R&H's easy morphing tips!!

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

I get asked a bazillion times how do I do it? So here's a hopefully useful answer for all of you. Truthfully what follows is simplified, I usually go to insane lengths to make something esthetically pleasing to me, but I'll let you discover that on your own. Right now this should BE instructive to those of you with little experience in morphing and probably enetertaining to those of you who excell, but have different styles than me.

The following posts will break down my 3 main morphing archetypes, although I freely combine all three on a regular basis, it still pays to seperate them for discussion:

1) Head swapping
2) Copy and Paste
3) Donor Boobs

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Head swapping is easy to learn, yet more powerful than you think. It's the easiest way to plop your subject into a situation or local. If you find the

right body and hair match and the lighting is similar, it can be nearly undetectable!!

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

What I like to call Copy & Paste is working strictly with the image you have by copying, pasting and distorting the single image. This can work really

well if your subject has relativly even hues and contrast. This will fail the easiest if your suject has patterned clothing that betrays the expansion
but it automatically solves the problem of matching the color and contrast.

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Thirdly What many refer to as donor boobs, pasting in large breasts from another image, sidesteps the danger of overstretching the original, or overusing the liquefy tool(yuk!) by having breasts that are already naturally large grafted on to your image. The only danger here is matching the color and contrast of your original image. To that end I have an enormous gallery of large naked breasts and spilling cleavage at all angles, sizes, shapes, colors and textures.

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

this thread:
http://forum.bearchive.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=369124&an=0&page=0#Post369124
pretty much covers it.

I hope this was helpful to you all.

yours,
Bob

[rtpoe]

Someone save this for the Tutorial Section that we have around here somewhere!

[OrangeSickel]

Who is the girl in the Copy & Paste section?

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Busty Merilyn, I believe.

[ZoD]

Hey, this has prompted me to re install photoshop!
Nice tutorial R'n'H!

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Thank you Zod

I am pointing to the thread below as well, for when it drops off  page one, because it has some alternative tricks I find useful. And in honor of head swapping I give you JLH!!

http://forum.bearchive.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=534530&an=0&page=0#Post534530

[AgentDee]

Bob, Q-BE is gonna LOVE that morph

[Palomine]

 R&H, I just wanted to say, that this thread is interesting even to non-moprhers like myself... I had a good idea of the process, and of the popular techniques including the much-discussed 'shrink the girl', but it's fascinating to see it spelled out like this... makes me appreciate the morpher's art that much more. Thanks!  

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Thanks Pallie, I never heard of shrink the girl, I'm gussing that's the converse of copy and paste. Shrink the girl instead of expand the boobs? Maybe?

Bob

[Shara]

yup, according to most it helps with resolution errors, but it's actually the same way all around

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Sorry to bump my own thread, but 2 months and 900 views later, I'm wondering if anybody has found this useful and /or put any of it into practice??

Feedback would be useful as I am not sure what is still in my head and what actually made it down on to the post!!

bob

[Angelus]

Quote:
Sorry to bump my own thread, but 2 months and 900 views later, I'm wondering if anybody has found this useful and /or put any of it into practice??

Feedback would be useful as I am not sure what is still in my head and what actually made it down on to the post!!

bob

You know what?

Fuck it, I'll give it a shot. Let's see what happens.



God help us all.

[Benji Dude]

Quote:
You know what?

Fuck it, I'll give it a shot. Let's see what happens.



God help us all.

What does the big purple robot have to say about that?  Surely it must violate the terms of your contract?

Benji "at the very least you'll be taking his job away" Dude

[Angelus]

Quote:

Quote:
You know what?

Fuck it, I'll give it a shot. Let's see what happens.



God help us all.

What does the big purple robot have to say about that?  Surely it must violate the terms of your contract?

Benji "at the very least you'll be taking his job away" Dude

It'll be ok, I really suck at this.

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Galvatron schooled me on why I was having so much trouble with certain models, Like Allyson Hannigan, during head swaps and his response was so instructive I quote it here for posterity:

Quote:
GALVATRON said:
bwaaahhh!

Here's the problem, or at least, here's how I see the problem. Alyson is a skinny girl, with a face to match. You're trying to put her skinny girl head, on the body of a heavy girl. The result is bound to look out of place. Michelle, had a bit more roundness to her features, so a fuller bodied swap doesn't looks so out of place.

And now for a general word on a fulfilling career in face swaping:

1. Pick the right head for the right body. Try to find a donor body, of a girl with a similar head shape, size length... This was just touched on, but it really makes everything MUCH easier. For example, Natalie Portman looks great with Christinamodel, their heads just mesh really well. (making Natalie that wierd orange color is a bitch though)

2. Placement. This can be tricky. Try and find a picture where the "new face" is in the same position as the old one. As a rule of thumb, I like to use the ears as the "lining up" point. The first reaction is to use the eyes or the jaw, but this will result in an off looking picture, because not everyone's eyes are equally distant in relation to their head, same of jaw. But, eveyone's ears are more or less where their head meets thier neck. If there is excess jaw hanging out, you'll need to clone over it. Of course, this is rarely perfect. Which segues nicely into the next part...

3. THE NECK! When a head is in a different position, the neck will fold differently. Study some anatomy and try to recreate any new folds, trachea bulges...

4. Hair. This can be another pain; but, it can also become a friend to cover up flaws. If someone's head is looking to flat, not enough crown, neck problems, add some more hair! Find donor hair from another picture if needed. Of course blending hair can be arduous, but poorly blended hair can be a crappy picture. (Be sure to test the image at different brightnesses, Many A time I make a  pic on one monitor and it looks fantastic, only to see it on a different monitor, and I notice a bunch of hue, brightness, and sharpess differences that make the image look like crap) One last, but important thing about hair. Always keep the hairline of the person who is being portrayed as the fake. A picture of Aly Hannigan, should have Aly Hannigan's hair line. Otherwise it looks like an amalgm rather than a fake. Bangs, or any hair peeking over the face is the only exception to this.

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Another shameless bump, but I would just like to know if anybody has found this useful and if I may have left out anything, or if anyone has any questions.

Bob

[Lohanwantsbigboobies]

I didn't mainly coz i can't afford PSP or any software am learning with gimp...and failing miserably.

[jayjay88]

Quote:
ROUNDandHEAVY said:
Another shameless bump, but I would just like to know if anybody has found this useful and if I may have left out anything, or if anyone has any questions.

Bob <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I just had a quick look, Bob...don't normally look in here.  You did a lot of hard work for little response which often happens unfortunately.  Your instructions were well presented and quite comprehensive.  I never use the head swop...yours of JLH onto Merilyn's bod is hugely successful!  I use the second two techniques mixed with lots of little tricks as you obviously do.  And I spend probably 2/3 of my time on finishing a morph: hi-lighting and shading etc. ... that's where the 'close to reality' comes into it... at least the attempt to get the max out of a morphed photo.

I hope some people benefitted from your efforts...

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Thanks for the response. I hope people found it interesting if not personally helpful.

Bob

[TheZookie007]

I'm not an artist, so I really don't look at this part of the BEA Forum. But I am glad that I did today. I am always fascinated by "how we did it" threads, and this is one of those.

Fantastic work, RaH. I wonder if magic & Sako would be willing to make a similar thread?

[Zorro]

Well I am not an artist either. I just take what is there and manipulate the pixels.

I use combinations of donor boobs, liquify, and cut and paste.
With Adobe PhotoShop you have to be extremely careful using the liquify tool though as the finished breasts will look terrible.

I started out using Paint Shop Pro 6 and it took me forever to work on one picture.

I think I have progressed a bit since I started morphing 4 years ago though.  

 

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

Zorro old bean, You were actually the first morpher whose work I saw back in the old Expanding Horizons MSN groups. Analyzing your's, Cheviot's and Magic's work was how I got started.

I argue at your assumption that you are not an artist.

[Q_BE]

Quote:
AgentDee said:
Bob, Q-BE is gonna LOVE that morph

Yes, I do!

Sorry I didn't see it sooner, R&H! I was curious about the morphing tutorial (especially since I'm interested in trying a morph one day), and I just noticed the morph two years after the fact!

Anyway, R&H, if it pleases you to hear this, you've come a long way from the days when you made that JLH morph, especially given the fact you were taught by Galvatron how to make skinny girl head morph swaps, improving upon the above JLH picture morph, which is still great!

Suffice it to say, R&H, do you think you could give that morph a second shot, just to see how you would do it differently this time?

Q-"I'd like to see you try"-BE

[tyr]

my hardest part of swapping is the hue/saturation, brightness/contrast any way to do it easy? any tips would be good

[PET]

Quote:
ROUNDandHEAVY said:
Zorro old bean, You were actually the first morpher whose work I saw back in the old Expanding Horizons MSN groups. Analyzing your's, Cheviot's and Magic's work was how I got started.

I argue at your assumption that you are not an artist.

agree, Zorro's and Magic's early work blow me away when I saw it the first time, the first morphs I saw, I thought they were real pictures and not fakes, silly me...but I didnt know much about PS at the time.

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

I like to set the contrast first, sometimes its hard to see the matching contrast with radically different colors.

I always try to to avoid this by picking close matches in the first place. Of course i have amassed quite a collection of donors to choose from, this helps.

[Magiciano]

I really like this thread alot.  It made feel like I was in class again.  I will try to use your theories with the resources that I have.  I do not have photoshop but I make due with what I have.  I will to strive for an A on the final exam.  I realize that you put a lot of time into creating this thread.  Thank You very much.

[Shara]

my hardest part of swapping is the hue/saturation, brightness/contrast any way to do it easy? any tips would be good

Use level/color layers to work on the details without ruining your existing work

[ROUNDandHEAVY]

I really like this thread alot.  It made feel like I was in class again.  I will try to use your theories with the resources that I have.  I do not have photoshop but I make due with what I have.  I will to strive for an A on the final exam.  I realize that you put a lot of time into creating this thread.  Thank You very much.

It was my pleasure. If even one person benefitted here, then it was worth it.

[robclassact]

Giving away your tips? I dunno, man. You know what they say...

Give a man a fish, and he knows where to go to get fish.

Teach a man to fish, and you destroy your market base. What's wrong with you?

[cynics]

Thanks for the tips bob, i've been attempting these for a bit now and failing somewhat.  I'm currently working of faceswap and i'm having alot of difficulty matching the skintone.  The face and the body i'm swapping have similar skin tone but one picture is kind of dark and the other is well lit.  so i keep tweaking but its still obvious it is not the same face.  any tips on how to refine my methods to get the skin tone matching better?