Custom head with 3dmenow or facegen & peoplemaker

[Frank Verberne]

Hi all,

I would like to create a custom virtual head based on a front picture and a profile picture. I've tried to use 3dmenow for this, but as soon as I start the program, the example.now file results in a strange 3D preview. Looks like the photos are not correctly applied to the 3D model (see attachment). The same happens when I try to model a 3D head of my own head based on pictures. Somebody knows how to fix this problem?

I've also tried to use facegen to create a 3D model of my own face, but when I import the result of facegen and auto-scale the head (as described in the peoplemaker manual), it becomes tiny and I have to zoom in a lot to be able to see it. Furthermore, navigation becomes near impossible at these scales. The navigation mode does not pivot around with the head as the centerpoint, but around some other (arbitrary?) point. When I do zoom in at the correct level and manage to navigate such that I can see the head, next I need to compute the neck vertices and use the vertex select mode. When I click the compute the neck vertices, my head has a lot of green dots (selected I guess). When I click vertex select mode, I can drag what I want, but it does not change the selection of vertices. Any help with how to solve these problems I'm having with 3dmenow/facegen and peoplemaker are appreciated!

[Frank Verberne]

OK, after playing around with peoplemaker, I managed to select the correct neckvertices and export a correct .vzf file. Two problems left:
- how to make the head of the original avatar invisble (the code from the peoplemaker help file does not work)
- if I put the custom head on the avatar, my head has a slight offset in it's pitch. Do I have to offset the neckbone to correct for that, or is there a more elegant way to fix this?

[Jeff]

Do you have the CompleteCharacters HD? If so, we have some updated files to support the head swapping. Please contact support@worldviz.com for that.

Please attach an image that shows the offset in pitch. Is the head in PeopleMaker showing up with that pitch as well?

[Frank Verberne]

I'm going to use the regular Complete Character set, but for now I've use the male from the Complete Character set that comes with Vizard. The offset is already there in peoplemaker (after I've exported from facegen). The offset is about 20 degrees in pitch. If I change the pitch of the neckbone bij 20, I can make my face look straight ahead (which it should do in it's starting position). As you can see from the screenshots, my head looks about 20 degrees upwards.

[Jeff]

It's not possible to make that adjustment in Peoplemaker. If you're not able to change the way the model is exported try and adjust the head in Vizard every frame:

vizact.onupdate(viz.PRIORITY_LINKS+1,morphing_face.setEuler,0,20,0,viz.REL_LOCAL)

Do you see any problem with the neck when you use this?