They just need to pick a better location for the facegen menu. When my first character (Dunmer) was being created in the jail cell, I got his face to be a cool blue color that doesn't look artificial. However, when he left the sewers his skin was green and he looked like an anorexic orc. All I'm saying is that they should hold character creation somewhere which has neutral lighting and not a deceiving blue tint.

Indeed; good suggestion :tops:

my biggest issues with facegen in Bethesda games are that the sliders are so linked & the lighting can be deceiving (as mentioned above). but it's a good system that could be implemented better IMO.

@ the OP, what would you like to see in it's place?

I liked faces in Oblivion. You guys are tripping. When yall see screens and if they used facegen again, yall will still accept it. No whining, no whining. Faces in Oblivion were pretty good IMO.

I like FaceGen. I can do some pretty decent work with it. It does require a little bit of an artistic hand and I understand a lot of people are hard pressed to draw a decent stick figure.

Yeah, I saw his name and started laughing. "Luke Skyrimmer". lol I hope he stays in these forums.

I like facegen really, I got pretty decent on it too.Also I never had a problem with the lighting, but I play on consols with the brightness slider leaning twards a sun being in every room.

That!! I've been wanting something like that for a long time, I mean on the face gen website it says it can create faces from 2 images, so why not add a feature to allow us to upload 2 of our pics and have it make our face for us?

Heh, I agree with the deceiving lighting of the dungeon. Oh, and http://theminttu.deviantart.com/art/Oblivion-Character-Creation-66134367?q=gallery%3Atheminttu%2F1069127&qo=18.

Yep, I thought it worked just fine... Other than the low-res textures used, that is. If they can use more polygons and better textures now (and they can), and apply the sliders to better effect, then the FaceGen software becomes that much more powerful and realistic.

But you never know... Perhaps Skyrim won't try for the realistic approach this time around. Perhaps the faces will be more stylized and accentuated.

The problem wasn't FaceGen tech. It was the meshes and textures used for the default faces. Check out some of the custom made races available and you'll see some, if not stunning, greatly improved faces.

I finally got to where I could create "acceptable" faces in OB, but they all tended to look similar. The facegen needed to have three or four different starting templates, not one, so you didn't always begin with the same basic shape every time, and with only limited range on the sliders to change it from there. On most of the faces, I ended up with half the sliders maxxed out in one direction or another, because they didn't go as far as I wanted. The idea behind the system was great; the implementation wasn't quite there yet.

MW just gave you a bunch of pre-made faces and another group of hairstyles to choose from. The NPCs were all done using those same pieces in different combinations. Making up a face by choosing pieces from a bunch of preset "sub-sections" might be faster and more effective for most people than trying to bend and twist your mug through all sorts of contortions with the sliders. By now, I'm assuming it's a moot point, as the game is far past that stage in development.

FO3 gave you a choice of beards and moustaches, but they were almost all so outrageously overdone that only a cartoon character like "Yosemite Sam" would look appropriate with them. There was the scraggly "Rasputin" beard, the curled "villain" moustache, and just about every "weirdo" configuration you could think of, but not much that you'd see on a typical small town street.

Regular suggestion poster Daniel Kay came up with a golden idea when he suggested making hair, beards, moustaches, and sideburns "modular", so you could add them piecemeal as suited the character, instead of "all or nothing" as in FO3.

Personally, I want as much personalization and customization as possible. Give randomizers and/or pre-sets for those that don't care or are in a hurry, but give minute detail for those that enjoy that sort of thing.

I thought facegen did good things for Oblivion overall. Though I admit the interface to face design was seriously braindamaged.

The problem with Oblivion FaceGen is that 1: There was only one androgynous base head mesh for all non-beast races and ages, and 2: all the base settings were doughy and round.

That was solved in Fallout 3 with sixually dimorphic head meshes, and also special sub-races (of a sort) of aged and REALLY aged heads. Beyond that, it was a case of whether or not the dev crafting the NPCs either just hits "randomize" and calls it done or puts some effort into making a face.

New engine, maybe people will look human (for the human races that is) this time. I don't feel the facegen was the problem. I thinkt he graphics themselves made everybody look very unbelieveable as actual people

Faces were okay in FO3 actually.
Even if the improvement is minimal for Skyrim, it should still be good enough for me.

The problem isn't necessarily facegen.

Proof
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/116431247_38ea550e9e.jpg
http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/88/l_e775f8d3cd034a068f0c5238d0b970da.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2894/albanif7qu.jpg
http://www.facegen.com/images/detail/my14ar.jpg
http://www.foro3d.com/attachments/16591d1122058327-facegen-modeller-nuestros-trabajos-comparando.jpg
6 Not FaceGen, thanks Luke

The problem is probably just the head meshes and textures... which are hard to make but hopefully Bethesda's improved them by now.

Those are awful. The faces have hardly any structure. Also, the last pic isn't FaceGen.

Whoops, remembered that from another thing.

Either way, it's got to be terribly difficult to try to make something like that on your own. It probably would be better without FaceGen, and hopefully they don't end up using it, but if they don't it won't all be that bad.

Or your GF's face looks like a...

Anyway, I'm sure they won't be using the same program they used 5 years ago.
And maybe we're not even allowed to customize our character.

If the facial animation reaches Mass Effect quality or even Enslaved quality I'll be one happy Internet Badass.

actually I hate to say this but I really liked how they did it in Mass effect 2 , and the only reason I like to make my faces realistic or cool or whatever is I spend a freaking sick amount of time with my games and it helps to make a char that is truly my own one I like to see when I take a look at my char but if its like Oblivion or like fallout I wont freak just heave a sigh and move on.

P.S. I really would like a ht and weight slider or at least a body type that looks like he could swing an axe all day instead of the body type that looks better suited to running away from everything

I think madcat hits the only true faults with the system as it is implemented in Oblvion.

Anyone who thinks they do not like it, please at least propose an alternative system. It doesn't even have to be better or more versatile.

I'll not be holding my breath.



what exactly is wrong with pic number 3? please don't say skin shader or the texture...think carefully.

don't remind me

dragon age and mass effect 2 face gens are WAY better and make hotter people