Facial expressions have been bad for a long time
ColemanRugh
Posts: 511
The Vicki 3 and mike 3 facial expression capabilities were the best ever in DAZ history. This is why you'll see 90% of the promos today use blank face.
With Genesis 8 you can achieve the most incredible face morph... but don't try to make them smile... horse face occurs. HD morphs make it worse. Stretched horse face.
I've been playing with it and you actually have to change the depth of the face to get more realistic smiles... but then you have to make sure the camera hides that their face has been made neaerer to flat.
This is the one major wish for generation 9... EXPRESSIONS. We need characters who can have expressions
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Could you post a couple examples?
Specifically what was so good about the old expressions you were able to make. It's easy to make bad expressions.
Edit: The criticism about many vendors not having their characters smile broadly or show much emotion at all is a valid one, however. I'd like to single out iSourceTextures as one vendor whose character expressions do vary with many promos showing smiles. Rarestone and Bluejaunte are two others, although usually only with expressions (included with purchase) crafted specificially for their characters.
I think old Miki has a pretty good smile (at least with the right textures).
This is a G2F character, not that bad either IMO:
I agree that facial expressions are still one of the most tricky parts for DAZ characters.
But I think we've had quite the upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1.
And it really depends on the character. I recently was testing some 8.1 expressions on Dain 8 and was amazed by how expressive he is. Other characters can't really take much expression and quickly fall down the uncanny valley.
The two examples posted look bad, IMO. Forced, fake smiles. Probably because they only affect the mouth, not the eyes.
One of the issues with Daz expressions, regardless of generation, is that foreheads look botoxed.
At one time, when actresses especially started using it, there was a lot of controversy about Botox, since it reduced their range of expressions, but it's become so common, even among everyday people, that real world people, both men and women, are increasingly coming to look like Daz characters. I had a really uncomfortable moment once when I ran into a friend at the pharmacy just as she was picking up a couple of bottles (vials?) of the stuff. I saw it, she saw that I saw it and neither of us mentioned it. She's a year or two older than me and looks 15 years younger.
I was mainly demonstrating the look of the mouth, the eyes can be very difficult to make look right, if you squint them it often just makes the person look mean which is worse, IMO.
I think the are pretty good though for forced, fake smiles, exactly how my passport was before they didn't allow expressions on passports anymore.
The 2nd one looks pretty good to me!
The 1st one looks weird.
Improvements in expression would be great but perhaps it is more difficult than some may think. There's a very thin line between expression and caricature especially in a 2-d image and with iray renders seeming to emphasize line a bit it is all too easy to go too far. My personal opinion, but 8.1 facial expressions tend to go over the line.
That's why it's always better to use sliders than one-click expressions. One-click expressions have always been problematic. What's more, the emphasis with G8.1 is on the Face Control rig, which provides a more intuitive and granular interface once you get used to it.
You can sense the pain in the first one, but IDK it still looks kind of accurate, if I try to smile with my teeth together and my bottom teeth revealed I also look like an axe murderer
second one the nasolabial creases look off - too soft
so I would say the first is a more accurate representation, but of a creepy expression
and the second a less realistic approximation of a more normal expression
(Primarily G3 user.) Sliders are better. My trick is to use the sliders until the expression gets a response from me that a real person would. For example, I want to smile back at my smiling character. I feel it gets me more realistic expressions, especially combined with small changes to some of the face morph sliders. It can take me a while to get what I am looking for.
If you have the time, own the morphs (especially Genesis 8 Female Facial Elasticity Morphs & dimples, etc. from EJ Face Morphs & Details), and are willing, you may convincingly copy just about any human expression that you like on Genesis 8. Although I haven't learned Genesis 8.1 yet, I'm sure the possibilities are exponentially increased. Alas, one-click will often fail unless you DIY for that specific character.
I agree with OP. No matter how many products I tried, making some human-like expression is impossible with DAZ. Looking at the pictures of smiles some posted here, they are not real smiles humans make. I am not trying to offend anyone but it's just frustrating to see some people think they are close to real smiles.
I was just struggling with this tonight... all the smiles I tried on one of my girls looked cartoony... or constipated.
I am not especially comfortable with expressions - even on Daz characters. I live by microexpressions, reading them on others. To me, expressions like on the characters up at the beginning of this thread are sort of like someone screaming in a library at 2am, or an entire newspaper article in all-caps, 72-point type. The first one especially - in context of being on an adult figure - almost makes me flinch and look away.
On the flip side I suspect that 99% of humanity probably would look at my renders and wonder if I've ever heard of expressions.
I know from doing some event photography that people IRL often look sort of constipated. It's the way of things. The best are the ones who see your camera and mean-mug you. But sometimes, you get some dazzling smiles, too.
Facial expressions are hard to nail because, as humans, we get a lot of practice looking at and perceiving the meaning of expressions. We also tend to pick up on expressions that look fake, pained, etc. I know of at least one figure with a custom smile that looks great! It's a selling point for the figure. I'm sure there are others, and there are far more 3D smiles that look deranged or wrong. When you nail an expression, I think you should feel good about it. And when you don't, it's okay - You're not alone.
Custom characters need custom expressions. Some recent improvements might help a lot, but for adding personality and realism, you still need to customize expressions.
Example:
Evolution Of A Smile | Daz 3D
Then the facial expressions of your characters are certainly too subtle for a high percentage of viewers, who consider the exaggerated facial expressions of many films, the ripped mouths of advertising, the artificial plastic doll grins of the (including political) PR photos and these hysterical influencers to be normal human expression... I do the same as you: A more reserved use of the controls usually results in a more exciting facial expression than wild grimace (see a certain picture in this thread).
Base Victoria 4 had a very broad face. Artists who wanted to make a "pretty" character tended to narrow the face. Other artist making expression sets only used the base character. They ended up using the same facets and the mouth would break. This is true for later charcters too but I gave up asking for a fix long ago.
In the long run, I think the best answer is for each character to have an included smile
Facial expressions - smiles in particular - are my biggest gripe with Daz characters with Gen 9 being the worst. They can turn a pretty portrait into a gormless guffawing monstrosity with a slide of a morph with the lips seemingly disconected from the rest of the face.
It doesn't help either that some PAs insist on sculpting a little pout on some of the lips to make them "sexy" which, when a smile is applied on top, it makes the models look like a gurning fish trying to suck juice through a straw. PAs .. please .. stop doing this. There are pout / pucker sliders available if we want the models in our renders to look like pastic intsagram models.
It's hard to get realistic smile poses.
I wanted a quirky, teasing, smile with this image, subtle and not in your face. I think I mostly got it. Took a heck of a time. Half an hour maybe? At least as long as the rest of the pose. Most of the smile is lopsided only on the left. When you look at people smiling, they rarely have the same smile on each side of their face, it's almost always on a favoured side.
Regards,
Richard
+++1!
Likewise. There are a lot of products I've passed over because I liked other aspects, but I need the abiity for my characters to look authentic. I've yet to meet a woman who looks like that in her daily life.
I suppose it probably works for the skimpwear-focused crowd, though, so maybe I'm just not the target demographic. In which case... yay for my wallet, I guess.
Expressions are challenging. I was pretty unhappy with doing expression work until the new face controls came out with G8.1, it was a real improvement. I have found Genesis 9 to be much better to work with than G8.1. G9 has such a robust tool box for the face. I love doing expression work with G9.
In my opinion, the facial expressions started going downhill when DAZ started relying on facial bones instead of sculpted morphs. Genesis 3 is capable of extremely natural expressions using sliders, and I continue to use the G3 characters for many of my prime characters for that reason. With G8 the expressions could become more extreme thanks to the facial bones, but often started looking very odd as a result, espcially the "Joker" type smiles with the odd break in the middle of the lips. Genesis 8.1, I felt, doubled down on the bones and looked even worse. Genesis 9 has been a mixed bag in general, as what works on a male often doesn't work well on a female and vice-versa, complicated by the fact that the G9 characters themselves often feel far more cartoony than the previous gens.
In my opinion, this artist makes the absolute greatest smiles. Whether somehow not technically accurate, or not realistic in some other way, I just love the overall look regardless. I've tried to dissect it and make my own version with absolutely no luck. Maybe I just got too impatient, or wasn't seeing where I could control some of the nuances that make this so great. Still, I would argue that not every facial expression is bad, and infact, quite lovely ones are possible.
This is : Lara for Genesis 8 Female from another store. I believe there was a PA here who created similar looks, but they have left, and we never got their secret smile recipe.
You're allowed to name the artist & the site, just not link.