Hi folks -I'm finally making a big dive into Oblivion, and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions to help with face and looks textures. So far, Melora (Dunmer) is running these mods:

Blockhead
Natural Faces
Oblivion Character Overhaul

Any help is appreciated!

Melora

Wow, she already looks like a big improvement over the vanilla Obliv peeps. Khajiit has only used the mods you mentioned for Oblivion so this one won't be any help.

You really think so? I've only invested time into Skyrim thus far, so maybe my expectations were a little too lofty.

And the screenshot is with Oblivion Character Overhaul? Nuska's OCO? I'm guessing Natural Faces is overwriting a few things (I've never used Natural Faces), because that doesn't look like a Dunmer from Nuska's OCO. I'd ask if it was v1 or v2? but it seems that OCO v1 is gone now (and Nuska's banned from the Nexus????)

I wouldn't use both, since Natural Faces is meant for Vanilla and OCO is, well, an overhaul. Unless that's what you were going for.

But yeah, I vouch for OCO. The latest v1 offered a decent alternative to v2 before it was gone. v2 has its issues but overall it makes character faces A LOT better than vanilla. You may need some patches to fix some NPCs because it's pretty obvious the mod was thrown in as-is with no regard to what the NPC's look like with the new visuals.

Compatibility Patches?

A friend went and fixed some NPC's herself and shared the patch with me but I haven't seen her in a while so I'm not sure where to get it from. :V

I haven't been back to Oblivion for a while, but I recall that there were a few more options like a replacement head mesh that you didn't mention. (Head06 by throttlekitty) Just like Skyrim, you need texture replacers that map to the heads and bodies you choose, and you could make your own using some Photoshop layer kits (also worked OK in GIMP). I did the latter, and mixed and matched layers from multiple mods.

It was also possible to use a body replacer as "clothing" to have one NPC a different shape from another when naked, and of course the clothing could include a variant body size.

Extreme example

Yeah, in Khajiit's opinion, you aren't going to get a great looking character in Oblivion. The system Beth instituted for character creation is just... off. This one really does think that she's a whole lot better looking than vanilla though.

Nuska indeed. Didn't realize natural faces was an overwrite - wouldn't have added that one.


Thanks - I'll have to look into this, too.


I think she just needs more tweaking (and less blue).

Yeah in vanilla you had to seriously play with the skin tone sliders to get a Dunmer that didn't look like a smurf. Khajiit actually did have some success with this, turning his Dunmer characters a dark, slightly greenish grey color.

Made some progress!! I removed Natural Faces, and installed Compatibility Patches, and Seamless. This was the result:

Melora

I also changed "bFaceGenTexturing=1" to "bFaceGenTexturing=0" in the .ini.

There you go.

Lots of folks have beat me to the punch on this one. Looks like you're getting there!!!! OCOv2 is indeed the way to go, imo. Bevilex devotes a section of his Oblivion Graphics Modlist? to OCO and add-ons. I followed its body/face recommendations to the letter for my experimental Oblivion build. You can see the results in my recent screenshots posted in the appropriate Oblivion sub-forum thread. Bear in mind that almost all experimental build captures also feature Oblivion Reloaded, which further improves graphics. More recent shots feature both Oblivion Reloaded and an ENB, though with that combo I've still got a number of graphical kinks to iron out.

ooh, thanks for that link! I'll have to go check your screens, too.

So, OCOv2....anyone have it working well? I can never seem to get results like they show on the mod page, and the last few times I tried to install it, I could not get it running.

Serethil is attempting it, too, and is also having issues getting it to play nice.

Any tips or tricks?

Isn't that what Decrepit's been using?

I don’t know if anyone is needing this currently (I might in the next couple of days), but there is apparently a new version of Oblivion Character Overhaul that someone took the time to clean and what not. I’ll probably give it a cursory whirl. OCO has traditionally been a bit finicky, so if it gives me too much trouble I’ll probably just stick with vanilla faces. Given enough time, I can make something I can live with.

OCO tends to mess up faces of NPCs added by mods because, well, it messes up faces. That is, faces need to be redone to look good with OCO. You may want to check whether there are OCO patches for the mods you want to use, if you are looking to install quest mods in particular. You'd notice those NPCs more than some random bandits.

There are also a number of new mods that modify vanilla heads by gently changing the mesh. They are designed to work with vanilla faces, that is, they don't deform them. The results are quite impressive! It is suprising how little the mesh needs to be changed for the face to look different.

For example, see this:

Undeformed Potatoes - fixes up vanilla NPCs without changing the mesh.

Enhanced Vanilla Faces - changes the mesh slightly which improves vanilla faces. Works well with Undeformed Potatoes.

I don’t see a huge difference with the first mod, but that second one does make a good difference! I can see how together they could be very beneficial.

What also makes a big difference is face textures. Some of those mods are referenced from the two I listed, but there's more. So if you wanted to try something different than OCO, there are actually quite a lot of options for the vanilla heads.

I’ve actually decided against bothering with OCO. I had forgotten how drastically they change the faceshape of some of the races (Like the Dunmer, eesh ). If I feel the need to, I will look into face texture mods. I’m trying to keep it mod light, so I’ll probably just stick to vanilla in this area.

I keep mine vanilla. I actually find that it makes the faces expressive, and that this expressiveness is getting erased with mesh improvements, texture replacers and of course OCO... But it is a matter of taste, first and foremost, and my taste is apparently not "canonical", whatever that may mean... I personally find blue better than green, but the prevalent opinion is to the opposite.

I mean, it’s one thing if the characters were designed to look like that in the first place. Oblivion’s art style in general is very different from Morrowind and Skyrim’s, which share some common themes in their art design (like with the design of the Mer races). OCO attempts to drag Oblivion’s character designs in line with Morrowind and Skyrim’s (again, particularly with the design of the Mer), and it just ends up looking very out of place, IMO. I’ve come to realize that, as bad as they are, Oblivion’s little pudding faces are just part of the game’s charm. I will definitely check out some of the mods you mentioned though, as they don’t change too much about the faces like OCO does.

Wish I had seen this earlier, but my time has been consumed lately by plumbing issues (my basement is undergoing a complete basement breakout and cast-iron pipe replacement, what a mess).

I've been using OCOv2 for my current game and for the most part I do like it. There are a couple of things that I do take exception with. Like Lena Wolf said mods that add custom heads are liable to be affected by grey-face, if you're familiar with Skyrim's grey-face you'll know what I mean. It's correctable should I take or had the time to do so. It only affects one of my companions and is only noticeable under certain lighting conditions.

My biggest complaint is Nuska's take on the Orcs. If fashion runway model faces with their pointy noses, and dainty little tusks aren't bad enough she had to paint them shades of brown instead of shades of green. I've made attempts to bring back the pig snouts a green complexion with limited success.

If I was to do it all over, I might go back to TNR.

What is TNR?

Tamriel NPCs Revamped. It's not bad but that's not to say I didn't like everything. For example, the Countess of Leyawiin I found to be much too old. Easy fix in the CS.

For the Orcs I wanted an even more brutish appearance, so I added Room207 Orsimer Overhaul.

Ok thanks!

Here is one that I have used in the past and forgot about:

Natural Faces

It really does help make the vanilla faces look a bit better.

I find that with all the face mods (from subtle to OCO), the premise must be that you don't like the way faces look in vanilla. Because if you do, then none of it is an improvement... (which is what I found).

It is certainly subjective, to be sure, and you *can* create a face that is not too bad without any mods. There is a good bit of weirdness with some of the NPC faces and a little sprucing up doesn’t really hurt any, imo.