I'm certainly still looking into things and with this case I found that Oblivion's engine shaders render normal map depth information quite differently from Skyrim, which has been my primary pool of experience. Very complex normal maps appear simplified and washed-out in most of the ingame lighting, mostly showing creases instead of elevation, and subtle changes in depth that Skyrim would've rendered beautifully are lost.

They do fade into the head, though, just higher up on the forehead. That I can easily blend in for a more smooth transition.

As others have already said, this is just absolutely amazing. I've been using a variety of face mods to make the races look distinct, but even then they still look somewhat samey. This looks like it'll permanently banish that feeling of "Didn't I just pass you and your 5 identical twins earlier?" that I always tend to get from Oblivion.

I do have a couple questions, however...

1. Do you have any plans on how you'll be handling Argonians? Coming from Morrowind's Argonian heads, I was rather disappointed by their Oblivion incarnation. I realize FaceGen has its limits (which makes what you're doing all the more amazing to me), but is getting a more MW (or Skyrim) style shape for the Argonian heads feasible?

2. Is the scarification on the female Dunmer done using agemaps? If so, how well do you think this mod would work with http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/8261/, which adds features (such as beards, scars, and tattoos) in between the vanilla agemaps?

If I had to guess, I'd imagine they'd conflict a bit, if only due to the fact that you're making your own agemaps, but I do love the extra character added by Django's. It's the closest OB players have (AFAIK) to Skyrim's warpaints and beards, so I'd love to see them work well together.

If she doesn't have plans for Argonians, there are a number of mods that have tackled the issue. Here are a few to browse through:
http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/15302/

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/13444/

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/6553

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/15469/

Yep, I know about those (in fact, I currently use everything on that list with the exception of Lizard-like Argonians)... when I got down to modding Oblivion, the Argonian faces were one of the first things I changed. That said, I'm always looking out for other interpretations.

Though, speaking of other interpretations, one thing that would be neat to see for Argonians (though likely out of scope for the project) would be feather-hair inspired by Skyrim - never thought I'd like the effect as much as I did.

Beast races are up in the air at this point, I'm focusing on human faces as doing anything significant with beasts would require wholesale shifting around of face parts to get substantial proportional fixes.

I haven't played Skyrim yet, so I'm not 100% sure about what you are talking about. But if it is what I think it is, the feather-hair was probably inspired by a great deal of the more recent scientific study of dinosaurs which apparently are the ancestors of birds and reptiles, and quite a number of which may have had mixtures of scales and feathers.

I recommend you direct those kinds of wishes to people who actually actively mod beast races, I'm very much focused on the humanoids as I get a kick out of working with facial features.

I would say keep them as separate projects, or at least as separate file downloads from your main download page wherever that might be.

You could have the Elven pack, the Human pack, Orc pack, etc.

This would give you the advantage of uploading and updating in chunks, rather than feeling like you have to do the whole thing at once.

I highly prefer having a consistent whole though, and with changes as big as the ones I'm doing I'm going to at least keep the nonbeast races in one package.

OK - first of all - It's nice to FINALLY see a comprehensive re-working of faces in Oblivion for the first time in about 4 or five years - I'm particularly excited to see you working on the age maps, they've been in dire need of some TLC.

Here are a couple of things you will probably be interested in:

First, I notice the lack of eyelashes, which they're missing from the Vanilla game we've been able to add them by merging the jaw/teeth meshes together:

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/18185/

Now, there was someone who went through and fixed up the EGT files etc. but I can't remember who it was, and I seem to recall they had trouble differentiating gender too.

With regard to the actual work you've done, I really like what I've seen, but it would be nice to see some older characters so we can see the older age maps, and more exterior shots too. The ones you're taken seem to make the NPC's look a bit shiny around the forehead and under the eyes, but it's hard to tell if that's the lighting or the normal map.

I hope that sounds like constructive comment - I'm going to be watching this with anticipation.

Okay, just wasn't sure if you were intending to do that at this point yet. I can do it myself without any hitch. Again, nice work here!

See the above I'll probably end up just merging them myself though, to save a mod slot.

Thanks for the tip Sigurd, the eyelash resource seems to have some BUT conditions and I'll need to check how it actually works before doing anything with it on my custom headshapes, but I'll look into it. As for EGTs I found out how to crack open the file format this morning and will be looking into the tint overlays tonight.

And yes, there are older NPCs too, I'll need to grab some screencaps. The thing with Oblivion's age setup previously was that the wrinkling started extremely early on the age slider, now the prominently wrinkly looks only kick in past age 50. Up until then you have a young face and a somewhat more weathered age 30-40 look. It might be a staggering change for some people as most NPCs in Skyrim will now be far less wrinkly on average, but it makes seeing actual aged people more impactful and adds a lot to each characters' personality as you're able to genuinely distinguish their age at a glance, which makes a whole lot more sense to me both visually and from a storytelling perspective.

Aging now also varies between races. Dunmeri are a lot more wrinkly and angular at a younger age than others.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/46f084f867f11f4c0c283cbe8e21abd5/tumblr_mm6vqkmCnM1s8q3l4o1_1280.jpg

Comedy bonus: http://24.media.tumblr.com/caca5e0fe59c8ba00a162905896a79b2/tumblr_mm6wd2ZW6Z1s8q3l4o1_1280.jpg

That looks awesome! Keep it up!

Fantastic job! Oblivion has needed this for so long, I can tell this is going to be a must-have mod. I'm excited to see more.

All I want to say that me and my bro are waiting for your mod anxiously. I decided to stop playing Oblivion and wait until this mod has been released.

I would actually either recommend starting a new playthrough altogether with this for maximum impact, or preparing mentally to recustomise your character if you've been using a vanilla race in an existing game. All of the head shapes change with this mod so if you've done a lot of slider-fu on your character they might not translate to the new head meshes well.

I like the new appearance but the creases above the brows do indeed look a bit strange. Is that going to be the default for all races? I also wonder if TNR faces will still look good with this installed. Or are you planning to redo all vanilla NPCs on your own?

Most NPC mods made with vanilla heads will most likely look bad with this as the sliders produce different effects with the new head meshes. I'm going through NPCs manually and fixing up new faces for ones that look completely mangled. The results have been VERY positive (see Falanu Hlaalu above). I decided low compatibility with other head-altering mods is a necessary tradeoff to make changes as significant as these - I'm building this into a comprehensive one-install package that fixes pretty much all problems with the character heads in one swoop.

It was much more impactful to just overhaul the whole thing from ground up than tiptoe around cross-compatibilities.

Brow ridges will be there for Dunmer and Altmer like they are in Morrowind and Skyrim. A big part of this whole thing is unifying the races' looks with the rest of TES imagery.

Are you going to release this mod, anytime soon?

Short answer: When it's done.

Long answer: There's a lot of stuff that's still up in the air and I always unconditionally want to take my time doing research, testing and iteration. I've made really quick progress so far and I will run this through a closed beta phase soon (I already have my testers, no need for more volunteers) to root out ugly NPCs that I can't reach on a cursory test run myself, and depending on how quickly I get some vital visual polish and NPC work done release might maybe be a few weeks away.

Maybe.

No promises, those always seem to turn into unrealistic expectations and stress for me.

Definitely take your time. I made the mistake once of caving in to pressure and released a version of my mod way before it was ready and before I did my usual testing, and it caused all kinds of problems. Patience is a virtue.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a3060a1e4619ef7a3581483f0a31ff52/tumblr_mm9pzoEcKl1s8q3l4o1_1280.jpg

I experimented with fully handpainted textures earlier, but I decided to keep the visual direction closer to original and sat down to projection paint some HD fur instead. The headshape needs some work to fix clipping issues with the mouth and eyes, but it's definitely a step forward from vanilla.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/642d9f8374e5c9d0e839279612e1a656/tumblr_mm9rw9z3p51s8q3l4o1_1280.jpg I had a bunch of people request Skyrim-style eye options for Bosmer and I was more than happy to oblige. Khajiit have a new slit-eye look with a few extra colour options that I'll apply to NPCs too to diversify them up a little.

http://i.imgur.com/ohfec5R.jpg

I strongly referenced the Skyrim looks for this. Reshaped the head, sculpted normal maps and painted the textures by hand. I put a high priority on making the faces more readable as the vanilla head was lacking in distinct readable skull structure.

Your work is just stunning.