On a quick test, the free The Many Faces of Moggadeet for Poser. Most are for Michael 3.0 character (M3) with “Michael 3 Head & Body Morphs”, and in terms of expressions they benefit from having additional M3 head morphs INJs found in the Brom pack. Sadly for others, the rather vital “Michael 3 Head & Body Morphs” pack appears to no longer be on sale.
But many will still have them in their runtimes (likely to be in your runtime as !M3 All Morphs INJs), and a few of Moggadeet’s Faces require other stock Poser characters. The Moggadeet sets’s four visual previews show which base characters are required.
ShareCG says “Non-commercial use”, but the file in the Moggadeet download says “File has no restrictions … Commercial use is at your own risk.” The file was rescued from oblivion and uploaded to ShareCG by a third-party, so I guess the uploader played safe with the licensing. The pack does after all contain living actors, as well as deceased. Fair enough, but be aware that the original maker had “no restrictions”.
In Moggadeet we have 3D faces for, among others…
Edgar Allen Poe.
Innsmouth denizen.
Whateley (a character in Lovecraft’s famous fun story “The Dunwich Horror”).
H.P. Lovecraft himself.
Hair and skin, as seen in the rendered previews, is not included. Once installed in your runtime the faces/heads show up under…
.. | Expressions | Famous
As you can tell it’s mostly H.P. Lovecraft and his idol Poe that I’m interested in, but there’s a wealth of other items. Including the Cheshire Cat for the Millennium Cat, which might be rather fab with a suitable Poser Hair Room fur preset if someone can make one. (Since there are “no restrictions”, the cat could theoretically be re-distributed as a freebie with suitably coloured fur – Tenniel coloured, not Disney coloured).
Suitable textures for the pack’s “Innsmouth denizen” and others can also be found at Inmate – Faces for Michael 3, David & The Freak. The pack is paid, but the same Web page has a free body and head M3 texture suitable for Innsmouth with a bit of green tinting. Another suitable M3 texture is “Lord Moldyshorts”, available free at TrekkieGrrrl.dk (second or third page).
The workflow in working down your runtime folders:
.. Figures | DAZ people | M3
.. Pose | !M3 All Morphs INJ
.. | Pose | CDI Brom | Head morphs INJ (optional)
.. | Expressions | Famous
I tried the H.P. Lovecraft and found him to be a bit of disappointment, as I had a few years ago. I had hoped that my having the Brom morphs might improve matters, but not really. And he doesn’t look good in the Smooth Shaded display mode I was hoping he might look good in. For some reason he just doesn’t have the lines that other Moggadeet characters have. Just too smooth I guess, and lacking crags and wrinkles to catch a nice graphic “drawn ink” look. However Wizard Whateley looks interesting in Smooth Shaded with real-time Comic Book inking turned on, as does the Innsmouth frog-man denizen. As you can see here…
Looking again at the thumbnail sheets above, it seems that the user is meant to elongate the Innsmouth head to get the full effect. Oh well, too late now. It’s more “Gollum” than “Innsmouth”.
Poe also looks good, but is not recognisable as Poe without the trademark hair. And with the M3 base character, popular though he was, one of the main difficulties today is finding hair that’s: i) suited to a more unusual character; ii) fits well and; iii) shows up and toons nicely in Preview mode. There’s Poser’s Hair Room of course, but that type of hair doesn’t show up in the Preview display/render mode.
I did some further tests to see if the Brom morphs are needed, and find they only seem to make a difference in terms of the expressiveness and tweaks you can apply. They appear to make no difference in terms of M3 simply taking the initial face preset of at least one of the faces…
So there’s obviously a huge amount of comic-book toony-face potential with M3 + head morphs, when in the real-time Smooth Shaded display mode and with Poser’s real-time Comic Book turned on and the right light. It may be worth continuing to tweak the Lovecraft character to get something as toonable as the other faces, but I think the Meshbox Lovecraft is going to be the 3D choice for those doing over-inking. Here’s a comparison to the Meshbox Lovecraft 3D figure (reviewed in detail in Digital Art Live #35), which does nothing in Smooth Shaded display mode, but which in a very low light in Texture Shaded display mode can be made somewhat useful…
Definitely not ideal, though. I had to force the Comic Book effect up quite high, which resulting in doubled ink lines on the nose and part of the upper chin. The old gent is just too smooth.