Facegen now on sale...get it!

cdpro_2831bbd990

Astracadia said:

Wonderland said:

Astracadia said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Wonderland said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Wonderland said:

This is still rendering, just a screenshot, but can people tell who this is?

 

Emma Stone?

Yes! Good, I was wondering if it was obvious enough... I probably should have done postwork before the render rather than after, but this will be an interesting experiment. I think FG is more of a tool than a one click thing. It's probably best to bring the textures into Photoshop and work on them (especially the eyes) BEFORE  rendering to get the best results and adding your own higher res resources to the photograph first if you're using a low res image pulled off the Internet. 

When I Googled various celebrities, especially iconic and dead ones, I saw many artists were simply taking existing photos and doing digitally artistic things with them or repainting them exactly as is. At least what we are doing is more original, creating views and poses of the celebs that are in different poses so no one can say that we simply altered an existing photograph, we are creating new views of them, similar to what celebrity hologram creators are doing. 

If all a user wants to do with FG is copy celebrities, it works pretty well.  But, I think it's real value is as a new character creator.  Combine FG with Figure Metrics and some new skins, and you have a character creation suite.

I agree with this. I've got the Simtenero Randomiser (mentioned a couple of posts later by FSMCDesigns, I can't multi-quote) and love it, but it relies on morphs you already own. This is not a lot of good to you if you've got a sudden need for an Asian G3F and the G3 male and female morphs are languishing in your wishlist at a combined price that's half the cost of the sale price of Facegen. As well as creating face shapes from a photo, Facegen can create male and female face shapes, African face shapes, East Asian face shapes, South Asian face shapes, European face shapes or any combination of them, and you can tweak almost every aspect of them individually afterwards in the program to make them look more/less older or more/less monstrous/realistic etc. You can't do any of that with the Randomiser unless you already own the relevant morphs. These will have had to be bought individually for each generation, male and female, unless you own the required version of GenX, whereasFacegen lets you apply your shapes to Genesis, G2M/F and G3M/F.

There's already a ton of value there, and you can combine morphs you already own with your newly-created face shape once you're in Daz Studio (step forward Zev0's ageing morphs and feel the love! :) ) .

The textures applied to the skins are more trouble than they're worth in my view as long as they insist on the daft practice of drawing eyelashes on eyelids, but it takes no time at all to create an untextured version of your character when you create the textured version, and blend the two skins together around the eyes in Photoshop. Alternatively, you can just create the untextured version (which will often stand well enough on it's own if yours is a young or background character) and make your own modifications to it. You can apply these skins to existing shapes too, or use them in conjunction with shapes created by the Randomiser. More characters than we know what to do with, but I imagine what will really complete our virtual 'character creation suite' will be the release of the next version of Skin Builder. If you're only working with Genesis or G2M/F and have the patience for the current version, that one pretty much completes it now.

As far as celebs go, I enjoyed creating my footballers and Mrs Becks and just did it to see if it could be done, but that's not really what I bought the program for. I expect most celebrities are fiercely protective of their likenesses and would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone using them commercially, and I haven't got the energy for that kind of thing. If you can find a way of using them without inviting legal challenges then your next challenge is to find an image of them not smiling - easier said than done when their livelihoods depend on them putting their most positive faces forward (unless we're talking Mrs Becks!) and most have mouthfuls of expensive dental work that they're eager to flash.

The ability to create a convincing likeness of somebody's face obviously does add extra money-making opportunities for those willing to pursue them, though. 'Want a 3D model of yourself? Look no further!', 'Send a unique Christmas card featuring you and your family in this festive Victorian toy shop!' or 'Let me digitally bring to life your dead relative!' etc.

Facegen isn't without it's flaws (I'm still struggling to get past the eyelashes on eyelids thing!), but in my view the benefits far outweigh them.

I have Simtenero Randomizer too which is great for creating characters for your own use, but you can't create commercial characters because you are relying on Daz and/or PA characters as a base and, at the end, the character still looks a G3 character. FaceGen moves it out of the obvious Daz character realm and can be used as a merchant resource with the supplied textures or your own (not celeb photos!)

I thought of that afterwards too, and as an experiment decided to see what I could come up with using FaceGen and the few merchant resources I have available. I started off in FaceGen by clicking the 'random' button a few times until I came up with a female face shape that echoed the doe-eyed and pouty look so beloved of the Daz store, generated a G3F morph and took the untextured FaceGen skin into Photoshop, where I removed the brows and replaced them with some from Hinky Punk's Build-A-Babe product. I added a smattering of freckles and a couple of moles from Build-A-Babe, and then blended in the lips with those from the skin supplied with Build-A-Babe to add a bit of texture. Bump and spec maps were created with the Photoshop actions that come with Build-A-Babe, and the eyes were re-surfaced with mats from Zev0's 'Growing Up'. All this was done during the half hour it took my daughter to make us dinner.

I'd be the first to agree that there's nothing special about the end result, but I've seen worse selling in the store and have bought worse in the past too. I have no real interest in selling characters, just in making them for me so that I don't have to buy any more, but for those that do I imagine FaceGen would pay for itself pretty quickly. You'd need to do a few variants with different coloured eyes, make-ups and maybe something quirky like a tattoo to give your character sales appeal, but even that wouldn't take too long.

I've done such a lot and had so much fun with FaceGen over the last couple of days that it seems like ages ago since I first saw that underwhelming product page for it with two not particularly informative images and thought 'For that money? You're having a laugh.' I'm glad I found the trial though, thanks to this thread, and ended up buying it. No regrets whatsoever here.

 

You say, "nothing special," But, I'd say you've come up with a really nice looking character!

nicstt

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Astracadia said:

Wonderland said:

Astracadia said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Wonderland said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Wonderland said:

This is still rendering, just a screenshot, but can people tell who this is?

 

Emma Stone?

Yes! Good, I was wondering if it was obvious enough... I probably should have done postwork before the render rather than after, but this will be an interesting experiment. I think FG is more of a tool than a one click thing. It's probably best to bring the textures into Photoshop and work on them (especially the eyes) BEFORE  rendering to get the best results and adding your own higher res resources to the photograph first if you're using a low res image pulled off the Internet. 

When I Googled various celebrities, especially iconic and dead ones, I saw many artists were simply taking existing photos and doing digitally artistic things with them or repainting them exactly as is. At least what we are doing is more original, creating views and poses of the celebs that are in different poses so no one can say that we simply altered an existing photograph, we are creating new views of them, similar to what celebrity hologram creators are doing. 

If all a user wants to do with FG is copy celebrities, it works pretty well.  But, I think it's real value is as a new character creator.  Combine FG with Figure Metrics and some new skins, and you have a character creation suite.

I agree with this. I've got the Simtenero Randomiser (mentioned a couple of posts later by FSMCDesigns, I can't multi-quote) and love it, but it relies on morphs you already own. This is not a lot of good to you if you've got a sudden need for an Asian G3F and the G3 male and female morphs are languishing in your wishlist at a combined price that's half the cost of the sale price of Facegen. As well as creating face shapes from a photo, Facegen can create male and female face shapes, African face shapes, East Asian face shapes, South Asian face shapes, European face shapes or any combination of them, and you can tweak almost every aspect of them individually afterwards in the program to make them look more/less older or more/less monstrous/realistic etc. You can't do any of that with the Randomiser unless you already own the relevant morphs. These will have had to be bought individually for each generation, male and female, unless you own the required version of GenX, whereasFacegen lets you apply your shapes to Genesis, G2M/F and G3M/F.

There's already a ton of value there, and you can combine morphs you already own with your newly-created face shape once you're in Daz Studio (step forward Zev0's ageing morphs and feel the love! :) ) .

The textures applied to the skins are more trouble than they're worth in my view as long as they insist on the daft practice of drawing eyelashes on eyelids, but it takes no time at all to create an untextured version of your character when you create the textured version, and blend the two skins together around the eyes in Photoshop. Alternatively, you can just create the untextured version (which will often stand well enough on it's own if yours is a young or background character) and make your own modifications to it. You can apply these skins to existing shapes too, or use them in conjunction with shapes created by the Randomiser. More characters than we know what to do with, but I imagine what will really complete our virtual 'character creation suite' will be the release of the next version of Skin Builder. If you're only working with Genesis or G2M/F and have the patience for the current version, that one pretty much completes it now.

As far as celebs go, I enjoyed creating my footballers and Mrs Becks and just did it to see if it could be done, but that's not really what I bought the program for. I expect most celebrities are fiercely protective of their likenesses and would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone using them commercially, and I haven't got the energy for that kind of thing. If you can find a way of using them without inviting legal challenges then your next challenge is to find an image of them not smiling - easier said than done when their livelihoods depend on them putting their most positive faces forward (unless we're talking Mrs Becks!) and most have mouthfuls of expensive dental work that they're eager to flash.

The ability to create a convincing likeness of somebody's face obviously does add extra money-making opportunities for those willing to pursue them, though. 'Want a 3D model of yourself? Look no further!', 'Send a unique Christmas card featuring you and your family in this festive Victorian toy shop!' or 'Let me digitally bring to life your dead relative!' etc.

Facegen isn't without it's flaws (I'm still struggling to get past the eyelashes on eyelids thing!), but in my view the benefits far outweigh them.

I have Simtenero Randomizer too which is great for creating characters for your own use, but you can't create commercial characters because you are relying on Daz and/or PA characters as a base and, at the end, the character still looks a G3 character. FaceGen moves it out of the obvious Daz character realm and can be used as a merchant resource with the supplied textures or your own (not celeb photos!)

I thought of that afterwards too, and as an experiment decided to see what I could come up with using FaceGen and the few merchant resources I have available. I started off in FaceGen by clicking the 'random' button a few times until I came up with a female face shape that echoed the doe-eyed and pouty look so beloved of the Daz store, generated a G3F morph and took the untextured FaceGen skin into Photoshop, where I removed the brows and replaced them with some from Hinky Punk's Build-A-Babe product. I added a smattering of freckles and a couple of moles from Build-A-Babe, and then blended in the lips with those from the skin supplied with Build-A-Babe to add a bit of texture. Bump and spec maps were created with the Photoshop actions that come with Build-A-Babe, and the eyes were re-surfaced with mats from Zev0's 'Growing Up'. All this was done during the half hour it took my daughter to make us dinner.

I'd be the first to agree that there's nothing special about the end result, but I've seen worse selling in the store and have bought worse in the past too. I have no real interest in selling characters, just in making them for me so that I don't have to buy any more, but for those that do I imagine FaceGen would pay for itself pretty quickly. You'd need to do a few variants with different coloured eyes, make-ups and maybe something quirky like a tattoo to give your character sales appeal, but even that wouldn't take too long.

I've done such a lot and had so much fun with FaceGen over the last couple of days that it seems like ages ago since I first saw that underwhelming product page for it with two not particularly informative images and thought 'For that money? You're having a laugh.' I'm glad I found the trial though, thanks to this thread, and ended up buying it. No regrets whatsoever here.

 

You say, "nothing special," But, I'd say you've come up with a really nice looking character!

Other than the teeth; too perfect.

All the merchant resource textures I have are full of teeth that at their best are not the, well best.

cdpro_2831bbd990

nicstt said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Astracadia said:

Wonderland said:

Astracadia said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Wonderland said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Wonderland said:

This is still rendering, just a screenshot, but can people tell who this is?

 

Emma Stone?

Yes! Good, I was wondering if it was obvious enough... I probably should have done postwork before the render rather than after, but this will be an interesting experiment. I think FG is more of a tool than a one click thing. It's probably best to bring the textures into Photoshop and work on them (especially the eyes) BEFORE  rendering to get the best results and adding your own higher res resources to the photograph first if you're using a low res image pulled off the Internet. 

When I Googled various celebrities, especially iconic and dead ones, I saw many artists were simply taking existing photos and doing digitally artistic things with them or repainting them exactly as is. At least what we are doing is more original, creating views and poses of the celebs that are in different poses so no one can say that we simply altered an existing photograph, we are creating new views of them, similar to what celebrity hologram creators are doing. 

If all a user wants to do with FG is copy celebrities, it works pretty well.  But, I think it's real value is as a new character creator.  Combine FG with Figure Metrics and some new skins, and you have a character creation suite.

I agree with this. I've got the Simtenero Randomiser (mentioned a couple of posts later by FSMCDesigns, I can't multi-quote) and love it, but it relies on morphs you already own. This is not a lot of good to you if you've got a sudden need for an Asian G3F and the G3 male and female morphs are languishing in your wishlist at a combined price that's half the cost of the sale price of Facegen. As well as creating face shapes from a photo, Facegen can create male and female face shapes, African face shapes, East Asian face shapes, South Asian face shapes, European face shapes or any combination of them, and you can tweak almost every aspect of them individually afterwards in the program to make them look more/less older or more/less monstrous/realistic etc. You can't do any of that with the Randomiser unless you already own the relevant morphs. These will have had to be bought individually for each generation, male and female, unless you own the required version of GenX, whereasFacegen lets you apply your shapes to Genesis, G2M/F and G3M/F.

There's already a ton of value there, and you can combine morphs you already own with your newly-created face shape once you're in Daz Studio (step forward Zev0's ageing morphs and feel the love! :) ) .

The textures applied to the skins are more trouble than they're worth in my view as long as they insist on the daft practice of drawing eyelashes on eyelids, but it takes no time at all to create an untextured version of your character when you create the textured version, and blend the two skins together around the eyes in Photoshop. Alternatively, you can just create the untextured version (which will often stand well enough on it's own if yours is a young or background character) and make your own modifications to it. You can apply these skins to existing shapes too, or use them in conjunction with shapes created by the Randomiser. More characters than we know what to do with, but I imagine what will really complete our virtual 'character creation suite' will be the release of the next version of Skin Builder. If you're only working with Genesis or G2M/F and have the patience for the current version, that one pretty much completes it now.

As far as celebs go, I enjoyed creating my footballers and Mrs Becks and just did it to see if it could be done, but that's not really what I bought the program for. I expect most celebrities are fiercely protective of their likenesses and would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone using them commercially, and I haven't got the energy for that kind of thing. If you can find a way of using them without inviting legal challenges then your next challenge is to find an image of them not smiling - easier said than done when their livelihoods depend on them putting their most positive faces forward (unless we're talking Mrs Becks!) and most have mouthfuls of expensive dental work that they're eager to flash.

The ability to create a convincing likeness of somebody's face obviously does add extra money-making opportunities for those willing to pursue them, though. 'Want a 3D model of yourself? Look no further!', 'Send a unique Christmas card featuring you and your family in this festive Victorian toy shop!' or 'Let me digitally bring to life your dead relative!' etc.

Facegen isn't without it's flaws (I'm still struggling to get past the eyelashes on eyelids thing!), but in my view the benefits far outweigh them.

I have Simtenero Randomizer too which is great for creating characters for your own use, but you can't create commercial characters because you are relying on Daz and/or PA characters as a base and, at the end, the character still looks a G3 character. FaceGen moves it out of the obvious Daz character realm and can be used as a merchant resource with the supplied textures or your own (not celeb photos!)

I thought of that afterwards too, and as an experiment decided to see what I could come up with using FaceGen and the few merchant resources I have available. I started off in FaceGen by clicking the 'random' button a few times until I came up with a female face shape that echoed the doe-eyed and pouty look so beloved of the Daz store, generated a G3F morph and took the untextured FaceGen skin into Photoshop, where I removed the brows and replaced them with some from Hinky Punk's Build-A-Babe product. I added a smattering of freckles and a couple of moles from Build-A-Babe, and then blended in the lips with those from the skin supplied with Build-A-Babe to add a bit of texture. Bump and spec maps were created with the Photoshop actions that come with Build-A-Babe, and the eyes were re-surfaced with mats from Zev0's 'Growing Up'. All this was done during the half hour it took my daughter to make us dinner.

I'd be the first to agree that there's nothing special about the end result, but I've seen worse selling in the store and have bought worse in the past too. I have no real interest in selling characters, just in making them for me so that I don't have to buy any more, but for those that do I imagine FaceGen would pay for itself pretty quickly. You'd need to do a few variants with different coloured eyes, make-ups and maybe something quirky like a tattoo to give your character sales appeal, but even that wouldn't take too long.

I've done such a lot and had so much fun with FaceGen over the last couple of days that it seems like ages ago since I first saw that underwhelming product page for it with two not particularly informative images and thought 'For that money? You're having a laugh.' I'm glad I found the trial though, thanks to this thread, and ended up buying it. No regrets whatsoever here.

 

You say, "nothing special," But, I'd say you've come up with a really nice looking character!

Other than the teeth; too perfect.

All the merchant resource textures I have are full of teeth that at their best are not the, well best.

True enough.  I have teeth morphs on my system that do allow some irregularity.  In particular, I like to shorten the overall length of the teeth (make them a bit smaller) and add some gap to avoid the "solid white wall" look.

I haven't messed with the teeth mouth textures.  But, I'm sure that would be a good way to add some slight color variations.

I hope to pick up Zev0's Dental Plan, if there's a version for G3.

 

Odaa

No pictures to demonstrate, but I seem to get better results positioning the eye markers below the pupil and above the outer rim of the iris than when I place the eye markers directly on the iris, at least when the picture shows someone with squinty/droopy eyes.

JackJack

It's really too bad there is no way to make small refinements. I have had some great results, but also some ALMOST great results that were spoiled by small innaccuracies that could be easily fixed if only I could give the program more info. For instance, the app often misjudges where the lips part, so the resulting texture has a line through the bottom or lower lip. Same goes for nostrils and the often states eye issues. If I could simply give the app a little more info (and option for more reference points) this could be alleviated I feel.

cdpro_2831bbd990

Odaa said:

No pictures to demonstrate, but I seem to get better results positioning the eye markers below the pupil and above the outer rim of the iris than when I place the eye markers directly on the iris, at least when the picture shows someone with squinty/droopy eyes.

I often do the same.  Sometimes the iris is unusable and I have to swap out eye textures in order to match where it should go on the eye.  The point placement is asking more for where the pupil would be on an ideal image.  That said, sometimes it just works.  If a photo is not working, it is often better just to try a different one. 

JackJack said:

It's really too bad there is no way to make small refinements. I have had some great results, but also some ALMOST great results that were spoiled by small innaccuracies that could be easily fixed if only I could give the program more info. For instance, the app often misjudges where the lips part, so the resulting texture has a line through the bottom or lower lip. Same goes for nostrils and the often states eye issues. If I could simply give the app a little more info (and option for more reference points) this could be alleviated I feel.

Agreed, a separate, texture matching screen would be nice to refine where the texture should match up on the model.  This is one area that I did really like in Headshop.  You can use the Auto Point feature to pull the points as needed to match the skin and see the result before exporting.

In Facegen, for lips, you're better off being just slightly under the lip line in most cases.  However this varies according to how hi resolution your original photo is.  The higher the resolution, the more accurate the point placement can be.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

I'm not sure if I'm just missing something, but there are quite a few things I can't seem to find. The one thing is, isn't there just a "new" to reset everything? I can reset all the morphs back to zero, but the nationality, etc. all have numbers. I've tried putting all of them to none and all to the left, but one slider seems to change the other ones, and it still doesn't look like the original one did when I started.

Also, is there a revert back to the shape the program picked from the photo? I've changed things and it hasn't helped, but there seems to be no way to go back to that other than to start from scratch.

Third, is there no option to move around the points to change them or again do you have to start from scratch? I can tell I misaligned some things a bit, but again, this doesn't seem to be an option, and to me seems critical.

Biggest problem I am having, however, is when I try to import the photo, it keeps saying the markers are wrong and to go back. The only way I corrected this was to set it to use points only from the profile photo, but honestly, I don't even want to use the profile photo because the eyes aren't open all the way. Maybe it's because it's an atypical face, I do not know. (Peter Capaldi)

Wonderland

Although it seems I am placing all the points correctly, I have to sometimes try 8 or 9 times before it will be accepted. It seems like the last point often won't go through, but just resetting that doesn't work, I have to keep backtracking to the first point, there doesn't seem to be a reset all button. And then for fun, I tried to use a portrait of my cat, which didn't work at all, so I wish the program was more lenient in what it accepted.

As a whole, I think the program could be improved a lot, but I'm really happy with the new shapes it can add to the gene pool and the textures it comes with are great. I also wish there were even more individual morphs for creating original characters (there are a lot, but I'm a morph junkie!) and I wish you could choose where to save the textures and have it auto-generate bump and normal maps, but I'm not a programmer, not sure if that's possible. The UI could be a lot better and if the developers really focused on improving it, I think it could be REALLY amazing, really revolutionize character creation, but even as is, I'm finding it one of the most useful products I've purchased, finally creating characters that aren't immediately recognizable as Daz characters...

Odaa

there's an "undo" button when you are setting the markers, but basically you have to keep undoing and resetting the first marker til you do it right, then be equally careful for each marker after that, because there's not really a way to, say, leave your marker for the left eye in place and double back and fix the right eye (which you mark first).

I wouldn't think that Peter Capaldi's face was unusual enough to make facegen throw fits on its own, but I haven't played with it long enough to know for sure.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Odaa said:

there's an "undo" button when you are setting the markers, but basically you have to keep undoing and resetting the first marker til you do it right, then be equally careful for each marker after that, because there's not really a way to, say, leave your marker for the left eye in place and double back and fix the right eye (which you mark first).

I wouldn't think that Peter Capaldi's face was unusual enough to make facegen throw fits on its own, but I haven't played with it long enough to know for sure.

I meant undo when you are changing sliders. Since adding the photo picks a starting point, I can't get back to that, only to zero out all the morphs, which makes it look generic, not what it looked like when I first imported the photos. Now though I'm trying again and it's not analyzing the photos at all, just hanging. I think that part may be due to my laptop, but I would think it should be powerful enough I have 12gb of RAM.

Has anyone ever tried just exporting with that default it creates and changing the morphs in DAZ or Poser? I'm wondering if in the end that might be better as there are many more options (like I can't change the philtrum or add I bags, etc), plus I could use age morphs. I just feel like the more I changed the sliders, the worse it became.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

I just figured out one big thing - where it kept saying the markers were off, I happened to read this, which I somehow missed:

The outer jaw points should be horizontally in line with the mouth corner points. It does NOT matter where the neck profile intersects the face profile.

I was in the wrong place and it was throwing it off. Now one photo works, so at least that fixes that problem.

Wonderland

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Odaa said:

there's an "undo" button when you are setting the markers, but basically you have to keep undoing and resetting the first marker til you do it right, then be equally careful for each marker after that, because there's not really a way to, say, leave your marker for the left eye in place and double back and fix the right eye (which you mark first).

I wouldn't think that Peter Capaldi's face was unusual enough to make facegen throw fits on its own, but I haven't played with it long enough to know for sure.

I meant undo when you are changing sliders. Since adding the photo picks a starting point, I can't get back to that, only to zero out all the morphs, which makes it look generic, not what it looked like when I first imported the photos. Now though I'm trying again and it's not analyzing the photos at all, just hanging. I think that part may be due to my laptop, but I would think it should be powerful enough I have 12gb of RAM.

Has anyone ever tried just exporting with that default it creates and changing the morphs in DAZ or Poser? I'm wondering if in the end that might be better as there are many more options (like I can't change the philtrum or add I bags, etc), plus I could use age morphs. I just feel like the more I changed the sliders, the worse it became.

Did you try holding down control then manipulating the left pad to rotate the figure? You can make a much better portrait if you see it from all angles, but yes regular Daz morphs do work on it, including aging morphs. And my laptop is only 12 GB RAM too and so far it seems OK, but sometimes takes a while to analyze the photo. But I haven't see a reset button to original photo morph, you'll probably have to start over.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Another question, does anyone know how to get rid of the overlayed photo? The eybrows it's adding are in a different place. Resetting all the colors to zero made it worse, and removing the skin texture removes the photos as well. I want it to use just the photos I put in only.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Thank you, I did end up rotating it to get a better version, but I didn't change it as much from the original and will later try morph dials in DS.

I'm attaching a screen capture from facegen (where it looks great, aside from the overlay of the eyebrows you can see I was talking about that I don't know how to get rid of.

second is the DS render which doesn't look to completely line up the same. Some of it does, but the lips look weird. It doesn't look anywhere like the facegen preview. (granted this isn't in iray its with 3delight, but it still doesn't look right. I'm going to try to update DS. Wondering if it's possible to load into Poser without DS, I'm so much more used to it. Maybe it's the render settings, IDK.

 

Mighty Mysterio

I tried a demo of Facegen around 10 years ago, and just tried it again in conjunction with Studio for the first time because of this thread. IMHO, Facegen is living proof of GIGO. Give it high-quality pictures in the format it requires, and you will be pleased with the morph results. Give it low-quality ones ( or just a frontal pic), and you'll get a ballpark likeness if you are very lucky or something wretched if you aren't. 

Its internal face generators according to ethnicity are exceptionally useful, and its sculpting sliders are essential (especially if you haven't any face morph packages for Genesis). I've not generated anyone stunningly beautiful yet using Facegen's face generator function, but it seems to be great for generating 'salt of the earth' kind of folks, and that fills a void many vendors aren't going to. I like the faces created through the face generator better than those created through the photo input, incidentially. am less of a fan of the textures Facegen outputs so I tend to use higher-quality textures from my favorite vendors instead. (Incidentally, it's when you swap in new textures that you may notice that the morph Facegen outputted may not be quite as spitting image as you thought they were at first.) I was disappointed to see that the interface was about the same as it was back in 2005.

I plan on buying this when I've got the finances for it rather than manually undo the FG scars on the foreheads of anything I create in the demo.  It's a useful tool to have in one's kit.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Mighty Mysterio said:

I tried a demo of Facegen around 10 years ago, and just tried it again in conjunction with Studio for the first time because of this thread. IMHO, Facegen is living proof of GIGO. Give it high-quality pictures in the format it requires, and you will be pleased with the morph results. Give it low-quality ones ( or just a frontal pic), and you'll get a ballpark likeness if you are very lucky or something wretched if you aren't. 

Its internal face generators according to ethnicity are exceptionally useful, and its sculpting sliders are essential (especially if you haven't any face morph packages for Genesis). I've not generated anyone stunningly beautiful yet using Facegen's face generator function, but it seems to be great for generating 'salt of the earth' kind of folks, and that fills a void many vendors aren't going to. I like the faces created through the face generator better than those created through the photo input, incidentially. am less of a fan of the textures Facegen outputs so I tend to use higher-quality textures from my favorite vendors instead. (Incidentally, it's when you swap in new textures that you may notice that the morph Facegen outputted may not be quite as spitting image as you thought they were at first.) I was disappointed to see that the interface was about the same as it was back in 2005.

I plan on buying this when I've got the finances for it rather than manually undo the FG scars on the foreheads of anything I create in the demo.  It's a useful tool to have in one's kit.

Not sure if that was meant directly to me, but the texture I used in DS was the texture Facegen output, which is why I'm confused that it lines up so different. I also used Genesis though. I can try it with G2 and G3, but I have to either install them or move to my other computer.

nicstt

Indeed.

I've been looking at some texture resources I have of models; none of them look anything like the characters that get released - blemishes are normal. And shape-wise, a wide variety (even of the slim models), that make a mockery of the perfect figures we see.

 

Richard Haseltine

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Thank you, I did end up rotating it to get a better version, but I didn't change it as much from the original and will later try morph dials in DS.

I'm attaching a screen capture from facegen (where it looks great, aside from the overlay of the eyebrows you can see I was talking about that I don't know how to get rid of.

second is the DS render which doesn't look to completely line up the same. Some of it does, but the lips look weird. It doesn't look anywhere like the facegen preview. (granted this isn't in iray its with 3delight, but it still doesn't look right. I'm going to try to update DS. Wondering if it's possible to load into Poser without DS, I'm so much more used to it. Maybe it's the render settings, IDK.

You seem to have the opposite issue to previous post - you DS camera has a very low focal length, producing exaggerated perspective.

Mighty Mysterio

@scullygirl818: No, my comments were just my own observations based upon my own use. I hope I didn't unintentionally imply otherwise. I've dabbled in Facegen but I wouldn't call myself an expert and don't have any insight into the particular problems with the textures you've been sharing in your screencaps. I think Richard is onto the right diagnosis, however.

 

 

TJohn

First Facegen result I thought I'd share. G3F.

TJohn

attachment.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Mighty Mysterio said:

@scullygirl818: No, my comments were just my own observations based upon my own use. I hope I didn't unintentionally imply otherwise. I've dabbled in Facegen but I wouldn't call myself an expert and don't have any insight into the particular problems with the textures you've been sharing in your screencaps. I think Richard is onto the right diagnosis, however.

 

 

No worries I just thought maybe you thought I had swapped out the texture:)

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Richard Haseltine said:

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Thank you, I did end up rotating it to get a better version, but I didn't change it as much from the original and will later try morph dials in DS.

I'm attaching a screen capture from facegen (where it looks great, aside from the overlay of the eyebrows you can see I was talking about that I don't know how to get rid of.

second is the DS render which doesn't look to completely line up the same. Some of it does, but the lips look weird. It doesn't look anywhere like the facegen preview. (granted this isn't in iray its with 3delight, but it still doesn't look right. I'm going to try to update DS. Wondering if it's possible to load into Poser without DS, I'm so much more used to it. Maybe it's the render settings, IDK.

You seem to have the opposite issue to previous post - you DS camera has a very low focal length, producing exaggerated perspective.

I can mess with that, but why would that make the texture misaligned? Thanks

TJohn

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Thank you, I did end up rotating it to get a better version, but I didn't change it as much from the original and will later try morph dials in DS.

I'm attaching a screen capture from facegen (where it looks great, aside from the overlay of the eyebrows you can see I was talking about that I don't know how to get rid of.

second is the DS render which doesn't look to completely line up the same. Some of it does, but the lips look weird. It doesn't look anywhere like the facegen preview. (granted this isn't in iray its with 3delight, but it still doesn't look right. I'm going to try to update DS. Wondering if it's possible to load into Poser without DS, I'm so much more used to it. Maybe it's the render settings, IDK.

You seem to have the opposite issue to previous post - you DS camera has a very low focal length, producing exaggerated perspective.

I can mess with that, but why would that make the texture misaligned? Thanks

Check to be sure the UV in Surfaces is set to the Base Figure UV.

FSMCDesigns

can't seem to stop playing with the demo, LOL. I never really got into the celebrity look alike thread simply because most celebrity type characters with default textures hardly ever looked like who they were supposed to be, so it's nice to get much closer now. can't wait to pick up the full program

Another one of a fav actor, in his younger days, LOL

Lindsey

Excellent likeness, FSMCDesigns ! 

Here is my latest...

cdpro_2831bbd990

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Odaa said:

there's an "undo" button when you are setting the markers, but basically you have to keep undoing and resetting the first marker til you do it right, then be equally careful for each marker after that, because there's not really a way to, say, leave your marker for the left eye in place and double back and fix the right eye (which you mark first).

I wouldn't think that Peter Capaldi's face was unusual enough to make facegen throw fits on its own, but I haven't played with it long enough to know for sure.

I meant undo when you are changing sliders. Since adding the photo picks a starting point, I can't get back to that, only to zero out all the morphs, which makes it look generic, not what it looked like when I first imported the photos. Now though I'm trying again and it's not analyzing the photos at all, just hanging. I think that part may be due to my laptop, but I would think it should be powerful enough I have 12gb of RAM.

Has anyone ever tried just exporting with that default it creates and changing the morphs in DAZ or Poser? I'm wondering if in the end that might be better as there are many more options (like I can't change the philtrum or add I bags, etc), plus I could use age morphs. I just feel like the more I changed the sliders, the worse it became.

Yes, I often export the FG creation without reshaping inside FG, and just do alterations with the Daz morphs.  You can do both.  I generally try to get the face to look as close to what I'm after as possible, then export to Daz...then, tweak within Daz with MR morphs.

cdpro_2831bbd990

Lindsey said:

Excellent likeness, FSMCDesigns ! 

Here is my latest...

Excellent!

cdpro_2831bbd990

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

I'm not sure if I'm just missing something, but there are quite a few things I can't seem to find. The one thing is, isn't there just a "new" to reset everything? I can reset all the morphs back to zero, but the nationality, etc. all have numbers. I've tried putting all of them to none and all to the left, but one slider seems to change the other ones, and it still doesn't look like the original one did when I started.

Also, is there a revert back to the shape the program picked from the photo? I've changed things and it hasn't helped, but there seems to be no way to go back to that other than to start from scratch.

Third, is there no option to move around the points to change them or again do you have to start from scratch? I can tell I misaligned some things a bit, but again, this doesn't seem to be an option, and to me seems critical.

Biggest problem I am having, however, is when I try to import the photo, it keeps saying the markers are wrong and to go back. The only way I corrected this was to set it to use points only from the profile photo, but honestly, I don't even want to use the profile photo because the eyes aren't open all the way. Maybe it's because it's an atypical face, I do not know. (Peter Capaldi)

I agree, the undo history leaves a lot to be desired.  Once you start fiddling with the shape morphs in FG, forget about going back unless you've written them down.  However, an easy way to have a history point of the original FG created face shape, is to let FG generate the face...then, immediately save the FG file as i.e. "Megan 1."  Then mess with the face in FG as much as you like.  If you screw it up too badly, you can just reload your saved, "Megan 1," and it will put you back to the original FG generated shape.

As far as FG reading points on the photo: A big help is to make sure the face is as symmetical as possible (meaning as close to straight on as possible), and the eyes are close to level.  I usually prep any face photo in Photoshop by using transform to rotate the image until it is close to level, then save as "Face A."  FG is looking for the points to be straight across from each other, just like in the sample photo.  If they are more than a little tilted, FG isn't sure which point is correct and gets confused.  The same is true if the face in your photo is either looking up or down by more than 10 degrees.

Another thing that can affect how well FG reads points, is the difference in face to foreground.  If the edges of the face have either very similar light values to the background or a lot of hair surrounding the face outline, FG might not be able to discern the edges.

Also, if the shot you're using has a lot of body in it, crop it to be just the head and neck. 

FG actually handles most of these things really well.  But, it still prefers a straight on and level headshot.

Hope this helps!

cdpro_2831bbd990

A new character created from a photo, then altered in both face shape and texture.  The texture still needs some minor corrections.  But, I think she looks pretty good.