Headshop weirdness
cdpro_2831bbd990
Posts: 1,430
Let me start by saying that I really love Headshop 10.2 for coming up with new characters. But, it is a very glitchy program. One of the really strange effects happens when using HS on Gen 3 faces. For whatever reason, after exporting the head back to Gen 3, the teeth get really weird...often sharp and pointy, or with big gaps. This doesn't happen when using HS with Gen 2.
Another oddity is the tendency for HS to create a near exact head shape with a photograph within the plugin, but not nearly so close when exported back into DS. I usually have to do a lot of post HS tweaking with other morphs to get the right shape.
Also, on some head shapes, I'll get weird ripples in the surface of the mesh. I'm not sure where they originate. Likewise, you can get some really lumpy noggins if you place a shape dot in the wrong spot. If there were some sort of averaging tool (similar to the Smoothing dial) for the Autodots, it might insure that you don't get a dot out of a smooth curve. I've notice that if I get a lumpy area, it is near impossible to fix it. Most of the time, it is easier to just start over.
After reading and looking at all the various tutorials available, the interface is still somewhat a mystery. I can find no explanation as to what the "Copy" arrow does in the "Profile" tab. Whenever I try to use it, I get an error that HS could not execute the command and will try to continue. Everything seems very straight forward in the tutorials and menu. But, what actually happens compared to what I'm attempting to create are often very different. It would be nice to have a thorough explanation of how the shape and texture dots affect the mesh. I mean, the dots don't seem to actually match specific mesh points. So, I'm not sure when I change a point on the jaw line, if I am pushing the mesh back or out on the x or z axis. Also, I have yet to figure out what the heck the neck dots actually do. Messing with them is usually a bad idea.
Perhaps some sort of specific point reference chart would help...i.e. "dot x defines the position for lower junction of the ear." or, "dot y must be positioned at approximately the lower corner of the jaw." It would just help to know what I am affecting when I move a dot. You can get very strange results if dots are moved outside their intended parameters.
I'm using a fairly robust system...current generation i7 with 16gb memory and GT970m graphics. But, I still find that the line tool will hang the system. And, the smoothing control will fail to function at all. Half the time, when exporting, I'll get an "Export Successful" message, then a "Headshop has ceased to function" message. Sometimes, the exported face works fine, regardless of whether or not Headshop ceases to function. Sometimes, HS just crashes and no morph is exported back to Daz.
Also, instead of using "custom obj" to model Gen 3 figures, why not just make each variety of Genesis (or Victoria), a check box selection?
I fully realize that HS is not supposed to be a competitor to ZBrush, or Blender...etc. But, I do think that it has room for improvement. Perhaps, dropping the hair and 3d statue sections would be a good idea for DAZ users. I don't know how many overall...but, I'm guessing that very few Daz users have a need for the statue add ons.
I really enjoy creating characters. And, HS10.2 is a great alternative to full blown modeling programs. I do hope that the developers continue to improve it. I would suggest to Laslo and the other programmers at Abalone, that a much more detailed manual would be very helpful.
I'd be very interested in hearing from other users that have experienced some of these issues with HS, especially if they have worked out how to fix them. I certainly haven't ruled out the possibility of my own ignorance causing my troubles.
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Comments
I went down this very same path when Headshop 10 first released. Just get "FaceGen Artist" instead and all your problems will go away. I got a refund for Headshop. It is nice to see that it has been updated to 10.2, but from your post, it is obvious many issues, and many that I complained about myself, still remain. I posted some head to head results in Headshop thread. Since then, I have learned FG better, as it is easy to learn. If you have quality pictures, you will get quality results.
FaceGen is better in just about every way. It is MUCH, MUCH easier to use, it can output full 4000x4000 textures, and is capable of better results. And of course, it is less buggy. Try the free demo for yourself and see. The big downside is that it costs $70 for G1 and G2, while the "full" version that adds support for Genesis 3 is I believe $140. So its $70 just to add G3 support. I focus on G2 anyway, so it was a no brainer to me. The only other knock against it is that while the app is easy to use, once the face is created, you must apply the textures yourself in the surface tab.
Did you turn off the realistic mouth HD morph on the Genesis 3s before exporting?
I did not...Thanks! I will try that and see if it fixes the teeth problem.
Thanks, I didn't want to buy a new program. But, I will definitely give the FaceGen demo a try and go that route if it's that much easier to use. I'm still hoping for Headshop to get fixed. Laslo is really nice about helping. But, the documentation overall is still weak. I hope Abalone continues to develop the software.
Also note that even for FaceGen Pro if you use something like 'autolevels' in Photoshop or Gimp to adjust the lighting in your photos that can reduce the detail in your pictures and thereby cause a lack of depth in the geometry of the face models FaceGen generates from your pictures.
It's somewhat subtle because the FaceGen face still looks like the person in the photograph at the correct angles but when you start looking at the Facegen faces at other angles you go 'wait a minute' something is not quite right. So lesson learned - one frontal and one side shot and non-adjusted in a photoediting SW for those pictures or one non-adjusted photo in a photoediting SW at a slight angle from straight ahead gives you the best results with FaceGen Pro.
Facegen has some really nice morphing tools in it. I like the feature to morph directly on the head. Just CTRL click on the head shape and move that spot around. It lets you really fine tune your final morph before sending it to Daz. I found that as a great compliment to the typical slider morph, or trying to align morph points on the photo.
You can use GIMP/PS to fix uneven lighting in the source, but you just need to be careful. Overly exposed pictures will wash out details. Perfect skin will also be tricky for either app to pick up face geometry sometimes.
My favorite aspect of Facegen is that it gives you an entire set of body textures. These textures are based of the default textures of the figure that you choose. It does a nice job of smoothly integrating them, so they blend in nicely without needing too much texture editing. That makes it much easier to get a body tone that matches the head. And you can adjust your color and white balance of the textures all at once in Daz itself from the surface tab to get the color right.
I bought Facegen Artist Home and love it enough that I'm going to upgrade to pro next paycheck. :) I second the loving that FG gives you good working textures based on the face color. This helps immensely when trying out new characters. Any character that I decide to complete, gets a rework of the textures with merchant resources to patch up skin problems or make a low res photo texture into a high res version. It can take many hours to edit a texture, but when you are finished, you have a new original texture that has the characteristics of the original face but turning it into your own work. That initial color approximation for the FG textures is very helpful in starting a new skin.
Another great aspect of FG is the license, good for any number of machines for 1 user. This is very important to me as I work at home and also while traveling. Also, FG states very clearly that any:
Texture images, morph targets and FaceGen '.fg' files created with Artist are yours to distribute.
That is awesome...and sensible on the part of the publisher. Because there's really no way to track a derivative morph once it's been exported and reimported as a new morph target...at least, not that I know of. I try to use all MR or otherwise free use morphs on all my characters. It's just much simpler than doing morphs on top of other commercial morphs. And, I don't have to worry about who's work I might be including. I plan to start adding variatons based on the G2 and G3 morph bundles, just so I can add that for a Daz feature. I believe they like products that have other purchase requirements.
I personally really like merchant resources as bases for skin textures. I can go through and add little color variations, skin tone, etc. to get a new character skin. Most characters don't need really unique skins. Except for distinguishing marks, I couldn't really tell the difference on many characters. The real character changers are things like eyebrows, lips, makeup, and eye color. So, a few base skins along with these distinguishers is all that I need for a whole bunch of different characters. While I'm on this topic, I really want to plug Hinkypunk's Build-a-Babe Photoshop template and texture. I use it for both G3 and G2 characters. It took me a while to build up a G2 set based off the Living Doll merchant resource that I got off Renderosity. But, it was worth the effort. Because, I can now use bits for both G3 and G2 depending on how much editing I want to do.
To edit an FG texture, I just have to drag it into Photoshop, resize it to 4096, and copy and paste it into the Build-a-Babe as a new layer. Then, it can be edited just like any other merchant resource.
Downside to FG - the face shapes often don't look the same once imported into Daz. I don't really know why this is. But, I can have something that I think, "Wow, that's a perfect likeness!" in FG, only to have it look much less like the original in Daz. This isn't all bad. It's just more work to get the shape right. I've also noticed that whether or not a profile photo is helpful is variable. I mean, sometimes the profile pic really helps the shape output. Other times, it's seems to confuse the program and output something that really doesn't look like the original at all. I don't know why. Also, noses tend to be the same triangular shape on initial output. I almost always have to use the shaping morphs to change the nose.
I often export an FG face, view it in Daz, then go back and redo it in FG, trying to alter dot placement to get an output that looks better in Daz. It's time consuming...but still a lot less trouble than learning how to model in Blender. As long as I get the basic characteristics of the model photo that I was going for, I don't mind if it's not an exact match. After all, I'm trying to create new characters, not duplicates. I often get a result that is better than what I was trying for, even if it doesn't resemble the original model.
I have noticed that young faces are the most problematic. This is either because of how FG exports or how Daz imports and adjusts to fit G2. Even if I were to put a toddler's face onto a G2 figure, it would still look like the figure were in its 20's. So, there's a lot of morphing to do after the import. I believe this is because Daz is trying to adapt a fairly extreme morph to a very standard figure.
Also (nothing to do with Facegen), I have not yet figured out how to do characters of varying heights without screwing up the joint geometry. I can scale after the fact. But, unless my figure meshes are exported at normal G2 height, it comes back a complete nightmare morph. It will import and look okay until you try to pose...Then, the results are crazy. I guess I need a tutorial on doing new bone structures or something so my 5' Asian figures can be loaded as such instead of doing post scaling.
Anyway, that's my mini review of Facegen. It essentially has very similar function as Headshop. I wish it integrated some of what Headshop does into itself, as I like being able to use shape dots to correct texture and shape. FG is more automatic. You place the initial 11 points, then FG generates its best approximation. You can't really correct texture once that's in place. You either got it right first go, or you have to redo the whole thing. Fortunately, redoing the whole thing isn't that hard. FG is by far less buggy than HS. It doesn't crash all the time or have mysterious menu selections that don't seem to function. I can make 4 reasonable FG morphs in the time it takes me to do 1 in HS. If HS was less crash prone and had more predictable results when using the various tools, I would not have bothered with Facegen. However, I'm very glad that I made the decision to go ahead and get Facegen as well. It is far less frustrating to use. One other thing I didn't mention before is that FG is very good at dealing with photos that are not perfect face forward, hair back shots. By placing the point in proper relation to where they should be on a face, you can still get a decent morph and texture. It is definitely not as good as the best case face forward shot. But, it will work.
I hope this helps others looking into both software packages. I wasn't able to find much 3rd party info about either one in my online searching, other than on this forum.
True - But, I really like how FG actually makes a very easy texture folder for you. And, the FG textures are much more complete in that they do their best to match the face to the head, etc. I've place many of these textures now. You'd still have to place any body textures with Headshop. The only automatic ones are the face and lips.
So, here's the quickest method I've come up with:
I pinned my Facegen folder to the Explorer quick links. So, I only have to do a couple of clicks to get to my "Facegen/Genesis 2/Leila 1 (or whichever)" folder and select which of the four textures I need - eyes, face, limbs, torso.
I go to the "surfaces" tab under Genesis 2 Female in Daz and starting with "ears," I click on the diffuse texture and select browse. Then, I navigate to the "Leila 1" folder and pick the textorso file. Now, the textorso file will be available in the quick list that comes up when you click on the diffuse texture button.
Then, I go to "face" under the surfaces selections after pushing the diffuse button, I select textorso from the quick list. THEN, I push the diffuse button again and select "browse." This takes me to the folder where the textorso file is located without having to navigate back to the Facegen folder. This time I select the correct "texface" file. Now that file is also in the quick list.
I do the same process for the "feet" surface, selecting the texface or textorso file to get me back to the right folder, then browse and select the correct "texlimbs." This puts texlimbs in the quick list as well.
The same goes for the "texeyes" when I get to the irises surface.
This means that by using this shortcut method, I can put all the FG diffuse textures on the appropriate surfaces in about 2 minutes. It's really simple once you get the hang of doing it this way.
Of course, if I go to the trouble of creating custom bump maps or displacement maps, this process can be a lot more time consuming. But, it's still pretty easy.
My one complaint about the way FG generates textures is the naming. It would be nice if it automatically named the texture files by using your FG filename i.e. instead of "textorso" it would be "Leila_1_torso." That seems to me to be an easy sort of thing to add into the export script. Even so, it's not too difficult to rename the textures. It would just be a help if FG did it automatically.
Hope this helps!
About children or youths, I believe I read that FG isn't really intended for them. It will always assume the face is an adult. But if you have a Growing Up morph for the Genesis figure you used, you can try adding it to the resulting morph you get from FG. I know you wanted to avoid commercial morphs, though, so perhaps there are some free youth morphs out there. Another issue with it I think is that for people with really clear and perfect skin, which is common for children, makes it harder for FG to pick up any details for a morph target.
LOL, I have used a method like you described for selecting textures. I keep my FG folder in the main Daz folder, which is pinned and that lets me find it quickly. And then I pick the files like you did so that the folder will pop up when you browse. I also sometimes rename textures to make them stand out more, like words in all caps, Leila_FACE_1 for example.
It would be nice if FG added a couple of features to address these. An option for youths, custom naming textures, and it really should create a duf to apply those textures as a preset. Still, it works very well for what it does, and I am happy over all with it.
Sorry, I missed your earlier reply. I need to sub this thread for FaceGen & Headshop / One-Click tips.
Well I'm buying the new one-click to try out because I like the auto-placement with one-click feature. I am still happy with FaceGen but I have trouble selecting the points on the photos and as noted about it can make a big difference in the morph. Also, noted above the FaceGen morph obj is a better likeness than the DAZ Morph and that's because the FaceGen program must do a sort of automated retopology so that the FaceGen morph obj model topology matched the DAZ Genesis / Genesis 2 / Genesis face topology.
If you were after the best likeness possible you'd take the FaceGen obj into Blender or Maya and attach to an existing model or model by adding to the FaceGen obj.
I see we're on the same page. I actually wrote a note to the Facegen guys to suggest those exact upgrades - auto texture naming, auto materials preset.
I have actually created some really good youth faces in FG. They just don't translate to G2 very well. As Nonesuch00 noted the retopology must adapt the mesh to make it fit G2, which is obviously a very mature looking face by comparison. I suppose I could try importing some of the Facegen meshes as separate obj's just to compare the difference in shape to that one attached to G2.
Commercial morphs aren't a problem for me. I just meant that I would rather use something I can redistribute as a merchant resource if I so desire. If I can get free use morphs, that's even better. I absolutely love Sickleyield's rework of DieTrying's 182 Morphs for G2F. I use them more than any other morphs I have available. I just hope that she feels like redoing them for G3 at some point. As to commercial merchant resources, I have Thorne's, and also Zev0's Growing Up for G3. Still, that doesn't completely fix the export import bone/joint issues. I'll have to work on that some more.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not really good with Blender yet. But, I might still give this a try. The "exact likeness" isn't so much of an issue as is predictable results - meaning, I'd like to know how the face will look on the G2/G3 before I export to Daz. This isn't a deal breaker at all. But, it would be nice to be able to adjust things beforehand in order to avoid quite so much post work in Daz.
I just did a search on "One Click" and found that thread. So, HS is developing a similar to Facegen type of software that you don't have to pick points. That is very interesting. After reading that thread, it doesn't sound like One Click will help much over Facegen except for the auto texture placement and dropping the point placement step. I am very curious to see the results. I might give it a try if there is a really good price break for current HS users. I like HS when it works. It's just such a buggy program. It's funny that Abalone mentions "you can't screw up." I realize that there is a lot of user error in HS. But, that doesn't excuse the fact that the program itself is very crash prone and can be hard to navigate. If the new One Click is stable, that will certainly be an upgrade. But, I think they will have a problem by not offering the auto and hi res textures capability of FG. Those ready made whole body textures are a huge time saver even without auto placement.
I do think that Facegen could do a better job with tutorials. It's very easy to use. But, I would like some more advanced tutorials and tips and tricks from the manufacturer to explain "best placement" of the face points to get the most accurate mesh. I've noticed that slight changes of the points can produce very different results. What I would really like is a combination of Auto Point Placement like OneClick is advertising and Point Tweaking similar to what is currently available in HS10.2, in order to be able to fix texture errors (like nostrils being slightly off) and shaping. The shaping morphs do a really good job as is. But, it would be nice to be able to do the point tweaks.
One-Click is a simpler to use with fewer bugs version of Headshop. I had Faceshop 7.x at one time but due to having to pay full upgrade price to go to Faceshop 9 and owning FaceGen Pro 1.9 I decided not to buy it. However the results from One Clink look bug free enough and good enough and cheap enough that I will buy One Click. It remains to be seen which results I will prefer - One Click's or FaceGen's. I'm pretty happy with FaceGen when I can get a good enough picture & place the dots precisely - even with frontal only pictures.
Personally I think there would be hundreds or probably thousands of DS users who would give their right arm to produce a realistic rendition of their favourite famous personality. The fact the galleries are devoid of any such renders using FS or HS suggests that to date they've all but given up attempting to do so. I wish One Click the very best of luck, but I'm not exactly holding my breath in anticipation by results so far with these programs.
Actually, I usually get better results with the Front Only approach and then morphing to match profile. When I try to use profiles, the forehead often gets a weird neanderthal brow shape, and when exported to G2, looks like the head is wearing a mask. I'm not sure why.
The biggest downside I can see to One Click is the loss of those auto generated body textures in Facegen. Those literally can knock hours off of texture editing time in Photoshop. I have enough MR skins. But, it still takes a fair amount of time to match colors to a seamless look.
Aside from that, I'm hesitant to buy another upgrade to Headshop after already spending the money for 9 and 10.
I think you're right. I've seen really good results while in Facegen and Headshop both. The translation to G2 seems to be where that perfect likeness changes. I'm generally fine with that, since I'm just trying to get the general shape of a face and use it to create new characters. But, it would be fun to get an exact match some of the time.
But aside from celebrity face matching, both programs are really cool simple face modelers. That tends to get overlooked, since that's not how these programs are marketed.
Good news: OneClick still has all the tweakable points if you need to tweak something. It also still has the profile tool as well.
Maybe this helps: