Is facegen worth it?
unknownmystery445
Posts: 414
in The Commons
I'm just curious if facegen is worth it? Like does it create "quality" looking characters like what's being sold here in the Daz store? And I've heard only the face is created so how do you adjust the body skin from the face skin? And can you guys post like your final polished and edited renders using characters created by this program?
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There are already a thread going about this, you might have better luck posting there:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/149871/facegen-now-on-sale-get-it/
...just my to zloty's worth
I actually enjoy the challenge of attempting to create a celebrity or RL person just through working the morph sliders. There actually used to be a thread in these forums dedicated to it.
From what I can see, no.
The character in the demo was unusually "easy", with especially flat lighting and a neutral expression. FaceGen did nothing to compensate for the flaws in the lighting: for example, it "baked in" a wide highlight across the eyebrow ridges, as easily seen in the rendering of the new character. This means that lighting the resulting figure with any sort of soft lighting, or hard lighting from any direction other than that which created the original image, would look totally unnatural.
I haven't used it but the promo art doesn't entice me to buy it. Sorry can't be of much help.
Yeah, honesty for such an expensive program, you'd THINK they'd provide more than two promo images to give people a better idea of what the thing can do. $139.00 product ($97.00 intro sale price) with only two promo images? Doesn't seem like a wise choice.
Try the demo for free. There is a manual here. I've decided to purchase it after this third try with the demo version.
That's really cool! Nice looking character!
Well, FG's worth every penny IMO
Just FG + N.G.S.2:
Please limit the width of images to 800 pixels. ~Mod
More:
In a word and IMHO, no. And not just FG, but none of them are. And it gets worse if you want then to have anything but a nutral expression because facial expressions are so unique to each individual.
The only instantly recognisable DS/Poser celebs I've seen were Jean Reno and Bruce Willis, but they were not from one of these programs, and they were recognisable because they were more caricatures than true life-like renditions.
I'm not desrespecting those who offer these programs, but I think it's just a bridge too far with the current DS/Poser technology to convincingly produce likenesses of real people.
Well, it depends on your goal.
I would agree that the ability to capture a framous person's likeness is... extremely hit and miss. If that's your primary goal, meh, no.
But FG, unlike some of the others, also has 'dial up a face.'
And even if you 'miss' with some face you get from a picture, assuming the face looks interesting, you've just added a morph possibility to your 'mix' of faces. That's potentially VERY valuable.
I agree that many people have produced "interesting" and unique faces that are useful for any render one might like to do. But this isn't the claimed primary purpose of these programs and not what it says on the box.
Can you kindly give more renders? :) also like close ups of them?
I bought the software yesterday.
My opinion is that it is useful for character creation, however, it is important to note that the results generally will need a lot of more work.
If you want professional closeup quality you will have to manually create the normalmaps, bumpmaps, improve the skin in certain areas, et cetera.
While I expected this in the first place, the program provides an interesting and fairly quick process to get the basics of a character up and running.
The documentation needs more work and the program would need basic features such as saving the path to your genesis folders.
A workaround could be made by saving a separate notepad document with your paths, or making shortcuts on your computer, however, it is a bit lazy of the programmer
to not include a simple option to save paths.
I would say that this software requires some general experience with making skin textures in order to achieve good results for closeup renders.
I'm not sure if I downloaded the wrong version or what, but my demo version is only for Genesis 1&2 and I'd like to see how it is on Genesis 3. Was anyone able to download the demo that includes Genesis 3 and if so, could you please post the link? I think it could be very useful for new interesting morphs and much cheaper than Z Brush! Unless you have really high res photos for front and side views, I don't think it would be easy to recreate a celebrity but you might be able to recreate yourself or friends with your own hi res photos taken under the right lighting.
Hi Aeonmoon
Thanks for giving us your thoughts. Could you though use other skins from other figures once you've applied the new morph to your figure...?
I downloaded the demo, and had a play; $30-$40 maybe worth it; for the fun factor and other functionality.
The price it is, no.
If you want to create G1,2 of 3 character likeness of your friends, this is the app for you. It's very easy to use and produces a fantastic likeness, especially on G2 in my experience. I can't recommend enough.
Thanks Greybro. I'm tempted to pick this up later. Am I right though in that you can use skins from say other Gen 2 figures on the face and body once you've dialled it onto the Genesis figure in Daz..?
There is no demo for Genesis 3; the Genesis 3 option is only with the purchased Pro version. I was just on the site that had the demo version download and it states that clearly at the bottom of the download page. https://facegen.com/artist.htm
I made a review / quick tutorial on FaceGen Artist Pro (the newest version), and this is the result you get!
Yes, I figured that out. I posted some renders in another thread, there are three threads on this now, I'm betting a mod will combine them... But I'm loving it, really want to get it now. It has its own great textures, you don't even need a photo! It creates textures and morphs and you can use expressions like normal! I still would like to demo it on G3, but I guess that's impossible. This is my best result so far.
I think it's DEFINITELY worth getting if you like creating original characters. If you just want to create celebrities, I think it's a bit harder, but probably doable. Although I'm not sure the expressions would look like the celebrity's expressions. And it's hard to find hi-res photos from the front and sides of celebs. But you could probably do yourself and friends...
Both the texture and morph created in Face Gen...
You use then a replacement texture preconstructed with neutral lighting. DAZ character model textures still have baked in lighting if you pay attention. It also can supply textures to DAZ that are neutral from FaceGen's generic stock.
Bottom line is if you have even complained about a lack of diversity in DAZ Store's available characters this is a cheaper solution and it is available now. Although I expect with Genesis 4 there will be another upgrade fee to a new version of FaceGen but then people do that without question for the DAZ models and Gen2 and clothing and hair and iRay already so just because you can't see all the incredible amount of work and testing and planning that goes into the software product, only a face morph, that doesn't mean as much or more work went into making it as the DAZ models themselves.
Cant wait until June :D
does this work if the mesh is in a connect cloud folder ?
couldnt get it to work with that
Facegen + Figure Metrics + tweaking = tons of custom characters. IMO it has been very worth the money, and I paid full price for the Pro version. I do still buy exceptional characters from PAs on here. But, I much more enjoy creating and rendering my own characters.
I do cleanup and alter the face textures in Photoshop because not every photo is perfectly lit for a face generation. In fact, most photos are lit to be flattering, not for utility. Usually, this just means that I have to airbrush or clone out a few harsh hightlights or too dark shadows. This really isn't much of an issue when working with the exported textures. That said, if your photo reference is pretty flatly lit, you shouldn't really need any post work to the texture in photoshop.
I'll give a shout out to HinkyPunk's Build-a-Babe for Photoshop. It makes editing a set of textures much easier.
I'm anxiously awaiting Zev0's new Skinbuilder for G3.
Ruphuss - I just reinstalled both G2 and G3 via DIM...quick fix to the Connect issue. I really don't use Connect at all. It's such a pain to figure out where all the bits are located.
Sure, here's a head shot....
Here ya go!
The character looks really good! How'd you make the textures? Is it also from the program?
The face is generated from a mix of African and East Asian sliders, a few other Facegen tweaks, and a little Facegen tug/pull (particularly around the nose).
I tweaked the morph influence on the eyes (as described in either this or the other Facegen thread) because the eyes were a little distorted.
The skin is http://www.daz3d.com/fw-cayman-hd-for-darius-6 (I don't really like the Facegen skins)