What is the best face transfer tool?

daybird

Until now there are many face tranfer tools available in the shop and I'm a little unsure which I should take.

Some of them are only for G8 some for all, some seem to do all the work by them self and others give me the opportunity to change a lot manually.

Since I work nearly just with G8 I have no problem with such a product.

But I really would like to know from the people who have bought one of this products what you like at the product you picked up and what not.

Blando Calrissian

I own Face Transfer and Face Gen, and they both have their pros and cons.

**Face Transfer is easier to use. As long as you have a relatively head-on, neutral expression photo of a person's face, it will generate a reasonable likeness. However, some of that likeness comes from copying the highlights and shadows in the reference photo and painting those onto the Gen8 face. If you swap out the generated FT skin with one from another character, those fake shadow lines will disappear and the resulting face will look very 'flat.' If you go the FT route, I highly recommend also getting the Face Transfer Shapes product. This will allow you to 'dial in' more accurate shapes to match your reference photo. 

FT will attempt to copy the skin tone from your reference photo, but I've found that the results are rarely good. You'll probably want to swap them out for someting created by a good skin/character artist.

Finally, one thing to watch out for in FT is a tendency to deliver an exaggerated asymmetrical face, usually in the form of the left eye being lower than the right, or the left corner of the mouth being higher than the right (even with the best reference photos). Sometimes this is subtle, sometimes it is not.

***I've found that Face Gen Pro is much more difficult to use, but just because it has a steeper learnng curve doesn't make it impossible to use. The hardest part is fiuring out where to locate the reference 'dots' on your reference photos. FG provides a guide, but if you follow that guide exactly, your generated face will look like a moon pie. On the other hand, FG gives you the option to use up to three reference photos- front, left side, right side- which makes the finished product more accurate than Face Transfer. 

FG is much better than FT at generating skin tones. It will also save those tones as a separate skin file, so if you ditch the skin to use another character's maps, and then change your mind, you can plus the original FG-generated skin tones back in without going through the whole process again. About the only place where FG falls down in this department is in the eyes. The eyes themselves usually don't come out right, and if the person in your reference photo has long eyelashes, those eyelashes will transfer to the G8 figure's eyelids, giving them a streaky black appearance if you pose them with eyes closed.

So, in summary:
Face Transfer pros: Cheaper; easy to use; works best with PhilW's add-on
Face Transfer cons: Faces need additional tweaking if you change the skin; generated skins don't look good, faces can look off even with a good photo
Face Transfer tip: Photos with hair around the side of the face will make the face too wide; use a photo with hair in a bun or close-cut for best results

Face Gen pros: More reference photos means better accuracy; can create good skins with a good reference photo; also works with OBJs; more user control over the transfer process
Face Gen cons: Expensive; steeper learning curve; eye materials look bad; eye shapes can come out weird; kind of a clunky older interface
Face Gen tip: The Forums here have several threads dedicated to helping people obtain a better result from the product. Great stuff.

EDIT: I should add that a set of face morphs is critical, regardless of what route you choose, so that you can fine-tune the results yourself. You can also make corrections in Blender, which is free to use, and which has a pretty good sculpting feature. I've used it in the past to help correct the aforementioned Face Transfer "droopy eye" issue. 

There are plenty of good morph sets at the Shop, including these, and these. If I recall you may also be able to find morph sets for free (legally!) on some of the other 3D product sites and/or at DeviantArt.
 

daybird

Thx a lot for this detailed explanation.

That helped a lot.

Since I'm a total beginner  I tend to Face Transfere now, but I have set both of them in my wishlist.

Also a great thank for pointing me to FTS this will come also in handy and since it was on sale I bought it instant.

THX Daybird aka Lykantos

sjroste

Blando Calrissian said:

I own Face Transfer and Face Gen, and they both have their pros and cons. [...]

I appreciate these recommendations with succinct pros/cons.

I just recently purchased HeadShopPRO because it was on sale and I had a coupon code on top of that, but now I wish I had used in on your Face Gen recommendation.

• I've already spent 3 days just trying to install HeadShopPRO.
• The installation instructions that come with the product are completely outdated. You have to find the updated instructions on their website, but only the PDF, because their YouTube video is still out of date.
• Then, after (or if) you get it installed properly, the face image doesn't apply to the head properly, despite following the instructions.
• Then, an entire menu for editing the texture/geometry is missing.
• I haven't been able to find any sort of support forums, updates, FAQs, etc.

So I will be returning HeadShopPRO and hoping to get Face Gen when it's on sale, if possible.