Facegen now on sale...get it!

nicstt

I prefer to get a likeness in Daz; generally, I delete the morph that facegen produces. I did keep one though.

Mighty Mysterio

FSMCDesigns said:

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

He will always be Magnum PI to me, no matter how many other police roles he has played since. That's a great likeness you captured! It would be cool to see what his textures would look like on a different face.

3Diva

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

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.

Her face shape is quite cute. The texture around the eyes seems to be off though. The area under her eye - I'm not sure what's going on there but something is off. 

Mighty Mysterio

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

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.

I agree with your workflow. The program's interface/functionality looks virtually unchanged from what I remembered back in 2005, and doesn't include multiple undo functions like most other software I use does. Once I start fiddling with sliders, I am potentially getting in big trouble. I also feel that the various Genesis morphs provide much more control than Facegen's, whose age morphs (for instance) seem really arbitrary. Others might disagree.

The big exception is if I am generating faces wholly within Facegen and not using any photos as inputs. I mess around with the sliders a lot then, because I am not looking to recreate a likeness but am instead coming up with a character I might want to 'cast' as an extra in a future Studio render. I always find it theraputic and relaxing to just create characters without preconceived notions in my spare time and then save them for future use.

Odaa

Does anyone have any advice for using almost-profile shots (more profile than 3/4, but where you can see a little bit of the person's other eye and cheek)? If I'm using a right-side almost-profile shot, for instance, should I place the dots more towards the right or towards the left to compensate?

Wonderland

I'm finding FG best to create extreme original characters, like in the acting world, "character actors," rather than leading actors. To make them really attractive from all angles, I've found I do have to make some adjustments in Daz and then again in Photoshop but I really like the DIVERSITY, especially in a time where there is an attempt to prevent that... 

cdpro_2831bbd990

Odaa said:

Does anyone have any advice for using almost-profile shots (more profile than 3/4, but where you can see a little bit of the person's other eye and cheek)? If I'm using a right-side almost-profile shot, for instance, should I place the dots more towards the right or towards the left to compensate?

Profile usage in FG is hit or miss at best.  2 things can help.  First, take the profile into a photo editor and try to get it to match orientation with the sample profile in FG.  Second, if you are using a less than perfect side view, try outlining and cuting the extra bits from the other side of the face, out of the image.  High contrast seems to work best.  So, use a white background, unless with an extremely pale subject.  Cutting the excess gives FG a new sharp profile outline to work with.

Most of the time, I just use the front view and fix the profile using morphs after the face is generated.  Sometimes using a profile will help with shaping.  But, I find that more often than not, I get a closer match with just the front view.  Also, the very few times that I've managed to crash FG were when using profiles and profile textures.  Quite possibly, it was just too much for my computer.

 

ANGELREAPER1972

the advantage headshop has over facegen is those extra markers but ffacegen is easier and I like the results have a pretty results for new textures don't have to do many touchups both have their pros and cons can't say about the latest hs oneclick didn't get it though it'll be interesting to see what the next version does to compete with facegen which I prefer

 

ANGELREAPER1972

ANGELREAPER1972 said:

the advantage headshop has over facegen is those extra markers but ffacegen is easier and I like the results have a pretty results for new textures don't have to do many touchups both have their pros and cons can't say about the latest hs oneclick didn't get it though it'll be interesting to see what the next version does to compete with facegen which I prefer

 

actually if the next version of either program allowed the import of textures of say a cat so you could do a cat human as well as morphs now that would be cool

Wonderland

ANGELREAPER1972 said:

ANGELREAPER1972 said:

the advantage headshop has over facegen is those extra markers but ffacegen is easier and I like the results have a pretty results for new textures don't have to do many touchups both have their pros and cons can't say about the latest hs oneclick didn't get it though it'll be interesting to see what the next version does to compete with facegen which I prefer

 

actually if the next version of either program allowed the import of textures of say a cat so you could do a cat human as well as morphs now that would be cool

That's exactly what I tried, but FG rejected it, said it couldn't analyze the photo....

Odaa

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Odaa said:

Does anyone have any advice for using almost-profile shots (more profile than 3/4, but where you can see a little bit of the person's other eye and cheek)? If I'm using a right-side almost-profile shot, for instance, should I place the dots more towards the right or towards the left to compensate?

Profile usage in FG is hit or miss at best.  2 things can help.  First, take the profile into a photo editor and try to get it to match orientation with the sample profile in FG.  Second, if you are using a less than perfect side view, try outlining and cuting the extra bits from the other side of the face, out of the image.  High contrast seems to work best.  So, use a white background, unless with an extremely pale subject.  Cutting the excess gives FG a new sharp profile outline to work with.

Most of the time, I just use the front view and fix the profile using morphs after the face is generated.  Sometimes using a profile will help with shaping.  But, I find that more often than not, I get a closer match with just the front view.  Also, the very few times that I've managed to crash FG were when using profiles and profile textures.  Quite possibly, it was just too much for my computer.

 

Good advice, I'll try that. Thank you for your help!

BTW, it reads pictures of classical marble sculptures pretty well, about as well as pics of live humans. I stumbled across a full-face shot of a female statue from the Italian Renaissance, liked the face and gave it a try. The morph results, although not flawless, were about the same as what I've gotten from photos of people (ie, result is an extremely caricatured morph that I dial to about 50-80% and then adjust the bits I don't like using other dials). And the skin looked better than its take on live people, frankly.  If you've ever run across a bust of a Roman emperor or somebody, and thought, gee, that guy has a cool face! Give it a try in Facegen, you might be pleasantly surprised.

It tends to default to very round faces (even when using pics of the hatchet-faced Charlton Heston!), so dialing your facegen morph up in DS and then dialing "Face Round" to a negative value will often bring you closer to the real thing than the facegen morph alone.

posecast

Odaa said:

 

It tends to default to very round faces (even when using pics of the hatchet-faced Charlton Heston!), so dialing your facegen morph up in DS and then dialing "Face Round" to a negative value will often bring you closer to the real thing than the facegen morph alone.

You win dazzer of the day award for this!

Mighty Mysterio

Odaa said:

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

Odaa said:

 

Good advice, I'll try that. Thank you for your help!

BTW, it reads pictures of classical marble sculptures pretty well, about as well as pics of live humans. I stumbled across a full-face shot of a female statue from the Italian Renaissance, liked the face and gave it a try. The morph results, although not flawless, were about the same as what I've gotten from photos of people (ie, result is an extremely caricatured morph that I dial to about 50-80% and then adjust the bits I don't like using other dials). And the skin looked better than its take on live people, frankly.  If you've ever run across a bust of a Roman emperor or somebody, and thought, gee, that guy has a cool face! Give it a try in Facegen, you might be pleasantly surprised.

It tends to default to very round faces (even when using pics of the hatchet-faced Charlton Heston!), so dialing your facegen morph up in DS and then dialing "Face Round" to a negative value will often bring you closer to the real thing than the facegen morph alone.

I've never tried classical busts, but I have tried high-quality Halloween masks with some good results. Sure, it wasn't easy to find pictures that didn't have mood lighting. But once I did, the basic monster morphs weren't bad. I, too, prefer to use the morphs at less than 80% dialed-in, and I prefer to combine them with other morphs that I bought or made because I'm more interested in deepening the gene pool than I am in creating a flawless celebrity look-alike.

 

posecast

Mighty Mysterio said:

I've never tried classical busts, but I have tried high-quality Halloween masks with some good results. Sure, it wasn't easy to find pictures that didn't have mood lighting. But once I did, the basic monster morphs weren't bad. I, too, prefer to use the morphs at less than 80% dialed-in, and I prefer to combine them with other morphs that I bought or made because I'm more interested in deepening the gene pool than I am in creating a flawless celebrity look-alike.

 

Please show an example of this! It sounds interesting!

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

cdpro_2831bbd990 said:

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

 

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!

Thanks, Yeah I finally saved the original that FG output. I tried the number route, but the odd thing I noticed, is that when you press undo, it doesn't always take it back to the same number. I did end up cropping the photo and rotating it straight, the FG version actually looks pretty good as you can see from above, I'm just trying to figure out why it looks odd once I import it into DS.

scullygirl818_02147fecb6

Tjohn said:

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

scullygirl818_02147fecb6 said:

 

 

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.

Thanks, I selected the male uvs as per the instructions (this was on Genesis) It seems like most of it is lined up ok, but the mouth looks weird, and it really doesn't look like it did in facegen. I'm wondering if part of it is because it's being applied to Genesis, where in FG it's before it's exported. I need to go to my other computer and try G3 to see if I get a better result.

 

Mighty Mysterio

posecast said:

Mighty Mysterio said:

I've never tried classical busts, but I have tried high-quality Halloween masks with some good results. Sure, it wasn't easy to find pictures that didn't have mood lighting. But once I did, the basic monster morphs weren't bad. I, too, prefer to use the morphs at less than 80% dialed-in, and I prefer to combine them with other morphs that I bought or made because I'm more interested in deepening the gene pool than I am in creating a flawless celebrity look-alike.

 

Please show an example of this! It sounds interesting!

OK, if all goes well, both my source photo of a HQ mask based on Frankenstein and my quickie portrait test of a creature whose morph is largely based on the Facegen capture will both show up here. Now, my goal wasn't to necessarily create a Karloff but to create the type of character that Karloff might have played. I did not use the texture that Facegen created because my source photo has some pretty funky lighting and that would have translated onto my G2 character by default. Instead, I used one of MortemVetus' monster skins ported over to Genesis 2. 

 

Let me know what you think, please. Honest feedback is always welcome! :)

 

 

grinch2901

I was having real problems with this (posted my attempts earlier) in particular with females. I noted that males seemed to transfer better. Well, I ended up requesting a refund based on the fact that I couldn't get it to work properly and in the meantime I decided that maybe there was a problem with G3F. I reinstalled her and tried some more and well whattya know, it worked much better.  Then DAZ approved my refund right after I figured that out so as it happens, my fun is over.  However if you are getting bad results I thought I would pass on that maybe there's something not interacting well with the base mesh and if you do a reinstall (I used DIM to reinstall G2F starter pack) then it might work better for you. Something to consider.  

And here's one of the characters I worked up (a male, as most of the ones I created were, since it worked).  Have fun with it, folkes!

3Diva

Mighty Mysterio said:

posecast said:

Mighty Mysterio said:

I've never tried classical busts, but I have tried high-quality Halloween masks with some good results. Sure, it wasn't easy to find pictures that didn't have mood lighting. But once I did, the basic monster morphs weren't bad. I, too, prefer to use the morphs at less than 80% dialed-in, and I prefer to combine them with other morphs that I bought or made because I'm more interested in deepening the gene pool than I am in creating a flawless celebrity look-alike.

 

Please show an example of this! It sounds interesting!

OK, if all goes well, both my source photo of a HQ mask based on Frankenstein and my quickie portrait test of a creature whose morph is largely based on the Facegen capture will both show up here. Now, my goal wasn't to necessarily create a Karloff but to create the type of character that Karloff might have played. I did not use the texture that Facegen created because my source photo has some pretty funky lighting and that would have translated onto my G2 character by default. Instead, I used one of MortemVetus' monster skins ported over to Genesis 2. 

 

Let me know what you think, please. Honest feedback is always welcome! :)

 

 

Decent effort. I like the face shape. The texture is a bit blurred though. Perhaps a higher resolution image would give a cleaner texture map. It's not bad though. :)

3Diva

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

grinch2901

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

3Diva

grinch2901 said:

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

hahah That's really nice of you to say. :) Thank you.

Still needs quite a bit of work to look like the original - but I don't think it's bad for a quicky. :)

unknownmystery445

divamakeup said:

grinch2901 said:

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

hahah That's really nice of you to say. :) Thank you.

Still needs quite a bit of work to look like the original - but I don't think it's bad for a quicky. :)

Can you kindly post the photo reference that you've used? :) and suggestions on what photo references to use and where to find them online? :)

3Diva

unknownmystery445 said:

divamakeup said:

grinch2901 said:

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

hahah That's really nice of you to say. :) Thank you.

Still needs quite a bit of work to look like the original - but I don't think it's bad for a quicky. :)

Can you kindly post the photo reference that you've used? :) and suggestions on what photo references to use and where to find them online? :)

I find the best way to find large enough images is Google image search and type in your search parameters. In this case it was "Frankenstein" but normally I just do "face" or "pretty face". Then Settings >> Advanced Search >> Image Size >> Larger Than 2 MP

That should pull up some larger image files to look through. 

As for the Frankenstein face, I used these two images:

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-1.jpg

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-8.jpg

unknownmystery445

divamakeup said:

unknownmystery445 said:

divamakeup said:

grinch2901 said:

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

hahah That's really nice of you to say. :) Thank you.

Still needs quite a bit of work to look like the original - but I don't think it's bad for a quicky. :)

Can you kindly post the photo reference that you've used? :) and suggestions on what photo references to use and where to find them online? :)

I find the best way to find large enough images is Google image search and type in your search parameters. In this case it was "Frankenstein" but normally I just do "face" or "pretty face". Then Settings >> Advanced Search >> Image Size >> Larger Than 2 MP

That should pull up some larger image files to look through. 

As for the Frankenstein face, I used these two images:

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-1.jpg

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-8.jpg

Oh that's why it looked great because you got side photos :) I hope you continue sharing photos it'll help people who purchased this product and is having a difficult time making great contents. :)

3Diva

unknownmystery445 said:

divamakeup said:

unknownmystery445 said:

divamakeup said:

grinch2901 said:

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

hahah That's really nice of you to say. :) Thank you.

Still needs quite a bit of work to look like the original - but I don't think it's bad for a quicky. :)

Can you kindly post the photo reference that you've used? :) and suggestions on what photo references to use and where to find them online? :)

I find the best way to find large enough images is Google image search and type in your search parameters. In this case it was "Frankenstein" but normally I just do "face" or "pretty face". Then Settings >> Advanced Search >> Image Size >> Larger Than 2 MP

That should pull up some larger image files to look through. 

As for the Frankenstein face, I used these two images:

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-1.jpg

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-8.jpg

Oh that's why it looked great because you got side photos :) I hope you continue sharing photos it'll help people who purchased this product and is having a difficult time making great contents. :)

I'll try. :) I don't own the product, I just have the demo - so I'm not likely to use it often due to having to deal with the large "FG" logo on the foreheads. 

nicstt

unknownmystery445 said:

divamakeup said:

unknownmystery445 said:

divamakeup said:

grinch2901 said:

divamakeup said:

 

Tried my hand at a Franky. Shaded with Anagenessis 2. 

Good lord, that's so awesome!  You are really good at getting the  most out of this tool and (based on the above) Anagenesis 2 also.  Fantastic!

hahah That's really nice of you to say. :) Thank you.

Still needs quite a bit of work to look like the original - but I don't think it's bad for a quicky. :)

Can you kindly post the photo reference that you've used? :) and suggestions on what photo references to use and where to find them online? :)

I find the best way to find large enough images is Google image search and type in your search parameters. In this case it was "Frankenstein" but normally I just do "face" or "pretty face". Then Settings >> Advanced Search >> Image Size >> Larger Than 2 MP

That should pull up some larger image files to look through. 

As for the Frankenstein face, I used these two images:

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-1.jpg

http://legacyeffectsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/111004_Frankenstein-8.jpg

Oh that's why it looked great because you got side photos :) I hope you continue sharing photos it'll help people who purchased this product and is having a difficult time making great contents. :)

I find side/profile are almost esential; the difference in what we get is a more whole face with less obvious blending into the surrounding textures.

 

Odaa

Bravo to Grinch, Mysterio, and Divamakeup! They all turned out really well.

Artini

That looks great, Divamakeup, and you really mastered Anagenessis 2.

I have tried Anagenessis 2 on some textures created in FaceGen, but they looked worse than without it.

 

Odaa

Facegen in my experience is terrible at skins, period, full stop. Maybe with a high res source pic like the ones divamakeup found, it's doable, but if you're looking for a particular face (that doesn't belong to someone you can know well) rather than searching in general for something interesting and hi-res, your chances of finding what you're looking for go way down.