How did you all create the faces you came up with? Buffy, Lothran, MaxiCal?

Well, as for me I didn´t have any template or anything. I chose Dunmer because I liked the description of them in the manual and then I just played with the sliders to find a setting where I thought he looked good


You´ve seen it many times before, but here´s the results





This post has been edited by mirocu: Feb 12 2015, 09:50 AM

When I first brought Buffy to TES, it was Oblivion. Prior to that, her look in other games was no more sophisticated than blond hair and blue eyes. As a fragile archer who backed herself up with magic, Bosmer seemed a good choice. So it was in TES where Buffy emerged firmly as an elf - a choice I've been very happy with. For her face, I simply used the tried and true 'cycle through the presets until you find something you can work with'. Well, one of them sort of spoke to me, so I went to work tweaking the sliders to suit a very hazy vision I had of her. Since then, she's evolved through several makeovers. Most of the changes she went through in OB were to make her more attractive and 'polished'.

Her Skyrim evolution has focused on two areas. Firstly, Skyrim is a harsh and stark land so I've tried to keep her from looking too 'Cosmo' perfect - so I actually stepped her back a bit from her somewhat 'covergirl' Oblvion look. Secondly, I've tried to emphasize that she is an elf - not simply a human with big ears. Yet I refuse to give up the blue eyes. So that has meant trying to emphasize other facial aspects that I tend to associate with elves such as large eyes that tilt up at the outer edges, high cheek bones and a pointed chin.

Most of my NPC's started with constraining age in the Construction Set, and then generating random faces until I got something I liked. Then I'd adjust the result until it "matched" the personality I wanted. In a few cases, like Juliana, or Silanu and Miranu, I was making sisters or cousins of existing characters, so I'd start with their faces instead of the random ones. Virgilia's mother Ovidia is simply Virgilia with the age slider moved up.

I've also done something similar for a few others. Darwen was based on Parwen and Carwen, because both of those look good. I picked the average of their settings to get mine. Then Cyndil the archer and Horwen (the Bosmer acolyte of Dibella) were tweaked a bit from that result. I forget what I did for Enilwen, probably something similar.

Tsarrina just got a new outfit, as did Nelrene.

Clark got done twice. The first was kind of random, and just supposed to make him look young and inexperienced for the start of his story, and then his re-made face had to be based on that, making him look a bit older. In Skyrim, since he's a follower based on Marcurio, I started there and adjusted towards Oblivion Clark as much as I could.

Oops, sorry about that! Here it is:


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...eenShot1051.jpg







Seconded!





This post has been edited by mALX: Feb 12 2015, 11:50 PM

mALX, I remember that! Maxical and Vilja did not get on without some sparks as I recall.

Maxical is a Kawa Shiro Khajiit (mod). Kawa is Japanese for small/cute; Shiro means white = small cute white Khajiit - so that is what I was aiming for when I made her.

I found the mod after seeing this screenshot that I fell in love with for her quasi Oriental face and mystique:


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...-1244394027.jpg



Of course, Maxical has long red hair and green eyes (mysteriously, so do I, lol); so she ended up looking like this:



http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...reenShot522.jpg


http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq67/Ma...reenShot527.jpg




I like that Oriental touch to her face a lot, and the mod gave her a lot of expressions you can't get in a vanilla Khajiit.


(The mod also adds an extra long tail, which gives the tail a lot more movement than the standard Khajiit tail - really nice!)








He is a good looking Dunmer!








That is really interesting, I saw someone use that "Random" trick on YouTube today! I didn't even know what that was for in the facegen!




This post has been edited by mALX: Feb 13 2015, 12:14 AM

I make my faces in a lot of different ways. I have done the trick of hitting randomize again and again until I find something close to what I like, then went and tweaked it for ten or twenty minutes until I got it right. Sometimes I have downloaded character saves, and used Face Exchange Lite to copy the face to a brand new character in the starting cell. Even then I always spend a good fifteen minutes tweaking it. Sometimes I have used the Construction Set to make a preset of an NPC I liked, and then started the game with that, and of course, spent more time tweaking in the game.

And of course when I am doing my tweaks, I always keep proportions in mind, and try to keep them even. That is one of the main things I concentrate on when trying to get things just right.

Not in Oblivion, but in Skyrim - is there anyway to tweak the look of the children that doesn't require a mod? (so they aren't dependent on another mod to look that way)?

The Skyrim kids don't have any face sliders (yet).

There is a mod that's in development that will add them. It's going to do elf and Orc kids too, so my own is suspended until I see how it turned out.

Sliders in game? I was hoping to be able to tweak them in the CK, if possible. In game the children all look exactly alike, and kind of like pumpkin-heads. I can get permission to use RS Children, but the author wants the mod to be dependent on her mod so it will benefit from all the updates, etc - I was just hoping to change these two children, not every child in the game - and really not sure how to make them customized yet still adoptable.

Oh, by the way - I saw an Orc child that was beautiful in a mod the other day; here is a couple screens of her:



http://static-5.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/...-1420264149.jpg



http://static-5.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/...-1420264149.jpg


I thought of you instantly when I saw her!

That's not a child, it's a miniature giant adult. I think at least one other "child" mod is done that way.

By slider I really mean morph, which is a second mesh with the same set of vertices, but some of which are moved. The slider then controls how much each vertex moves linearly towards its corresponding target. Whereas bones are used for rotational transformations of a mesh, morphs are linear, and typically used for shape changes, such as lip-sync. The sliders are just the controls for the morphs.

In Oblivion, it was almost impossible to apply both types of transformation to the same mesh, which is why the hair length slider wouldn't work on a rigged wig that moved with the neck and shoulders.

That was an adult giant? Holy Cow !!!! I would never have guessed that !!! Urk, so I guess I'm just stuck with the pumpkin-head kids,

Oh wow, Lothran's first pic!

Oh yeah, that's right, Buffy has been in other games too. Do you mean games which don't allow much freedom with faces though?



Yah, that's what I've done with my elf. She looks all young and fresh-faced back when I made her on PS3. She has a light smile. By the time she is on PC, she's supposed to be about 7 years older. She's nearly died several times, she is tough and experienced (yet still fragile), so now she rarely smiles. But I DO have a couple pics in which she smiled. Gotta find one of them.



Wow, what a cutie there! Thanks, hon.



Yes, she's got an oriental look for sure. I tried making an Asian-looking character in Oblivion on PS3 long ago, but it's just impossible without mods. Same goes for Skyrim.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Feb 14 2015, 03:15 PM

Yes. For example playing an archer in Diablo II meant a human woman with big bewbs and a blond ponytail with no customization at all except to change armor in game - take it or leave it. The blond ponytail and woman part has stuck; the rest, no so much.

Gosh, it's so nice to get a fresh selection of Lothran shots! I so hope he is enjoying his spring.

Lothran has come to the forum!

Acadian: Oh yeah I know about the 'no customization' thing in older vid games. It's why I got so hooked on Oblivion in 2008. We can create our own guy or gal?

Lothran: Love your new pix, Lothie! Good luck & have fun!

Glad you enjoyed the pixies, guys