Soft Expressions Collection 2 (Solved!)
Hi everyone,
I am trying to use P3D's Soft Expressions Collection 2 but I can't seem to get them to look like the promo picture. I'm using the model in the picture (P3D Aria) and when I apply the Smile presets, they just don't look right - at least compared to the beautiful smiles shown in the promo images. It's probably just user error but I'm curious if anyone else has this issue? Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
Here's the promo I'm referencing:
And here is what I get when I apply the "SE02 Smile_02" expression preset:
This issue happens on other characters, too. Their mouths are always hanging open instead of being a mouth-open, teeth-showing smile.
This is what the preset icon shows:
Sorry if this is a simple issue to fix, I'm used to working in Blender so I'm not 100% familiar with everything in DAZ yet.
Comments
@Budsly
It is likely that another expression has been loaded prior to your selection of "SE02 Smile_02". This can happen if you have been trying other expression and forgot to zero the changes or if a figure has had an expression applied and then been saved over the original. This is a fairly common occurence for new users.
I have a lot of Studio characters and i don't quire recognize the character in your example so I wonder if another morph/expresion is at play.
@fastbike1 Thanks for the response. The character is P3D Aria. Here are my steps:
The result is what I showed in my screenshot in the original post. I even tried the expression on the Genesis 8 Basic Female and get the same issue. See below for Genesis 8 Basic Female with the SE02 Smile_02 expression applied and nothing else:
It looks a little less weird than the P3D Aria character, but still doesn't look like the promo images nor the thumbnail for the expression shown in my original post.
I went to the Shaping tab and the only "Currently Used" shapes are Eyelashes Curl, Eyelashes Length Lower, and Eyelashes Length Upper. Similarly, the "Currently Used" Posing tab shows only pose dials that are brought on by the SE02 Smile_02 dial.
Could this have something to do with me using the Content Library tab rather than the Smart Content tab?
Tilt your figure's head forward slightly.
I used the "Neck-Head Bend" pose control to tilt her head forward and nothing changed:
I found this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/324171/g8f-expressions-problem-solved and decided to try to manually reinstall the Genesis 8 Starter Essentials. I was so sure that this was going to fix my issue because when I pasted them into My Library under DAZ 3D > Studio, I didn't get many "replace this file" dialogs. Unfortunately it didn't help anything. I still get the weird expression issue.
Is there anyone with this product that can tell me if these parameter settings for the expression dial are accurate?
I believe Gordig's comment about bending the neck was to provide a different viewing angle, in case that was the issue. Bending the neck won't affect the bite.
I own some other of P3D's expression sets and they generally work okay. This one is still wishlisted, so I can't vouch for it, but I'm a fan of P3D's work generally. I do have one open-mouthed smile in another set I tried, and the teeth remained apart by about as much as in your example, so you're not imagining things.
In the meantime, have you tried the other smiles, or using the dial controls for these expressions to see if perhaps the thumbnails got switched? I often prefer to use dial controls, myself.
@Sevrin Thank you for letting me know it's not just on my end. I've tried using the dials for other similar expressions - for example Playful_04 has an open mouth smile. Both the dials and the one-click expression for that seem to be accurate to the thumbnail picture:
It looks like every other expression works accurately. It's just Smile_02 and Smile_04 that don't (in my opinion) look like the thumbnail/promo pictures. It's tough to pinpoint exactly what's different, but to me it looks like the lips aren't formed into as much of a smile as the thumbnail/promo, and the teeth are further apart instead of being closer together like in the thumbnails:
Smile_02:
Smile_04:
I'm very happy with the rest of the expressions, but I'm disappointed that I can't get these two smile expressions to work because they're really good smiles! I was looking forward to using them. I've reached out to @P3Design on Renderosity to see if maybe they have any insight to what could be wrong.
Does the dial label have a "(2)" in it by any chance?
That one would mean you have two expressions installed with the same label and moving the dial effects both of them at the same time.
It's nothing like that. The expressions have distinctive names.
I had an idea that perhaps it was a matter of turning limits off, but that had no effect. Nor does reinstalling G8F Starter Essentials. What does have an effect is manually translating the teeth into position.
This is from Get Real Expressions by the same PA, namely @P3Design Note that the cheeks are a bit too high as well, so that's another thing. This is with P3D's character Aria.
Tooltip for GR Expression #25
Base
With upper teeth Y-translated -0.20
Interesting... I have the Get Real expressions as well but I hadn't tested them enough yet to notice the same issue was occuring. You are right, though. Fixing the upper teeth helps, but the expression is still missing something. It's missing some lip corner movement as well as some movement on the middle of the bottom lip, I think.
I don't have anything useful to add to the topic at the moment, unfortunately. However, P3Design responded to me on Renderosity - we have not figured out what the issue is yet. I invited them to come discuss with us in this post, so maybe we can all work together to figure this out! I will come back and update with any findings if we make some progress. Thanks for your help with testing so far @Sevrin I hope we can fix the issue for all of the expression sets, Get Real and Soft Expressions Collections 2 included.
Happy to help. Glad to hear that P3D is engaged. :)
Hi everyone, I am not yet sure what's the issue. It seems like another expression is dialed in as well.
I have to state that an expression for Genesis can look different depending on the morph you use,that's why I included thumbnails for the standard Genesis 8 Female and used a morphed face in the promo's so one could compare. Some morphed faces are shorter and some are longer then the standard. This also counts for the hight mouth and teeth. That results in teeth being higher in the mouth or lower. In my morphs I always try to place the teeth as high as in the standard Genesis face. I dont know wether other vendors do this as well. So yes, sometimes, with some morphs, its needed to translate the teeth a bit manually. However, I tried this smile 02 with the Aria morph and at my end it looks fine:
And this is the SE Smile 02 applied to base Genesis 8 Female.
@Budsly Please try the following: start a new scene - select Genesis 8 Female in the scene tab - zero figure as in attached example.
Then dial or apply SE Smile 02.
Please do this on the standard Genesis 8 Female for by the look of it, your standard Genesis 8 Female has a different expression then mine when the smile is applied. So we can already exclude the P3D Aria morph, the issue you have is with the smile.
After you did this step by step, can you please show me your render?
@ Budsly: My tester had a look at it and had the same result as I have, see attachment. Also the expressions have been thoroughly tested by daz. So my expressions are ok: the issue is on your system. So I advise to handle this further through sitemail and sort out what might go wrong at your end and end this thread here :)
@Budsly
So I tracked down the culprit with Richard Haseltine's help, at least in my case.
The expression I used engages the morph Mouth Smile Open. That, in turn, triggers a hidden morph eJCMNamMouthSmileOpen from the Nam Terror Set at 100%. Now I don't know if you have that product, but setting that to 0% closed the gap between the upper and lower teeth.
@Sevrin thats what's the case with Budsly as well. I asked for his log file and that's what's showed up. It must be an adjustment morph for the smile of a character that another vendor created. Do you owe any character with a name like that?
This one maybe: https://www.daz3d.com/nam-terror-set-for-genesis-8-female ?
Lol, ok, excuse me, it's late here and I didnt read it properly, you already stated its from that Nam terror set. This shouldnt happen and I will contact the vendor. Thanks for sorting this out :)
Just glad it's sorted out. I put in a support ticket about this, as well.
Great, thanks :)
@Sevrin @P3Design I'm so glad you were able to find the culprit! Thanks again to you guys for the help in figuring this out. The smiles look much better now that I have removed the interfering morph.
It can be frustrating when I run into issues like this and have no idea where to begin troubleshooting. I'm glad I learned a few things about how to deal with stuff like this.