Hello guys.I saw a tutorial on youtube showing how you can put a real face in a poser figure.However i tried to do this and the result was not good at all.So i would like to ask if you have tried it and if it worked.Where can i find a better video perhaps that would be more helpful

From what I've seen, it will produce results like you see in video game characters. From a distance, it's OK, but it's never going to work for a portrait. If you're doing architectural visualization and you need a bunch of different people to populate a scene, then it has its uses.

For making real characters that stand up to close scrutiny, this is no shortcut.

If you're serious about making a specific face (both color and shape) you need a specialized tool and skills to use it. Something like ZBrush and 2000 hours of practice.

People have gotten good results with Faceshop, but I haven't used it. Search for threads here and at the DAZ forum to see what others have doen with the program.

I'm not disputing anything, as I've never used FS.

But can you define "good results"? If you mean it looks as good as a character from a video game, OK, but that's not what I'd call good. I'd like to see something that is as good as the three famous characters for Apollo.

Everybody is on a different point of the anal retentive continuum, so every person must use their own judgement of what is acceptable. But when certain people give their opinions, I tend to believe them. Have a look at this thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2795822

In particular, read what carodan has to say. He has an artist's eye that I trust - he can paint realistically and is very capable of producing very convincing characters in Poser.

This is a quote from one individual that I think best represents the general outcome:

"Yes I agree I wish I had not bought the wretched thing but the video made it look so simple lol."

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2783198

Attached Link: A Morphable Model of 3D Faces

As a reference point for what I expect to associate with the word "good" in this regard, please have a look at fygomatic's gallery.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=fygomatic

There are some good results in this thread.

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=57975&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60

James Cagney

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=57975&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=80

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=57975&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=120

Pamela Anderson

There are a great deal more mediocre results in the thread. Faceshop is not a one-button instant celebrity solution. For people that don't have fygomatic's skills, the program might help provide a good starting point that a lesser skilled artist could not otherwise achieve. I've seen a lot of negative reviews of the program, but have also seen good ones. Quite a few negative reviews came from people who are quite capable of producing good Poser art, so the negative reviews should not be taken lightly.

Abalone's website used to have a demo for the program, but no longer does. That makes this an iffier program to try out, though DAZ does have a good return policy.

Well, while working on one failed indie game, I've found that the key to achieving likeness is the texture. Literally, If you project the photo of Brad Pitt on a sphere, from certain distance and angle, it will look exactly like Brad Pitt :)

I bet if you use fygomatic's awesome textures (which, I believe, was made with combination of modifying generic hi-res textures and drawing) on default V4 figure, you won't lose too much of the likeness, but if you apply one of his morphs on a character with different materials, I bet you will have a hard time recognizing what sort of celebrity is this.

Quote - Well, while working on one failed indie game, I've found that the key to achieving likeness is the texture. Literally, If you project the photo of Brad Pitt on a sphere, from certain distance and angle, it will look exactly like Brad Pitt :)

I bet if you use fygomatic's awesome textures (which, I believe, was made with combination of modifying generic hi-res textures and drawing) on default V4 figure, you won't lose too much of the likeness, but if you apply one of his morphs on a character with different materials, I bet you will have a hard time recognizing what sort of celebrity is this.

This is a mistake a lot of folk seem to make because sometimes it seems like a texture is all that's required to achieve a likeness.

The real Brad Pitt is recognisable as Brad Pitt because of a combination of the shape of his face, his particular skin colouration, where his eyebrows and hairline come on his face, and because of the particular shapes of his facial expressions. A diffuse texture made from photos of his face will only ever make an un-shaped 3d head look like Brad Pitt when lit in quite limited conditions, and will probably contain burned in shadows and specular reflections that will conflict with 3d lighting and materials. It's these burned-in shadows and speculars that are describing in part the shapes we associate with being like Brad Pitt, but these details come from photos that were taken in specific lighting conditions with light falling from specific directions.

Given the example of 3d games - many use limited lighting schemes with a lot of ambience in the materials which is why textures alone can transfer a significant amount of likeness to reasonably stock figures. You usually find that some degree of shaping has been done in the better looking games to help things along.

I think Fygomatic's excellent likenesses are achieved through a combination of both very accomplished morphs and textures. I'd be equally willing to bet that the textures alone would not be as effective as you think - certainly not with strong directional lighting.

carodan, you're right, of course. I wasn't completely serious :)

However, as a side note, we didn't use Brad Pitt's photos - for obvious reasons :) The photos we used were taken specifically to be used for texturing and all the shadows and highlights were carefully removed (well, more or less anyway) before projecting. They were baked again in 3d package, but I only did projections and cleaning up, so I'm not sure about the rest of the process - and the project pretty much died before the character was complete.

The mesh itself were modeled based on the concept art that had little to do with the person photographed - yet the uncanny likeness - which wasn't a goal at all - were there up until the point when the texture was manipulated (it's supposed to be a zombie).

Gotta love the James Cagney example.  It's a photo from the results inside faceshop, rather than the resulting model/morph and texture applied to a figure in Poser or Daz.  In other words, faceshop produces crap unless you spend 2000 hours tweaking the results.

I wouldn't find that Cagney example the least bit usable. But that's just me.

And James Cagney had a so called character face, even when he was young, so it should be rather easy to recognise him.

This is something I wondered too about the promos for the Faceshop or whatever software, it maybe a few years old: it worked with Winston Churchill. Churchill had one of the most famous character faces in the last century. You would even notice him when you see only his shadow. And that's what makes it difficult for faces who are less characteristically structured.

As good as fygomatic's likenesses are, he still uses a limited set of angles and expressions.

Poser heads are hollow shells and not skulls with muscles and skin over them. The best likeness ever created will slowly become unrecognizable as expressive dials are changed because those dials will be adding an expression for the original underlying figure (V4, V3, etc.). To truly capture a likeness, a person would have to create expression dials specifically for that likeness to retain the resemblance beyond the initial emotionless morph.

gagnonrich, that's why most figures come with "expressions building blocks" so to say - morphs that give you more control then generic "smile", "frown", etc.  I think morphs++ pack for V4 includes collection of morphs to build custom expressions.

But the way facial muscles work isn't unique to the person.

The combination of skeletal structure, musculature, and fat do a very good job of making individual faces very unique. We meet thousands of people in our lifetimes, but find very few that look alike. We may all have similar facial muscles, but we don't all have the same smile.

Poser expression morphs aren't moving 3D muscles, but are moving vertices that don't have to slide over anything that preserves the overall shape of a celebrity likeness morphed head. It would take a lot of effort to create a Jessica Alba likeness and make it still look like Jessica Alba when she's smiling. The odds are pretty good that new morphs would have to be added to do the job.

I agree.

And actually, the converse is also true - there can be people who do not appear to resemble each other at all except with a particular expression such as a smile (or one kind of smile), frown etc etc. There are many reasons for this, one of which is that expressions are driven by elements that are not simply lying under the surface of the skin.

The way people smile is different (but not too much, if it's a real smile). The way jaw, facial muscles, etc. work is the same. And the way the uniqueness of the character fades with emotional facial expression applied is actually right. That's how it works in real life, too.

However, as a separate point, custom morphs can affect how basic facial expressions work. That's the problem with morphs in general (or blend shapes or shape keys or whatever they call it) in any 3d package - they can conflict with each other.

Quote - The way people smile is different (but not too much, if it's a real smile). The way jaw, facial muscles, etc. work is the same. And the way the uniqueness of the character fades with emotional facial expression applied is actually right. That's how it works in real life, too.

However, as a separate point, custom morphs can affect how basic facial expressions work. That's the problem with morphs in general (or blend shapes or shape keys or whatever they call it) in any 3d package - they can conflict with each other.

That's certainly true. I use ZBrush to do custom sculpting on Daz figures like V4/M4 and if you get a character you want, regardless of it looking like a real life person, facial expressions MUST be tweaked.

If you buy a general expression package like from here and then try them on a custom morphed V4 figure, most likely you will need to do some tweaking at the very least. Typically bought expressions are not meant to work with meshes that have been altered in programs like ZB. That is why I usually end up doing facial expressions by hand because if you use those created by others they simply do not work as well and tend to be too strong.

Now, just as in real life, if a person smiles big, laughs big, etc. their face will be distorted because it is not in a general neutral position.