How do you guys do it? lol

[Deleted19890699User]

Hey, so I used to play male characters almost exclusively in fallout 4. One reason for this is I cannot seem to create a decent-looking female character to save my life - all the female characters I create seem to look too much like guys in drag, lol.

 

And yet, I see some people make great-looking female characters - some of the screenshots on various mod pages. My question is this:

 

How do you do it?

 

I already installed numerous mods for beautification, but I just can't seem to make a decent character. The screenshot attached here is the best I could do after spending about 2 hours in character creation. (ignore the very noticeable neck gap on the screenshot - it goes away when wearing other clothes.)

 

Any tips people could give me to make my character look better would be appreciated.

 

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by Guest

[Moraelin]

Well, dunno about the others, but I really wish I had a recipe. It would have saved me a few dozen hours of trying hard.

 

The only shortcut that comes to mind is really just downloading someone else's preset.

[parrotheada1a]

Well, dunno about the others, but I really wish I had a recipe. It would have saved me a few dozen hours of trying hard.

 

The only shortcut that comes to mind is really just downloading someone else's preset.

 

I will second Moraelin's comment, and add a few of my own. First thing, you CAN get your Character looking just as you like. What I suggest is using a preset that is Looksmenu compatible, as this will give you the largest pool to draw from. The idea is to use it as a base. Just follow the instructions for installation and you should be fine. Oh, not bragging here, but I'll use Mac as my model. Mac is now on her second play through the Commonwealth, and I learned that a lot of stuff is just plain hard to do down in the vault.

 

So you have to do a bit of research in the Character Presets mods section. There are hundreds to go through. If I can emphasize one thing, it's that despite what you see in a picture you are not likely to get it looking exactly like that in your own game. This is simply because everyone has different machines, game settings, mods and ENB/ lighting setups. Once you pick a preset you need to get out of the vault. The lighting down there is terrible and you need to see what you are doing. If you need some help, shoot me a message and I'll do the best I can.

 

So I've been using various combinations of hairs & makeup on Mac over time. I found that using just a little makeup goes a very long way.

This is how she looked after getting out of the vault.... and a small tweak here and there.

ENH20181106211944_1 by Jim S, on Flickr

 

Cheers

PHa1a

[DanteRedfield]

I just make it look like what i like

[jones177]

I don't use mods other than hair and eyes on character creation but I have a method.

 

I start with a back story and a personality profile. I then try to convey it by the set of the jaw the mouth, then eyes. After that I work on the profile.

 

I try to get my characters to look like they are in their late thirties, early forty because I think it fits the voice.

 

Here is one of my favorite ones.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/images/85245

[TheGadget1945]

Partly due to the lack of black characters in the game I generally make my character a black woman but I am hopeless at sculpting faces of any kind. It would have been really cool if someone invented a way of taking a photo and making it into a face in FO4.

[Moraelin]

BTW, while it's harder to estimate in Fallout 4 than in Skyrim, at least unless someone made a mod to actually show the slider positions, I find that THE best starting point in any game with sliders is to just bring them all to the centre position first. Then work from there. The centre tends to be whatever face the dev's 3d modeller actually sculpted, and it must have looked good at least to that guy. The more you deviate from there, the bigger your chances to land face-first in the uncanny valley. (So basically Uncanny Valley Girl;))

 

In most games, including FO4, I also find that it's usually a good idea to go light on the makeup. Semi-natural looking tends to look better than a clown face. There's a reason why you have intensity percentages in the character creation. (Although, if you want to actually fit the theme is 50's, you can feel free to be a bit more generous with the lipstick. They didn't DO "subtle" in the 50's.)

 

I also find that Bethesda's face textures look like ass. Actually, no, that was mean and uncalled for: the average ass has smoother skin than Beth's faces :tongue: The reason being that they insist on some texture with huge pores, which don't just look old, but also make texture stretching more visible. (Again a reason to stay near the centre. Go to far and you get more stretching.)

 

Worse yet, if you stick with their textures, their idea of an optional Ultra-HD texture just makes those huge pores more pronounced and visible, not any smaller. So you might actually get better faces if you DISABLE Bethesda's Ultra-HD texture pack.

 

Finally, something I found works well with just about any game or game engine I've ever tried is to give those mouth edges a slight upwards turn. We tend to be more attracted to smiling people than to someone who looks royally pissed off. Downside: if you go to far, your character might literally look like the Joker in some Batman comics when they actually try to grin. Like for example during in some Silver Shroud dialogues.

 

 

Oh, right, and while it's not about how you sculpt the character, be sure to check your character from other angles than dead-forward too. Nobody looks at their best in a deer-in-headlights kind of photo. There's a reason people look slightly to the side in paintings and photos, and why almost nobody looks good on their biometric passport photo where they have to look into the camera.

[jdrfox]

I have the same character since FO3, except she looks much better now.

 

 

 

Only img i can find of her in New Vegas

 

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by jdrfox

[zanity]

I'm not artistic so, like the OP, if I try to create something I don't know, I'll unconsciously bias to forms I do know. Thus the 'mistake' of trying to feminize a male form, rather than doing a pure femine form from the off.

 

A skilled artist can use a few few strokes of a pen to create a clear typical female or male image on paper. Yet those few strokes will certainly NOT be a realistic eye, nose, mouth etc.

 

So the answer to the OP's question lies in doing what any good artist does- namely LEARNING what elements make us perceive a face as male or female. And to this end the answer is simple- go on Youtube and search any of the many thousands of excellent drawing tutorials. Do NOT assume that just because you are looking at faces all day long, and KNOW what a really sexy female face looks like, you'll obviously be able to draw or model such.

 

The greatest thing about the Internet is the learning tool aspect- IF one bothers to use it that way. The greatest library and teaching tool in Human History is free, and near universally available. Just cos the net is littered with trash and distractions does NOT mean one cannot use it for learning.

 

Games have evolved amazing character creation tools- and Beth's face sculpting (which I think is licensed) is one. But just because one owns a great tool does not make one a great artist. The matter of talent is not mitigated because the tool is so amazing.

 

We all know that real artists learn figure drawing cos of the old joke of the art class and the naked model. But what the obsession with figure drawing proves is that it is NOT easy and NOT natural, even tho we see people of all types all day. Would this skill have to be taught (to even many natural artists) if it were easy?

 

So the simple truth is that Beth provides a great sculpting tool, but does not provide the art lessons, and most people's experience with the tool will be laughable and pathetic- hence the preset system. But to get better, likie I said, the answer has NOTHING to do with Fallout and everything to do with how aspiring artists get educated.

 

However, even with the best advice and classes from expert artists on Youtube, a vast amount of practise is then needed to learn and skill-up. Do not puzzle at the fact that even after hours experimenting, one's results are still g-dawful. Only on nasty TV dramas for the hard of thinking do characters suddenly aquire skills that in real life take years to master if at all.

 

Is this forum the best place for art advice (or even coding advice )? Actually it is pretty much the worst place. Modders use art skills and/or coding skills in their work all the time- but they will have gained their skills more conventionally and honed them via a LOT of practical practice.

 

OTOH we have mods where the modder is great at some things, hopeless at others, but needs to do all the things themselves so we accept some dodgy aspects in gratitude for the whole.

 

But for the individuals skills themselves, I would never expect a non-artist to come to being even close to acceptable to even the work of a mediocre trained artist. Same for coding. And this fact is hard for many people to accept in the modern age, where true skills and the vast amount of hard work required to hone those skills is down-played in all popularist media.

 

PS ever watch SF's brilliant show 'Face Off'? A 'reality' show very much to the point of the OP's question- tho focused on practical 'Hollywood' facial make-up skills. After ten seasons or so the show had to end because it could no longer find enough constestants of sufficient quality (and the contestants were not 'diverse' enough for the channel down to the simple fact that only certain types of people seem to seriously consider this career path). In early seasons, the producers would take a few 'token' contestants who expressed an interest in make-up and give them a 'crash course' before the show began. But the judges- pros from the industry- demanded the right to eliminate contestants on merit alone- so the 'tokens' were removed within one or two episodes. And in the end this looked worse than never having the 'tokens' in the first place.

 

'Git Gud' is a much mocked Internet meme- but it is an eternal truth. It means there ain't no cheap advice as to how you become proficient in a skill. There wasn't 10,000 years ago, and there isn't today- no matter what TV may tell you.

 

Me- I'll rely on the TRUE experts everytime and never try to replicate their skills. I have my own fields of expertise, and like so many of my type, they are not artistic in the image sense. Why MY brain cannot do what the brain of a natural artist can so very easily is both a puzzle but a joy as well. How boring life would be if we all had exactly the same access to a given list of skills. I rejoice that when I come here (well the section hosting the mods) I see certain types of work I could never replicate, and I have access to that wonderful work for free.

 

TL:DR use the presets of a person artistically skilled enough to know what they are doing.

[Moraelin]

But for the individuals skills themselves, I would never expect a non-artist to come to being even close to acceptable to even the work of a mediocre trained artist. Same for coding. And this fact is hard for many people to accept in the modern age, where true skills and the vast amount of hard work required to hone those skills is down-played in all popularist media.

Some of the users of my sword meshes would disagree. Or faces, even, for a couple of games. Not only I'm not formally trained as an artist, but the extent of my graphics skill when I got into it was basically at the level of needing a cup to draw a circle. (Whereas now, after honing my skill, I can also draw one with a glass or a vitamin tube in a pinch;)) Yet I've had people actually ask me to port my stuff to another game, so they must have liked SOMETHING about them.

 

 

Also, for what it's worth, I wouldn't take a reality show or even contest show as indication of anything. They're not exactly a random sample or anything. They're in fact selected to fit a certain goal, be it creating more drama or whatever. And contest shows have been known to occasionally outright cheat to keep the audiences interested.

 

So the fact that one particular show ended up with people not knowing their a*** from their elbow, is not necessarily more relevant to reality than Star Wars is.