Tool · 6 min
The 3D head
A head solved from your own photographs — what it captures faithfully, and the five things it does not capture at all.
The 3D Studio takes a set of photographs of your head and solves a three-dimensional surface from them. Not a stylised avatar and not a face swapped onto a template — the geometry comes from your pictures.
That makes it the only tool here you can rotate, measure from any angle, and hand to a surgeon. It also makes it completely dependent on the photographs you feed it, which is what this page is mostly about.
What to photograph
- 1
One square-on front view
The anchor for everything else. Level, neutral, even light.
- 2
Both three-quarter turns
Halfway between front and profile, on each side. These carry most of the information about your midface and cheek.
- 3
Both profiles
A true 90° each way. Ear visible — see below for why it matters more here than anywhere else.
- 4
A top-down and a back-of-head shot, if you want those parts to be yours
Without them the crown and the back are filled in from a generic head model rather than measured from you.
- 5
All in one session, one light, one expression
The solver has to reconcile every photo into a single head. A smile in half the set and not the other half gives it two different faces to merge, and it will split the difference badly.
What it does not capture
This is the important half of the page, and it is not a disclaimer — these are real properties of how the reconstruction works.
| Limit | What that means for you |
|---|---|
Hair is not built as hair | There is no hair mesh. The result is a single head surface, so hair volume collapses onto the scalp — long, curly or thick hair flattens into the skull underneath it and can pull the outline wrong. Tie it back and get it off your forehead and ears. |
The back and top are inferred | Unless you actually photograph them, the crown and back are filled in from the underlying model rather than measured. The texture there is filled in too. |
Ears set the width of the whole head | Ear position and how far they sit off the skull decide the head's width. Hair over the ears in every photo means that width is a guess. |
Eyes and teeth are generic | They are standard inserts, positioned to fit you but not shaped from you. Judge those from your photos, never from the 3D head. |
Your expression is baked in | Whatever your face is doing in the pictures is what the head does permanently. |
It does not update on its own
A head is solved from the pictures you gave it on the day you built it, and it stays that way. Sliders and procedures applied to it afterwards are a simulation — a projection of what a change might do — not a new measurement of your face.
If you have a better photo set now, build a new head. Pro includes one; each one after that is $25, one-time. The old one stays in your library.