I was scrolling through many of the beauty mods for the game, and I was just wondering what does it take to create such pretty faces? The default Imperial is so ugly and fat, and lets not get started with the randomize feature. It seems like for every pretty face out there, theres 700 other ways to get it wrong. I'm sure it takes an an artist and a keen eye to make an attractive character, even with the right mods.

But I was wondering if I could get some pointers on creating a pretty face.My first girl turned out pretty average on my first attempt at the game. I thought I created the perfect face with the capabilities of the face constructor, untill I saw other examples.

So anyway, I'm looking for some tips in creating some real beauties that I wouldn't mind looking at for 40+ straight hours in the tab menu. I'm looking for tips on creating an overall pretty character.

I attached an example. I like her eyes and lips, how would I go about reproducing those results? What mod files would I need?

Begin with new face textures. You actually can create nice face shape with Imperials - but no settings can correct those lousy default textures. I believe the face texture in your picture is from "Human Race deluxe edition" but I may be wrong as I don't use it.
If you need more than just face then you should also look out for a new body mod.

I got the HG Eye Candy Body mod. Its working fine. I'm just getting into MOD's now. There are so many. I replaced the NPC's with more attractive looking characters.

Still, I can't get over how the default textures gives the characters cottage cheese face (aka lumpy). As if they're made to look so realistic they got to be ugly.

Well, I have no idea whatever got in developers' heads with that. But anyone will tell you that textures replacer for faces is absolutely a "must have", and not only for a protagonist. Hardly a pleasure to watch that freak show whenever you talk to a NPC. There's pretty much of such replacers around.
If you already use HG EC, then try face textures that come in addition to that mod, alongside with body textures. I wouldn't call them marvelous, but they fit well. Besides, all I can do in the way of personal recomendation are Lattamer textures - though they come with custom race. Not a problem if you use construction set.

Actually, I'm trying to discuss methodology to creating a character.
As in should I frame the face first by shaping the head, and then working on details?
What is everyone's experience with creating faces?

Any pro tips?

I don't know. Seems that "professionals" are not interested, but you may ask them directly Well, I generally correct shape and proportions a little, make face and cheeks slightly narrower, adjust the cheekbones and brows, make the jaw a bit narrower. Then do nose to my liking - which seems not to be like most people prefer - a bit down, not to look too childish, make nostrils narrower. And then comes the hard part - lips. Mostly luck.
Changing tones is not even worth discussing, though after that I slightly move age slider forth and back, makes face colouring more "natural".

But, you know, you may download a face made by someone else, but that's no fun.

First thing, download chargen w. numbers so that it shows the number values in the face generation menu. I also like to have neutrual lighting when doing a face. The way I used to do it is just to hit the random button until i see something I can work with. I'll then adjust the sliders (in small amounts) to improve the look from the front. Turn it to the side profile, and adjust the sliders again, and then back to working on the front side, etc. Takes a couple of passes. Then go back to the game mode to see if she looks good under different lighting conditions, and then readjust for minor details (usually the nose and mouth region in my case). In my experience, it is hard to do a face that looks good from all angles, but it can be done with lots of patience. Facial textures are also very important, and it can change how the character looks quite drastically. Once you have a really good looking face, you can just change the race of that character to make some siblings. Good luck and post some pictures.

I download custom races. Most of them(I.E Ren's Mystic Elf, Cute Elf, Lineage II Elves) have much, much prettier face textures. Also, I find custom races easier to work with, seeing as how the pre-set facegen character already has at least a semi-attractive face.

Since you already have HG's body, then I won't bother suggesting any body replacers.

My advice would be to get a custom race and start fiddling around with the chargen. You'll eventually find a face you like. Good luck.

If you don't mind, download Facegen Modeller Free demo version. I found it's easier to make decent looking face than fiddling with in-game facegen sliders. Make your face, save it, then use fg2ob or focon to transplant the face. Although the results are not already satisfying, you can make some good-looking face even for vanilla human/elven races.

Mystic Elf Mod.

I just wanted to make it blunt. The Mystic Elf mod worked best for me, and I had exactly the same problem as you. I wasn't happy with the original faces, especially the Breton's. So fat and plain.

When I installed this mod, even randomising can make the faces pretty. Just set the complexion to highest, and age to lowest, then you're good to go!

(P.S. The character in the picture you just posted is amazing, I can understand why you want one to look like her!)

Well what you want to do is do the face structure first before any toning.

Structure:
You want to keep the forhead large and square, keep the eyebrows as close to the eyes as you can without making them look unrealistic or weird, the nose needs to be near the mouth which needs to be close to the chin.

Jaw/Cheeks:
She has a heart shaped face, so don't be afraid to give her some width.
- Cheeks as high as you can make them
- Soften them to what hers look like
-Back jaw should be wider
- Turn the face to the side
- Convex/concave The neckline should not be sharp. It should look like a slope.
- Cheeks should be wider rather than concave. Make them just roll over, no dipping.



Eyes:
For her eyes, you probably need to get that mod for the shape, but you can get close on vanilla if you DONT MAKE THEM HUGE!
- Make the eyes medium first, pick a slider from the two at the bottom, slide one as far in whichever direction, then slide it back, do the same with the next one. You should see that one controls the angle of the eye. Use that one primarily to shape the eye into an almondy shape far ends slightly pointing up. It's okay if it looks like alien eyes, use your aux. slider to take care of the size, not the size slider. That way it looks more natural.
- once you have your shape, you can make the eyes bigger or smaller. Hers aren't very big or small, just go with something that looks right to you, try and stick away from making them too big. Big can be bright, but you should only add a touch of it.

Nose: Side and front
-She has small nares/lines so go ahead and make it a little smaller if you need to.
- One of the sliders near the bottom should say small->>larger, you want to slide it just a little smaller than what you would want it
- Find the pointed slider and slide it very slightly up until it looks right.
- If you need to change the deep/shallow, deeper almost always looks better.
- You want the brow (it could be called something else, but you know what I mean) to be closer to the middle of the eye, the deep part where the nose begins. Lower is better.

Lips: front - side just to be sure she has an overbite.
Hers will be very hard to do on vanilla, as they look to be custom-race
- Move lips as close to the chin as possible to get that lower lip thicker than the upper.
- You want small and non-pursed lips. Work the sliders by moving the non-pursed all the way to the non-pursed side. Move the small all the way to the small side. If either of them moved, continue putting them back until they both stay. Eventually they will.
- Toggle the sliders to get the correct shape you want after that.


Chin: Turn the face to the side.
-She has a tall chin
-that only protrudes a little bit.
-The portrude is soft.
- If you end up with a pointy chin, but the general shape, don't fret! Leave it be once it is the right length and protrusion. Go to the jaw to fix any sharp angles.

rinse and repeat. Anything that got messed up, go back and fix it. It will look better if you do everything in one swoop, then go back to it.


Okay, and I tried this all on my own just now to see how close I could get: You definitely need the eye and mouth mods. The textures are too different to get close there, but everything else I have here should get you a pretty character similar to her facial construction on vanilla :3 and if you have her mods, then just apply it with her.

Don't flame me, I personally don't like the Mystic Elves anymore.

That's because my love lies in Lineage II Dark Elves.

Anyway, nice faces can be most easily obtained on the default of custom races. They'll far surpass stock races and if you don't mess with them much, you won't have to worry about making them ugly. >.>

You can scour save games, but I find a lot of those to be odd-looking.

If you can find some Japanese mod sites, they tend to have incredible faces in their save games! I knew an awesome one, but it's down. T_T

Find a custom race mod you really love the looks of. Edit the default faces minorly. On custom races resetting the face right-off can help because it diminishes such unattractive features.

Some things I personally think one should avoid doing to their character that can make them unattractive:

- Large, overly-pursed lips (looks too doll-like)
- Massive eyes (too unnatural and anime-like)
- Very wide jawlines (a female character can end up looking too masculine, likewise odd if her jawline is too narrow)
- Sunken cheeks (messing around too much with the settings for cheeks can make your character look unhealthy)
- Overly-rounded faces (simply make a character look too plump in comparison to their body)
- Too much eye makeup (a lot messing with those eye tone sliders seems to mess with the rest of the face's tones and makes a character look creepy!)
- Ghostly white skin (fair skin is beautiful, but when your character is outright glowing in the sunlight, well aside from eye damage, its just odd ... tone lighten the skin far too much, keep the light/dark slider about halfway and use adjust the ratio of blue and gold tones in the skin instead)

Those are some majors for me. These days I like my light-skinned characters to be fair with healthy golden hues to their skin and my Dark Elves to be more blue than green looking, and I don't actually add eyeliner or eyeshadow to them much at all, and it seems to help!

I hope those tips can help you out.

I myself am pretty good at messing with the stock face generator. I have made some wonderful looking Imperials and Bretons both male and female. I'd upload some pics but I don't have the means to yet. As for my technique I'd love to share it with you but I honestly don't know how to descibe what I do short of I spend a good 2-3 hours tinkering with the sliders untill I get what I like. I would also suggest downloading modded races, I would suggest mystic elf, Linneage elf, or look for NEC's mystic elf remakes my favorite are the mystic high elves. You could also ask NEC or Divine Avenger both are excellent face modelers.

I agree with all of that completely. I really prefer the more natural look you can get with the normal races, I haven't had much luck with the custom races (not a fan of the mystic elves either).

Sorry for the double post, but you can get that face using the cute elves mod, setting complexion to the left, then changing the skin tone :3 Everything else you should be able to keep the same ^^

Lots of good advice here. I would point you to the CS Wiki, too. There's some good advice there.
And DO download facegen, if just for fun. I spent a whole Saturday just finding pics of celebrities and gen'ing their 3D faces (never used any of them, but GREAT fun--don't export textures, though). You can do your own face that way, too, which is lots of fun, and you get better results because you can take proper mugshots of yourself.

You HAVE to have different face textures, especially for dark-skinned characters. I've been killing myself trying to work that out. Darkening the complexion adds that wierd feathering above the eyebrows, and a general blotchiness. I don't know enough about how it works to fix that, so I make dark custom textures that don't have to be darkened. I think I've figured out that you need a smooth, low-contrast normal map for that too. In fact, I use the same smooth, low-contrast N-map for all my face textures.

As for the shape, I've found I can usually make a good-looking face in about 20 minutes, starting with the standard imperial settings. Bear in mind that some changes affect others. Cheek height and eye size is the most noticeable. Here's a few tricks I've learned (for females, anyway. You can do anything with a male face. But in general, moderation produces the best results):
low (or high?) slope under the jaw, but not all the way (say 80%).
slightly concave jawline
jaw can be narrow or wide, depending on your other settings (and your tastes)
65-80% narrow chin
check the underbite
50% on most mouth settings
try slightly wide nostrils with slightly small nostrils.
Extreme settings with the nose will look awful, and you won't know why. The only exceptions are the sellion settings and concavity.
convex nose region looks elfin/childlike. concave can be nice too, though. (extremes here help determine the TYPE of face you're making)
a lower sellion makes the eyes look more exotic. Likewise if you lower the inner brow and raise the outer brow (and then lower the whole brow because you probably went overboard.)
try widening the sellion slightly.
shorten the mouth-chin distance (after you're happy with the nose)
if you like large eyes, leave the cheekbones lower
forehead size and height will only tolerate very minor changes without looking like a supervillain.
forehead slope can be very nice at any extreme IMO. But extremes seem to conflict with some custom hairs.

texture settings MUST be changed in small increments! And setting darken/lighten to either extreme will ruin you texture irreparable (I don't know why, but any extreme seems to have a general screwing-up effect).
make very slight changes to the eyebrow settings to drastically change your character's look or fix problems with the eyebrows or eyes. Try things that don't seem like they'd help--you can be surprised.
try eye sliders other than just eyeliner and eyeshadow. Bruising can get you a more subtle effect.
slightly lighten the beard.
slightly darken the mustache if your upper lip is too pale. (I don't touch the pale lip slider much, to avoid that)
start with a standard hair color, and then adjust 2-3 of the sliders together.

In general, I think the best way is to make a few minor changes to everything first (but finish the shape before you do texture) then go back and make a few more minor changes. If it's not working out like you want, go back and reverse a few things.
Well...I really hadn't meant to write a book...

Sorry man, but i think she looks stoned. I have no advice for this other than: Slow down on the boobage!

eye of the beholder, but my PC char took me not once but several times, I make the best I could at the end of the sewer tunnel, I play for a bit and go hey! Her jawbones are too manly or ZOMG SHE HAS A CLEFT CHIN! and then i edit it

I have a fairly fool-proof way to make a pretty stock race.

Re-path the default races to one of Ren's head meshes.

It works absolute wonders. I *highly* recommend this simple trick!