I want to morph one of the standard Poser figures head/face into a particular Japanese face for a figure that I want to create. Being still new to this, which method(s) would you suggest: magnets, Python script, external morph app, another 3D modelling app, what? This is not my occupation, so working with all of these features is somewhat daunting. Kuroyume

I find Zbrush quite good for making morphs, but quite a lot can be achived with good old magnets.

There is a tutorial on morphing with magnets at travelers site:

http://www.morphworld30.com/tutor.html

Even before magnets, you might just fiddle intensely with the self-contained face shape parameters (Square Face, Heart Face, Bump Nose, Jaw Strength, etc.) You can reach some surprisingly different faces by the proper combination.

ockham: I can do these in P4, but not P5. P5's general parameters are limited to facial expressions and that's all. And the Face Room, although offering many morphs, does not facilitate the face shape that I need. Asian Ethnicity morphs look particularly round-faced Chinese and the other morphs allow no control over certain features such as nostril roundness/location or ridge bump, tip roundness and shape, and so on. IOW, I have played extensively with the controls and cannot find the necessary face because the necessary controls are not available. P5 has severely restricted the morphs as compared to Daz's popular figures. I may load up Michael 2.0 and see what can be done but am worried about what sacrifices may be incurred by not using the new P5 figures (we shall see). lesbentley: Thanks. ZBrush is a little pricey, but I'll keep in mind as a future purchase (since it looks so cool!). Magnets scare me. I can't exactly relate to them with respect to applying subtle facial modifications. I will certainly check out that tutorial. ***************** The one problem that I noticed is that modifying the figure is at facet-vertex level, which is very coarse whereas the needed modifications are very fine. I hope that this makes sense. IOW, it looks like it will be difficult to move facets and vertices around and be able to see if the changes are heading in the right direction (without a good render after each slight modification). Yours truly bewildered, Kuroyume

I don't have P5, so can't comment on P5 specific features. My understanding is that morphs work by moving vertices, there is no finer level.

Anim8tor is a free modeling app, that I have heard good things about, another free one is Metasequoia. There is a commercial morphing utility called Extreme Morph 3D, that you might want to look at, I think is on sale now for around $50.00, I have never tried it myself, I think there is a save disabled demo so you can try before you buy.

http://innuendo.ev.ca/extreme_morph_3d.htm

Ah, but the morphs move "groups" of vertices around, not individual ones. Even the new P5 feature, morph putty, when moving a particular nostril vertex, moves the entire nostril and surrounding face. This is good if you need to put a special smile or scowl on a figure, bad if you want to reshape the lips. Those applications sound promising and will check them out. You are being a great source of research in this endeavor! Thanks, Kuroyume

With the modelling software mentioned above you should be able to move individual vertices.

Probably the best choice is an external modelling utility. . .so long as you keep the vertex count the same, you can export a mesh, edit it in 3DS, Shade, whatnot, and bring it back in as a morph target. For anthropometrically correct data on head shape, nothing beats FaceGen (www.facegen.com). The morphs in Face Room are licensed from these guys, but their own (expensive) application has much. much more extensive data about face shape. . .you can download the demo for free, and see if you like it. Hope this helps.

Hi crocodilian, an interessting point. I was not sure how morphs really work. Do they just store the transition of each vertex? So it should be possible to export a figure to let's say 3DS, change it and bring it back. Aren't the vertices reordered? I know from AutoCAD 2000 that imported meshes are tiled into independent vertices. So I had to make a new mesh and fit it point by point to the old one (a very time consuming process). In the end I didn't use it for a morph target, because I thought that would never work.

crocodilian - thanks for pointing out FaceGen. That may be very useful for a project I plan next year. Tintifax - * right, a morph is just a position-change per vertex. * Fortunately, 3DS / Lightwave / etc. appear to retain vertex order as long as you don't add/delete any vertices. Kuroyome - * I was also going to recommend Anim8or. Haven't used it myself, but it looks like a good free way to go. * Re "ZBrush": download the free demo and experiment before buying it. It has one heck of a strange interface. I paid for it, but went back to using LightWave, because I didn't have time to learn ZBrush.

Thank all of you very much! I will look into FaceGen as it sounds like the right tool here. Also will check out the long list given so far. Wow! So many different apps that it is no wonder that 3D graphics can be daunting. AutoCAD is better with solid modelling for drafting/design purposes anyway. I've never used it for 'artistic' modelling with meshes. Not saying that it can't do it (and it should for the cost! ;), but just that it is geared towards 3D design and not 3D graphics. Thanks for the heads up on ZBrush. Will definitely demo before considering purchase. Now on to filling my harddrive with 3D applications!! Kuroyume