Question a model based on a photo?

[allll]

is it possible to make a model based on a photo in this game?

 

[pinosante]

FaceGen isnt perfect, but I keep going back to it, because it provides the best starting point, like TToby has been saying. Especially for the textures. Use high res photo references, with good lighting. Gigapixel is great to for doing magnification with little negative effects, also paid tool though. The comment earlier that Keentools Facebuilder isnt compatible, is technically true, but there are ways around that. You can use software like wrap3 to wrap a daz g2 model around an exported OBJ. Wrap3 is a paid product also. You can also do it in blender for free, kind of, using a shrinkwrap modifier. There will be artifacts you have to fix, and neither of these methods gets you a texture. Everything mentioned has a pretty significant learning curve, but it can be fun.

How about facegen for textures and photo2vam for the morph? I think that solves the problem of the bad facegen morph.

 

[TToby]

How about facegen for textures and photo2vam for the morph? I think that solves the problem of the bad facegen morph.

This is a good suggestion. In some cases, the photo2vam can create better results. BUT, aside from the fact, that it brought me some more gray hairs to install the runtime and stuff, there is no way to edit the created face in the tool itself, like you can do it with FG. I often use the different face geometry sliders to iron out extreme distortions.

FaceGen isnt perfect, but I keep going back to it, because it provides the best starting point, like TToby has been saying. Especially for the textures. Use high res photo references, with good lighting. Gigapixel is great to for doing magnification with little negative effects, also paid tool though. The comment earlier that Keentools Facebuilder isnt compatible, is technically true, but there are ways around that. You can use software like wrap3 to wrap a daz g2 model around an exported OBJ. Wrap3 is a paid product also. You can also do it in blender for free, kind of, using a shrinkwrap modifier. There will be artifacts you have to fix, and neither of these methods gets you a texture. Everything mentioned has a pretty significant learning curve, but it can be fun.

You are totally right. Wrapping a G2 figure around an OBJ of a 3rd party figure is what I usually call "there are some ways to do that, but they are much too complicated for beginners and to explain...". I did this myself for some times in ZBrush, but I found it especially complicated to not distort the "head internals", like teeth, tongue, eyeballs, lashes,.... Not to forget you have to keep the exact verticle count and don't destroy the UV-Map, aso. I've got many gray hairs from that, too. ;-) IMHO you have to know your Blender, ZBrush and co. somewhat good before starting this. Obviously I don't, lol. Though, I never tried Wrap3.

 

[TToby]

By the way: If you are good at this, I found it very helpful to use the DAZ-ZBrush bridge and skulpt the face in ZBrush. Pulling here, pinching there,... it is like using clay. With those bridge you can one-click import it back to DAZ for making a custom morph out of this. Meanwhile, there is a similar skulpting tool in Blender, too. So, if you are good in skulpting, you may like this, too.

 

[dadirector]

Hi allll,
there are many users doing this more or less successful.

There are several ways to do this.
- For instance, you could simply open up an image panel in the background, load the photo,
and then start to skulpt the look with morphs, create the hairstyl, aso... untill you are happy with the outcome. There are some variations to this methode, like making the image panel transparent and putting it over the figure to have a direct reference, aso.
- There is an old free VaM community tool called something like foto2vam or something like that.
It requires you to install a certain Phyton runtime environment and is command-line based. It is a very stubborn tool and many users had issues to even make it work. You have to copy your face pictures in to a certain folder and the tool will put out a more or less useable head morph. No face texture!
- There are some few DAZ3d tools to create a face after pictures. The IMHO least terrible one is FaceGen.
It is a paid tool with many functions, that is able (with some practice) to create a relatively good 3d head WITH texture. Unfortunately FaceGen is somewhat bad in convering it's internal face formate into a DAZ head morph. The outcome is most of the time somewhat dissapointing, and the exported morph can IMHO only be seen as a first basic starting point for further editing in VaM. BUT it creates a somewhat useable face texture from your pictures! This is what most of the "look-alike" VaM looks are using. Most people will be somewhat happy with the outcome if theyare using it for the first time, but to go a step further, it needs a LOT (!) of refinement and postprocessing in tools like Photoshop.
- There is a free trial version of FaceGen, but it will use a watermark on face texture and morph. For only getting the face texture, you can use this free version, erase the watermark with a tool like Photoshop (you will loose the forehead and parts of the eyebrows) and blend/mix the outcome with an original (or previously made) VaM face texture. But you have to edit the texture anyways...
-A somewhat doable alternative for creating a face texture is to use picture morphing tools. Instead of using FaceGen, you can use a free morphing tool to projecting and morphing the face on your photo onto a VaM face texture. I bet you know those tools from things like morphing a females face into a leopard face, for instance. This even requires more post- and preprocessing in tools like Photoshop, but some creators like this way to keep control over the whole process.

There is (AFAIK) no tool to morph the whole body shape from pictures.

Hi @TToby
When you say "
simply open up an image panel in the background, load the photo,
and then start to skulpt the look with morphs,"
Do you mean I'm VAM it self or open the image in another image processing app and start changing morph options?

 

[pinosante]

Hi @TToby
When you say "
simply open up an image panel in the background, load the photo,
and then start to skulpt the look with morphs,"
Do you mean I'm VAM it self or open the image in another image processing app and start changing morph options?

Easiest would be to do it in VAM. Create an imagepanel there, and load the reference image on that imagepanel. Then use the morph sliders on the person, to "sculpt" change the look of the person to fit the reference image. You can also make the reference image transparent and slide it over the Person, to see if the width of the face is correct, etc.

 

[TToby]

Hi @TToby
When you say "
simply open up an image panel in the background, load the photo,
and then start to skulpt the look with morphs,"
Do you mean I'm VAM it self or open the image in another image processing app and start changing morph options?

Like Pinosante said above. If you are in VR, just add an image panel in VaM as reference. You just don't want to take your Headset off, again and again, and the VaM image panel is ideal, cause you can scale and positioning it just as you need it.
If you are in desktop mode, do as you like, maybe with other tools, split screen or overlay apps.

 

[HolySchmidt]

A very useful tool for creating lookalikes in desktop mode is "OnTopReplica". This makes it possible to make an image transparent from 0-100%.