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I found FaceGen Pro to be hit or miss. When it misses, it misses, but when it hits- it's so much fun! Take a peek, I posted this on my thread. My friend and I had fun testing it on her. It was definitely a hit!
I bought FG Artist Pro before it was put on Daz. I contacted the company directly to ask about selling or giving away morphs and textures created using FG. They told me very clearly that I can sell or give away whatever I make with FG with no restrictions, save any that I might have regarding the photos that were used. So, that's a non-issue.
Personally, I love using FG to make characters. It is rare that I get a perfect morph match from a photo. But, that doesn't really matter to me as I am creating new characters, not celebrity copies.
This little gal was created using FG and Measure Metrics. It does take some effort to get a good result. But, I think it's well worth the $55. I paid 3x that much for it, and I'm still happy I bought it when I did.
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That's really nice.
I bought Facegen in a sale a while back but have only played around with it a little. The real limitation, as others have said, is the reference material you have. Oddly, I've found I get better results on the morphs using Black and White photos rather than color ones. I pulled a couple of fairly good likenesses of some actors from promo stills for older films, but obviously the resemblence disappears when you try to use a different texture.
You have to be lucky really if you are not making the skin textures yourself and search here in the DAZ Store and at Rendo for a skin texture set that's similar to what you need. The big thing you need to do is get the skin tone as close as possible because in most renders that aren't closeup portraits the fine character unique details won't be visible. It's almost like trying to be a caricature artist.
Lucky the eyebrow options have gotten a lot easier to get closer to with both these fibre mesh & one paint you own brow texture creator in the DAZ Store (made for Genesis 3 Female but I suppose since it's paint your own it wouldn't be too hard to use on males or either Genesis 8 base).
Use LIE & Gimp/PS to edit existing makeup options.
I purchased Headshop OneClic for about $15 and I think that was about $10 too much for it. It is a terrible product, mostly because it only creates a texture of the FACE which doesn't actually blend into the head, let alone the rest of the base model body.
FaceGen Pro is light-years ahead of Headshop in this regard - and the version I have does a decent job even from marginal photographs. Cleaning up the source image in Photoshop can help. The morphs - generally I find that if I only dial them up to about 65-75% they look best - and they're never PERFECT... but when you go from a neutral expression to ANY other expression - you're dealing with musculature and bone structure and individual nuance that it is impossible for a 3D modelling program to accurately mimic, at least at this point.
Most of the "character" of a FaceGen map does come from the skin map textures that FaceGen generates... but the truth is, take ANY character morph, and change the skin map, and it will radically change the entire character. Michael 7 wearing Leo 7s skin maps or Dale using Lee's skin - whatever. The skin map creates a LOT of the character.
It is a good base to start off at, at the very least, and probably the best tool out there to get you started if you're trying to accurately recreate real people.
The OTHER advantage I see with it - you get REAL and believable every day characters with FaceGen. You still have to work on the body with morphs to add imperfections - but in general, MOST of the models you're going to buy or see for free are very idealized examples of the human form - even most of the old characters like Abel and Opel are GOOD LOOKING old people.
FaceGen brings the beauty meter down below 11 - so if you want renders that aren't completley populated by incredibly good looking people but instead with some average looking faces - it is a good place to start.
Saving grace for HeadShop...
Sometimes using HeadShop to create the face morph and FaceGen to create the skin maps makes a good combination that might be more true to the source material. But the HeadShop morphs are harder to work with than the FaceGen morphs (transferring to diffferent genreations using GenX2, for example, seems impossible with HeadShop.)
FaceGen does a GREAT job of taking the face texture and extrapolating it to the entire skin map.
Yes, very helpful tips, Odaa, so thank you. I would add to remember to save often (as a FaceGen *.fg file) and always before doing your own sculpting!
Thanks. :)
@Novica the picture of your friend turned out really well!
@HorusRa I'm talking about for personal use, like with the novelty images of family members that have been mentioned, or fan art of celebs/the characters they play. Not interested in becoming a vendor of characters, so I don't have anything useful to say on that.
If you are in fact interested in selling such characters, most merchant resources should be fine as long as you make reasonable effort to change them up-the derogatory comments about vendors using merchant resource skins comes from them using the same merchant resources over and over (in the opinions of the critcs) and not doing enough to make the skins unique.
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Hello facegen folks. I enjoy using the crippled version. But one problem I had was where do I click for the cheek bones? Can someone post an expample screen shot of where you put your "face dots" when getting good results with facegen?
The dots need only be placed 'in the ball park' but generally the peak of the cheek bones are two inches forward from where the top part of the auricle joins the side of the head. Once you place one, place the other on the opposite side.
I think this post speaks really well to the primary shortcomings of FaceGen, most of which seem to have to do with the limitations imposed by good source image availability rather than program shortcomings. The other critical factor seems to be lighting. Attached is a Jillian Michaels prototype (using Gen3F) based on one quite good frontal image, and no profile image(s). It is unretouched, and rendered in 3Delight with only one AoA ambient omnidirectional light at 100 percent intensity. Honestly, I find the likeness to be quite flattering to the subject with just this light, but an overhead distant light markedly degrades the likeness, which makes me suspect that any directional light might have the same unwanted effect. I don't use Iray, so I satill have to experiment with the impact of other directional lights on likeness. I'm wondering if I may be confined to ambient light only to preserve likenesses to other familiar faces.
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/552056/
I think a criticism followed by "I don't use Iray," may be part of the problem.
I only use Iray, and I've had great luck with FaceGen, down to it getting the texture of unique scars. It isn't perfect - and sometimes playing with the dials helps (dial the morph down to 80%, play with some other morphs if the shape of the jaw isn't quite right...)
Sometimes the limitations seem to be in DAZ's ability to morph the geometry... and again... once you get away from a neutral expression - DAZ and Facegen BOTH don't know the actual musculature and underlying skeletal geometry to make the face seem accurate as the figure smiles, or frowns, or closes its eyes, or scrunches its nose.
Seems like the technology to do THAT with recreating a digital representation of a real human is still far away... and I think we see the same thing in games that use celebrities... It looks like Kevin Spacey when it has a neutral expression, but once it grins and starts talking, you quickly enter the uncanny valley.
I mean, even in The Force Awakens, the digitized Grand Moff Tarkin isn't always quite right... and that is with a Disney budget.
But yeah, FaceGen isn't a silver bullet, and it just seems to do better with some faces than with others.
I got better results with better source pictures with FaceGen. It was that easy and simple. Also the latest FaceGen has improved and it's ability to mix the source photo(s) with your choice of DAZ Studio professional textures does bump the realism up quite a bit. Using iRay.
Short of becoming a master digital sculpture technichian, FaceGen is the way to go, and even master digital sculpture technicians would like to save time sculpting results using FaceGen and refining them, when and if needed, as that would be dependent on the source photos available.
I think you're quite right. I really wish I had the computer horsepower to use Iray at times. At the moment, I'm managing a viewport test render of Jillian with it, and halfway through the test, her likeness is markedly improved in ambient light.
Couldn't Facegen be used to generate the facial expressions as well as the neutral pose? It seems to me that if you're having problems with the non-neutral expressions then you could create your own using the same method. In my opinion, everyone is missing the full potential of this product. Why stop at a neutral pose? If you are trying to duplicate a particular person, copy their expressions as well and use them as morph targets.
You could do that but it tends to erase the more neutral subtle expressions.
So, I started with DAZ on an i5 with a 2GB Nvidia 750ti... Iray renders could take 24 hours to run 10,000 samples. Now I've got an i7 with a 1070 with 8GB of memory, and renders that took 4 or 5 hours take about 15 minutes. Here is the thing... I've seen renders that are photorealistic and beautiful done on way less powerful machines using less powerful cards in 3Delight. There is an argument that Iray makes you lazy, and I wouldn't deny that. With lighting, shaders, and scene setup, you can achieve results that are at least equal to Iray with 3Delight - and you're going to learn a lot more about the DAZ rendering engine. I bought and tried Reality with LUX too... and that generates some incredible results with the right scene and lighting, too. Someone here on the forums used to have the signature, "I use Iray because I am lazy." There is truth to that. If you've got more money than time, use Iray. If you've got more time than money, throw yourself into those other engines and enjoy your results. But... part of that is realizing that certain tools lend themselves better to certain render engines, and I think Facegen is absolutely geared toward creating the best results in Iray. One of the most frustrating parts of Iray is that things look so much different in the preview "texture shaded" viewport than they do when rendered in Iray. There are times when I love the texture shaded preview and Iray washes out all the details that made that the case. Figure expressions tend to be the biggest example of this. You see dimples and creases and other things in 3Delight that disappear in Iray, and what seems the perfect pose and likeness looks completely different in the final Iray render. Iray gives good results quickly... but GREAT results still take craft, patience and artisty no matter what render engine you use.
As for using Facegen with non-neutral expressions - the application doesn't know how to streach something like an open mouth over the base Genesis 1, 2 or 3 figure right when creating the textures. It is trying to overlay the morph and textures it creates over a default genesis figure. If I have a non neutral base picture I am trying to convert using FaceGen, I actually go in with Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro and try and ERASE the expression as pre-work before putting it into FaceGen... and often that is enough. Take out the upturned corners of a smile and put the top lips and bottom lips together with no gap... and FaceGen does a good job. Leave the smile there and you get these alien distortions where the lips are peeled back and the teeth are now the closed lips. Does that make sense? It assumes that what appears in the picture is a neutral expression... so if there are teeth where the lips should be, the teeth become the lips, and a horror show morph and skin texture results that will give your subject nightmares if you show them the final result.
I also have Headshop Oneclick... and it is TERRIBLE... but if you can get it for less than $10... sometimes letting HEADSHOP make the morph and FaceGen make the textures will result in a better likeness overall than either can achieve on their own. But Headshop is really, really awful. The textures are terrible - it only scans the face and tries to fade/blend it into a normal Genesis skin, which ends up making it look like the face texture is painted on another body... If you can't cover it with hair, it looks like a figure has skinned your subject and is just wearing their face ala - Silence Of the Lambs. It crashes more often than it works, too. Literally, $10 is too much to pay for it... but, on the other hand, if you pay $10 for Headshop, you'll realize why FaceGen is worth $50-$80 on discount... so there is that. :)
Remove smile in Photoshop:
You can also blend a little of a Headshop morph dial and a little of a FaceGen morph dial to better get an accurate morph of your subject. But another limitation of Headshop is that you can't use GenX to transfer Headshop morphs from generation to generation... where FaceGen supports Gen1, 2 and 3 characters *and* the Morphs will transfer using GenX. It really is the best product, even if it isn't perfect, for doing this kind of work.
And this post is where I realized that somewhere over the last two years, I became a total DAZ 3D geek.
Congratz! Welcome to the Asylum. :)
To get halfway decent results from FaceGen requires careful attention to the photos used. For celebrities, you really have to scour Google images until you find images taken truly straight on for front and profile views and the results will often be disappointing if the lighting casts shadows that differ from the lighting you set up in Daz Studio. Fortunately, popular celebrities are photographed from every angle and patience will reward you with good photo references to use.
Moreover, as others have said, FaceGen does not do a terribly good job replicating facial structure but, instead, relies heavily upon the texture mapping to "sell" the likeness. If you think about it, this has to be the case because when you create a face with FaceGen you only tell the software where the pupils are without any input regarding eye shape. As a result, the 3D face created by FaceGen maps the eye texture onto its "generic" eye so that if you examine it closely you will see that often significant portions of your character's eye lids are actually mapped on the the eye surface. Below is a closeup of the FaceGen geometry generated from photos of Charlize Theron:
If you don't want to be able to move the eyes this will still look pretty good from a distance. However, it is pretty simple to use Blender or another external 3D app to do a simple reshape of the eye opening. I prefer 3ds Max and by importing the FaceGen model I can easily move the edge of the eye surface by making the model see-through with the reference image behind:
My approach is to select a Genesis model I'm going to work with and I export its head and eyes as an OBJ file that I bring into Max or Blender. I then import my FaceGen head and remove its eye surfaces and scale it so that the eye sockets lay precisely against the Genesis eyes. This has the advantage of making my head match the Genesis body perfectly since I've scaled to the Genesis eyes. Moreover, when I bring the FaceGen head back into Daz Studio it matches the Daz eyes perfectly. By parenting the FaceGen head to the Genesis head and making the Genesis head invisible I can now pose my model in Daz Studio and move the eys up and down/left and right. You can also use the Genesis eyelashes to have more realism.
To significantly improve the likeness I use the photos I used for FaceGen as references so I can reshape the head to better match the true head shape:
Moving vertices around in 3ds Max is quite easy and actually kind of fun. Below is the FaceGen portrait against the main reference image after reshaping:
Obviously, this is no substitute for truly sculpting a 3D head with Zbrush or Mudbox. However, it is quick and easy and dramatically improves youro FaceGen model and it teaches you a lot about facial structure. Below are my reshaped FaceGen portraits of Jennifer Lawrence and Charlize Theron:
I did a quick 3D scene using my iPhone to capture references of my neighbors and used this same technique to very quickly use FaceGen to build their likenesses. It was loads of fun and they loved the result (inset photos for comparison):
I hope this simple workflow may be of help to FaceGen users who are willing to fool a little with Blender or another external application to improve the results.
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It takes some time, and some effort but the results can be very good; depends on the source images; although generally a good profile and full face are the best bet, sometimes, the side profile makes things worse.
The more time you spend the better the results, but the law of deminishing returns can apply too.
Even lighting and good resolution are important, so too is limited or no facial hair blocking the facial features.
Hi,
I'm learning Max at present. Would you be kind enough to show me the steps you take to achieve what I've highlited above?
I can inport / export OBJ's without problems, but removing eye surfaces and scaling the eyes is new to me.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.