Hi, 

Bellus3D, an iPhone application and now a Windows desktop application (with SDK), has been around since several years, and works much better and much faster than any version of Headshot, which requires a quite important amount of manual work, even just to get the right contour of a head.

Bellus3D results can be qualified as nearly 'perfect', it is like the Polaroïd of face scanning. If only there was a simple way to integrate/port the Bellus3D head as a CC3+ head, that would be awesome.

Why should we use painfull tools when it exists 'perfect' tools ? We are paying either way..

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

I have to disagree with you about "painful". I quite like Head Shot. Besides "perfect" whatever that means, there is artistry.

Also, where would you find faces to scan? I can go to places like Thispersondoesnotexist.com and find plenty to use to create unique characters in CC.

I find it typical that every time RL comes out with a new feature that instead of embracing it and doing something with it, people find fault. I think that is a waste of time and energy.

---

@animagic
Well, clearly along the years Reallusion shifted their efforts from machinima to game tools and games professionals. I have nothing against artistry, obviously, but I like efficiency too for specific tasks. Headshot is nice but it fails for that specific task of quickly creating digital double. When we need a character identical to an existing actor. For this, it simply does not work compared to Facegen - even the Crazytalk pipeline worked better - or now Bellus3D which of course use the real face instead of images, which is not an issue in case of digital doubles. It does not work without a lot of manual work that is, other than that I'm not complaining, the all CC features are very nice of course.

So, like for Motion Capture, perhaps there could be a system that accept a all eco-system of 'devices' that could be used with Headshot to creates faces, either from photos, scans, depth, ...

Because the issue here is not to create realistic faces or to capture faces from real actors, there are several tools and ways in order to do that, the issue here is to 'integrate' those as CC3+ heads (without spending zillions of hours manually using morphs for that).

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Hi Guy

I feel your argument fell apart with this statement.

Honestly I can only think maybe you haven't mastered Headshot yet because neither Facegen or CrazyTalk can come close to Headshot in terms of the results you can get.

Personally I have used Facegen for many years and back in the day the faces it created were great, but sadly it has not been updated so the results are now far inferior to what you can do with Headshot. CrazyTalk 8 on the other hand paved the way for Headshot, but again it is now a legacy product that hasn't been updated for a long time. I have lost count of the heads I have created in CrazyTalk but I have never been able to create a 3D Head that could match what can be done with Headshot.

As Animagic suggested why not invest some time with Headshot. I think once mastered you will find the results you can get are fantastic even creating digital doubles.


                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Im a fan of headshot myself,  but then I do a lot of photo-editing - touching up for customized work. 

I wouldn't have it any other way though  because that allows me to add "me" to my work and i do get some very realistic looks from my process,  headshot just makes it quick and painless for me. 

I had my relatives ready to attend a funeral when I told them this guy died

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I gotta agree, I loved Facegen back in the day. However it really shows it's age these days. Calling that closer to perfect software is more than a stretch. Headshot works just fine and there is a little work involved, but there is a HUGE EZ button if you don't want to spend much time at all getting something very good from it. The EZ button gets you 80/20. If you just spend a little bit of time even less than an hour, you can achieve very good results. We've seen them posted a plenty on the forum and in our won work so we know it's "doable."



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I know this will not be popular here, but I can live with that.

It really pains me to read how many people want more and more click button tools. No one wants to learn a craft anymore and use the tools available in new creative ways.

One of the problems brewing in the future for 3d Animation is the one click does everything. All work will end up looking the same and tge art will be de valued.

Just because you can buy mocap suit. Would it hurt to learn to key frame ? Instead of using iphone mocap, why not act and record face and keyframe expressions? 

i created from headshot just go photoshop setting pixel to 3200...i think maybe got great texture in headshot

First off I appreciate the link Guy. They are off to a good start, but yet have a long way to go to perfect it.
Yes, sure, it is only applicable for a "Live Shot" with people who'd agree to get the scan taken.
Same with profile photos. Though I'd say Headshot plugin must have profile option.
For me personally, using dozens and dozens of sliders to get the profile (and front for that matter) right is a painful process.
Maybe I do not have an "eye" for that.
I tried morphing myself in the past in head-shot and miserably failed.

Long story short. Downloaded the app (there are 2, I used Face Maker), scanned my face, paid a buck to get hi-poly OBJ to iCloud.
Now, how the heck to bring that head to CC??
Here is a very brief workflow (still yet to be perfected):

1. Used Bellus3D unwrapped texture of my face in Headshot (I could have used regular photo, but the outcome is pretty much the same).
This is what Headshot "thinks" of me, without any texture/photo/morphs tweaks... Oh boy...




2. Exported Nude OBJ Body out of CC and imported to Blender. Imported Bellus3D OBJ to Blender as well.
Using Blender Mask modifier I left only those parts visible on CC imported character. Associated visible vertices with special vertex Group



Symmetrized original Bellus3D scan. This is how it looks:




3. Tweaked original CC mask. The goal was to match the openings of eyes, ear parts, lips and nostril. I did not care about the rest.
The reason for that was to prevent deformation of hidden inner parts of the CC head (tongue, mouth, eye sockets, etc) in the next step:





4. Applied a Shrinkwrap modifier to the CC mask over the original scan OBJ. A little sculpting to fix slightly deformed inner parts contour and the Morphed body is ready for export:



5. Imported as a morphs slider, fixed the texture a little (I should use a better photo next time). Spent some time with eyes.
No matter what, this is a hardest part to get right. A slight inconsistency in eyes contour and character looks totally different.
I'd say this character has about 90% accuracy match with the host. Maybe a little younger

Two things made me happy. The face profile, which I did not have to do anything about. Again I'd never be able to match the profile with such an accuracy (maybe someone can - I cannot).
And this new Prime Hairstyle hair, which is pretty much close (guess I cannot fool anyone with my avatar anymore )




One thing I noticed, is that I was looking down a little during scan and it shows at the outcome. Next time should look straight.

One more note: Using this method you can bring practically any nude 3-rd party character into CC - morph only - not the texture I suppose. I have already experimented with body, which was a lot easier.
Now I know what to do with the head.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.