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About this mod
This is a project dedicated to modernizing Skyrim's character assets. The first version focuses on applying originally sculpted, realistic faces to the male humanoids of Tamriel. This means their faces now react to lighting appropriately and naturally, and now have well-defined bone structures!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
LATEST WIP:
WHAT IS THIS?
This is a project dedicated to modernizing Skyrim's character assets. The first version focuses on applying originally sculpted, realistic faces to the male humanoids of Tamriel. This means their faces now react to lighting appropriately and naturally, and now have well-defined bone structures! In all comparison shots I'm only displaying the awful Vanilla presets (with no beards or blemishes to make the shots consistent) and in absolutely ALL shots I have installed the wonderful Total Character Makeover by Scarla as well as several other non-character texture packs. Oh, and also, Rudy ENB with Obsidian to make Skyrim look breathtaking.
WHAT IS THIS?
This is a project dedicated to modernizing Skyrim's character assets. The first version focuses on applying originally sculpted, realistic faces to the male humanoids of Tamriel. This means their faces now react to lighting appropriately and naturally, and now have well-defined bone structures! In all comparison shots I'm only displaying the awful Vanilla presets (with no beards or blemishes to make the shots consistent) and in absolutely ALL shots I have installed the wonderful Total Character Makeover by Scarla as well as several other non-character texture packs. Oh, and also, Rudy ENB with Obsidian to make Skyrim look breathtaking.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
As most of you probably know, Skyrim (just like other games) uses flat textures with "baked" 3D information known as Normal Maps. These are extremely performance-friendly and make up a big part of what makes things "pop" and react to lighting realistically in a game. These maps in particular are baked from sculpts I did specifically for this project. Here's an example for the Imperials:
PERFORMANCE HIT?
Same as Vanilla with the 1k option and indistinguishable for even remotely modern GPUs with the 2k option.
WHO'S INCLUDED?
Right now all humanoids except the Orcs (their normal maps weren't too bad to begin with and I'll get to them soon enough) and for now I'm
SO DO I HAVE TO CHANGE MY TEXTURES?
Technically no, although there may be some seam issues if used with body textures other than Total Character Makeover. I also included my face texture with most download options, which I recommend since it was tailored-made for my normal map (all screenshots use my texture, unless specified).
WHAT ARE MY DOWNLOAD OPTIONS?
Basically the only differences are between diffuse sizes and with or without wrinkle tweaks. What are these? Well, Skyrim uses a, shall we say, unsightly set of overlays for all NPC's that are supposed to be 40 to 50 years old. Unfortunately they look like they were crayola-painted and they're probably the biggest reason you hate Olfrid Battle-Born, a name I'm sure you know well...
INSTALLING AND UNINSTALLING
Just click on the download button lol.
You can uninstall safely at any time. They're just texture maps after all.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Since you ask:
-Add Orcs and animal races to the party ;)
-Differentiate Races further in a lore-friendly manner.
-Add variants such as "rougher" and "softer".
-Redo beards and hair textures from scratch so they don't look so painted-on.
-Find an elegant way to redesign beard and hair meshes so they don't look so much like paper cutouts.
-Remesh bodies and hands (for first person). As an avid VR user I'd like to see more love given to hands.
-Replace the super low-poly heads with more up-to-date low-poly (much higher poly count) meshes. This will be the hardest thing to do on the list I'm assuming.
In the distant future:
-Remesh Vanilla armor and weapons.
-Polish Vanilla 3rd person animations so they flow much better (already started working on this around a year ago)
BIG THANKS TO:
-Nuska, author of Ethereal Elven Overhaul, who made this wonderful guide that helped me figure out how to get the original meshes into ZBrush in the first place.
-CD Projekt RED, for some of the high quality skin assets used in my diffuse map.
-rudy102, because of his incredible work on ENB that continues to inspire me to mod this everlasting game.
-Bethesda, for The Elder Scrolls (duh)