Facegen to DAZ Studio help for newbie

bushsbunnys_b828959fe2

Hello out there!

I have been a dabbler in DAZ Studio 4 and FaceGen for some time, and now I'm ready to combine the two. At this time I only want to make 3d art and not any kind of animation. But the same question still remains: how do I get the FaceGen head on a DAZ V4 body? Or do I use a Genesis body?

I realize this topic might be answered on another post, but I have read as many DAZ-FaceGen posts as I can, and I am still in a state of confusion. Being mentally exhausted and having nothing to lose, I bring my questions to you in hopes some kind, tolerant artist can at least point me in the right direction. I have the most recent versions of DAZ Studio, FaceGen and even Poser, and I would really love to get serios about some 3d art! I thank any and all who reply!:red:

WendyLuvsCatz

I did this tutorial for another user using the $99 facegen exporter for Genesis which just uses the free version of Facegen on Genesis.
I do not have the paid version of facegen itself but believe in Poser you can swap the head mesh of figures and use the morphs from the exporter as morph targets.
you should be able to do this on the head with morph loader in Daz studio too.
and maybe parent it to a body with head hidden.
Someone did a video on it.
Was a tad pricy for me so never got it (at least for the version that did redistributable mesh which I might want one day).

bushsbunnys_b828959fe2

Thank you so much, wendycatz!:lol:

Valiska

Two things:

You can get the morphs across. But they're meant for Genesis, not V4. You probably can apply them to V4 for Genesis, but since V4's head isn't the same shape as Genesis', that may not get you the results you want.

First you make your face in FaceGen. Then get the FaceGen --> Genesis exporter (costs $100) and follow the instructions to export your morphs and textures. You'll end up with a single morph slider in Daz's Parameters tab, which you can put where you want.

You can also export the textures, including FaceGen detail textures. But they'll need work, because:

1.They're too shiny, and you have to dial that down in the Surfaces tab (not hard);
2. FaceGen textures only have detail on the front of the head. The sides of the head and everywhere else will have no detail, which means you're going to need more texture from elsewhere;
3. The exporter is buggy. If you include any of the photographic detail textures in your texture export, you'll have to fix the eyelids in a paint program. You can't see the problem when the eyes are open, but when they're closed, the eyelashes are smeared into the eyelid texture in a bizarre way.
4. The exporter only produces V4 UVs. This isn't insurmountable. But, since FaceGen only textures the front of the face, you're probably going to want to blend the FaceGen texture into some other texture; and if you've got a male figure, it'll be harder. You're likely to want to use M4 textures then, and you'll have to make adjustments in your paint program.

wancow

Other than a slight issue with deformed eyes, I love FG... watch the eyes, however.

bushsbunnys_b828959fe2

Thank you wancow and kcoady for your replies! I appreciate it so much! :D

okros19

Hi Everyone!

I'm trying to use this FaceGen exporter Demo program to export my photo made face into Daz Studio 4.5. In the First time it work good no errors but when i renistall the windows it always shows up with the next error when i want to export:

"Unable to complete operation
Details (std::exception):
Invalid UTF-8".

I reinstalled the windows and daz studio again but nothing works... The error keeps coming.
I red a lot of forums but i cant find any good solution
Maybe here somebody know how to fix this.

Kevmann

wancow said:

Other than a slight issue with deformed eyes, I love FG... watch the eyes, however.

Does anyone know a way to fix or avoid the eye distortion issue? I really like Facegen, but the eye distortion really hurts the morphs.

johng

I'm working on trying to improve the eyes at the moment. My idea is not to bother with the facegen eye textures and instead stay with Genesis' own default eyes. I'm only using Facegen's face texture, and it's morphs.

Obviously, some adjustment is needed as the eyes won't look right initially. The Evolution head morphs were useful for changing the size of the eyes and the irises. It was also necessary to adjust the Pose Controls on each eye as the character was somewhat cross-eyed.

The supplied picture gives you and idea of how it's working so far, using the V5 "Bree" eye textures. I'll let you know if I make any more progress.

Myds

Sorry to post on a thread that's been quiet foe a while, but I have been getting fair success with the FG export process, and figured I'd enumeruate the less intuitive steps here. I also hoped someone could enlighten me on how to streamline my process for "blending" the fg body textures with others to add detail. I currently open the texture I want to add in photoshop, stretch the FG texture across it as a layer, put that layer behind the additional texture, and use the eraser to make a hole in the "background" of the additional texture (off tot he side where the skin isn't). I then use the hue/saturation/lightness controls, followed by color balance to try to match the "background" color to the FG texture. Is there an easier way to do this?

As promised, here are some of the things I learned about FG:
1) In Facegen modeler itself: Photofit works great. You don't need quite as perfect a photo as you've been led to believe by the instructions. If your face comes out lopsided or with weird patchy texture due to lighting, this can be fixed by going back to the "generate" page and messing with the symmetry, texture modulation, and gamma sliders. The other sliders come in handy sometimes, too. Save first and play with them. Also, I personally find that it's better to just use a "front" photo, then after your head is made, turn it sideways and fix the profile with the sliders, Sometimes adding a profile photo creates unexpected results,
2) After exporting, go to the textures photo and rename your textures. This avoids the confusion you and your program will have with multiple textures of the same name if you use multiple FG characters in a scene.
3) When morphing your head using the FG morph, if it looks weird, notice any other morphs affecting the head, such as "basic female" or "v4" or even any of the more extreme whole-body "universal" morphs.
4) I use actual eyes to deal with the eye problem. Preferably applied after setting the whole figure's lighting model to "skin," as it will reset the eye lighting model when applied.
5) I also usually apply a Mat set from a commercial character (injection-type one-click mats), before applying my FG textures, as a quick way to get some bump maps in place.
6) Skin Overlay is great at bringing those FG textures to life. I prefer clicking stud like "skin detail" on the displacement page. I usually don't mess with the first page or use SO to add bump maps--its displacement function is excellent.
7) Anything FG can't do can probably be added in after using the Genesis Evolutions morphs and/or SickleYield's version of DieTrying Morphs for Genesis.

These may be obvious, but I hope they help someone. They took me a bit to figure out. Also, if anyone knows a better way to approach "blending textures" than above, please let me know.