How do you get the Genesis 9 Male character to Smile?
jdavison67
Posts: 689
in The Commons
I have been playing with it for an hour, and I still can't get more than a sneer out of this character.
JD
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There's a ton of expression products in the store that can help you with this, one of them being Genesis 9 Expressions. It's part of a larger bundle, and if it's within your budget, definitely useful for other things you might need, too. But if you want to do it yourself, try using the mouth smile, cheek squint, raise the brows, open the jaw, or lower the mouth, to get the desired effect (all in the posing pane).
There should be various means.
G8.1 and G9 should have a FACS rig somewhere you can use, in addition to posing pane and expression control properties mentioned by poster above.
With smiles its always best to go subtle
I start with the "Sarcastic" expression dial, and then build up the smale from there. The smirk that "Sarcastic" gives seems the most natural to me.
I agree and like the Sarcastic one, too. I also like the Confident expression. When I raise one eyebrow, do a mouth smile for only side (with a widen) it also comes off as a confident, amused smile. Very easy to execute-here's the lovely Sylvia with that one.
Adding an upper nose sneer to any smile with a head tilted downward, looking up a bit, is also an easy way to turn any smile into something decently evil, too. Some eye squints (one or both) are also good, but for this example I wanted to use the base smile as much as possible. This one uses the Happy smile from JWolf's Brave One Expressions for Sylvia 9. This came out pretty creepy, like straight out of a Smile movie. All it needs is some light angled from below her and it'd be perfect for the 3rd installment in the series.
The biggest thing, though, is even with preset expressions, sometimes you'll need to do your own tweaking based on the feature's figures (mostly the mouth). JWolf makes custom expressions based on this, and HID's figures come with dedicated smiles that are good, but tend to not translate well to others outside his designs. Experiment and have fun!
My preferred product is this one 20 Unique Smiles HD for Genesis 9 | Daz 3D
I use it in almost all of my promotional renders for both male and female characters.
Always mixing and applying in small amounts.
Another good expression set I have found is https://www.daz3d.com/pixie-9-expressive.
It may seem weird, but the extreme versions tone down when used with discretion and look like real. Especially mixed together.
I don't know if one was done yet, but if there's a puppeteer for G9 now, that can be used.
Heck, I'd settle for 'Mouth Open'. You added eight million little subtle do-dads and didn't add a simple 'Mouth Open'.
I think it was renamed Jaw open, starting with Genesis 8.1
Compared to their previous products, from Genesis through Genesis eight. DAZ has really dropped the ball with the rigs on these new characters, making, body shaping, and facial posing, much more difficult. This is why I stick to Genesis 2 - Genesis 8.
It does save me a ton of money though, as I avoid almost every product related to 8.1 or Genesis 9.
JD
I wish I would have stopped at 8 actually, but now have tons of 9 and 8.1. I also find them much more difficult to work with. Most people tell me I'm wrong. I don't think so. I find content library a lot harder to use too than smart content, so maybe my brain is wired differently.
I wouldn't say you're wrong-it's all about learning how to work with the figure(s). I work with a lot of Genesis 9, and because of the time I've spent with it, I can work with the expressions very easily. I have a variety of preset G9 poses I also use for reference and make changes as needed. The problems arise if they're mixed and matched from different PAs. With so many morphs and styles of figures, I never expect them to work outside the intended forms.
PAs like Jwolf make really good kits that can actually work across other DO models. Even more so if they share the similar face shapes like Lyna and Sylvia.
Tell him he's pretty!
More seriously, what I like to do is start with an expression (like, well, smile or whatever), maybe use some of the mouth poses, but then turn on joint editor so I can see the facial bones and tweak.
So, for example, click on one of the mouth corner bones and lift or rotate, experiment with getting the look you want.
To sum up: start with rough dials, then fine tune with bones.
Shamless plug... You could try using one of these sets: NG Build Your Own Smile for Genesis 9 - Facial Expressions or NG Build Your Own Smile for Genesis 8.1 Female.
Personally I find the FACS system easier to use and can't go back to G8 or before. I often use the dials in these sets and then tweak a bit at the end with specific dials, particularly the mouth corners and tightness. Reference is also very helpful when constructing a "perfect" smile.
Edit to add that I've recently updated the Genesis 8.1 set to include dials, not just pose presets. This give more flexibility and with the ability to mix dials, you can come up with unique smiles for your character.
I find that with the genesis 9 male the smiles can be sort of Jokerish so you have to dial them down, so they aren't so extreme. I would use the dials and dial them at lower percentage than 100 percent.
But yes, even then some of them can be sort of 'scary' and creepy looking.
I have never thought about it to be honest there are plenty of happy expressions
a genuine smile uses the whole face so never felt the need to dial up just the mouth and make him look like a psychopath
G9 men are men and don't smile :)
I think you might be on to something...
It says in the "G9 Alpha Male" instruction manual, that all happy smiling options have been removed by design, and any attempt to make the character smile like a "girly man" will result in a blue screen, and hard drive corruption.
JD
I salute your plug!
As I have always said, if your going to plug a product, make it shameless!
JD
Honestly, I've felt that the smiles on DAZ figures have gotten increasingly creepier with each generation since Genesis 8, and it's always been more extreme on the male figures... With Genesis 3, the expressions were primarily morph-driven, which made for very smooth facial flow but could leave one unable to get a really extreme expression, whereas beginning with G8, the basic problem became that while the "bones" allow for greater and more varied movement, they're ultimately a compromise as real expresions don't really work the same way the DAZ face is being manipulated and the more extreme the expression is, the more obvious the "bending points" become. My solution, such as it is, is to keep every expression a bit on the muted side, and if I want to make them a bit broader, to fix it in post by copying out the area right around the mouth into a separate layer in photoshop, nudging the shape of the mouth ever slightly using the puppert warp tool, and then blending parts of that back in carefully so that it fills in the harsher bends.
Well, that, or just make all my males from Star Trek's evil universe and giving all of those characters moustaches or beards. :)