Duplicating head shape to genesis
James
Posts: 1,042
I saw a blender add on - Kentools that can create a head from photos references and bake the texture.
My question if I had the head geometry, and I want to copy the shape of the head and texture to genesis, how to do that?
Post edited by James on
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You probably mean FaceBuilder. I don't know how to make it in Blender as what we ever tried all failed (weld geometry, shrinkwrap ...)... but one typical workflow is to wrap the Head with Genesis floating geometry in Faceform Wrap, as well as convert the texture.
We? who are we?
What is faceform wrap?
A long time ago, when I was learning to make cc for sims4
There was an addon that can mimic the shape of a geometry based on the vertices comparison on the uv map.
I forget the name of the add on.
One can also copy the shape manually by using the basic translation tools that Blender has, there aren't that many vertices in the head
Some years back I manually copied a gorilla head to Genesis 3 and it came out pretty good.
I never tried that myself, but there's also softwrap.
https://blendermarket.com/products/softwrap
Also: You could import the geometry to DAZ and then you could fit Genesis 9 to the shape of the Blender created geometry using DAZ Studio by treating the DAZ Genesis 9 model as if it were a full body piece of clothing and doing autofit. You want to scale and align them to be close in size and location. It will get you most of the way but all the bones and weight maps won't be properly aligned.
Export the base Genesis figure into Blender, bring the original figure there, line them up and use the basic tools to make the Genesis mesh to match the original figure, then import the Genesis figure into DS as a morph
FaceBuilder makes a Head (portraite) only geometry with unique shape as per the given photo, how could you "match" a Genesis Base figure to that Head geometry in Blender?
Fit Suit method won't work either because the source item is just an OBJ geometry of a Head / Portrait... rather than a Genesis figure, so no weight / shape could be transferred to G9 "Suit". The "Suit" can be only rigged on a Genesis figure by using Transfer Utility... And Auto-Fit plugin can be only triggered when loading a wearable figure rather than a Genesis figure to another figure.
Well, if these simple ways can work it out, we never had to buy that expensive Wrap software...to bring whatever scanned mesh or chars. from other platforms ~~
Me neither ... but my hunch tells me for retopo... it should work well but for wrapping a mesh to get 99%+ same result, I'm afraid it might not make it 'cause wrapping on detailed mesh needs to be accurately done on vertex position level plus even higher SubD wrapping may be needed depending on the case...
is the faceform able to wrap head only?
What has this to do with FaceBuilder?
The Genesis base figures are meshes that can be modified
One can import/open whatever source figure from where-ever to Blender, scale it and align it with the Genesis base mesh, and then scale/move the vertices of the Genesis mesh where needed (utilizing mirror and falloff)
Nothing fancy or difficult
OP clearly asked if one can make head shape and textures from the head geometry created from keentools aka Facebuilder (based on a photo)... https://keentools.io/
Yup, definitely ~ then merge the wrapped result with Genesis body. Then export the full OBJ from Wrap and import onto Genesis figure in DS with MLP + HeadSplit dFormer as you just need the Head morph.
There're a couple of tutorials on youtube from shinteo channel, like this one https://youtu.be/w0ci6kJmanI?si=R6NY6KJvSwno85Sr and some timelapses on his channel in which there're streams of wrapping a head only.
It makes a mesh like any other mesh. After one has scaled and aligned it with the Genesis mesh, one can start moving the vertices of the Genesis head accordingly
As I said, the amount of vertices in Genesis (whatever generation) head is not that many and using mirror it even gets halved.
Manually move the vertex position to match a fixed geometry ... ? Okay... I personally don't think this is a proper answer for any similar question like this one 'cause any Blender user should know how to move vertices...Well, based on a common sense, if one expects such a solution, I could've been hands-off from very beginning.
So, vertex count from a G8 Base Head is 5.8K (Face only, 5.0K), G9 Base Head is 5.5K (Face only... 4.2K), I DO believe one can "get the job done" given there's enough patience and time ( also with symmetry.. if possible ). I won't question about the final quality, however, head / portrait created by FB is usually asymmetrical and with denser mesh... In such a case, it's pretty challenging to assure precise vertex alignment, let alone using symmetry / mirroring, whatever..
As I said, I did it with G3 and it did't take more than one evening to copy the shape of a gorilla head onto G3 male mesh.
If matching no inner geometry... G3 Face has 3K+ vertices (without mouth cavity / teeth)... I'm out of curiosity how that gorilla look like... Anyway, it's always up to people's preferences at the end of the day... as long as they can get the job done ~
@crosswind
what is MLP + HeadSplit dFormer?
MLP: Morph Loader Pro with which you're quite familiar, just an abbr.
HeadSplit dFormers: go to G8 or G9 Starter Essentials, you can find them under Utilities category. (SS1)
I never did that personally as it's a long time since I was into modeling, but I suspect PerttiA is referring to the snapping tool, which greatly simplifies retopology and can probably be used in this case too to stick G3 to the gorilla, in that case it's mainly a matter of moving points around with proportional editing while snapping to the target.
@crosswind
Okay,
I've experimented roughly with faceform.
Following the tutorial I've managed to make GF8 to follow the shape of the head made from facebuilder.
I have succesfully make the full morph.
I'll try the headsplit latter to make only the head.
But my question is now,
how do I make the head texture from facebuilder to GF8?
Probably the answer is to bake it.
But then how to combine the texture from the head with the rest of the GF8 Body texture?
Yea, maybe... but I only have retopo exp. in MD. And retopo is not true Wrapping which endeavors to make vertex to vertex alignment.
Yes, that might be a tough job... depending on the texture maps per se. Converting texture is not a big deal, you can do it in Wrap or Blender. But the problem is how to make it seamless aligned with Torso / Body / Head maps on a Genesis...
Besides modifying them in an image editor, I don't have other better idea. You may find relevant tutorials in Shinteo's channel. TBH, we most of the time just convert shapes and use texture maps from other characters (retouched of course) or we paint in Adobe SP.
But if your character is fully dressed, the job may be much easier... then you even don't have to care about seamless issue.
Maybe I'lll just use facegen / facetransfer to slap the texture.
I'll use facebuilder to create the face shape.
Then faceform for the morph.
In theory that should do it.
***
Update:
Facetransfer doing such bad job.