Soft Expressions for Genesis 9
xyer0
Posts: 6,016
in The Commons
P3D's new Soft Expressions look natural, and they may help Genesis 9 deliver on the hopes I initially had after seeing Victoria 9 promos. If only the promos were labeled with their actual names so I could use them as a quick guide.
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Comments
The mouths have been getting worse, really, as the expressions become more orientated around bones than on morphs. The thing is that Bones DO allow for more extreme expressions, but the fact is that the human face isn't filled with a lot of little pivot points, so unless one is extremely careful, the end results can creep into the uncanny valley quite quickly. After all, what produces expressions in a real human face is not just external points on the skin being moved, but rather a long complicated interaction as muscles expand and contract while interacting with both the underinhg skull and tendons and also the overlaying layers of fat and skin, all of which are also interacting, and something that's truly accurate simply can't be produced with the existing DAZ system, even if the number of facial bones was expanded into the multiple hundreds or even thousands.
Mouths and eyes are two of the things that I am never happy with with any of my renders. Mouths in particular are so annoying to try and get right. That said, with these expressions somethings are very subtle and others, at least to me, are really odd. There's two promo images that freak me out.. the first one is the one with the closed mouth smile with the open lips. With most people doing a closed smile you'll only see the top teeth but in that image the bottom teeth are exposed way too much imo. It reminds me of those early face tests with the disney animatronics where they'd make those over the top facial expressions that scared most people or that smile that Donkey from Shrek would make. The other image that's bothering me is the other open lip smile, there's something about the shape of the bottom lip that's making me feel uneasy.
If there's any hope it's bluejaunte's smile morphs, to me they look fantastic and realistic, so it's possible to do but there needs to be more than one vendor who can consistently pull it off.
The problem with a complete morph based approach is that it can conflict with the underlying character morph/s - causing pinching and other deformations, especially around the corners of the mouth and eyes. This can be compounded by a poorly constructed morph - if a vertex is moved too far out of it's base position in relation to its weights. The ideal solution, in my opinion, is a mix of joint and morph based expressions; somewhere along the lines of 66/33 to 75/25 joints to morphs. The joints do the raw, bulk lifting and the morphs tweak the end result to blend in surrounding features. The morphs, however, should really be character dependent for best results - moreso for more extreme character shapes.
That said, the best out of the box expression pack I've seen so far is Valery3D's V 100 Eye Catchy Expressions for Genesis 8.1 Females - it seems to just use 8.1's facs morphs and in my experience is the one expression pack that has only required minor adjustments depending on the character.
Regarding teeth positioning - I think that's less the expression's 'fault' and more the character. It can take a while for me to determine the best vertical position for a character's teeth after experimenting with several expressions.