When Chris was making additions to Dawn's morphs in SR1 and SR2, I remember asking for smiling expressions with "less facial creasing", but I couldn't explain what that meant. Maybe showing is better than explaining. I know that Dawn's expressions take into account realistic facial muscle groups, but I think those things vary with age, where the older we get, the deeper those features become.
I wish I could make Dawn smile with less cheek creasing, because that would give her a more jovial look. I also wish she had more smiling variety. In all these years, I have found myself always using the "Joy" smile because the other smiles didn't seem to fit the occasion.
Having that said, below is Terai Yuki 2 showing some of her mouth and lip expressions, where top left is her neutral face, and mid left is her "relaxed lips". Note she basically never creases the cheeks, which may be a feature of her semi-realistic style, but I believe it does give her a more jovial look. It is worth noticing that TY2 is an old, obsolete figure, and she's not very versatile - but what people remember the most about her are her expressions. She's one of the very few figures where we can push her expression dials to max values and she still looks pretty.
I know TY2 is not a realistic figure like Dawn is, but I wish I had an option to make Dawn smile without creasing the cheeks so much. I also like how TY2 smiles in several different ways, sometimes with subtle differences that I find easy to place in my scenes. Dawn has some of these expressions, but I wish I had more to play with. So much that sometimes I replace Dawn's head with TY2's just to get a specific expression, even when TY2 has very few mouth dials.
And here's one morph from Maelwenn's Elisa that I use in almost all Dawn renders nowadays: "Elisa Lips Parted". I would call it "Lips Relaxed" instead, and I use it as a permanent replacement for DawnSE's "Mouth Parted". I love this shape because it "relaxes" the lips instead of opening the mouth. I think it doesn't really replace "Mouth Parted", but instead it adds an option Dawn lacks.
I wish I could make Dawn smile with less cheek creasing, because that would give her a more jovial look. I also wish she had more smiling variety. In all these years, I have found myself always using the "Joy" smile because the other smiles didn't seem to fit the occasion.
Having that said, below is Terai Yuki 2 showing some of her mouth and lip expressions, where top left is her neutral face, and mid left is her "relaxed lips". Note she basically never creases the cheeks, which may be a feature of her semi-realistic style, but I believe it does give her a more jovial look. It is worth noticing that TY2 is an old, obsolete figure, and she's not very versatile - but what people remember the most about her are her expressions. She's one of the very few figures where we can push her expression dials to max values and she still looks pretty.
I know TY2 is not a realistic figure like Dawn is, but I wish I had an option to make Dawn smile without creasing the cheeks so much. I also like how TY2 smiles in several different ways, sometimes with subtle differences that I find easy to place in my scenes. Dawn has some of these expressions, but I wish I had more to play with. So much that sometimes I replace Dawn's head with TY2's just to get a specific expression, even when TY2 has very few mouth dials.
And here's one morph from Maelwenn's Elisa that I use in almost all Dawn renders nowadays: "Elisa Lips Parted". I would call it "Lips Relaxed" instead, and I use it as a permanent replacement for DawnSE's "Mouth Parted". I love this shape because it "relaxes" the lips instead of opening the mouth. I think it doesn't really replace "Mouth Parted", but instead it adds an option Dawn lacks.
