This is the next in a new series of excerpts from the Thomson Course Technology book Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide. In the next few months, VFXWorld readers will develop the skills needed to create, render and animate scenes and projects using the amazing tools offered by Poser 7. We will offer step-by-step tutorials for each task, followed by projects that allow readers to apply each new skill.

What You'll Do
In this lesson, you learn how to create a custom face from loaded front and side view images.

The Face Room includes the capability to create a custom face from digital photos. The needed photos are a front view and a profile view. You can map these images onto the current head element.

Preparing Face Images for Poser
If you're capturing your own digital photos for use in the Face Room, there are several guidelines that you can follow to make the process easier. Following these tips will result in a cleaner import:

• Minimize the amount of hair. The 3D model that the facial images are mapped to are bald; hair can be added using props or the Hair Room. If you can, shoot a subject with a bald head or have the subject pull their hair back so the ears and forehead are exposed.
  
• Avoid smiles. Although a smiling face is a joy, when capturing facial photos, try to have the subject remain expressionless. If the face is in a relaxed state, the match will be better.
  
• Simplify the background. If you capture the images in front of a plain white background, the facial features will stand out and be easier to align. Avoid shooting your facial images with a complex background. If you can't control the background, it can be removed using an image-editing package like Photoshop.
  
• Eliminate shadows. When lighting your subject, make sure the light on the subject's face is sufficient enough to eliminate all shadows cast on the background.
  
• Crop images to the same size. The Photo Lineup wizard assumes that the facial snapshots are roughly the same size and that the images are cropped to show the face in good detail. It helps to make the front and side shots the same size.
  
• Pinch the facial features. If you pull the digital images into an image-editing package, select all the front facial features and scale them down to be tighter. This compensates for the curvature of the head and better aligns the features.
  
• Use a template. Some figures include a template that unwraps the polygons applied to a figure into a template that you can use to help you identify where the seams of the texture map are located.

Loading the Front Face Image
To load a front face image, click the Load Image button to the left of the front pane in the Photo Lineup panel. This opens the Load Front Face Image dialog box to help in the alignment of the photo, shown in Figure 1. This panel lets you position the front image by clicking once to locate the corner of the right eye and again to locate the corner of the left lip. This dialog box also includes a Flip button that you can use to flip the image about its vertical center. After you click to locate the left corner of the lip, the image is placed in the front pane of the Photo Lineup panel. If you make a mistake, use the Delete Image button to remove the loaded image.

Loading the Side Face Image
To load a side face image, click the Load Image button to the left of the side pane in the Photo Lineup panel. This opens the Load Side Face Image dialog box to help in the alignment of the photo, shown in Figure 2. This panel lets you position the side image by clicking once to locate the top of the right ear and again to locate the front of the chin. This dialog box also includes a Flip button that you can use to flip the image about its vertical center. After you click to locate the front of the chin, the image is placed in the side pane of the Photo Lineup panel.