If you’ve ever wanted to place your face on a super hero’s body, now is your chance. The Face Room includes several sets of controls for creating and modifying the look of the figure face. These modified faces are then applied to the figure model.

There are two ways to modify faces in the Face Room. One way is to change the face texture, which can include color, shading, highlighting, beard, and so on. Another way to alter the face is to change the head’s geometry by deforming the head model.

A number of parameters are available for changing the face’s texture, including the ability to load custom face images. Using the Photo Lineup panes in the Face Room, you can load custom front and side view face images and map them to the head geometry for the current figure. You can also save the existing texture map and edit it within an image-editing package.

Even more parameters are available to change the head geometry, including a Face Shaping Tool, which lets you deform the head geometry by dragging in a separate pane. You can apply the resulting face to the current figure by simply clicking a button.

This chapter also looks at the parameters available for working with expressions. When the head element is selected, a number of parameter dials are available in the Parameter palette. These dials let you control the look of the Brow, Eyes, Nose, Jaw, Lips, and Tongue to create an infinite number of expressions. The parameters also include several Phonemes morphs that can simulate the facial expressions used to speak.

Learn The Face Room Interface
You open the Face Room by clicking the Face tab at the top of the Poser interface. This opens an interface setup that is different from the Pose Room, as shown in Figure 9-1. The main interfaces within this room are the Photo Lineup, Face Texture Tool, Face Preview, Texture Preview and the Face Shaping Tool palettes. If any of these palettes aren’t open, you can make them available using the Window, Room Tools, Face menu.

You cannot access the File, Save menu command when the Face Room is open. To save the current scene, click the Pose tab to access the Pose Room again.

When you open the Face Room, the head of the matching figure is loaded by default. Most of the default figures have a matching head that you can work with, but some default figures and custom figures that you load may not have a head that works in the Face Room. If a matching head isn’t available, a warning dialog box will appear when you open the Face Room saying that the selected figure is not a known Face Room figure and a default male head will automatically be loaded instead.

The Ryan Casual and the Alyson Casual figures in the Library do not have matching Face Room heads.

Using the Photo Lineup Palette
You use the Photo Lineup palette, shown in Figure 9-2, to load custom front and side face images into the Face Room. These images can then be matched to a 3D head using a series of walkthrough steps. To the left side of the palette are several buttons used to load, remove, and manipulate the face images.