Quote - OK I'll post the image directly, since it's too easy to miss the above link ...

All done in FaceGen, and shown in FaceGen, with absolutely no retouching. Can you guess who they are?  And they are all done with Victoria 4.

Now ... for the benefit of the original poster, I do have to add a disclaimer. The DAZ figures (or any other figure for that matter) do not "automatically" work in FaceGen. So this is not a solution that is equivalent to FaceShop at the present time (not sure of future versions that may come down the road).  It took me about a month's worth of hard work to figure out how to get DAZ figures to work in FaceGen. Now that I have it figured out I can get any figure working in it in 2-5 days. And once the figures are working, it takes only a matter of minutes to generate a likeness like shown above.

So ... it's not a simple solution for Poser figures. However, I show these results because it does at least show the type of results that I would HOPE to see in other similar apps.

I see Clooney, Presley, Zeta-Jones, Bette Davis (?). The others I don't recognize but I know Facegen is a good app so I assume I just don't know the subjects. I'll take on a Zeta-Jones FaceShop morph and let you all judge yourselves. If you say nice things, I might even share some simple tricks. ;O)

Quote - I am not trying to make excuses, but I'm in the middle of installing a fresh install of Windows 7 and don't have any of my software installed yet. I say this lest I be accused of taking too long to make something for the challenge. But I venture to guess that I can have a reasonable likeness and texture done in FaceGen in about 5 minutes.  But I'll also have to contact the program developers for an updated license key once I get everything reinstalled, so my ability to take up this challenge won't be immediate.

In the meantime I'll see if I can find a thread that shows some of the other FaceGen faces that I worked up a while back ... stay tuned

link added

Facegen costs several hundred dollars doesn't it? Plus you have to use the included mesh so unless you make your own expression morphs, the face will be static. That's my understanding of it anyway. I have seen some amazing work done from it though . . . probably your's. :O)

I'll offer this challenge to anyone who cares to accept it. We'll agree on a famous person, obviously someone from the modern age so we have color photographs to use for texturing. I'll use Face Shop and anyone else can use whatever other apps they chose and we'll see who comes up with the strongest likeness. I have confidence in the app and promise not to use any modeling program.

Quote - The other issue is the textures. You can't get a decent result without a lot of effort.

Please, when people express dissatisfaction with a software program, don't automatically assume it's because the program doesn't have a make art button. It's a rude and disrespectful assumption. Carodan, in particular, is one of the most talented "custom character" folks in the community!

I could tell you how to get very good textures out of Face Shop with only a modest amount of extra effort but the solution is so simple and you're so talented, you can figure it out for yourself. Hint: it applies in the Poser face room as well. :O)

Quote - You have to jump through so many hoops placing marker dots and curves with FaceShop, and it crashes so often that I actually found it easier to go back and hand-manipulate the vertices in a modeller with my references set up in the old fashioned way.

Placing marker dots . . . oh my! If you can use a modeling app, you're an exception in the Poser world. I can use one too and still like Face Shop. Essentially, it's the Face Room for any head mesh. It's a quick, easy tool to get rid of the stock look on Poser heads, nothing more and nothing less. If you want more, you have to do more.

It's threads like this that make me realize that Poser people just want a "Make Art" button. Pathetic really . . . . :O)

I like this app. I know I don't have the most recent version, but I've been well satisfied with it. Any app that helps get rid of any of the Poser characters stock look is a good app in my book.

Quote - fls 13:
I still hope not to change the app. Because then I have to learn all that stuff again. I still hope it's me, the settings, the whatever and not firefly. Or if it is firefly I still hope it's only a bug that will be solved in the near future.

Satisfying yourself is the main thing. My suggestion is if you do decide to try another app out, try the freebies first before sinking a lot of $$$ into something that may not be to your liking either.

Looks like you get fine results in Poser, better than I ever could. :O)

Try some of the freebie raytracing render apps available. Povray is great. I'm sure there are others. I gave up on trying to render in Poser, other than the occasional test, ages ago. It's not worth the aggravation and the quality is sub-standard.

Here's the very top of a .cr2 file:

version
    {
    number 6
    }
morphBinaryFile :Runtime:libraries:character:!Frank'sPlace:Female:Victoria 4.pmd
figureResFile :Runtime:Geometries:DAZPeople:blMilWom_v4LowMat.obj

What I did with this file was combine a lot of the materials into a significantly fewer number of them and saved the .obj file under a different name, then had to change the name of the figureResFile. There's one other spot in the cr2 where you have to make the same change down below, but use the find feature to get there.

You could also import the newly morphed character into Poser and create a new character in the setup room quick and easy. If you morphed M3, just apply the M3 rig in the setup room. Takes a few seconds.

I'l try to give a quick workflow runthrough.

Your goal is to make Vicki 9.9's breasts look less realistic. You take the base figure into a modeling program and do a great job of it. Save your work as a new .obj with a readily identifiable name back to the same folder. Then open the .cr2 file in a text editor and change the two references to which .obj file/geometry file is used by the character to the new name.

The two key files to making a character go are the .obj and .cr2 file. If you save the morphs to an external file, you also have the .pmd file, but just leave that alone.

Not exactly sure what you're trying here but you could always create a new character, save the .obj file and change the .obj reference in the .cr2 file. I've done it many times, more often for cutting down the number of materials in a character than morphing, works well.

Great, I will give this method a try! Thanks for your efforts.

I think the whole system and the way characters are designed is awful. They're digital dolls that if you want to properly clothe them, which I do want to do on occasion, make up 6-7 or even 8 figures. It all gets very cumbersome very quickly. I use the setup room frequently to make new characters Frankensteined from others, but the whole concept is just dumb and highly inefficient.