Let me preface this by saying that this post has OPINIONS EVERYWHERE; not facts. Slider-fu General tips If you can't get the jaw right, or can't get enough forehead, you can move the entire face up or down on the head. This means moving eye-height, brow-height, nose-height and mouth-height up or down together. When you're not happy with your character, but don't know what else to do, try this.Keeping the mouth and nose pretty close together usually looks very nice.A little bit of downward tilt in the inner eye-corners can give a little schwung to most faces. (dont overdo this)To avoid fat faces, give your character a lot of neck-slope.Avoid underbitesAvoid pointy chinsAvoid convex nose-bridgesAvoid downward tilted nosetipsSome mouths are impossible to fit on some faces.Maintain a smooth contour on the face. This means don't make the cheekbones too wide, else the bones will stick out and the frame of your face gets jagged. Also, adjust the jawbone up/down, in/out and back/forward to avoid bumps in the frame.A good colour for eyeliner that matches most eyes, hairs and faces is a semi-transparent fairly dark blue. Try to avoid full black.Try to avoid very dark eyeshadow; a little touch up is fine. i recommend very little alpha for eye-shadows.Don't use bald hairstyles while editing. Find a ponytail or something that doesnt add a lot of hair to the face, but is still similar to a hairstyle you like.Try to avoid bright eyebrows. You can never go wrong with very dark ones. If you want blonde hair, a dark brown is sometimes preferable to full black.Bright lips tend to look better than dark ones. I like bright pinks with little alpha, or pinks/reds that are close to pale skincolours.I like to choose eyecolour, haircolour, brows and hairstyles when im close to wrapping up.Don't forget to check the view from the side.My favourite place to use the racemenu is inside the temple of kynareth in whiterun during daytime. (coc whiteruntempleofkynareth).When you don't know what else to change, but you're still not happy; try moving the face up/down, add some eye-tilt, work on the jaw, or change the eyebrows, and see what happens. Cheatcodes to use when you can't get it right and you just want to play the game Ponytails, or hairstyles that cover some of the facea lot of dark eyeliner. This is an easy way to get pretty. I recommend avoiding it if you can though.White eyeshadowTry different eyebrowsAdjust eyebrows to get an expression you likeAthena-hair - Everyone looks good with this, but try to avoid it if you can. You know you've got someone pretty when she looks good even without athena hair. It's in many hair-packs, but Apachii is the most popular.Avoid very detailed high-resolution skins and get a skin with the porcelain/anime look instead. For example SG Textures. Smoother skins are easier to get pretty with, but the results get better with detailed skins. Babyface features (Cute looks with childish traits, think Selena Gomez) a lot of forehead. You can get this by moving the brows and eyes downwards.some upward tilt on the nosetipNose a little higher above the mouth than usualShort nosesInnocent expressions: high brows with upward tilts in the inner cornersround cheeks Strong adult features (What you think of when imagining female warriors, or think Olivia Wilde) Eyes positioned mid/high in the faceStrong cheekbonesStrong jaws sometimes helplong noses close to the mouthwide eyebrowsthin noses Barbie features Symmetrical faces, kind of the middle-ground of babyface/strong faces Mods Character Creation Menus You're going to want a replacement for the default character creation-menu. The ones I know of are: RaceMenuEnhanced Character EditMy favourite is definitely ECE. Like RaceMenu, it adds a lot of sliders, but it adds a couple more that RaceMenu doesnt have, like Eye Tilt (which is fairly important). The only time I would consider RaceMenu is if you want layered warpaints (warpaints on top of warpaints), which does not work in ECE. Body replacers Bodyreplacers are very much up to your preference. They replace the blocky vanilla female body with (usually) more feminine ones. These are the ones i think are most relevant. The notes behind each of them here is what I think of the bodyreplacer. Your opinions will not necessarily match mine, so check pictures before you decide. UNP - A pretty slim body. The boobs tend to get a little pointy at higher weight-levels (especially on armors), and the butt, hip and waist get a little too big for my tastes. UNP has a huge selection of armors and armor-replacers, and is very popular.SeveNBase - The supermodel-version of UNP. Its a lean body which has a weight-slider that mostly affects boob-size. Some people complain the body has fake looking boobs. I like SeveNBase a lot, but the UV is not perfect, meaning textures look like they have been stretched in some places. Decent armor-replacer availability.CBBE - A very curvy body that a lot of people like. The weight-slider yields a fairly big butt and boobs. It makes your character a little too fat looking for my tastes. UNP skins do not work with CBBE, but there are many skins available. Huge armor-replacer selection, and comes with the very handy BodySlide tool which lets you tweak the body to your own tastes.BodySlide CB Plus Plus - BodySlide mentioned above is a tool that lets you use many sliders to make the CBBE body match your preference perfectly (there's a slider for ankle-size, several boob-sizes, hip-width, etc) BodySlide CB++ is very much recommended if you're going to use BodySlide. It adds more sliders so you can be more precise, and lets you get even bigger boobs... Pretty good armor-replacer availability. Skin Textures Skin-replacers change the texture of your skin. Here are some things that are important to know about skin-textures: The body and face textures are not in the same file, meaning you can mix/match face/body textures. Though doing so might lead to neckseams, this is something you can fix yourself with photoshop.There are 3 categories of skin-textures:Diffuse - The colour and texture of the skin. These are the *.dds files in your skin-folder Normalmaps - The geometry of the skin, wrinkles, muscle-definition etc. These are the *_msn.dds files in your skin-folder. Speculars - The glossiness of the skin. Good to simulate sweat, shine, and makeup-reflections. These are the *_s.dds files in your skin-folder What this means for you is that you can mix and match different parts of skin-packages. If you like the realistic look of Mature Skin for example, but hate how wrinkly it makes you, you can take the normalmaps from a skin-package that doesnt have wrinkles and still use the diffuse-textures from mature skin.Not all skins work for all bodyreplacers. They are mostly separated into CBBE or UNP, as a lot of bodyreplacers are based off these two.There is a huge selection of skins. Here is a list of some: Mature Skin A skin-texture made for realism. It has imperfections such as moles and large pores, to look more realistic. The normalmaps have a bit of wrinkles in the forehead, that i recommend replacing. (goes well with New lips.)SG skin Super-smooth "perfect", almost porcelain skin with an anime-feel. It is pretty easy to make good faces with, but might not be for you if you're not into the anime-girl look.Real Girls skin A WIP that never seems to finish. has VERY detailed skin, with face-textures up to 8192px resolution. I honestly dont have a lot of experience with it, but thought I should mention it for those of you who want even more details than Mature Skin offers.Navetsea skin A fairly detailed skin. The skin has a kind of dark disposition. I don't like the blocky and wrinkly normalmaps. It is very popular, but I do not recommend it because I find it ruins pretty faces.Coverwomen Face-textures only. This has very nice speculars for makeup and lips. Be wary of neckseams, unless you're using the UNP body. The full package includes some eyebrows. It's all in all a pretty good package that can make getting a pretty character easy, but the skin is not very detailed or realistic. I recommend grabbing just the speculars from here.Better Females by Bella A fairly popular beauty-package. Not very detailed, but easy to make pretty faces with. Has very nice eyebrows. I recommend only grabbing the eyebrows from here.Women of Skyrim Face only. Just normalmaps. This is my favourite normalmap. It is very smooth.There are MANY more options, so go hunting! These are just some I thought i should mention. My favourite combination is Mature Skin diffuse with Coverwomen glittery speculars, and Women of Skyrim Normals.Miscellaneous beauty-mods Precache Killer Mandatory. You definitely want this, unless you want the textures for the 700 hairstyles you have installed to be loaded ALL the time.Prettier teethBetter eyelinerLess pixely makeup and warpaintsAnother headmesh I recommend sticking with the one from ECE thoughI don't want to list hairs and eyes. I wrote this because of all the requests i get for advice on how to make My character in game. 2nd pic The mods used on her are: SeveNBaseCoverwomen pink specularsmature skinwomen of skyrim normals with maevan patchbrows are from better females by bella i thinkeyes are from the mod that adds a couple of eyecolours with really thick lashes, i think its part of eyes of beauty.enhanced character editrans eye reflection extendersmile in HDBeauty Spot -Skyrim Warpaint- Better makeup for SKSE for mature skin, with lips and tintmaskssome textures from Co0N on the nexus.
