Quote - Mark- can you describe your work flow?*
 *

Chaotic at best...

 

"HAHA! Me too!"

 

I really type slow, so let me give a few more tips instead. I do this as a hobby and I am not an expert, so hopefully someday an expert will write one of these. 

1. Collect a lot of photos. You already know this. You need front and side preferably without the person smiling or laughing. The link I gave above is one of the best I've found. One hint, many celebrities get plastic surgery several times in their lives, so you may find photos just a few years apart that look very different. Bearing that in mind, when you do your final tweaking, focus on just one or two photos.

 

 "Thanks! That site is great! I found some great Scarlett Johannson pics-and that is where I got my Meg Texture. You are SOOO right about the plastic surgery!!! There are a number of Megan looks- and that threw me off at first- until you mentioned that on the Daz thread."

 

 

2. I know the temptation is to sculpt a whole face in some package and then kick that out as a morph, but I can't do that and I bet most people will fail at making life-like morphs that way. I find it easier to buy/build a collection of facial part morphs (like "hook-nose" or "long_chin") and then tweak the face with those morphs. I also get to re-use those morphs on other faces. One limitation is you can't give the final morph away as many of the people who sell morph packages do not allow that.

 

"That is a great idea-the collection of morphs. I found that real world faces go way beyond any of the morph packs in variety. One limit with V4 is that they disabled the XYZ scale dials- and MANY faces are narrower than V4's or M4's. I found a python script to make them visible again-works in Mac Poser 6- but NOT PoserPro2010 (crashes).

I am going to try the "sculpt a whole face" approach unless my Zbrush trial expires first."

 

3. Bearing that in mind, buy all the morph packages you find and can afford and try out all the dials until you understand what they do. You must have the ++ morphs from DAZ. I'm beginning to appreciate the RDNA packages. The link below is for the RDNA V4 morph package. Some of them duplicate the DAZ morphs, but some are nicely subtle.

 

http://www.runtimedna.com/V4-Ultra-Morphs-2-Face-Randomizer.html

 

"I got the V4 Ultra-Morphs-2- great pack that expands on the ++ morphs. I started with those-but ended up moving everything around in Zbrush. For instance-the nose-there were no commercial morphs to make the nose narrow at the top-and gradually widen on the way down. Same with the nostrils- I could not quite get them right with any morph target packs- so I "rebuilt" it in Zbrush (trial). What I DONT have is an individual morph-there are ALL combos. Which is a shame because I will have to start from scratch with Scarlett."

 

There are excellent morph packages sold here at Renderosity too.

4. Even with all the above packages, you still need a few more custom morphs. I think most of the morphs I make for myself, and I have about 200 of my own morphs, are for V4's chin and nose. I think those areas need the most help. I use pretty simple and cheap software to make these. Carrara 3 and Blacksmith 3D (the morph package). About 95% of my morphs that I make, I make with that 8 (?) year old Carrara package. I use Blacksmith for facial creases or bumps. I really don't think you need an expense software package. It's most important you practice and master what you have.

 

 " Wow- Carrara  3. I think I finally found something I DONT like about my Mac. Unless I find an "OS8" simulator that will work on an Intel Mac- I cannot USE my original morph program- RayDream Studio 5 (ancestor of Carrara). I am going to have to check out BlackSmith 3D! "

 

 

5. Use BagginsBill's VSS shader package. If you don't know what that is, do a search in this forum. You'll find lots of threads on it. Keep working it until you get a good look to your texture. I think that's more than half of it if you want a real looking figure. It makes up a for an only semi-good morph. I'm planning on getting the latest Poser Pro when it comes out too if I keep my job. The images of skin from it look really nice.

 

" I love that shader!! I used it extensively!! PoserPro2012 adds fantastic SSS based skin shaders!!! I exported Meg to Lightwave-then created a node network based on "Fast Skin SSS"- for the skin, teeth and eyes- making 3 different versions of the face texture-one for Subdermis, Epidermis, and diffuse-many hours there.  It looks like PoserPro2010 solves it-with preset shaders! Love it.!!!"

 

6. One you have all your morphs loaded in a figure and get a good texture and lighting set up, use that as your starting point every time. I open that pz3 and rename it and start from there.

 

 "SMART! I lost my best earlier build by NOT doing that!" I ended up with a different version of Meg (from a different plastic surgery). I am equally as pleased with it-but I had a Meg 2010 version as well. Oh well."

 

7. Don't get discouraged by the better work of others. You want to see really good morphs of celebrities look at fygomatic's stuff in the galleries here.

 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=61047

 

His stuff is great. I'm only fair, but hey it's a hobby, so I keep at it.

I hope this help and I encourage others to submit suggestions.

 

" I did at first- Fygomatic is the reigning champ. He makes his characters in Lightwave 3d. It is an expensive program-which I got years ago- on a SIDE grade offer. The typical work flow involves subdivision surfaces (which Poser will NOT accept as a MorpH) The toolset for organic face REMODELING is actually much more limited than BlackSmith3d, and very much more limited than Zbrush. And yet- he makes the best celeb characters that I have ever seen! Lightwave has MANY MANY modeling tools-but they alter geometry-there are a few that don't. No brushes as in Zbrush. "

 

"This is only a hobby for me too-and I hope to keep at it- I learned a lot making Meg- I started seriously back in June. Hopefully it will take less time for Scarlett"