I picked up the demo a few weeks ago and have monkeyed with it a little but not much really. Since it's on sale now for way cheaper than I was looking at, I decided to dust off the demo and see if I could get anything decent with it.  I came up with this, not exacltly a point-and-click operation, I had to do some decent tweaking to get it right. For example, it had a bit of a pin-head and so I had to use a d-former to widen the top of the head so it was proportionate. But I got something decent, much better (for me) than HeadShop was here, which was so broken (for me) that I had to return it.  If this is still on sale tomorrow, I may break down and do it, time to sleep on it.

Is that JFK?

Yes it is.  The morph and texture were actually based on an artists rendering of what JFK would look like if he lived into his 60s. It had the benefit of being a straight ahead shot, perfect for FeceGen, the bad part was the texture was aged looking. I had to get rid of lots of textured in wrinkles and the like but it gave me a good base to work from.  Got lucky finding that artists concept though.

I picked up the demo a few weeks ago and have monkeyed with it a little but not much really. Since it's on sale now for way cheaper than I was looking at, I decided to dust off the demo and see if I could get anything decent with it.  I came up with this, not exacltly a point-and-click operation, I had to do some decent tweaking to get it right. For example, it had a bit of a pin-head and so I had to use a d-former to widen the top of the head so it was proportionate. But I got something decent, much better (for me) than HeadShop was here, which was so broken (for me) that I had to return it.  If this is still on sale tomorrow, I may break down and do it, time to sleep on it.

Is that JFK?

I picked up the demo a few weeks ago and have monkeyed with it a little but not much really. Since it's on sale now for way cheaper than I was looking at, I decided to dust off the demo and see if I could get anything decent with it.  I came up with this, not exacltly a point-and-click operation, I had to do some decent tweaking to get it right. For example, it had a bit of a pin-head and so I had to use a d-former to widen the top of the head so it was proportionate. But I got something decent, much better (for me) than HeadShop was here, which was so broken (for me) that I had to return it.  If this is still on sale tomorrow, I may break down and do it, time to sleep on it.

Now, off to find one of those Marilyn Monroe characters I have in my archive, finally have someone for her to hang out with!

I commented in this thread http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/150236/facegen-vs-headshop-oneclick#latest 3rd comment page 1 about hs9-vs facegen the above lady was created via facegen including her head morph expression was done in daz and posted some early examples did of same lady in hs9

don't have oneclick but have previous version I have gotten some pretty good results out of that but also had a fair few not so good now got facegen pro and some not good but others YES good and morphing is easy in fact even easier than morhing in morphs got in daz though in some cases still needed but it lines everything up for you and in the prog click control and with left mouse drag the part of the face you want to reshape so easy also it creates matching skin textures cool huh so in surfaces you select face and lips locate where you saved textures are which should be documents-daz3d-my daz library- runtime-textures-face gen - genesis2/3f/m-and your character's name

for the morph select shaping tab (one where paremetors and other menus are) select head and I find it easier to type in the search that charecter name to locate the morh dial

ok back on textures now the main face head will look like a mask and rest of body skin tone back of head may not match that's ok as I said you get skin textures for the rest body sooo in surfaces select legs and where you saved your facegen tex selects the legs texture, same for torso and arms texture and eyes pupi/lcornea/iresisis and you get a brand new character. this is g3 btw with g2 and maybe g1 the arms and legs are more broken up and have to select more sections in surfacs  menu some reason shoulders didn't convert texture wise probably missed selecting something 

ok now the first 3 pics of this lady I did with headshop 9 with her with blonde and red  hair and the ones with dark hair I did of her in facegen including morph some not fully rendered trying different lights expressions sometime the eyes got a little wonkie cross eyed so had to pose each eye seperately also the blue eyes kinda watery  were from her photo textures was a little not sure on those and chose blue eyes from a bought skin 

this one below using her own eyes texture 

below final version completed render I liked

I haven't got Headshop, mostly because it's made by the same people who made Dress Shop, one of the few products I've returned for a refund. I can't remember why as it was a while ago, but I know I wasn't impressed by it at all. I only got FaceGen yesterday, and already wouldn't want to be without it. Whatever you pick, I can't wait to see what you produce with it. I love seeing your character creations :)

Aww Thank you! :D That made my day! 

I've heard good things about FaceGen, but at that price, I definitely want to shop around to see if the alternative is as good. The base price for HeadShop is $100 less than the base price of FaceGen, so if that's an option that is as good I'd for sure want to go with it. Hopefully someone with HeadShop can give some imput on if it's good or not. :)

I haven't got Headshop, mostly because it's made by the same people who made Dress Shop, one of the few products I've returned for a refund. I can't remember why as it was a while ago, but I know I wasn't impressed by it at all. I only got FaceGen yesterday, and already wouldn't want to be without it. Whatever you pick, I can't wait to see what you produce with it. I love seeing your character creations :)

Now what we have a couple products that create textures and morphs from photographs, the question is - which one is better? How does FaceGen compare to HeadShop OnClick? Which one creates better results?

I want to get one of these products (I can't afford both) - but would really appreciate some feedback from those that have tried one or both of these products. I hope you guys can help me. 

I think my biggest frustration is the eyes. Almost every result warps the eyeballs a bit.

I can work around it, but ... eh

 

Agreed...But, I had this same issue with Headshop as well.  I find that it might take several tries to get the eye shape acceptable.  But, it's so fast to do that it's really not a big headache.  Also, I've studied a lot of faces while using these character generators, and lots of people have eyes that are not perfectly round...or at least, the iris is not 100% centered.  Also in most photos, unlike a generic 3D character, the eyes are usually slightly looking up with more iris exposed at the bottom lid.  I think that this might also affect how FG reads the face.

Facegen is awesome!  It isn't magic.  You will have to tweak face shapes.  But, it works very well, and doesn't crash.  I mean, you can make it crash, but it takes some effort. :)  I used Looxis Faceworx, Headshop 9 and 10, and now Facegen.  FG is by far the easiest to get good results.

well thats news to me, they used to be for renders only when I bought it a few years ago.

I could redistribute the fg file thats all back then.

Interesting update, I knew Faceshop known as Headshop allowed it so guess its an update to remain competitive.

I want to know what makes it worth $70 more, on sale, than Headshop Oneclick. 
To me, the problem with all of these programs is that they take a neutral face photograph and create a base face from that. 
As soon as you start adding expressions, the similarity is going to erode. I guess this one creates a texture map too? 

Is this only for private use or we can make commercial characters too? 

My question is what version is this? I have FaceGen Artist Pro 1.9 (64 bit)

Is it delivered as a better integrated DAZ plugin or is is still stand-alone?

I'd like in the future installations as a DAZ plugin with a morph management system to where FaceGen keeps track of install morphs you've created with it and allows you to delete them via clean-up menu. Also it would be nice if when you where create / selecting the path to put the morphs you were given the option so that you could rename the path such that the morphs and textures where savable to a unique path, as in, the user gives instead of the default assignment (once you choose the correct directory for the generation of Genesis you are using - which you have to use) in making unique characters. 

I've quite sure FaceGen has already been used for commercial DAZ products but won't name them.

The link below has a gallery where I did a side-by-side comparison of FaceGen and OneClick. FaceGen wins as you'd expect at the much higher price point but OneClick made huge gains from the prior version HeadShop 7 that I own (can't use Headshop 7 anymore because it doesn't support new versions of DAZ)

http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/403752/

A note on picture details -

1st - when you use a picture for FaceGen never do any postprocess or contrast or brightness or auto-adjusts for pictures you use with it or use pictures that have had that done. That was my first mistake and often when you use a picture from the internet that will be the source of unexpected 'unlikeness' to the used photo.

2nd - higher resolution photos are not always the best, it's emphasized in the READMEs to if at all possible to use a photo with a neutral expression and that is harder to do then you think. As luck so hapens I had a old tiny ID photo that I scanned at high DPI to make it over 1000 square pixels but could not with a few attempts get a face with a neutral expression in my new photo I was trying to make for FaceGen. So give a choice between an old photo with a neutral expression or a new photo even when they are taken with the most sophisticated cameras but the expression is not neutral - take the old photo with the neutral expression although the texture created from it generally won't be usuable. It's better to get a more correct geometry than a more correct texture which can mislead as to the true quality or lack of quality of the morph.

It's similar for celebrities although I don't use them but occasionally to try & make toon caricatures of - yes if you have an expression on the celebrity photo you'll get a 3D model that looks like that photo but the problem comes with making other expressions with such morphs. It is difficult to find a photo of anybody that is expressionless, the one that I used of Meryl Streep was nearly so but even that had this characteristic tell-tale pursing of her lips that she habitually does.

The other great feature of FaceGen that goes unmentioned is it's ability to pseudo-randomly generate faces according to races.

I have a question. I bought the HeadShop One Click Plugin a while ago, and that was only working properly if your program directory and the temp render directory were in the default location. If they were on other drives, it created problems with the functionality. In the end, I returned the product.

Is FaceGen suffering from the same problem?

thanks Phil... here is the rendered version before postwork.. I used headshop to try and get a general look then tweaked all the dials to try and get closer.. what a PITA!

DAZ had a very aggressive ad campaign on Facebook, that then started linking everywhere else I went, that got me to finally download DAZ. 
Once I did, I saw the prices, and I didn't buy a thing. Until March Madness. Once I saw how the stacking discounts work - since then... LOTS. 
And if there were a LOT of people like me... they may have realized there is WAY more money to be made if you price this content at prices that a giant hobbyist consumer base will buy. Victoria 4 Pro Pack is NEVER going to be worth more to me than the $4 I paid for it. Same for M4. You can get me to spend about $15 for a Genesis 3 character Pro Pack... maybe a starter pack if it is a character I really want that I see NEVER goes on sale because it is super popular. 
But $140 or more? NEVER gonna happen. $40... never gonna happen. 
And it is the same for the rest of the content. I'm never going to pay $20 for hair, or an outfit, or a prop or scenery. The rare exception are utilities that are VERY versatile, plugins, Terradome 3 - Hair Studio, UV sets that allow me to use skins between generations. I'll pay a little more for those - but even then, I prefer to get them at the $5-$10 range. That is why Headshop isn't in my library, and it won't be for a long time at the discounts it has been seeing. 

But, I could be wrong... 

I'm making an effort to curb my spending here considerably this year. I had to take a good, long hard look at some of the things I've had in my cart (usually clothes and hair) and ask myself "Do I really need this?" Unless it's something substantial at a really deep discount. 

I thought the BYOB sale was rather ingenious (even including certain base characters for $5 extra), but if it ended up causing Daz to lose more money than it actually made, then I doubt we'll see anything like it again any time soon, especially since it could be activated with PC+ items that are typically dirt cheap for PC+ members. Same thing with the freebies from the Christmas sale last year... but a lot of those items were either PC+, textures, poses that are included in the pro bundles, or reeeeeeally old items (we're talking Vicki/Michael 3 era). I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens with March Madness this year.

DAZ had a very aggressive ad campaign on Facebook, that then started linking everywhere else I went, that got me to finally download DAZ. 
Once I did, I saw the prices, and I didn't buy a thing. Until March Madness. Once I saw how the stacking discounts work - since then... LOTS. 
And if there were a LOT of people like me... they may have realized there is WAY more money to be made if you price this content at prices that a giant hobbyist consumer base will buy. Victoria 4 Pro Pack is NEVER going to be worth more to me than the $4 I paid for it. Same for M4. You can get me to spend about $15 for a Genesis 3 character Pro Pack... maybe a starter pack if it is a character I really want that I see NEVER goes on sale because it is super popular. 
But $140 or more? NEVER gonna happen. $40... never gonna happen. 
And it is the same for the rest of the content. I'm never going to pay $20 for hair, or an outfit, or a prop or scenery. The rare exception are utilities that are VERY versatile, plugins, Terradome 3 - Hair Studio, UV sets that allow me to use skins between generations. I'll pay a little more for those - but even then, I prefer to get them at the $5-$10 range. That is why Headshop isn't in my library, and it won't be for a long time at the discounts it has been seeing. 

But, I could be wrong... 

What the hell am I doing wrong or what is wrong with this program???

I create a face from a photo -- looks great

then when I bring it back up, the texture is distorted.

what am I doing wrong -- what didn't I do -- what SHOULD i do?

Another blink sale. Abalone LLC (Headshop) and Djigneo (Line Render 9000). 50% off or 60% off with new release.

I would seriously consider it.

Had a headshop product way back but didn't get on with it, this new product looks better.