Creating Your Face in Oblivion!

Posted on June 11, 2007 by Alex Taldren

Character customization has always been a huge factor for RPGs. Creating unique and cool looking characters is always a blast. At first, people were wowed by The Sims character creation system and since then, gamers have been placing increasing significance on character customization. With MMOs, having a unique character is a must. Many MMOs are plagued by poor customization options that leave a gamer’s character looking just like everyone else.

Well, The Elder Scrolls is a game series known for its in-depth RPG atmosphere and, therefore, also known for its great character customization. The most recent addition to the series is Oblivion, an open-ended RPG. The character customization is so detailed that you can change things like the length and with of your nose, how far your eyes are from each other, and the size of your cheek bones. Naturally, gamers see a system as detailed as this one and think, “I’m going to recreate myself!” However, it is far more difficult than they usually suspect. How do I know? Well, I was one of them once.

I spent countless hours attempting to modify the scroll bars until I got the concavity of my cheeks just right. By the end, I had spent nearly an hour just creating my character’s face, which ended up looking nothing like me. I was disappointed, but decided to screw it and play the game.

It has been a while since the release of the game and things have become easier. Furthermore, it seems this technology has been around for a while and I just never heard or realized it. Oh well, it still deserves some additional praise.

Using a free demo version of FaceGen Modeller, a program that allows a user to take three photos of him or herself — one from the front, the left, and the right profile — and then use them to create a 3D representation. Furthermore, the program also sets all the numerical values for all the dimensions! These numerical values, for example, allow a user to see how wide their face actually is in the model. Moreover, there is a mod for Oblivion that gives the slider bars, that the gamer uses to customize his or her character’s face, numerical values.

A forum discussion at Rage3D has some interesting comments on recreating your Oblivion character using FaceGen. It also has some examples of the differences between the real photo, the FaceGen representation, and the Oblivion character. Check out my FaceGen and real photo below to see.