Character face selection has always been a problem in every RPG, not just TES. The problem is not lack of customization, as some people think, or lack of "pretty faces", as others contend. The problem is more fundamental, and it has to do with the way faces are created in 99% of all video games with faces. I would say 100%, but someone might be able to think of an obscure example. Nevertheless, MOST face systems proceed as follows:

Choose face from a list of faces (think WoW or TES 3)

or

Create face using sliders of some sort (like TES 4)

And we've been led to believe that these are the only two ways to do it. The first option allows a player to just select a face and go without having to worry about spending too much time fiddling with dials. The downside is lack of variety. On the other hand, the second option gives almost unlimited variety, but the player must spend a long time to make a non-deformed face. If only there was another way...

Now, my idea:

Before you read about my idea, know that despite my long-winded explanation, this is INCREDIBLY EASY to code.

The player is shown two* randomly generated faces. The features of each face have underlying slider values (just like TES 4) for the various features, which are hidden from the player. All the player sees is two faces. The player is asked to pick which face he/she likes better.

Then the player is shown another two faces. Again, he picks the one he likes better.

And again, and again. For two faces at a time, we would probably need to do this at least a dozen times. For 3 faces, only 8 times. For 4 faces, 6 times.

If the player chooses between 2 options 12 times, that gives a tree of 2^12 = 4096 distinguishable possibilities. This is probably more than enough. However, the beauty of this system is that if you want twice as much refinement, you only need to choose 1 more face!

*I picked the number two for simplicity, but in reality about 3-4 at a time would be better. More than 4 and it gets too difficult for the player to choose.

How is it done?

The faces have six, in a sense. We employ a genetic algorithm where the player himself takes on the role of "natural selection". The first 2 faces shown are random. The "winning" face is allowed to "reproduce" with another face from the genetic pool, which at this point is just random faces. I will explain reproduction in a moment. For now, just assume that we can create a set of offspring that share genetic traits of the chosen face, the random face, plus some added mutations.

Second time round, the player is shown 2 random offspring selected from the larger pool of offspring that was generated last round. Again, he chooses one. This face is allowed to reproduce with another randomly chosen face from the offspring pool. A new offspring pool is created.

Rinse and repeat. Eventually, and in fact very quickly, the player will converge onto the desired face.

Details of generating offspring pools:

Suppose each face has about 10 properties, each being an integer between 1 and 100. These are things like nose size, distance between the eyes, colors, etc. An offspring is created by copying half the properties of the chosen face (randomly each each time), and the other half come from a random face chosen from the previous offspring pool. After those properties are copied, we slightly randomize all the properties. This new face becomes a member of the new offspring pool. Repeat this about 100 times to generate the next offspring pool.

And that's how the offspring pools are created.

I know this all sounds very tricky written out in english, but in code it's extremely simple.

Advantages:

- the player never needs to do more than select the best face out of a set of 2-4 faces
- by the power of exponentials, this method converges on the desired face very quickly, under most circumstances
- we still get infinite variety

Disadvantages:

- the player might not understand why he's being shown 3 faces instead of 1
- if you want huge precision in the end result, this method might be slow in producing offspring each time
- biggest potential problem: does not converge to a final face if the player changes his mind over and over

Wow hey this is a fantastic idea! well written too. only thing you left out is that the player should always whenever he wants to be allowed to switch from "randomly generated" mode into "manual mode" so from the random facegen engine you thought up over to something more like what we had in oblivion.

players should also be able to select how many faces would be generated at a time. both for lower end system reasons and for how much precision they really care for.

there was one issue with the oblivion face generator, there were so many options, but there were just too many of them. (and it was near impossible to get a pretty face as a final result) also another issue was the skin color sliders. they could end up getting pretty messed up and desync the neck from the rest of the body making the character have 2 skin colors. (for example blue face, green body) check it out yourself, draw one slider all the way to the right, then the one below all the way to the left, and do this a few times and you'll never get it back to normal! :celebration:

Yeah, the option of opting out and just setting the sliders would be good. And all the gory details of the algorithm itself would probably be best handled by sticking it in skyrim.ini or whatever.

If someone is capable of making a model, this might be an interesting theory to test. Some of us would have to see it work.

I am hoping it is something similar to CCP's carbon character tech.

I can see the idea having merit. I would only be for this, if, I still get the option in the end to "hand tweak" the finished product. For example, if I like everything about the face except for one small feature, I want the option to go in and edit that "one" feature.

so basically that FaceGen genetics thing? that sounds like an unnecessarily long process compared to just sliders.

what i've interpreted from the previews sounds like they're going with a sort of Sims 3 face system - pre-made eyes, noses, etc. that you stick together and you can individually tweak each bit to a degree.

Sounds lame to me, all because people couldn't be bothered with learning how to use Oblivion's character creator. Being stuck with predetermined features and characters looking very similar the other like Mass Effect. I will be very disappointed if that is the route they are taking with the character customization.

I have no idea what FaceGen is. But the way I've described it, the player would literally only have to make like a dozen clicks, which is way less time that I've spent doing faces in Oblivion.

it's like - you're given a default face, and you pick like THIS SET OF EYES and then you adjust brow depth and [censored], or THIS NOSE and you adjust width and nostril size and tilt and size and bridge shape and [censored]. it's basically exactly like Oblivion/Fallout 3 except instead of just preset faces you get preset face-pieces too.

note that this is all interpretation of weirdly-translated foreign [censored] i don't even know if i'm anywhere near correct on this.



FaceGen is the software Bethesda uses for faces. the program itself has a feature that works pretty much like you described - it takes the face and gives you eight different faces around it, all based on genetic mutation and [censored], and you click one and it gives you eight more faces based on THAT face, and so on.

This would be interesting

Great Idea.

http://www.facegen.com/modeller.htm was fine. Just needed more base head models to choose from. OB used just one head for all humans (for both male and female). Orc head was a deformed version of that same mesh.

I think this will be a good character creation method. By choosing a pre-made face piece, you can really have different textures and looks. And then you can still shape the piece to make it look perfect. Hopefully it will work well.

I also just noticed with that FaceGen technology, you can upload pics of yourself and have the program create your face for you. It's working it's "magic" right now, so I'll see if it works out in a bit. But if this works out well, this would be cool technology to see in an ES game. They did this in the Tiger Woods PGA games and also in Fight Night Round 4, it worked really good in these games, so it could be cool.

if this doesn't make it into the vanilla game, someone bettered add this as a mod. but lets just hope for the poor modders sake that this will be in the game cus getting it into the game through mods would be a couple hundred times bigger headache than just putting it in the vanilla game.

Does t sound much like actually creating your character to me, you just pic faces, and what if I don't like any if the end results and what about beards, what I am saying is no thanks

selecting a pre made face which you can customize is also good

It sounds interesting if you're just basing it on the attractiveness of the face or something, though it wouldn't work so well if you were looking to build a face to a specific design.

BTW, could you link me to any applications of this method so I can see it in practice?

It will be more like Mass Effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlMZJyp1cUA

I'm pretty sure Todd said in the podcast that you just chose the nose and then adjusted the size and position, and nothing else.

I'd rather just stick with sliders, honestly, while a system like this might be good if you're content to just pick a face that looks nice and go with it, it sounds like it could be problematic if you want to get the exact face you want to play, I think it would actually be pretty time consuming if you wanted to get a face that's just right, and there's no guarentee you'd succeed. Besides, there's no guarentee that just because you choose a face that looks good, randomly chosen features from it would look nice with another face. I'd much rather stick with a system that just gives players direct control over different aspects of their character's face.

I guess a system like this wouldn't hurt as an option, but there should still be the choice nto just directly edit you're face in the usual fashion.



I don't know, I think I'd look pretty strange as an Argonian...

And that's the problem with such a system in a game like the Elder Scrolls, it might work fine if everyone is just a normal looking human, but when you can play as elves, orcs, catmen or lizardmen, it wouldn't really work. Besides, I don't want to play as myself, I be myself every day in real life, I want to play as a different character of my own creation.

Wait you can customize your face in TES?!?!?!



Why? :wink_smile:

There should be an option. However, I wonder if you understand what the system is actually doing. Assuming, in your mind's eye, you have a particular face to shoot for, the faces shown will quickly converge onto the desired face. So by the time you get many iterations into the process, all the faces shown will look almost identical to each other, and almost identical to what you wanted to begin with.

The Oblivion process, was tedius, but it eventually worked, except the lighting. It seems one had to continually exit the tunnel, face a certain direction, in the proper light to get the coloring correctly. RInse and repeat. We had a rather limited version of FaceGen, though.

With the CC in DA:O, It seemed that everybody looked the same. And some of the sliders were not really sliders, just things that clunked from one set to another. In other words, some features lacked "fine tuning."

With work though, some did come up with some good faces. There were few good options, and very limited hair selection and color.

The Mass Effect vids look interesting, and seem to be much better than DA:O.

The one for EVE seems to look nice.

Some of you think it will be like Mass Effect? Perhaps.

With the brief description Mr. Howard gave us on the topic, and from the working examples from DA:O and ME, it could be either like either one.

Between Oblivion, FO3, and DA:O, the best result I obtained was from Oblivion. (And thank you. Ren, for the hair.)

The worst thing about character creation is limited selection, regardless of the method used.

Hopefully, we will be given more information on this subject a bit later. We seem to be at the mercy of their (TES) information release timetable.

The concept proposed by the OP sounds interesting. CC is one of the more important features of a game for me, and a lot of time is usually spent in that phase.

With TES, it seems like each step in their game evolultion, this process gets better. I hope that is the case with Skyrim.