I think some sorts of headsets or "future microphones" 😉 that you fit anywhere near the mouth would be great. futuristic glasses that give the person wearing them information on incoming ships would be nice too. It should be even possible to have people that have bionic elements like an artificial eye or other things that help overcoming injuries or increasing some skills.

just some thoughts 😉

Scars, spots, freckles, different cheekbones, wrinkles, moles, tattoos, dirt/grease (etc) can all be added in using different layers in order to add more variety

any progress

I remember you having a 3d avatar with a pilot. Maybe it can be possible to do something similar with 3d models and subzero faces to make a 3d portrait instead of 2d.

as video link faces?

such is possible yes, but if done right needs a lot of work,

it's also possible to randomize the face in the same way the texture gets

and you could animate the face as well.

the mouth could form the proper vowels while "reading" the string.

but i guess that would need a team only for this task and will evolve to something like heavy work 😉

the model would be preferably a scripted one, then you can control each vector for the animation.

allready this is heavy work.

but therefore a nodding head like Max Headroom would be possible. 😆

that's a really good idea, let's see what i can do with my low poly head as a scripted model.

it will be maybe a bit rough looking and i would have to use later bezier shapes to make it smooth.

but for a first experiment it will be just fine.

here we go...

a simple quick preshot of a animated head, not very good, but enough as example.

i know looks like a fish snapping for breath

Whoa! Some weird and interesting things going on here. I have zero knowledge of 3d modelling so I'd have to say I'm out on that idea lol.

I'm going to keep going ahead with my 2d plan for the moment and if somebody wants to try and make 3d talking heads out of it then fantastic. The above example would need to be able to create textures at random then apply it to a model: seems pretty feasible to me, (if a bit complex). Hopefully it it wouldn't need me to start again though because..well, I don't have the energy to be honest haha.

I'm still slowly working on races. Asian mostly at the mo 🙂

I'm pretty sure that last guy was in the 'Sabotage' video by 'The Beastie Boys'. 🙂

Haha that reminds me, I need to get some aviators involved! 😎

Here are some lovely asian ladies for your enjoyment-

<>

And a couple of extras 🙂 -

Thanks! I agree, that is probably the best one yet but the trouble is, it make all the others look like dog crap! 😆

A lot of it comes down to the quality of the original images I use. It's very rare to find a portrait of someone where they are looking directly at the camera with no shadows and also compleately clear and crisp. The eyes in that example were a rare find. I'd love to find a library of faces somewhere on the internet that have all those qualities. If anybody knows of any let me know, and please feel free to point me to any portraits you run into that might be good to use

1.Here's my plan for the moment-

2.Finish races, genders, accessories and hair to a functional level

3.Hopefully get it implemented in game

4.flesh out the unfinished stuff

5.add content to all catagories based on feedback

6.Clean everything up/replace the not so great parts with better ones

7.Have a cup of tea and a biscuit

Hmm I can't remember what the ufo:ai portraits look like.. perhaps I could offer some help when I'm done on this project.

LOL! he's gasping for air! But yeah, I guess it takes lots of work. But it's a nice start. Good Idea to be taken as a future project. Maybe something similar as the talking Deus Ex models.

Thats actually pretty good.

i don't know looks very crappy to me, but was made in only ~2hrs.

difference is, you cant see, it's not simply animated, that could have be done better in the same time maybe.

the difference is allready that it would be possible to control the movement with even a string,

as example you could give all vowels a certain value, this amount or a derivate of, will let the mouth open more or less.

a next step will be to construct a head from bezier quads, wherefore it has to be sectioned in parts that are reproducable and fit seamless. i guess that's the hardest part, but i will see if it's possible to create such shapes in a CAD program and readout the coordinates for the bezier, that would be really helpful and timesaving.

you could transfer them to a lua script and had "only" to setup the animation and reading function.

Hehe, that would be a lot of work. So many lines to copy and edit... we need a converter, .obj -> .lua 😉

Good stuff!

Keep up the great work - as always.

Jamie

Hey I found a nice little software called FaceGen. This can be useful to generate faces for the game. It can export from very high to very low poly. there's a free version to try it out. Unfortunately the Re-Distribution license is about 900$ but this is definitely something to consider for the future, if we get more people interested in the game then we can all contribute to get something like this. 😀

...or we could use the work that I've laboured over for the last couple of weeks? 🙁

Maybe I'm just biased but I think the portaits will have a lot of frontier charm while still improving upon the original by a lot 🙂

Oh no don't get me wrong Sub. I do like your idea and would like your concept to be implemented. The 3d idea was more of a concept for a future feature. Btw I took the liberty to steam one of your creations to make it more seemingly:

I basically blurred the parts that are connected to the background face. Because of the blurred and heavily brushed style of the face you're using as a template. The eyes and mouth part don't look very connected to the face, therefore you can either add blur effect to parts you have connected or sharpen the face template you're working with. You can also sharpen the edges of the hair part to make it stand out of the dark background. I don't want to feel bad about your creations, that was not my intention 😳 . I do like your models quite a lot and would gladly help you out finding more face parts and send em to you via pm for your creations. I remember I did a shodan face a few years ago when I was obsessed with system shock maybe you can use something like that as well. I need to find it tho. 😀

Yeh the parts dont all perfectly match up, this is due to the small confines of each section. Touching up the finished pics is not an option either as pioneer will be procedurally generating the faces. My aim is not actually to make finished portraits, but to make loads of "pieces" of faces that will be dynamically slotted together to create the feeling that the galaxy is full of a diverse selection of people. S2odan is dong the hard work on that, and it sounds like he's got some really good ideas in the works. There will eventually be an overlay over the portraits, perhaps a fuzz or something that will help conceal the imperfections so dont worry about the bad joins, and I'm also going to touch up what I have already done once I've fleshed the whole thing out.

It's ok that suggestions is really good! Perhaps something like that can be implemented but for now at least I think my portraits should be pretty cuool, especially once it's got lots of content and accessories. It's really just in it's infancy at the moment 🙂

I hesitate to suggest this, but there are galleries of police mugshots on the web that match your criteria. Might make for some interesting sketchy characters! 😆

I think I get the idea. Sounds very interesting. 🙂

Haha I tried really hard just now to find some but sadly, the police really need to invest in some better cameras. They would've been amazing otherwise... depending on how many crack heads you reckon there might be in the galaxy 😆 😆

If you see any good pics around let me know though, if they're high quality I'd love to have em. And thanks for the offer, Taquito, pm me with anything you find 🙂

Ok Sub. I just need to see if I understood the concept correctly. If I did then you just need for example one eye and mouth vectors right? The other eye can be inverted then I guess. What exactly will the template be? Face and nose? If I got it right then I think something like giving you an eye or mouth vector from a pic? Something like this?:

please try to place any of these eyes in one of your empty faces. I faded the edges in both but a bit more in the red one but I havnt tried yet on a face.

Each eye is going to be subtly different. If you simply invert one you mat be heading into uncanny valley.

Have a look at some celebrity mirrored faces on the net. It's difficult to put your finger on but there is something not quite right about them.

Very true. I resorted to it a few times already, when things wer'nt working quite right. Here's one that's inverted-

And this one used 2 eyes-

The first one just doesn't look anywhere near as natural.