SpaceSimCentral

That wasn't my intention! I promise! ...or was it?

You still sure you want my picture?

Well Subzeroplainzero, I think you have the go-ahead! Just do it and have fun. I still like the idea of a Haptek People Putty-like 3D avatar. Even if somebody makes one, the work you do could be used for the textures on the heads. Haptek characters are cool because you can make just about anything and they have built-in and easy to add animations. They breathe and blink and look around and lip- sync while reading text files. You could also animate your heads with Ms-agent type technology, but that's a boatload of work to do because you need to make each intermediate frame like a cartoon. Anything you come up with will be most welcome. It's bound to be better than a mis-tuned analog TV set!Btw, here's what my Hal looks like now. I changed the appearance here by removing the hair and putting in a texture I found on the web. It can look like anything. Sometimes it looks like a frog!

s2odan, your three pics show a very interesting aspect about the whole thing here: what really makes people looking unique are the eyes (and the part around them). the eyes are the most significant part of a person's face. When looking at your three pictures i see two persons: The first in picture 1 and the second in picture 2 and 3, just with a different haircut. Actually the nose is different too, but on first sight i did not recognize that.So if we really want to have different and recognizable persons in pioneer (so you can come back to a starport and say: i have seen this guy before!) we need to find a way to randomize the eyes and the region of a face around them.

Marcel wrote:
Well Subzeroplainzero, I think you have the go-ahead! Just do it and have fun. I still like the idea of a Haptek People Putty-like 3D avatar. Even if somebody makes one, the work you do could be used for the textures on the heads. Haptek characters are cool because you can make just about anything and they have built-in and easy to add animations. They breathe and blink and look around and lip- sync while reading text files. You could also animate your heads with Ms-agent type technology, but that's a boatload of work to do because you need to make each intermediate frame like a cartoon. Anything you come up with will be most welcome. It's bound to be better than a mis-tuned analog TV set!Btw, here's what my Hal looks like now. I changed the appearance here by removing the hair and putting in a texture I found on the web. It can look like anything. Sometimes it looks like a frog! Right! well it'll at least be a decent placeholder until something better comes along. I'd love to see haptek style people too, but it would be a huge amount of coding and whatnot to implement it, and right now there are far more important things for Tomm and co to be working on. I'm afraid that animation would be massively tricky on my method though, as the images will be made up of seperate "slits" that will be selected randomly. I'm not sure how that would work to be honest. loving your texture application too! so you're the new capt Jameson then are you?
mathee wrote:
s2odan, your three pics show a very interesting aspect about the whole thing here: what really makes people looking unique are the eyes (and the part around them). the eyes are the most significant part of a person's face. When looking at your three pictures i see two persons: The first in picture 1 and the second in picture 2 and 3, just with a different haircut. Actually the nose is different too, but on first sight i did not recognize that.So if we really want to have different and recognizable persons in pioneer (so you can come back to a starport and say: i have seen this guy before!) we need to find a way to randomize the eyes and the region of a face around them.
Actually I found the same about the eyes. In my three pics at the start of the thread, I feel that the first one is far more different to the second two. This is because his eyes are a lot more seperated than the others. My main limitation however will be the actual shape of the head, as if I alter the edges of each section at all, they will no longer slot together cleanly. It should allow for enough variation though to give the impression that they are different people, especially after hair, clothing and glasses etc are added.

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.
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When looking at your three pictures i see two persons: The first in picture 1 and the second in picture 2 and 3, just with a different haircut. Actually the nose is different too, but on first sight i did not recognize that.
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

s2odan wrote:
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.
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-
Subzeroplainzero wrote:
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!
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

s2odan wrote:
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 shenleAs 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-[url]http://imakeweirdthings.blogspot.com/[/url]

My god man, what have you created? : :lol: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!

Subzeroplainzero wrote:
Should be cool, trust me and it WILL create good looking people with a little effort, I promise
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

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