Have any of you tried to make a head morph of your (or someone else)'s face and put it on a Poser character?

You have different methods of doing it. You can either export the mesh into a 3rd party program (i.e., Blender, etc.) and tweak it until you get something satisfactory or spin dials in Poser for each facial part. The morphing brush can be a great tool for manipulating the mesh within Poser but you need to develop a delicate touch. Face Shop is another alternative but considering that you still gravitate to a P4 model for your renders, it's pointless to recommend a software heavily invested in Genesis and La Femme and L'Homme.

I have done it a lot. Not with my own face, but often with famous people like politicians, sports stars, or actors.

There's the Head Shop program in the RMP for LF and LH. (I tried it, but at the time, it was incompatible with my high-res monitor, so I returned it. I'm curious as to whether this issue has been fixed, but haven't been able to find out.) I have used an earlier version I bought from DAZ. I think it was called Face Shop back then, and was for V4 and M3.

The problem with those programs was the texture. It generated a texture, but it was low-res, and you had to blend it with a body texture somehow. IMO, textures are the hardest part of making Poser likenesses. This is why I prefer M4 and V4: there are a million textures for them, and they're really cheap. You can usually find one that works.

I'm not much of a modeler, so I usually use morph packs to create the head morph, then browse through my very large collection of textures to find one that works. (It's hard to judge just from promo pics. In particular, the eyebrows often end up not where you thought they'd be on a head with a different morph. Eyebrows make a huge difference in getting a likeness.)

Capsces morph packs are the ones I use most, but there are several others. If there's a morph pack, I will usually buy it.

You can also look around and see if someone else has made a head morph that looks like what you want. For celebrities, there are often free characters who resemble them (and some for sale as well, with the serial numbers filed off). There's a couple of web sites that keep track of these. Even if it's not that close...it can be a good base to start from.

As I stated in my post above, Anthony predominantly uses P4 Dork as his primary model for his renders. There are not too many sources to depend on for external morph packages. Without revamping all his personal content to a different model, he is stuck using any available character morphs and dial spinning to achieve any resemblance to himself. But you are correct, textures play a very important part in the caricature, the closer the match, the better the simularity.

I think it would be tough to get decent likenesses with Dork. Not enough polys, not much of a selection of textures (unless he has a stash from the old days, which is entirely possible.)

I found V3 and M3 the easiest to get likenesses with, actually. I think they have more polys in their heads, or they're arranged better, or something. Not that many textures still available for them, alas, though I still use them sometimes.

If you are able and willing to use multiple figures, it might help to start with a default shape closest to your target. Several Trek fans I know have noted that Michael 1/2 is relatively easy to turn into Mr. Spock. The shape of his head is more like Leonard Nimoy that other figures.

Agreed. The 2 generation 3 models you mentioned are more suitable for morphing with more 3rd party packages available from different sources. Together with a texture converting app (i.e., Universal Texture Converter, Texture Transformer), you can find the right combination to get you close.

I believe Dork works in the Face Room.

If that's the case, Poser 11 still has an active Face Room, the last version before it was removed in P12.

I managed it for my face with Dork. But in Dork's head and all its face morphs, the bottoms of the wings of the nose are higher than the bottom of the nasal septum, but they are on the same level in my real nose, so I had to make a Dork head morph to pull his nose's wings down. A nuisance was that Dork's head has one version in the nude man and another in the casual man and business man: the difference is that some vertexes are shuffled. I have Visual C++, and I wrote in it a program to handle Dork head morphs, including finding if a Dork head morph was for the nude man or for the casual/business man, and to convert between the two. ![aa_as_spman.jpg]

Me in the Sea Patrol. The morph looks younger than me, because I have aged since.

hborre posted at 5:16PM Fri, 20 August 2021 - #4425738

If that's the case, Poser 11 still has an active Face Room, the last version before it was removed in P12.

Why was it removed? What does Poser 12 have instead?

Me in the Sea Patrol.

Someone uploaded a super-Dork with many extra head morphs.

Anthony Appleyard posted at 5:57AM Sat, 21 August 2021 - #4425741

Someone uploaded a super-Dork with many extra head morphs.

The model was called Ultramorph and it was made by someone called Confusius (note spelling).

Hello Anthony, why not use the P5 Don figure instead?

His body geometry was derived from the P3/P4 Man ('Dork'), so converting any of the clothing/uniforms you already have shouldn't be too big of a problem.

Alternatively Don's body could be "Dorkified" by eliminating his extra grouping and adding the Dork's joint centers. (Similar to the "Michael-P4" figure that DAZ offered once)

Or you just use his head and neck as a parented figure on top of a Dork figure.

In any case, the P5 Don figure is 100% Faceroom compatible, so you can use your own photographs as well as DAZ Michael 1/2 textures! And if you own the 3D Universe Texture Convertor software, you could even use M3 or even M4 textures with him.

Then there's AprilYSH' remapping of the 'Dork'

http://shop.aprilsvanity.com/free-items/p4mskin.html

This allows you to directly use Michael 1/2 textures on the Dork. This won't make him directly Faceroom compatible like 'Don', but if you have Poser 11, you could subdivide him and use the morphbrush to do high-res sculpting.

That detail of muscle is irrelevant if it is inside a wetsuit or a uniform, except to use up memory and time handling it.

Very excellent sculpting there JoePublic. Maybe a bit too prominent in spots, subjectively, but really nice nevertheless.

I have tried hiding the figure's head and replacing it with a flat square texture-mapped with the replacement face, and the area outside the face is textured to transparent. That works, if I am careful, if the head is aimed straight at the camera, if the photograph was taken straight-on. That way I could make an image of Cousteau in a Sea Patrol uniform (Not the Australian TV series!)

@primorge: Thank's for the praise, but I can't take credit for that. That's actually Don's default "Buf" morph. :-)

Unfortunately that morph is broken in his default cr2, but I was able to fix it by mirroring the working parts. The rest is just some scaling and a simple head morph (75% Don, 25% Will plus some improvements with the morphbrush)

Texture is standard Michael 2.

Anyway, I think using Poser 11 technology, these classic figures really should get a second chance as they were explicitly designed for Poser, not for game engines.

@Anthony: That "muscle morph" could be easily deleted. But it is not much extra weight anyway, as it is already "built into" the mesh geometry. It's basically the same as the Dork's "Superhero" morph. As I said, Don was derived from Dork, so while their mesh is grouped differently, it's still very similar.

JoePublic posted at 9:20AM Sat, 21 August 2021 - #4425785

@primorge: Thank's for the praise, but I can't take credit for that. That's actually Don's default "Buf" morph. :-)

Unfortunately that morph is broken in his default cr2, but I was able to fix it by mirroring the working parts. The rest is just some scaling and a simple head morph (75% Don, 25% Will plus some improvements with the morphbrush)

Texture is standard Michael 2.

Anyway, I think using Poser 11 technology, these classic figures really should get a second chance as they were explicitly designed for Poser, not for game engines.

Humph. I'll have to take a closer look at those old meshes. There's actually some pretty nice modeling tucked away in those neglected figures. And I totally agree with your second statement about the classics.

I agree about the classics. I loaded Victoria 2 into my P12 and I was still amazed at how good she still rendered.

I found it quite easy to make a replacement Dork head with the geometry the same and the texture-mapping much bigger and easier to use, and the head skin in a new material named 'Face'. I started in Poser in Poser 3 times. I seem to remember that in Poser 2 times there were no materials as we know them, and all of a model had to have one texture-map.

Anthony Appleyard posted at 10:02AM Sat, 21 August 2021 - #4425794

I found it quite easy to make a replacement Dork head with the geometry the same and the texture-mapping much bigger and easier to use, and the head skin in a new material named 'Face'. I started in Poser in Poser 3 times. I seem to remember that in Poser 2 times there were no materials as we know them, and all of a model had to have one texture-map.

Started with 3 also. Skipped from 3 to 6,7,8 then to 11. I'm just loving the features in 11 pro.

Still have a heavily postworked (old photoshop) Poser 3 render. This is when I first got into digital art... sorry for the drift. Wish I still had all those old files.

I still have the Ultramorph Man (a Dork derivative) and Universal Nude (a Posette derivative) that Confusius made. Their heads each has around 100 morphs.

Their geometries are
:Runtime:Geometries:newMaleNudeHi:maleNudeWithEyes.obj
:Runtime:Geometries:newFemaleNudeHi:femaleNudeHiP3.obj

The Ultramorph Man and Universal Nude, and other models, are still available for download at http://www.confusius.net/

If the site says "not available", keep on clicking or a while, the site may merely be slow.