One other thing that can make a big difference to how a face looks, is the structure or outline of the face. Shape of cheekones and chin ect ect. This is something that neither of us has demonstrated, however I think it would be a requirement for more varied faces. Otherwise every face would be the same shape, which is not right.

I agree, when I glance at my pics, I too see 2 people. The one with short hair actually looks a lot like a friend of mine 😀

Very true but I can't see a way around it without making it either cartoony or ending up with the textures of each section failing to line up. I'm not keen on making cartoon style avatars and I definitely don't want them to look like freaks vaguely stitched together.

I'm going to give it a try though, S2odan. And you know why? Cos it's all for you baby. It is highly probably that I will fail however as this is going to push my ability with photoshop to the absolute limit.

We have faith in you 🙂

Ok Here is my next attempt and I'm pretty proud! Due to the increased complexity, there are will be more noticable "joins" in the images as you will notice here, but I think you'll agree that they are a vast improvement. Please please please give me a thumbs up on this one, then I'll be able to move on and make more variations, then of course move on to races, hair and clothing... oh and ladies 😉

They look slightly odd perhaps, but these are fairly extreme proportions. The final generator would make people as ugly as these and anything in between. I dare say it would probably generate some fairly good looking people too!

I promise that this is the limit to what I can achieve with the facial structure, so anything more radical would result in a messy overlapping weirdo kind of look.

And also, Tomm if you are there, come forth oh wise one and impart thy wisdom upon me! I will need to know if there are any necessary requirements please 🙂 I need to know what the ideal size/resolution would be for my pics. I can't really do anything until I know this, as it could save me a lot of work in the long run.

So here they are! here are some examples of my children!! 😈

Sorry, these don't look realistic. Except maybe for the first one, although I still feel the need to refer him to a plastic surgeon.

As for the last one, the only way he could have ended up looking like this is if you caught his face in a vise, and punched him in the nose. Repeatedly. 🙂

I know, hence this-

These are extremes of what is achievable. They wont generaly be this ugly, I'm just trying to show what I can do with the actual facial structure.

Seriously though. I dont want to sound like a mardy arse, but you're never going to get perfection with photo-fit images. This is what I'm offering and I feel it's a bit unfair that it should be rejected so readily by people when nobody else is putting anything else on the table. Please go ahead and show me how much better your attempt is!

Sorry, I'm just starting to get ever so slightly annoyed at the fact that I am offering my time and effort to help this project and all I am getting in return is nit picking.

I thought they were really good. If your looking for thumbs up then I give you two thumbs up 🙂

Certainly a good basis to start from IMO, good variation between all of the examples and any peculiarities will be much less noticible at the size they would be seen in the game.

Seriously, well done 🙂

Hehe thanks 😳 Sorry just needed to rant a bit there. I'm vented..all's good. And thanks! It's just that I spent a good couple of hours getting it all in order then it was instantly critisized, sorry shenle

As I say, they're ugly buggers, but they are ugly buggers with varying facial structures. Here's some of the various pieces of the three faces mixed up to create another brand new face, just to show how versatile it can be-

Again, another ugly bloke but you get the point. Should be cool, trust me 😉 and it WILL create good looking people with a little effort, I promise.

I think I'm just a natural at making ugly things. Here's my art blog, you'll see what I mean-

http://imakeweirdthings.blogspot.com/

My god man, what have you created? 😮 :

😆

Seriously , what are these?

[attachment=485:pioneer-2D screen03pg.jpg]

All seriousness aside Subzeroplainzero, you are doing excellent work, and it's very much appreciated. Tomm is probably too busy polishing alpha 8 to respond at the moment, but I'll bet your faces will make it into alpha 9!

Who here is fascist enough to believe ugly people aren't allowed into space?

I think these "e-fits" are great.

Dear Subzeroplainzero,

Great work there! Let me know if I can assit when you begin to add age, glasses, visors, tatoos, helmet art, microphones, percings, etc. to the figures.

-- Jamie

Well if you watch Sci-Fi shows, it would be the norm not to allow ugly people in space, except of course Ferengi 😉

Star Trek - So fascist they removed the ugly gene from an entire race 😀

BSG - All the ugly people got killed in the 'batte', god has tastes 😉

Ok Here are a couple of new pics to show how the idea's coming along. And look! one of them is a rather charming gent!

As you can see, I've started a crude attempt at hair. Clothes prove to be fairly easy, and I've even thrown in a mustache! (My next attempts will be a lot more neat 😉

One thing that I will be unable to get around (without some advice) is age. I'm afraid everybody in the universe will be in their early 20s 🙁

Still, It seems to be looking good so far and am looking forward to hearing from Tomm or the new coder I'm hearing all about! So if you're there.. you know.. let me know what you think 🙂

Oh and thanks for all your kind words, people.

Haha I try not to catagorize my "things" but in simple terms, I would call them dimented babies from the deepest pits of hell 😆 🙂

Thanks for the offer! I will no doubt take you up on it when the time is right! 😉

Thats a nice tweed jacket that guy is wearing 😆 They are looking good. Jamie is a bit of a Dab-hand so he might know a thing or two about how to make them look older 😉

Thanks, who says there aren't any true gen'ts in the future 😉 ignore his bad hair though, the real ones will be much better. I'm already working on a way of making hairstyles withough horrifically chopping up google images of celebrities.

I'm just waiting on some answers now before I get started on it. Infact would you know? you seem to be quite clued up! All I really need to know is what size to make the finished portraits.

Age is going to be tough. I'd need a way of superimposing wrinkles without them overlapping things like eyes and lips etc

I'm not entirely sure so I did a little test for you by placing your face in with the dead video widget and trying it at 2 different resoluions and aspect ratio, you will be able to effectively judge the size yourself this way:

[attachment=492:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 03-52-17-74.jpg]

[attachment=491:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 03-52-59-70.jpg]

As you can see there is stretching on wide-screen resolutions and I'm not sure how to stop that.

Here you go:

[attachment=493:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-01-31 04-06-24-14.jpg]

Thats resized to 192x240.

PM me your email if you want a copy of that version so you can get an idea how they will look in-game.

Thanks! I see that there's a bit of space above his head, that means I can show a bit more of their clothing 🙂

Hmm the stretching doesn't look too bad actually. Hopefully there can be something done about it, there may be a way to have the aspect ratio coded in regardless of resolution, but then again, I know nothing about coding.

Endif

End

Just to keep those who care up to date, here are a couple of tests of how it is currently going. I'm now splicing various portraits of people and it's looking a lot better now if I do say so myself 🙂

I think you'll agree they look older now too!

I think you might also agree that the first one looks a bit like the guy from Avatar, and the second one looks a tad like Billy Crystal squinting at the sun. 😆

And those that offered their faces up for this project. Here's you chance! Pm me and I'll give you my email so you can send me a piccy 🙂

<>

Also, here's a quick look the animated overlay I'm working on-

Nice work!!

Wow, these look really nice and promising, but could you possibly put in a few women? 😀

This is a nice project and I really wouldn't like to feel like in half-life 1 with the only women being ninja-robot-assassins 😉

haha Don't worry women will be worked on shortly. I'm just trying to get my head around the blokes at the moment.

I'll add to the sausage fest with a couple more examples 😆 -

And here's a mix up of some of the ones I've posted so far-