to find something about expressions. Maybe because each character is a different story?

*Its a very subjective area......I might find a certain smile on someone's face appealing while you do not

There were some good tutorials concern expression c. Y2K back for Posette and Victoria 1 which had a more limited number of dial. Maybe doing studies with a figure like Posette would be enlightening. Posette Expression magic was a very good product. Posette looks really good with a good texture and Stahlratte's morphs to fix the eye, lip and nose edges. I am sorry I can not find the tutorial URLs for you right now in case they are still up but an old "Flying Dutchman" site that has not been updated might have tutorials links... I still have old ghost sites from 1997-98 up on free hosts because I can't remeber the passwords to take them down!

*I rarely find the "built in " emotion dials useful.

*When used alone they are, but I found out that the combination of emotion dials can make some realistic emotions: It's almost like a recipe: take 0.6 of smile, add 0.2 Fear, and finish it with 0.3 of surprise and you have a pretty smile.
Here is a unmorphed, plain V4 with a good skinshader, Gloria short hair, and the emotionsettings above.
And there are more settings you can combine: evil smile: combine happy and angry,
a mocking smile : happy and disgust, very mad: angry, disgust and surprise. You can use surprise too exagarate emotions, because surprise rarely stands alone: you can have a happy surprise or a nasty surprise or a surprise  when you see how much tax you have to pay.
For quick emotions I find these dials really useful, but for more subtile emotions I use the V4 -Base-settings, and I have to agree that a face morph not always works with pre-baked emotions. Especially the G2-figures are terrible: you can make a nice face with the face-room , but the emotiondials just ruins the moprh.
A lot of patience is aquired to make real emotions, an advice: use a mirror and look mad, or sad or happy and look how your own face change. But beware: if the clock strikes twelve or you'll keep that face. (old dutch superstition)

Best regards,

Bopper.

they don't use expressions much in poser galleries (as noted above) because:

• they're hard to do right
• new poser users are mostly interested in posting a large-boobed girl in order to get congratulatory comments, and AFATK nobody looks at the face
• in the absence of affect, emotions and facial expressions have no meaning to them

however, one way to do it is to look in the mirror when trying to do facial expressions, or rotoscope it over a photo of a person with the desired facial expression

There is an other trick for adding expressions to Poser figures... the Liquid Tool in Photoshop.

It might be best to take this whole thing in bite sized chunks too. Just do a general pass over the face gently nudging dials (.100 - .400) and do the whole face area, write an email look at a photo of the expression, and then come back to it after some time and do another general pass, slowly refining the look...almost like sculpting. Don't be in a hurry, study photographs.

 Quote - "The old adage says that it takes 64 muscles to frown. My problem is that it seems to take 64 careful dial spinnings for a frown... and I not even sure which they are and how much to move them!  

Frowning is only two muscles - M. corrugator supercilii and depressor supercilii - I have a V3 and a V2 with all muscles implemented as  morph targets - this is the only way to go

Look here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System

 This is the idea :

 And another one - only done with muscle contractions - data coming from real faces

*new poser users are mostly interested in posting a large-boobed girl in order to get congratulatory comments, and AFATK nobody looks at the face

Yeah !     Young whippersnappers !!!! 

Expression Tutorial right here folks!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2762957