How do you deal with face expressions for your customized characters?

Dissendior

I realized that most of the pre-defined face expressions are already exaggerated so playing around with the sliders is necessary - 100 % of a face expression is almost never a good idea. I now played around with head and face morphs and in that way mixed different characters. What I now see is that the face starts to look more and more weird for some face expressions which might look well enough on other characters. For example in one of my characters the bottom eye lid goes too much over the eye when I add a smiling. 

Just in general - is it common that the same face expressions can look different on another or customized character? And if so how do you deal with that? Do you create custom morphs or do you play around with the sliders? I saw products selling face expressions for specific characters (like Michael8) - I think this might be a contribute to the fact that a customized head/face might react in different ways to the existing sliders? 

crosswind

Yes, that's common. Most of the expression products were made with Base figure (or certain Characters..), that's why they cannot be well applicable for various characters, even you'll find them pretty ugly on some of your characters (with morphs fusion or highly customized).

In some cases in which you dial a certain or mixed expression properties, you'll find some partial mesh as well as attachments (e.g. Eyelashes) don't "well follow" even distorted. That's why vendors made corrective morphs on their characters (e.g.: eJCM or MCM on Genesis 8). So if you wanna have such perfection on your characters with these expressions dialed, you have to make the corrective morphs in the same way, for instance, fix them in Blender and import back as eJCM, as well as for the followers (Eyelashes, Tears... etc.)

I myself, from time to time, make unique expressions for my characters, with Blender, with PowerPose tool, etc. I even don't use any expression products in quite a few cases.

Richard Haseltine

Which figure? Generally character and shape makers will add corrective morphs for thes tandard daz expression controls - however, Genesis 8 and 8.1 use different sets of controls, and 8.1 does not load the 8 expressions, so 8 shapes on 8.1 will not have corrections for the 8.1 expressions and the 8 expressions, for which they may well have corrections, will not be available.

crosswind

Following Richard's post, if you ever removed the "dummy aliases" that block G8.0's base pose head and expressions on G8.1, then the case might be more complex if you dialed both of G8.0's expressions and G8.1's FACS expressions... Better use only one of the systems, either the former or the latter.

Dissendior

Okay... just for clarification:

• it's actually the case that the expressions may need morphs for a specific character to really fit his face shape. And many expressions already come with character specific morphs which are activated when I dial in an expression
• when I customize a character it's not unusual that I may need to adjust the face for a expression
• additionally there are different sets of expressions / controls for G8 and G8.1 and I shouldn't mix them. I had a view at the pose controls for my G8.1 figure and found a "Expressions" and a "Expressions 8.1" sub-categorie where the "Expressions" is greyed out, tweaking the controls here has none to just a very little influence on the expressio of the figure. I thik you mean these expressions which are for G8?
  • As I used the G8.1 figure in Blender with Diffeomorphic I might have dialed in a G8 expression on this figure, I am not sure
• the FARC expressions are all just for G8.1?! I can't use them on G8?

crosswind

Dissendior said:

Okay... just for clarification:

• it's actually the case that the expressions may need morphs for a specific character to really fit his face shape. And many expressions already come with character specific morphs which are activated when I dial in an expression

That's right... Technically, the character specific expressions / corrective morphs can be Zeroed in Parameters pane (some in hidden properties), but that'll be cumbersome. You may leave them there, fix the expressions in blender as needed, and import as a delta morph. 

• when I customize a character it's not unusual that I may need to adjust the face for a expression

Fairly usual and common... and that could always the last step of customizing a character. Then save the character's specific expression presets.

• additionally there are different sets of expressions / controls for G8 and G8.1 and I shouldn't mix them. I had a view at the pose controls for my G8.1 figure and found a "Expressions" and a "Expressions 8.1" sub-categorie where the "Expressions" is greyed out, tweaking the controls here has none to just a very little influence on the expressio of the figure. I thik you mean these expressions which are for G8?
  • As I used the G8.1 figure in Blender with Diffeomorphic I might have dialed in a G8 expression on this figure, I am not sure

That's correct. "Expressions" path is for G8.0. If you don't remove the "blockers" in data folder, they won't work. Just refer to the attached SS to test...

• the FARC expressions are all just for G8.1?! I can't use them on G8?

Nope... G8.1 can read and load G8.0's morphs / pose controls, but not conversely, which is "backward compatible" only.

Dissendior

thank you againn, this is soooo helpful!