Better still?

Better?

I've taken some of your advice and made some adjustments to the eyes and eyebrows.  This is the result:

Klutz, could you please elaborate on that "textures need alot of work" comment?  I am aiming for realism (with the exception that asymmetry isn't a big concern of mine).

Unfortunately, I know nothing about frames.  All I'm doing is finding just the right dial settings and then saving the resulting head as a morph target OBJ.

P.S.: If you want to see a more extended example, check out my two most recent gallery submissions.

I would've put this in the above message, but I think 'Rosity's having technical problems.  The server thinks the allowable editing time has lapsed, but the above message has only been up for about 10 minutes.  It also told me I'd already reached the daily gallery upload limit yesterday when I went to upload what was only my second image that day (the limit is 2 per day, isn't it?). 

The lighting is the same and the textures are different, just like in yours.  There's no color diffusion involved.  What you may be seeing is the underlying technique I used to create the textures.  This is what I did to another texture set of mine to create the 7 tones in Photoshop.  I used either the Hue/Saturation or Brightness/Contrast command for steps 1 and 2.

1)   Lightened up the texture slightly and saved the result.  This became Tone 1.
2)   Darkened the texture to the darkest reasonable tone, slightly increased the saturation for a more natual look, and saved the result.  This became Tone 7.
3)   Copied Tone 7 into a new layer on top of Tone 1.
4)   Resaved the image under a different file name with the dark-tone layer at each of the following Fill settings: 17%, 34%, 50%, 66%, and 83%.  These became Tones 2 - 6.

Regarding your point about using textures alone to convey ethnicity, in many cases, you're probably right.  I had a hard time finding specific featuresbesides skin tone that distinguished Arabs from Europeans.  Arabs and Indians also seem to look very much alike.  I just did my best from the photos I was able to find and study.  The idea is that a hypothetical user can use the textures by themselves, but the morphs are there in case he/she wants them.

The V4 on the left has my European morph and skin tone #2 applied.  The V4 on the right has my African morph and skin tone #6 applied.

Thoughts?

I've already created a set of 7 different skin texture sets ranging in tone from very dark to very light.  My focus is on facial structure only because it's the more difficult aspect to depict accurately.  I'll post an example of one of my darker skin tones as soon as I get the chance.

Since most if not all remaining criticisms seem to be relegated to matters concerning the face, I decided to focus on that for a bit.

Adult on left, child on right.  Any better?

Well, here's the full version of the test image for round 2.  I think I'm just a few tweaks away from perfection.

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

Do any of you have any idea how to export the FBMs created based on the INJ/REM poses to an externally usable file?  I've tried exporting a morph-target OBJ, but there are two problems with this: 1) whenever I try to load it, it takes forever to load and then a second dose of forever for Poser to resume responding to anything (though that may be more of an individual processor issue, since my laptop only recently got purged of 14 items of malware and underwent a disk defragmentation); 2) since I set the morphs up with a completely blank V4, I then have to export a complete-figure OBJ, which I think will cause the resulting morph target to detract from any character-specific morph settings which have no bearing on age and should therefore be retained.

The reason I ask this is that I'd like to be able to polish this stuff up and package it into a vendible product (or at least a freebie),  If I do do that, it'll probably be quite cheap, since despite the utility of it, all I'd really be selling is two or three morphs and some general guidelines for optimal use.  How well do you guys think something like this would sell?

Well, I finally got the bodysuit to morph properly!  Thanks to all your suggestions, I believe I've made some significant improvements.  I decided to have a one morph for the head and one for the body.  The head morph makes the jaw slightly smaller and the forehead and eyes a little larger.  The body morph flattens the breasts, narrows the hips, thickens the neck, and adds a little extra bulk to the body.  I decided to leave the actual body proportions up to the built-in HeadSize, LegsLength, HandsSize, and FeetSize morphforms to make room for slight individual variation.

I think the youngest I'm going to be able to go with this is 5 or 6 years old.  The reason is that I can only make the head so big in proportion to the rest of the body before it looks too heavy for the neck.  I've thickened the neck as much as I could, but a HeadSize setting of 0.2 is about as far as I feel comfortabe taking it.  It would really help if there was a morph that would thicken the neck in the Z direction instead of just X (or maybe a bi-directional neck length morph).

Here's a test render of a re-done 7-year-old Francesca.

HeadSize: 0.18
LegsLength: -0.8
HandsSize: -0.07
FeetSize: -0.07
Minor adjustments to the hip of the bodysuit for best fit

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!  Even if I create the FBM after applying the morphs manually and then un-apply them manually before testing the FBM, it STILL does nothing!!  What the heck?!

It's official.  I'm about ready to throw my computer on the floor and run it over repeatedly with my wheelchair.  I've made some improvements based on some of your comments, and the new INJ and REM pose for Vicky 4 converts to an FBM nicely.  But the INJ and REM poses I create for the bodysuit refuse to do so.  The FBM I create from those always does nothing to the mesh, no matter what I do with the dial! 

I've been spending the last six hours trying to get the bleepin' thing to work, but it's still being stubborn.  I don't get it!  It worked fine for the first draft!  All I did was bring a few more morphs into the picture,and now it won't work!

If they haven't already been added to your list, here's my wish list:

Christopher Reeve (M3 or Vittorio 4)
Hilary Duff (V4)
Zac Efron (M3 or Vittorio 4)
Vanessa Hudgens (V4)
Tom Welling (M3 or Vittorio 4)

Better?