THIS is the way facial animation should be done.  Morphs don't provide this level of control, and get a load of the REALTIME realism with DX11 shaders.  This is where it's at, ladies n gentlemen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z86YsS-pVsQ

Looks very impressive, would be fun to see the same video in wireframe mode.

That is amazing!! It would be great to have something like that with Poser/DS/Carrara, but it would probably slow the viewport to a crawl! Even getting that kind of viewport display quality would be huge!

I just got Maya 2015 (Educational) and I'm blown away by the speed and image quality of the viewport. I imported a fully textured/rigged (lost the morphs) Genesis2F figure and the speed and quality of the viewport is outstanding. You even very realistic realtime shadows (AO) and specular highlights - including the eyes!! Just like in the video - the quality of the viewport display is better than many (most?) renders in the galley here.

Thanks for posting. I wonder how much that model/rig would cost?

Quote - I just got Maya 2015 (Educational) and I'm blown away by the speed and image quality of the viewport. I imported a fully textured/rigged (lost the morphs) Genesis2F figure and the speed and quality of the viewport is outstanding. You even very realistic realtime shadows (AO) and specular highlights - including the eyes!! Just like in the video - the quality of the viewport display is better than many (most?) renders in the galley here. Thanks for posting. I wonder how much that model/rig would cost?

I looked into it just briefly.  I don't use Maya, but I do have 3dsmax, and the rig system is supposedly available for BOTH packages.  However, it's not available yet on SnapperS Systems' website.  It will be a plugin rigging system for Maya or 3dsmax, when it does become available.  3dsmax also has DX11 shader support through the Nitrous viewport, so it should look and behave just like in the Maya video, or better, but that last shot in the video was fully rendered.  Probably in MentalRay or Vray.

To some degree you can do this in Poser as well. In the face room or with the morph brush. Use the combine tab and lock all morphs, then unlock the expression morphs. You can now drag in the face to change expressiions. How much you can do depends on the available expression morphs.

Not as good as in the video, but it is a step in that direction

Quote - To some degree you can do this in Poser as well. In the face room or with the morph brush. Use the combine tab and lock all morphs, then unlock the expression morphs. You can now drag in the face to change expressiions. How much you can do depends on the available expression morphs. Not as good as in the video, but it is a step in that direction

Hmmm.  Well, it may be a step in that direction, but still entirely different.  The modulations done to the expressions in the face room or with the morph brush do not directly translate to an animated result. You would still have to create a morph from that adjustment, and use the dials to animate the expression from the new morph targets.

 The freedom of movement exhibited in that video with a very simple facial "rig", along with the corresponding "stress maps", which change along with the position of the rig, makes for an incredible degree of realism with very minimal effort.  For example, raise his eyebrow, and the wrinkle morph targets and stress maps appear automatically, because they are wired to that bone.  Driving maps and morphs from a rig isn't anything new, but the freedom of control, and realtime results on display in that video are unique.

What I meant was a bit different.

In the morph brush you have the option to use and combine existing morphs. So what you do is to make only the expressoion (and viseme morphs) and 3rd partyh morphs active. Then you use the morphbrush to change the expression directly on the face. 

So what you actually do is an alternative to using the dials. No new morphs are created.

It does show however that the default morphs (++ for V4) are pretty limited. If you would have more expression morphs, it would work better.
But it works on all figures (if they have existing expressions)

I see what you mean.  You can directly control the morphs via the morphbrush, yes.  However, as you pointed out, the morphs must be already loaded, and present in the figure, and range of motion is restricted to those targets.  A facial "rig" like exhibited in the video, offers much more freedom of movement over the mesh, and allows the animator a fluid, and organic work environment that currently isn't possible within Poser.  I'd like to see future versions of Poser Pro take a serious approach to some deeper, more flexible structure for controling facial expression and emotion.  Nothing  impacts character believablity more than the ability to create realistic and natural facial expressions, in animation or still renders.

Yes, the animation control in the video is much better.  I think you can go a long way with the morphbrush when you add more morphs (and some improvement in the tool) but it won't be as flexible as in that video. But I think you can only achieve that with improvements in both the program and in the rigging of the figure.

I saw the video a couple of weeks ago and was impressed as well and I tried out the face room and morph brush on how far you can go with the existing tools.

But the video shows a good example of what can be achieved with improvements in tools and rigging

You can do blend shape rigging in Poser. Just keep in mind that weight mapping with just a bone can't translate. You have to use a weight mapped magnet to do that. The map switching can be a little tricky to set up, but it is not impossible.

Now if only we had that good of a preview....

Quote - You can do blend shape rigging in Poser. Just keep in mind that weight mapping with just a bone can't translate. You have to use a weight mapped magnet to do that. The map switching can be a little tricky to set up, but it is not impossible. Now if only we had that good of a preview....

Interesting about the weight mapped magnet.  That's something to look deeper into.  I don't like the way magnets behave with direct translations currently.  You have to move the base, etc., and it can be somewhat clunky workflow. Not the smooth fluidity I would like to have over a "control object" in the viewport, when animating or emoting a character.  I can see potential there though.

However, I haven't seen anyone successfully illustrate a practical way to blend between texture maps, controled by a bone or morph yet.  Do you have any real world examples of that in practice?

With weight mapped magnets you just make the zone big enough that you dont have to move it, the base posistion will modify the effects origin, and the falloff adjustments are just used for fine tuning for the mostpart.

The easiset way to blend texture maps with blend shapes, is to link a dependency to a blender node from a bone rotation. You can do the same thing with morphs as well and many times this works better since it is not following a 3D arc. You sort of have to plan out what needs to just move along a plane and what needs to arc to get the morphs to work, then link the proper type of dependency to it.

If you only want it to affect a certain area you make a mask with 2dWave nodes for it.

Give me a bit and I will make an example for you that demonstraits map blending.

Open the scene and render it, nothing special....

Under the morph tab, set ScaleY to 1 then render it again.

Could this have been implemented using Maya muscle, trying to figure out how the wrinkles where achieved.

Edit - ok it mentions wrinkle maps so guess not (no idea what a wrinkle map is)

Interesting.  I'll look this over more closely when I get to my workstation.  I appreciate the example.

Quote - Could this have been implemented using Maya muscle, trying to figure out how the wrinkles where achieved. Edit - ok it mentions wrinkle maps so guess not (no idea what a wrinkle map is)

I don't know about Maya specifically, but in 3dsmax, it's done simply through parameter wiring.  In Poser language, the action is similar to a JCM.  You can use any translation or object parameter to drive the adjustment or changes of another parameter automatically.  For example, you can have two distinct bump maps... one for a "relaxed" face, the other containing specific wrinkles.  Using a special blend material, you can "wire" any action in the scene, such as the rotation of a bone, to drive the parameter of the blend material, and blend between the two maps seemlessly.  Almost any action in the software can be used to drive any other action.  Same principal is at work in Maya.

Speaking of facial controls - did anyone see my video on creating a box controller in Poser? I had posted it up before Pro 2014 released but I took it down because it had one of the new toons in there and I didn't want to violate NDA. Seems I freaked out and deleted it from my HD too because I can't locate it. Was hoping someone out there had downloaded it. I was trying to recreate the process and hit a wall. Sorry to derail the thread (it's kind of a related topic though).

Attached Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdfcPyqHDqA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdfcPyqHDqA

**"ttached Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdfcPyqHDqA**Mankahoo has something similar for Poser."

That is actually pretty cool did he ever release it?
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I think that Mankahoo is using the morph brush in the video. I have the figure he is using, Angela2, and I can get the same effects.

Yea, that video is the morph brush+combine tab method mentioned above by wimvdb. Using Nightsong's expression dials on Dawn, only thing I can manage to do using this method is wiggle her nose back/forth like Bewitched.