Facial Studio

Motion pictures you see on TV and modern movies all go through heavy processing in every step of development. The same goes for video games, with 3D models created in professional environments such as Facial Studio. Dedicated only to heads, the application lets you import images in order to create and render high-quality face objects to use in more complex projects.

The application easily introduces you to its rich set of features, first of all through an intuitive design that somehow manages to keep things simple and not make you feel overwhelmed. Although you get to use a decent amount of editing tools, these are stored in separate windows you can either dock to the canvas or leave floating on your desktop.

A sample figure is put at your disposal as soon as you start a new project. It can be viewed with textures, as wireframe or both for better analysis. Every minor adjustment you make has a direct impact on the given figure, which serves as a real time updating preview of the model you want to create.

It's not mandatory to import pictures, but it's one of the application's main features so it's worth at leas a try. This is done through a dedicated open dialog that lets you add front and side images. These can be of common formats like JPG, BMP or TGA.

Once added, the photomatching tool lets you crop, adjust size, rotate, manage brightness and contrast. Technical details are the star of the show, with mapping through points you can arrange for both front and side views. At the press of a button, a map is created with the possibility to export as images and even view gathered textures applied to your model. Needless to say that the higher the image resolution, the better your object is rendered.

Editing doesn't stop here, but rather just begins. With the face all mapped out and textures applied, you can work on minor tweaks to make the object fully resemble a real person. It's achievable nonetheless, and there are countless adjustments to prove it.

Bringing up the deformation panel is where all the fun is hidden. Every face element and feature benefits from an impressive array of sliders and values that, if carefully adjusted, result is an almost perfect representation of a human head.

These are cleverly stored in categories like cheeks, ears, eyes, jaw, neck, teeth, chin, eyebrows, forehead, mouth, nose and tongue. An easier approach is through the shapes manager tool, which comprises of a few preset face areas to quickly create expressions.

Just so it doesn't leave your work hanging, the application lets you export to some useful formats such as FBX, OBJ or even 3DS so you can directly add it to your 3D Studio Max projects. You can just export face textures and the whole map to use as resources.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Facial Studio lives up to expectations and provides a surprisingly comprehensive environment in which you can create 3D heads from images. Editing features are abundant, letting you handle even the smallest of facial details. With fully mapped textures and neat export options, you don't need to rely on complex modeling applications anymore.