Hi all... Been working on this face for quite a while now and am getting frustrated. There are several things I can see that are wrong, but can't for the life of me figure out how to fix. Not being objective after staring at this for so long, I thought I'd hand it over for review by a fresh set of eyes. Here's a number of obvious things that I notice immediately: 1) skin color is a little too dark. 2) the tilt of the head isn't quite right to match the picture. 3) the nose just isn't quite... right. 4) there's something wrong with the eyes. Can any of you morphing wizards out there give me some pointers?

1. Did you whiten the model's skin before applying the texture? It is very yellow looking. 2) The tilt looks okay to me. 3) The nose is a bit high as well. 4) Shift the eyes and eyebrows down. The tops of the eyes need to go down, and the eyebrows are too high. If you draw a line across Sarah Michelle Gellar's features and extend them to your model, I think you'll see what I mean by features being too high. You're almost there. Very good job!

The Posette's face: 1) Has the hairline and eyes too close. 2) Looks more bronzed than the real woman 3) Needs more frontal lighting so that the nose does NOT look more pronounced (I think that may be where you're closest to her!), and 4) For some reason looks about five to ten years older than the photo. IIRC, Darth Logice did a Buffy (that IS Sarah Michelle Geller, right?) a while back - you might want to search the Gallery and Archives for his posts. IIRC, he got everything but the nose right...

I am not a morphing expert but I can say a few things about the image: the nose is fine but in reality noses are a bit off. Look at hers, it isn't going down a straight line (look at the light reflection)...yours is. The forehead is not high enough (or the hair line is too low). The brows are too thick and dark. The lashes are too dark and thick (something she complains about in an ad for mascara!)The eyes slant up just a tiny bit too much and the whites go right into the corner...hers do not do that which gives them a slightly rounder look. her eyes are blue, yours look dark grey on my screen...or hazel... The shape of the lips is a bit off as well. The bone that is near the temple is coming to a point on yours and in the real picture that is a very rounded area. These things are soooo small...she is pretty anyway. But if you want to be exact...well I see these things. she is looking great tho...really!

You need a slanted eye morph and some eyelid morphs to lower the lower eyelid.

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/duane_moody/slaybelleth.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/duane_moody/index.html

that eyemorph should help too.

Everyone's comments are right, but it seems to me that several of the problems (including age effect) may be related to the fact that your model is narrower in the zygomatic area than the original (the bones just under the eyes commonly called cheekbones). The original face is a bit wider which is common for teens / young adults...

Attached Link: http://clik.to/dtoybox

I gave up on using Vicky as a base for this because it was more trouble than it was worth, and because someone else had done an excellent "Buffy" texture that captures her choice in cosmetics beautifully. "Slaybelle" (in freestuff) was done using about five carefully picked photo references from a TV Guide article. You've correctly captured the planes of her face; the major issue here is that Smeg's face is smaller proportionately to her skull than most adults', and you've discovered that there isn't a simple morph dial for fixing that. I suggest going the opposite route, widening the head then scaling it down. Also, her makeup goes to pains to conceal how angular her face is; I'd flatten it some. Lift the mouth, shorten the face (again, the small chin is her passport to looking like jailbait), use my Eyefix morph to straighten Vicky's eyes (or, if you're using V2, the Slant dial). Lower the brows and straighten them; Smeg's don't naturally arch like most peoples' do. Try messing Without bragging too much, check out my morph for guidelines. Someone must like it, it's been the top download of my gallery since it went up in January (2200+ so far). This one's tough; kudos to you for your perseverence.

duanemoody is so right on it. I just learned a lot here. You got a tutorial? Cool! Thanks duanemoody!

Thank you, everyone, for the advice. I'm flattered that you think this is the Vicky model, but alas, I can't afford her. This is pure P4 female modeling. Dials? Nope... won't touch those except for expressions. This is all from manupulating verts in Anim8or and piecing together photos from the internet. Here's the next step after a bit of insomnia: shortening the space between the nose and mouth and lightening the makeup. I still can't seem to get the soft-light effect as in the photo (I want Lightwave, &@#$!), but it's a start...

P.S. - I want to thank everyone on Renderosity for being so wonderful and free with advice. It means a lot when modeling! Although I enjoy looking to other artist's models like the fine "Slaybelle" available in freestuff, I enjoy morphing and want to do figures myself. Thus, I stubbornly avoid using other folk's dials, but eat up the tutorials whenever I can. Keep 'em comin'!

I'm impressed if this is the P4 mesh you're working with. If it makes your job any easier, do a search on 'Sarah' in Freestuff -- your only hit should be Nod's excellent SMG texture. You won't believe how much more realistic it makes your model. (and I'd love to see the results). Don't be afraid to use expression dials to make permanent anatomical changes to your models. In most cases it won't break anything. As far as not using other peoples' morphs is concerned, what I did was done exclusively using morphs and magnets. For now, I've given up on using 3D applications for more than vertex repair morph targets. It took about eleven iterations to get "Slaybelle," using several morphs and building quite a few along the way. I finally settled on the idea that a small degree of exaggeration was probably better than undershooting the mark, esp. for long distance perspectives. Final comments: her chin doesn't go smoothly from lower lip to tip but instead tilts inward, making the permanent 'pout' expression. Find a good profile shot of SMG to see what I'm talking about. Thin out the lower lip a tad (applying and reversing my LowerLipFull morph for P4 should do the trick). As far as tutorials are concerned, visit my website and see the "Making portraits from photos" tutorial. You may be able to apply the same concept to Anim8tor.

You still need to play with the lighting - I think that's where the excessive "yellow" of the image comes from. But you are moving in the "right" direction here.

Definitely in the family. Looks like you've got a sister or cousin there. (Whoa, new story line!) Great work using tough materials.

Definite improvement. Also to note: The point of the nose on the model droops down below the level of the nostrils - not so in the photo. The eyebrows (sure you already saw it) The jawline on teh model isn't quite right. The 'corner' that is made from the jawbone joint is too low, and the edge of the face from the jawbone up to the ear is too long. Also, the pic is less straight in that area. It's not the cheekbones, because they look fine on the right edge. It's something further back along the head, visible on the left side of the photo. The bridge of the nose in the pic looks a little rounder too, but that may just be lighting. All in all, you're getting close. Better than I could do.

What JSwing said is true. And SMG is very hard to model--i've tried, too. And if you look at what the pros are producing in the way of Buffy statuettes and action figures--they're even further off than we are here.

Several complications: her features alternate between delicate and almost exaggerated, her choice of makeup deliberately disguises this, and her facial proportions are off standard for an adult (at 24 or so, her head should no longer be changing or measured by teen proportions). In fact, she's probably going to resent having a fourteen-year-old's face when it comes to trying to get dramatic roles in the future. Look at Angelina Jolie; her face is actually a little large for her head and she can get all kinds of roles. My choices were to zero in on the nose first, as I always do, get the vertical distance proportions correct, then the skull, jaw and cheekbones. I made the eyes a little too large on purpose, because from a distance they look correct. I still think for the money, the best sculpture of a celeb for an action figure was the one Kenner did of Lee Majors for The $6M Man. I'd love to interview the artist to see what their technique was.

Speaking of action figures and great likenesses, the Giles figure is outstanding. Back on topic... I fiddled with making the features smaller, but that just made the entire head look awkward. I'm still fiddling with it, though. Hopefully, the next post for this will be Monday. Thanks again for the suggestions