Are there any actually good face cloning tools out there? (E.g. not Facegen or Headshop)
Paradigm
Posts: 423
in The Commons
With all respect to their creators, Facegen and Headshop generate results that aren't worth the time it takes to install the plugin. Is there anything that actually produces something that doesn't look like a highschool art project?
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Zbrush + Talent
What if I have neither?
well I only have Zbrush so fully understand your pain
Commision TritiumCG to create a morph for you ?
Seasons greetings from Steve.
That problem would be much improved for FaceGen/Headshop and hence the customers if Genesis 9 male and female (I guess because it's not going to happen for Genesis 8) raised significantly the number of polygons on the head/eyes/face.
There is no substitute for work and practice.
The problem with these apps is the quality of the results you get are based off the quality of reference images Low quality or missing profile images results in poor morphs.
That's just crazy talk.
Lower the lights and have a few drinks...
They will all look gorgeous.
Do you know this guy? This is Face Transfer and they are very easy to create.
More Face Transfer and they are very easy to create. With a little Tweaking and you have original Characters in seconds.
I've tried face transfer a few times and got less than satisfactory results, but tonigh, after seeing this thread, generated one from a photo on the net ... What I've found to be key, as stated, good direct lighting, no shadows, and no hair in face. Pulled back results in great image.
I have seen some information on the 'Net indicating that yes, there are some very decent methods for obtaining "clones" and the costs are well over the heads of most people on this planet. Many thousands of dollars - computers, cameras, wiring, lighting, models {people}, studio space, etc.
For the money, one can get passable results starting with the available plug-ins and software that can work with D/S using additional morphs [purchased or made] for closer matches. Having the right skins, hairstyles, etc. also go along way to providing the desired of impression of having a recognizable character.
..........
Alternatively, if one can find somebody who has all that equipment - some might be willing to make a clone. I don't know price details save for to expect at least a 3 figure amount.
LOL, technology, physics, and math is actually obliterating the need for much hard work and any practice but it is true my house didn't get DIYed until I actually did the work myself since I can't afford the folk and the materials of those with modern technology.
I actually have some sets of high-res multi-angled images from models (we're talking about hundreds of images here per set), and must say I haven't been too happy with facegen/headshop results. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that facegen and headshop try to make a model based on only 1 image, which is technically near impossible. It would be better if it required at least 2 images: one from the front, another from the side to accomplish this. A third image taken from above should help finetuning even more. For really good results, We'd need about sixteen images circling around the model, even better if combined with even more images taken from different vertical angles as well (we're quickly reaching over sixty images here..) Oh, and since models do tend to move ever so slightly, it'd be better if all those images were shot at the same moment. So that's sixty+ high res cameras.
And that's why it's so hard (and usually also expensive) to find these imagesets. Some studios more publicly sell their older ones nowadays, since they lack support for even newer technology (mocap data, even higher resolution images, and some other stuff). But, as long as we're trying to make a 3D model from one single single-angle image, results will be mediocre.
imho, in a world full of deeplearning AI etc, we should just be able to plug in a large data set into an algorithm that generates a full angle view of the face, regardless of whether the images used to train the algorithm were taken at the same time and under same conditions.
This is correct, if you examine the deepfake software data you will notice that it generates a 3D object to map the donors face in place of the actual. The 3D data or point cloud data is accessible so you can get very good 3D model results.
With some of these products, it seems like the only people who say they work are the ones selling the products.
I think the people who make these products should state that you would probably need the cooperation of the model to create a character that looks like the model. Or if that's too much, they should probably state that you need a 2000x2000 resolution photo of the person looking directly at the camera with no shadows, and hair tied back. Because if all they say is, "Create 3D heads for your characters with photographs with HeadShop 13!" then they seem to imply the software will make things easy. Then when you expect it to be easy, you get comments from people who seem to think something's wrong with you for expecting it to be at least a little bit easy. Never mind that the promo pictures show fairly low resolution images with hair covering part of the face, still getting good results.
I can understand that everything involving DAZ Studio requires a certain skill level to produce good results. But when I click on a dot meant to mark a point on the model's face and I can't just drag that dot to another location, that seems like more of a problem with the interface than the skill level of the user. If I have to run an installer that places files in a location, and then I still have to unzip files into a directory because the installer doesn't install the whole thing by itself, the installer seems like it didn't have much effort put into it. If I have to get on YouTube for instructions on how to use the product then I feel like the product is poorly documented. But I do recognize that YouTube is widely available and including a video with a product download would be problematic due to the file size. I don't see what's wrong with text files and PDF files though.
I think Face Transfer, though it has it share of problems, does seem to come the closest to the goal of being good. It seems even closer with the addition of Face Transfer Shapes.
Lets not forget that the best custom mesh you can create will NOT work with Genesis rigging, so you need to recreate all the ellaborate rigging, the poses, etc
Headshop has two major problems that have not been addressed. I spent some time online with the author, and he was really trying to help, but we couldn't find a solution. When you generate a morph for the head on G8, the eyelashes are not part of the morph, therefore do not fit the finished figure. Unfit and re-fit on the eyelashes used to fix this, but in recent versions of DS, it fails. I opened a ticket on this about a year ago. Daz closed my ticket saying that all support for plugins comes from the author.
The other issue is that the default head shape it gets from the photo flattens the top of the head. It's as if all the vertices in the head get pushed up, except for the dome. It's very unnatural. You can make some adjustments early in the flow, but forget bald characters, or short hair. It won't look right.
There's a lot of research in the area of using AI to do 3d face reconstruction: https://paperswithcode.com/task/3d-face-reconstruction/latest#code
Unfortunatly, many of these are still in the realm of research and you need to have a pretty deep technical knowledge in order to use these tools right now. Hopefully in the future some of the vendors can incorporate the research into their products so that an average DAZ user can use them.
Problem 1: Eyelashes: it is an issue that DAZ should fix, there's no reason why they made eyelash a separate figure in Gen 8
Problem 2: If you follow manual/tut video, you can see that at the set-up, there is a green semicircle that need to be adjusted to fit the top of the cranium.
Seems, issues had been addressed
Even if the semicircle is adjusted for the top of the head, the shape still won't work for a bald character. The G8 eyelashes are what they are now, so any head shaping plugin that sells in the store for G8 should support these eyelashes. The issues are *not* addressed.
As I understand it the lashes were made separate to help morph makers. In any event, integating them now would break existing morphs and while I iamgine Daz coudl fix store products it wouldn't help end-uers or vendors at other stores.
Thanks for the tip, TritiumCG on dA has a very well Aiko3 full morph on G8F for free!
https://www.deviantart.com/tritiumcg/art/Aiko-3-Reimagined-for-G8F-861367761
Check out Face-Builder:
Its approach to modelling is several steps in the right direction. This is my workflow exactly when modelling faces in ZBrush using references except I use the move brush instead.
Unfortunately it's still not there. The ideal tool would use the same workflow but will also have the option of importing custom meshes.
There's an artist on DeviantArt who uses Wrap3. He's getting brilliant results, and he's using it with game characters. It's pretty pricey though. As is zBrush... To be honest, it's all a pain in the butt if you're dealing with low end computers, and a low income.
If you are looking for celebrities you can goto https://www.renderhub.com/search-for-3d?s=bust or equivilant, grab a bust obj import that into Daz, scale it to your g8 head morph it till it's close, export g8 to blender and along with the bust align them very close, vertex group select just the g8 face and apply shrinkwrap. Export from blender and reimport back into Daz using Morph Loader Pro.