I think they're great... each one seems to have a different subtle expression, which is impressive.

The eyes on the far right seem familiar - I'm sure I've seen them before somewhere

Excellent nose - are you using any other texture as a face? The airbrushed look is reminiscent of Harborgolfer's work - has a nice translucence

I always think that the eyes are the most important feature of the face - if you can get them to look 'wet' then the character will come alive

Not sure what tool you are using for texturing - am a skimpy GIMP user myself - anyway playing with layers around the eyes and using the contrast and lightness sliders can really pull out the look - (it's like applying makeup on the eyeball)

How are you aligning the facial features?

If you aren't already doing it it can be useful to select the mesh you want to put the face on in nifskope - rightclick the head and select texture and then select export template - it will give you a nice 512x512 uv map to add to your texture layers - very helpful in aligning eyes perfectly

I also find that I need to rotate eyes for Dunmer and Altmer so they are angled a bit - if you leave them horizontal they look too human (nedic for lore hounds) and you want to try and avoid cardboard face looks if possible

Nice work - looking forward to adding your work to my collections

The source image for the eyes on the right is... someone whose name I don't know. She's really pretty though!

I don't know if I understand the question about any other texture, but I've been using one of the textures in Jenova Children as a base to match the skin tone, if that's what you mean? And, actually, since you mention it, with my high elf I'm about to post, I used your high elf from your fresh faces pack, number 4 I think. It was perfect. I struggled for literally hours to match the skin tone and then got the bright idea to just look at your mod, and there it was. Did that answer it?

I'll have to try that nifskope UV trick, I've honestly just been using a head on reduced opacity to make sure I've got it. But with this high elf I see what you mean about tilting the eyes. I tried to do it, not sure if I succeeded.

edit - I hope it's okay that I used one of your textures for a base. I checked the readme, it said go ahead. :X I can change it if you'd rather not though.

Updated with a high elf! (finally, god this was a grind)

Your Altmer has beautiful lashes - very good line above the eye

She is a bit cross eyed - that can happen if you mirror the eyes - I do love symmetry except when it comes to bodies - well faces anyway - if you aim for perfection it can end up looking imperfect whereas oddly I find imperfection to be more interesting

Beautiful lashes though - absolutely gorgeous - I suspect your Altmer was an alchemist by trade who happened to invent mascara for Morrowind

Updated with another Altmer. x.x


And you're right, Illy. I'll see if I can work on that.

Updated with an attempt at a Dunmer. Feedback please! I'm really unsure of this one.

Biggest fan of the dunmer.

I like it. I wouldn't mind seeing darker variations though.

Thanks guys. Darker, you say? The thing is I tried that and it looked weird in the shadows. But I could give it another go. I wanted to try to match the skin tone of the body, which I absolutely hate, because IT'S GREEN. :S Any thoughts on this? Or do you like the default BB skin color?

I use Westly's replacer and the Dunmer are a dark blue-green in color body wise. I think maybe adding in a little purple might help with the skin coloring.

The problem face makers have for mer is that there are a number of different bb skins - AOF's, Cappucine's, Original, AlienSlof's

It's hard to get it right - I personally use AlienSlof's with my own textures for underwear so I aim to match the tone with those skins - I was a big fan of Harborgolfer and he didn't seem to care what your skin was as the majority of his faces used a vamp mesh so he tended to keep them pale

With GIMP i use the Channel Mixer to adjust the RGB values before going into the colour balance to adjust for highlights, shadows etc... also tend to desaturate Dunmer to try and aim for a light blue/brown/grey look - they are suppose to be ashen in colour

It can be hard keeping the green out of their faces and numerous times my Dunmer have turned out looking sea sick.

It is so personally subjective in getting the right look and asking people can be a bit hard too as we all have different monitors that calibrate colour differently - my 22" samsung is very warm in colour versus my 24" HP - which is far more colour correct - on the other hand my 24" Viewsonic is a happy medium between the 2 - on all 3 monitors I can see variance between the colour I thought I was working on and then how it looks in game

However once in game I have MGE XE running which is busy casting shadows all over the place - the lighting is often rubbish in rooms and to be honest I don't really notice the colour of their faces anywhere near as much as when I am making them.

So anyway... just keep adding a few more to your collection - I bet by the time you reach your 50th you will want to go back and readjust your first 20 all over again

Wow. Just wow, great stuff.

I think these are exquisite! I really like the Dunmer, I think the slightly edgy, "don't mess with me" look is perfect! And I particularly like the two brown-eyed faces, as well. This will be an instant download for me, when you release it!

Ladies look really epic! I love your style too, it looks like those old school faces that were made back when Morrowind barely came out, but with the quoality of today's standards. Truly lovely work there.

Now I'm torn between your faces and Illy's.

Chaka, I'm so so so happy you said that. That was completely my goal. I wanted to stay true to the look and feel of 'classic' race modding, just updated with new details. Thank you, it makes me so happy that someone else noticed.

Callidus, tytyty.

Looks like I have another couple replacers to download for perspective. Thanks for the tip Jac.

Lyssia, again so happy someone noticed. The dunmer chick is definitely a badass. I really wasn't sure about her, since I'm no good at judging dunmer (I don't play them) so this is pretty fantastic.

And Illy, I literally couldn't have made this pack without you. Your textures provide a perfect base for the skin and your advice as an artist is invaluable. I'll take a look at what Westly and Harborgolfer have done as far as color and adjust with your "ashen" description in mind (which I agree with).

Great feedback, guys. I'm confident that if these looked bad someone would say so (since I've asked repeatedly for honesty). Probably going to do the first release here shortly, maybe try to throw Nord in there and see how that goes..

edit - Question, before I forget. Is there any reason NOT to use a modified head with 3x the polygons? I tried it in game a minute ago and it looks a lot better with no discernible issues, but what do I know about graphic art, it might make someone's computer explode, right?

edit again - What eye color variants do people want to see? Any special requests I should do?

http://i.imgur.com/2kidO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5R8Jd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hOUUc.jpg

These are gorgeous, Meldiocre! The 2nd one is my favorite; the eyes, the lips, the pointy ears.

http://i.imgur.com/cFy5k.jpg
I'm not too favorable on the dark elf face. I personally prefer darker lips, like dark gray lips since their skin is an ashy blue hue for the most part. But I would love to see more dark elf faces by you since that is my favorite race. And for dunmer eyes, some eyes could be glowing bright red, some could be dark red, and some could be a dark burgundy red (like the eyes in my avatar picture).
Keep showing us more examples, please.

And the hair you used in some of them is very lush and wavy. What hair mods are you using for these pictures?

To be honest, 90% of people use these lovely heads for their own characters rather than for NPCs. So I don't see any reason why not, it's only one head really, shouldn't be an impact for fps. If you aim for a head replacer then I'm not sure, however I don't think any head can really have that many polies to make a significant fps hit, even with multiple heads on the screen.

Ok, Tes, I will keep trying to make some better Dunmer since that has been surprisingly popular. Did you want miss brown eyes as an elf, also? She was gonna be a Breton, I can do (dark?) elf though also with some skin tone tweaks.

Chaka, that was my thought as well. If someone wants to include my stuff in a head replacer, there's another head that fits the same textures more or less, just with 1/3 the polys. The low poly head is the one in all the pictures and it looks fine. (More just looks better)

Oooh yes! I would very much appreciate it if you could do that. She has a very stunning face and would look very lascivious as a dark elf.
And why would it surprise you that people want more dunmers? This is a dunmer-centered game, after all. But then we gamers most relate to creatures that most look like ourselves so I could see why nords, bretons and imperials could be the favored races among the masses.

Can the human eye tell the difference between 1024x1024 versus 4096x4096 face textures? For those of us with high-end machines the added polygons wouldn't cause a performance hit, I don't think. I'm wondering if it would make the quality of the faces significantly better.

Personally, I think that would be totally needless, I don't think it would be a huge difference in quality.

I think you're using photoshop, if so, here is a little tip for changing the color of lips.

First, start a new layer, (the button in the bottom right box) and then paint over the lips with the desire color brush. After that, in the same box where you made a new layer, play with the transparency until it's only slightly visible outside of the lips. Then in the top left of that same box click on the drop down menu and thumb through the effects until you find one you like. Optionally you can skip the last step, erase the excess paint, and adjust transparency accordingly.

Good day sir

Oh I know about layer blending, I think soft light or overlay might look nice, have to try it tho. Is this your way of telling me you'd like me to change the lips?

Tes, to answer your question, as far as textures go it's my understanding that the Morrowind engine can render faces effectively up to about 1024x1024. Any more detail than that wouldn't show up, or so I gather from talking to Hicks. This doesn't apply to other types of textures for whatever reason (for example, the bodies I use are 2048x2048). The point of the higher poly head, on the other hand, is that you don't get the jaggedness. Instead it just looks smooth and without visible corners, so for me, the relatively hi-res faces + the high poly head = a significantly better look without a performance hit. My computer is very high end though so for others it might not be the same.

I'm excited to try the new smoother model, I'll update pics as soon as I have them.

Updated with an attempt at darker faces (ignore the bodies). Not sure if it worked, tell me what you think. There seems to be a problem with the high poly mesh, also. Anyone know how to correct this?

I like these two:

http://i.imgur.com/7rqu8.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mFLn9.jpg