Mugshots - lots of them - is this the product for creation?
Mapbrix
Posts: 0
Hi, I have a requirement for many thousands of headshots (like criminal mugshots or passport photos - face on - no smiles - neutral background) of different ages and ethnicities for a project relating to synthetic data. The images would be static, no need for animation, although side-on view a bonus. Is it possible to purchase a 'base set' of faces and then make changes to show variation in age,colour,hair, etc? I'm not a graphics guy, so would be grateful for an honest indication of whether this would be straightforward or require a great deal of skill and time to make the changes. Can the changes be made through code? I could not find a similar posting so hope this has not been answered many times. Would also like to hear from users who believe there is a better solution to my requirement. I have a modest budget to get started, any help greatly appreciated, thank you.
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Comments
It's fairly easy to do with a few addons, but time consuming considering having to do each person. Since i assume you want many different ages, and shapes, your best bet would be the genesis 8 (or 3) base figures, the base head and body morphs for each gender.
Then the aging morphs bundle from Zevo https://www.daz3d.com/aging-morphs-bundle-for-genesis-8-female-s-and-male-s
then the growing up bundle from Zevo https://www.daz3d.com/growing-up-bundle-for-genesis-8-female-s-and-male-s
and then skin builder from Zevo https://www.daz3d.com/skin-builder-8-for-genesis-8-females
with these items, you should be ab;e to create quite a few different characters of all ages and shapes with unique skins
you might be better off with the standalone free demo version of Facegen by Singular Inversions that exports images
I cannot link it here as it's a commercial site
they have a logo on the forehead but that is easily fixed with an image editing program
It could probably be automated in Daz Studio with some scripting or programming, but not a simple task I think, and the process would take a long time anyway (setup, load and render time etc.).
a) Randomizer for all the ethnicities. Just roll different faces from the pool of genetic stereotypes.
https://www.daz3d.com/simtenero-randomizer
All the "faces of..." products for the base morphs (source of ethnic looks)
https://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=faces+of
I think this is a can of worms that sounds fun.....sounds fun..but in reality is a weeks to months project.
b) Spend that budget on a comission. Hire/enlist/get someone who already uses Daz and has the library and assets to pull this off.
c) I wouldn't use Daz or any app for this when there are, literally, thousands of stock and regular mugshot pictures already available.
Daz Genesis models are modular in nature, so it is very easy to change how they look. You can very easily press a button on a skin preset to make the same shape look completely different. Shapes are easy to change as well, you can click shape presets or use the sliders. Just about all shaping morphs can be dialed from 0 to 100%, giving you a lot of freedom in how strong you want that particular shape morph to be. You can also change eye and hair color very easily.
If you have some texture editing skill, you can also change textures. Since we are dealing with just faces, you can add blemishes and whatever to the base textures.
I would think Daz would be one of the better options for such a project. Provided you can render quickly in Iray, you can whip a lot of faces up with this.
There is even a product sold here that can randomize face shapes for you each time you press it, which could be ideal. https://www.daz3d.com/ej-easy-face-generator-for-genesis-8-females There is another for males.
Now there may be one other option you may like. https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ This site will randomly generate an image of a person each time you click it. However, I do not know what legal details there may be for it. But if it is legal to use the images in your project, then this would be the fastest and easiest tool possible. You literally get a new face each time you click in a fraction of a second. You cannot beat that! There is a contact link on the page so you can contact the people behind it for information. You can even create your own version of this, as there is a link to instructions. The downside is this is totally random and not repeatable. If you do not save the image, that image is forever gone when you click the website again. Though since the code is available, it may be possible to tweak it to your liking.
Wow, just checked out that site. I'm guessing that's how all the social media bots and troll farms get their profile pics! Scary!
Sorry, this is off topic but when I checked out the Thispersondoesnotexist site, I saw they also had AI make mixtures of episodes of Friends, the Office and News. Some of the news ones are hysterical! I'm not sure how it works, but based on a headline, the AI generates a news story, And talk about fake news..! I couldn't stop laughing when I read this segment:
"But Anti-Bleach insisted the company was just hearing claims that anti-vaxxers were encouraging children to adopt the HIV vaccine as a way to stave off the effects of fake news.
'We do believe that the discussion about a new vaccine for the hand which is causing the hand paralysis is playing a large role. It all happens from our research among 15-to-20 year olds.'"
LOL!
Hi Guys,
A very big and sincere thank you for your help, advice, feedback and candour. All hugely appreciated, thankyou. Since you've taken the trouble in many cases to provide comprehensive feedback including links, I'll respond to them.
Michael - FSMCDesigns - thank you. I did look at the links and can see how powerful these features are but I don't have any graphics/art background, so remain a little daunted, not least by the time involved. As Griffin Avid indicated, I might be better investing some budget to get an expert to help. I will consider that proposal and appreciate your comprehensive response with links, thank you.
WendyLuvsCats - thank you - I have had a look at FaceGen and in fact is the product that started my interest. However, it would appear that Daz3D is more sophisticated and has a newer, cleaner interface. I may be wrong on the technical side but both require a good deal of time and expertise.
Griffin Avid - thank you. I really appreciate your thoughts here and as mentioned above have listened to your advise around time and effort. I'll mention stock material later but most images are not quite suited in that they need to be face-on with minimal background. Also, there are costs and copyright to consider which, given the need for several thousand images could be prohibitive. However, I really appreciate your time and thoughts, thank you.
outrider42 - thank you. I don't have the skills you allude to and to be honest I'm a bit crusty to start such a big learning curve and for just one part of a bigger project. I did look at the link and thought that potentially very useful but the changes demonstrated seemed very subtle, perhaps I didn't give sufficient time to exploring but I appreciate the steer. In terms of Thispersondoesnotexit.com, I corresponded with one of the Finnish academics when they produced a paper last year. At that time they were unsure where it was all heading but they have now realeased the code in python on Git Hub. You will see the images have a contact panel, so I have also been in touch with Phil Wang who was very helpful. The most useful feedback from that was that AI images cannot be copyrighted so free to use as wished. I did programmatically (well...Excel vba code) capture several thousand images but removing the unsuitable ones and categorising them is a huge task. Phil's advise was to build my own version, their code, my images. Apparently, 10,000 good (1024x1024) would suffice, so I am considering that if I can find someone to compile the python into an app for me. For my pursoses, this site is possibly better: https://generated.photos/faces as there is some control over the imagery, the cost is the big downside.
Wonderland - perhaps some of the above explanation/background might be of interest?
You have all been very helpful, more than I anticpated. Thank you very much. Just getting a sore head considering next steps!
Mapbrix (Ian Oldfield, UK).