Demi's creation, recorded on 5th July 2021:
Mai's creation (90%), recorded on 6th Feb 2025:
No voice-over, no captions, no extras, just raw footage.
My Racemenu Workflow (written 4th April 2021):
^ Anabella; my Dragonborn at the time of this post, now converted into a follower mod. This post covers her face creation process.
The entirety of this post was first made in an image upload, then added to my user profile, then moved here. This should be its final resting place (lol).
Might be useful for people new to sculpting heads, but ultimately everyone has their own unique processes which lead to very fantastically diverse results.
Feel free to share links to your own sculpting processes if you typed them out! :)
I personally recommend taking a look at Dibethelegend's creation series as well, here is an image example of his Face Building Series, which includes the thought processes behind the sculpts.
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Lazy Sunday afternoon; decided on a whim to do this surface level process run-through, for posterity and maybe someone might find it useful.
Been working on and off on my player character's face for awhile, but kept getting sidetracked to do my follower mod uploads and fixes. I should be (finally) done with them for a long time.
Detailed process (WALL OF TEXT):
Reference or no reference?
Besides for Mion, I have never used a reference. I also do not have a fixed person in my mind when I make the heads. This part is entirely up to you.
Sliders first, sculpt later
I've got into High Poly Head 1.4 recently, and I'm not sure if it's a placebo effect, but the sliders seem to be much better (finer) than vanilla.
For Anabella (unlike Megumi, Mion, Amalee and Zora), I actually spent most of my time on sliders.
Back in 2017, I made the mistake of trying to sculpt the vanilla eyelids, which resulted in lashes being off-sync, which led me to sculpt the eyes, which led to endless problems. (Megumi still doesn't blink properly, but I've grown so used to her face that I don't want to make any further changes)
My workflow for Anabella was much simpler than the past few attempt. Slide first, sculpt later.
Do not compress the face
I used to want to make "cute" faces by compressing the features. I did this by altering the height of the eyes to be lower, shortening the nose, bringing the mouth closer to the bottom of the nose and then smooth the s**t out of the chin. The problem with this approach is that it works fine with ECE, but with Racemenu you end up with a head that's 80 to 90% of the original size.
When I made the Amalee replacer, I had to scale her by giving her a custom "skeleton.nif" and enlarging the head node to 1.1 so she doesn't look like a giraffe. One of my favorite follower modders (Overknee) always used custom skeletons and I figured out that he probably had the same issue.
From Sundered Souls onwards, I never touched the height and length sliders first.
Go bald
Usually people get the urge to pick a favorite hairstyle first. I did that, but now what I do is I note down the hairstyle I want first, then pick the bald head. Why? To counter the above issue.
When you have a bald head, the face is in full, clear view, with the forehead and cheeks fully exposed. You would know immediately if you compressed the face to the point that her forehead can fit the Ever Given.
Eyes
Generally I do the shape first before adjusting the size. If you start with the size, you're gonna have to do size again anyways once you move the eyelids about.
Lower and Upper Eyelid height for the sensual / mysterious or the naive / innocent look.
Certain adjustments to the outer corners will make the eyes have a lot of white space, so I do the eyelid heights, eye corners, then scale the iris, then scale the entire eye. Gut feeling on how natural the size is. I always focus on the "soul" of the eyes (I know it sounds cheesy), but I already know the personality of the character before I start sculpting.
Brows
Personally, I feel like it's natural to do the eyes with the eyebrows, I switch back and forth quite often. Sometimes I put up my hand to block the lower half of the face on my screen, to see how the eyes and brows look (like wearing a facemask) before continuing.
Nose
If you're feeling adventurous, you can just use sculpt to do the nose tip and bridge freehand. Otherwise, I would suggest the sliders first, sculpt later approach. Be careful with overzealous nose bridge sculpt because the inner eyebrow mesh is very tight with the eyeshadow area and top of the nose.
Mouth
Mouth width first, followed by lip shape (pursed or pouty), lip thickness adjustments and smile.
Overall facial feature height proportion scaling
Now, I do the heights and lengths. I try not to move the brows and the chin (remember I'm seeing a bald head) and just try to space everything evenly. Nose length first, then mouth between chin and nose height adjustment. Cover the eyes and brows with my hand (blindfold) to see if the proportions look human still. Continue till satisfied with heights and lengths.
Quick test using Expressions
At this point, the baseline for the face is done. I'm still on the frontal view of the face and I haven't done the sides yet; that will come later. Expressions tab helps me roughly see how she looks when emoting.
Do the depths using a 45 degree turn
I turn the head 45 degrees (left or right doesn't matter) Nightmare fuel. This where I do the depths. Brow Depth and width first, followed by eye depth, followed by nose depth, mouth depth and lastly chin depth (should affect the lower lip). Chances are the lower and upper lip are not aligned at this point so I pull the chin out (or push in) to align the lips, then do the chin length and protrusion adjustments again. Grab the head and start swinging it from frontal to 45 repeatedly to check for weird spots and adjust accordingly.
Jaw and Cheekbones
Do some preliminary adjustments but don't expect much from the sliders; I do most of it in sculpt because the sliders get funky with the face.
Now we sculpt!
WARNING: SAVE THE PRESET! You don't need to export the head, just save the presets because it's only been slider work so far.
Sculpt focus: Double eyelids
Some people go crazy with the Smooth tool when they see bumps and protrusions, and start swinging the Smooth brush over and over the face till it rounds into a perfect potato. I was part of those people once. Learnt my lesson. If you have a reference, now is the time to use it.
I start with double eyelids because they will most definitely not be in a straight line. I use the Move brush; turn off Mirror, lower the power to 0.4, reduce the brush size, face the mesh straight-on, and then pull gently up or down at the crooked points. Eyelids done.
Sculpt focus: Cheeks and cheekbones
IMO the hardest part.
I usually end up with very harsh features when I'm done with Sliders, it may be good for a caucasian sculpt but it's immediate failure for an asian face (My experiment with Mion gave me some insight on how to make an Asian look without flattening everything into 2D like anime). The subtleties are there, and this is the part that takes the most time for me; getting a believable cheekbone height and shape, with just the right cheek fat amount.
Cheeks and cheekbones for me are largely trial and error with Inflate and Smooth. I start with a bigger brush, lower intensity to half, and then paint from the nose bridge to under the outer eyelid, then make a 45 degree inwards and downwards towards the lip corners (but stop before getting near), and then up again towards the inner eyelids. Think of it as drawing a triangle under the eyes. While making triangles, I smooth the parts that protrude too much, by doing light strokes with the right brush size, going from a higher region to a lower region if I want to bring up the connecting area, or lower to higher if I want to fatten the area.
Last few adjustments
I save the preset (2nd time) as a new filename and the head sculpt with the same name as this preset.
I try not to go back to sliders after touching sculpt because things can go downhill and all hell will break loose if you start moving things around again. Protrusions are easy to fix with the Smooth brush but facial animations and expressions might go haywire. After the absolutely necessary adjustments are done, I go to the expressions tab again to test the facial expressions a little.
Once I'm satisfied, I save the preset as a new (3rd) filename, and then the head sculpt this time, with the same (3rd) filename.
Done!
Visual, less detailed process:
^ Leftmost picture was done purely with Sliders from the front. Second picture was after the 45 degree turn. Third to fourth picture is pure sculpting. Giving her bigger cheekbones and cheeks made her eyes look squinty, so I adjusted the eye size again in Sliders. (Screenshots were taken with the hair I wanted, working bald head not shown)
^ These are the angles I use in Racemenu to check for protrusions (or lack of them) and areas I want to add "face fat". Console to change FoV. I cycle between 40 for close up, 60 for upper bust and 90 for full body zoom-outs for gameplay (mainly only for my followers)
Screenshots - White light pose test:
Screenshots - Dim fire light test (4 images):
Screenshots - Comparison with my last completed head:
^ Personally, and I mean, really, it's probably just me, but I hate making adjustments on heads I've finished. I want to go on adventures with them ASAP when they're done, and when the mood hits I'll turn my player character face into my next follower mod. (except for Amalee and Zora, I wanted to change their heads) I don't mean to be that guy, but I don't see the point of constantly releasing multiple followers / presets that look almost exactly the same. I understand this might come off as throwing shade, but in my defence, I LOVE overknee and YuiH followers (I have all of overknee's) even though they share a similar aesthetic between them. I just like the aesthetic. But I can't do that when I'm actually creating my own followers, it just weirds me out a little.
^ ENB on/off test (for the followers I make)
If you've read everything, hey, thanks for reading! I hope this helped you learn something, and don't be afraid to fail, there is no "wrong" in art.
I understand many people download (and request) presets, but I encourage everyone to make their own works of art in their spare time.
There is no shame in downloading other presets and adjusting them (at home, please don't reupload) to your liking, the creator doesn't have to know (shhhh....)
I believe most modders learn by reverse-engineering, so it's always a good starting point to make edits before overhauling, and then recreating from scratch, it's a legit process. And also, hating the earlier heads you made will make your next ones better! But ultimately, learn to love your creations.
Look into my soul, and tell me what you see~
3rd July 2021:
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