Is Asking for a SMILE Too Much?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,152
Promo pictures of hundreds of frozen face characters. Is it asking too much to do ONE render for your character in which they are actually smiling - a FULL FACE SMILE, either closed smile or open smile. These 3D characters aren't department store mannequins. The faces on these haracters actually move, and can express emotions in addition to DOUR. Eight renders of the same face with the same expression isn't the best way to market a character. Throwing absurd makeup on their faces and setting outlandish headdresses on their heads doesn't really express their CHARACTER. I suppose it's to make them look "versatile". Well having them smile makes them look even more versatile. Any time I look at the promo images of a character in which they are stone-faced with a blank stare in every image makes me think that the character just can't smile - that trying to make them smile distorts their face. A thousand pictures of "sexy" can include smiling. From now on, when I buy a character, I'm going to give them a full face smiling expression. If the smile is ugly or distorts the face, I'm returning the character to DAZ for a refund.
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Comments
I almost feel the opposite: too many of the promos use specific expressions and camera angles, often coupled with extreme makeup, so that it's hard to get a feel for what the face actually looks like.
Did you even read my post - I mention the absurd makeup.
I did say "almost" the opposite.
Yes it is too much to ask for a smile. These are TOP models. Top, TOP models never smile. They always sulk at you. Because $10000 an hour is nowhere near enough for such important people to feel happy.
OK. I have no idea why they don't smile. Are you convinced by the standard 'smile' expressions? I'm not entirely convinced by the smiles myself, but I don't think I can pose the face better. Is it better to have a neutral expression or 'no smile' than an unconvincing one? Maybe.
Regards,
Richard.
Some characters on the other store feature custom smile expression morphs, and they look great.
These store character smile and pout and grimace too much! Is it too much to ask for some actual neutral expression to be able what the character morph actually looks like?
nobody likes being told to smile, why should 3D people be any different
Cheese!
Cheese is for eating, not for smiling.
Except for Babybel. That stuff needs to burn in Hell.
Excellent and unique characters. And their custom smiles are selling features.
https://www.daz3d.com/bluejaunte
speaking of unique smiles i still really like the unique smiles:
https://www.daz3d.com/20-unique-smiles-hd-for-genesis-8-females
https://www.daz3d.com/20-unique-smiles-hd-for-genesis-8-males-
They are great for adding a versatile smile of any kind.
Maybe it is because they are going into your runtime......Only Joking...SMILE
The point of it is, there are unique smiles for those who want smiles.
Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I find most of the smiles lacking the emotion, like a newsreader telling about a tragedy with the perpetual 'smile' on their face.
For the smile to really work, it has to follow through to the eyes. So, there's more to a great smile than a mouth morph. But a good mouth morph helps!
some facial expression in the promos would be really good, because some of them really distort the face whne you try to make them smile.
what annoys the heck out of me besides that is that some (esp female) characters never get theur mouth closed, in neutral position the constantly have that gap between their lips which is supposed to make them look sexy but all it does for me is look stupid
Subjective perception plays a big role too. I've seen people have completely different opinions on whether a character's smile looked natural or not.
I totally agree. I've wanted to see different expressions on characters faces too. I don't know if it was deliberate to use stoic faces or if the artist just didn't think of using other expressions. I do see some who put smiles on their characters. I like to see what they can look like with different emotions on them. I've seen some where characters are doing something fun, like riding a bicycle or a quad or something, but no fun expression on their faces. Or characters in a romantic pose, but blank face. No love in their expressions. Another thing I notice is when they also use dark lighting to feature a character, so the face is mostly in shadow and you can't really see what they look like. If I was an artist presenting a new character, I would want to make them look as appealing as possible to sell as many as I can. Show that they have character, not just a statue. The expression should match what they're doing.
I`ve been learning about sculpt in Blender/Zbrush lately and I kind understand why getting right/proper Smiles or another expressive face pose not easy task
I do believe those expression need custom sculpt especially if we using lots of mashup character dial . Although doesnt happen in IRL , in this case using just lips dial not enough , we also need lots of gum and teeth morph .
Each custom character ideally should including those morphs ( Gum and teeth ) . But TBH How many exactly custom character have shipped with it ?
In short , Universal solution hardly to work ,except we`ve using stock Genesis or specific expression built for one custom character . But Who want work without mixing it with another gene pools ?
For Note : Unrealistic expressions doesnt always means BAD as long our brain can accept it . But realistic bone- muscle and skin tissue movement if end with strange outcome should be avoid for all cost ;)
I hope in DAZ Studio 5 they will include Simple Morph tool to help user minimize character`s "horse smile " or Bad expression problems with ease ( without export and fix it in another apps)
Default smiles work on default figures only.
On characters they look usually horrible and I am sick and tired of them.
Infact, you'd needed a full set of custom expressions for every single character.
So in most cases, characters better not smile.
left to right:
custom character with custom smile
G8F with custom smile
custom character with G8F smile
G8F with G8F smile
Why so agressive?
Basically we have two systems at work in DS, the "old school" morphs for every expression/viseme, and the newer facial rigging for everything.
Both systems have major flaws.
With morphs only you have the problem that the morphs are designed around the default shape of the mesh, you change the shape with a character morph, and those expression morphs no longer work right, so you either have to make new expression morphs for each character, or add a bunch of corrective morphs that alter the default expression morphs when a specific character morph is active.
Facial rigging should be able to cope with custom character morphs, but that assumes that the rigging has been adjusted correctly for the character, otherwise you are going to need to make a whole bunch of correctives to get the default pose controls to work right.
Now G3, G8 and G8.1 use a mix of both systems, G3 and G8.1 use facial rigging for everything, but use morphs to add in detail rigging can't do (wrinkles etc). G8 uses morphs for the full face expressions (happy, angry etc) and the facial rigging for everything else.
"that assumes that the rigging has been adjusted correctly" <<<< this is the biggest issue with facial rigging, the bones need to be in the right place, and guess what "adjust rigging to shape" doesn't get them into the right place. It gets most of them close and those usually just need tweaked, some need a fair bit more than a tweak (ie upper eyelid bones), and some need chased back to where they belong (looking at you squint bones).
If I did that, I would've most likely ended up returning around 90% of the characters I purchased. The thing is, an expression(i.e. Smile Full Face) is generally applied the exact same way between all different characters/figures. For example, applying Demi Moore's smile to any other female's face will most likely end up looking not right. Same thing if you applied Jack Nicholson's smile to any other man's face, its not going to look right. Unless PAs start making custom poses & morphs that are unique to each character, you're just going to have to put more time in to get the expression to look the way you think is right. Also, keep in mind that the faces of these models don't even come close to the functionality of a human face & that its a lot of work just to get them anywhere in the ballpark when it comes to expressions.
I mostly use morphs to control the facial expression. To fine tune the character and the expression, I think it helps to have a some extra face morphs in the library. The stock Daz morphs are sorely lacking when it comes to nasolabial folds and such, Figures where I have more face morphs available work better for me than figures where I don't have as many morphs. Custom morphs might be best and most efficient, but I spend enough time reworking materials and textures. I'm content to spin dials wherever practical. I'm happy when figure artists include custom smile morphs. Some of them are quite well done!
The new FACS face rig is a huge step in the right direction but each real face has it's own skeletal, muscular, and skin geometry and those are not apart of the current generation of 3D models at DAZ 3D. Those things might be a part of UE4's and Unity's realistic human 3D models but I've not investigated to know. It's sort of important, as we've all seen the Disney 3D model emotive style propagate to be the somewhat unspoken standard; but it's a very odd thing indeed to try and watch a new episode of a live action shot Superman and see a serious scene with Superman speaking to a lady (not Lois Lane) and think that the directors have demanded he copy the acting style and emotive expressions of the characters from Frozen and/or countless other Disney live and animated shows when giving his dialogue.
I run a version of Daz that predates the FACS rig. When I'm done upgrading my hardware, I may try running the current version to see what I've been missing.
I want to see the teeth. Many characters have terrible teeth textures or distorted teeth shapes. A smile promo would help identify those issues, too.
End the sulking smile misery forever. Give HD morph tools to Daz users!