Well, that's the best I can describe it in the subject line. To clarify, what needs to be done is to take photos or pictures of a subject and flat map the information - face, body, whatever - (although they're already flat) for easier creation of textures over a texture template. Cake One has a wonderful tutorial for creating your own face as a texture, but even then it is an ungodly amount of work with obvious drawbacks to get all of the information model flattened from 2D pics of 3D information. Suffice it to say, I don't happen to have one of those extremely expensive 3D modelling systems that not only creates 3D objects but imports the textures onto them using a special camera setup. I'm sort of on the cheap, here. What I do have is a Canon PowerShot G2 4.0 Mpixel camera and tripod for live subjects (as compared to using pictures from elsewhere). There is a piece of software that does create 3D objects w/textures from 2D pictures, but not sure how feasible it will be for something as delicate as the human body and, especially, face. My philosophy on this is that in order to create photo or nearly-photo realistic figure renders, the textured image is going to need to be acquired from photographic material (or outsource a company like the one that did the "Final Fantasy" movie for several mil). I know that this is alot to ask, but who else to ask but the best! Kuroyume

PhotoModeler Lite is free and can make models with textures from a set of photos. It might be what you're looking for. I believe I found my copy at www.zdnet.com/downloads/

That's exactly the program I was talking about. I've used it before and the Lite version didn't handle complex photo objects extremely well while the full version (which probably does) costs $795. That's more than I spent for Poser 4, Pro Pack, M2, and V2 combined! I might be able to afford it by the end of the year, but not any time soon (The camera, 1GB microdrive, tripod, accessories cost $1300. So, I'm outta extravagance funds for awhile). :( Nonetheless, it may be worth fiddling with the Lite version to see how much they've improved the algorithms (it's been several years since I last demoed it). Thanks for reminding me of the name (it would've never dawned on me) and will let you know (or see) the results. Kuroyume

FyreSpiryt, have you used it for human anatomy or faces yet? I downloaded, installed, and went through the tutorials for Photomodeller Lite. It has definitely improved and has great potential. Though, I can't see an easy way (read: using less than ten thousand referenced points) to do something as convoluted as a human face or body with it and get good results. Any insights or experience? domo arigatou gozaimasu, ja mata, Kuroyume

No, I haven't done anything organic with it yet. In fact, although I've had a few ideas, I haven't done anything but the tutorials. In all fairness, though, I guess anything convoluted would need a lot of points, it's just a matter of if they're referenced like here, or if they're made in a modeler and then pushed around. You might be able to use it to make a low-poly human with textures, and then make the textures fit a Poser person; use it as sort of a go-between. The program has improved a lot. I first tried it a few years ago and deleted it right away because the free version was too limited and the learning curve too steep. The newer one definitely has potential; I just haven't had a project yet.

I just had this weird idea. What if someone (maybe me, I'm a programmer after all, albeit not much in the full-blown apps area) were to make a program that took three sources and created the 2D texture mapping from them. You create a correspondence file between the P4Male object and its template (points, facets, whatever). Then, for instance, you take a frontal face photo, align a hidden-surface mesh view of P4Male to the face and save it as a 2D image, and have the program map the corresponding aligned-P4Male points/photo to the template points while unfolding the photo image to match the mapping. It may require the user to select just one set of correspondence points to fixate the mapping algorithm correctly (such as, this point in the 2D mesh image corresponds to this point in the template). Of course, to fill in the texture areas that are garbled by not being planar to the camera, several viewpoints will be required. Does this make sense to you? It would work similarly to PM Lite, but remove the need for setting up reference points as they will automatically be given by those between the P4Male object and the template. In other words, in PM you have to construct a 3D model so that it can reference faces and gather texture information. But Poser already has the appropriate (although approximate) models constructed, so it's just a matter of putting the images over the correct views. one difficulty would be removing shadows and highlights without affecting the skin texture, though this can be done in Photoshop with patience and know-how. Damn, now you have me thinking... Kuroyume

Well, I like the way you're thinking, if that helps at all. If someone could pull that off, it'd be a great tool!

I agree.. but isn't that sort of the concept behind the "Still-to-Real" program that was here before.. (haven't really heard anything good about it either..) =Lee

LeeEvans, I did a search here at Renderosity and it appears to be available still (currently version 3.0). Most of the messages that I saw were complaints and confusion about getting it to work, though they are older messages. The new version has a "save-disabled" demo available. I might try it out and see what kind of results it yields. Yes! This is, at least for the first part, exactly what I had in mind. I figured that a great idea couldn't be considered in isolation. My only quip is that it's a bit pricy at $50. It'd better be good. ;) Kuroyume, his typing fingers heaving a sigh of relief at the possibility of not writing a big app.