What's all this beautification about?

[vixyn]

I was rather amazed that one of the first mods to be released made the teeth white. There I was thinking, yay, finally they got it that people living in the medieval had no teethbrushes, and there you go, teeth are white again.

 

Just to poke at this specific comment... you're pretty much dead wrong. Many cultures around the world, through the ages, have practiced some form or oral hygiene. If not to protect their teeth, than to - you guessed it - beautify themselves. Forms of toothbrushes have been used since as early as 3000 BC in Egypt, where they used sticks that had the fibers on an end flayed and shredded to clean teeth. The form of toothbrush that we use - bristles on a handle - have been mentioned in historical texts from as far back as the 1200's.

 

That said, medieval Europe, the area most RPG's are loosely based on, had a very high chance of having some form of oral hygiene in at least the upper class. Many of the Islamic regions the Crusades ranged through had use of a miswak - a tooth cleaning tool still in use today and said to be superior to a toothbrush - so its very likely that the miswak was brought back to Europe. That could have been as early as the late 1000's, as the first crusade was in roughly 1090AD.

 

 

So. Historically speaking...

Yellow, foul smelling teeth = bad.

Clean, sweet smelling teeth = good.

 

 

 

 

I'm gonna go with people making mods that get rid of really gross looking default teeth as being just as accurate as teeth being nasty. History backs them up :P

[domanz]

Interesting. I'm gonna google what a miswak looks like. ^^

[Aria C]

Well there is no going arround Nude Mods and stuff like that.

Someone allways will try to make things more pretty or just naked.

 

I would think that there are more important things for the start to deal with in Dragon Age then those fugly naked models...

but what is the first thing people mod? Nude stuff... what else?

 

I did not see the need for any new Morrigan or Lelilalulana faces... so far. In the posted screenshots they all look the same to me anyway.

 

Please understand the whole process of modding for a game has to start somewhere, what you are seeing is the first attempts made with little to no tools available to current modding community. All modding communities start off this way.

 

If the dragonage modding community had the same tools available to them that the oblivion and fallout modding community currently has its disposal the mods being released today would leave anyone drooling regardless of personal taste but as I have said everything starts somewhere and here in DA we are still in the early stages of pionearing the way and learning from each other on what works and what dosnt.

 

Too bad, if it was possible to create a chubby warrior princess, maybe I would have tried that for fun. :D These guys would have the innate ability to tackle their targets to the ground and sit on them while slashing their throat. Something like overwhelm for humans.

 

I remember the witcher having the same problem, all peasants and nobles and whatnot looked the same, all the guards looked the same and so on. 3 faces for all npcs, the special ones excluded.

 

This is the reason why I gave all of the NPC's in Oblivion a makeover, I used the weighted pregnant dress and modified it to shirts and armors for fat people, and for skinny people I used alot of different hgec armors and cloths. It would have all been easier if I could have found a way to just set a body type for each npc but unfortunately my attempts at that met with disaster.

 

It may be possible to get lyods or whatever that tavern owners body for use with the player character, and from the superman pun cutscene I know of atleast one fat woman in DA so it may be possible to get hers as well. I will investigate this.

 

As for my own tastes, I like a healthy mixture of beauty and uglyiness and even ugliness can have beauty in it if its done right. So my own modding abilities will be put to use on mods that create both and if I am lucky I can round up some voice actors and make the npc voices more unique

[Curious002]

I am definitely disgusted with the unnatural looking and bulky models Bioware came up for the character bodies.

 

One doesnt really notice it much with people in heavy armor, but with robed people or people in light armor its very obvious. Especially the shoulders often look very awful.

 

Unfortunately redesigning these models will require redesigning a lot of animations and models for armor as well, so its not likely someone will try to fix this soon - and its likely nobody will ever fix it.

[Curious002]

Its mainly due to society/media telling us that beauty = success.

Hu ???

 

Nope.

 

I just like my characters being beautiful.

 

I like being handsome in reallife too. I like it if other people are beautiful. Theres nothing secondary attached, I just like it all by itself.

 

And when I play a fantasy roleplaying game, I like my characters being very aesthetic, too.

 

Not necessarily by being just plain beautiful. But even ugly or old people can be done in an aesthetic ways. For example, the Halforc character from the D&D 3 player handbook was looking ugly, but heroic looking. I really dont like it if Orcs just look like Pigs.

[domanz]

I guess we need to distinguish between 2 forms of uglyness:

The first being that the models and textures are awful, which is not an aesthetic discussion but a failure which might be fixed, and the second being that we don't like the whole appearance of a character, including things like face, expression, breasts and whatnot.

 

So I guess what you (curious) mean is that orcs are often designed horribly, they should be ugly in an aesthetic way but beautiful regarding their model, they should look dangerously ugly and not stupid. Right?

[myrmaad]

I guess we need to distinguish between 2 forms of uglyness:

The first being that the models and textures are awful, which is not an aesthetic discussion but a failure which might be fixed, and the second being that we don't like the whole appearance of a character, including things like face, expression, breasts and whatnot.

 

So I guess what you (curious) mean is that orcs are often designed horribly, they should be ugly in an aesthetic way but beautiful regarding their model, they should look dangerously ugly and not stupid. Right?

 

This is definitely how I feel about it. Skinny, voluptuous, tall, petite, hairless, bearded.. Beauty comes in many packages.

 

 

About those historical teeth:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html

Edited December 15, 2009 by myrmaad

[Mlai]

Necro! Sorry but...

I use a mod to put more clothes on Morrigan.

If you look at the Trailer Edition mod, IMO the companions look more "characterful". Default Morrigan looks more like an overdone catwalk model with lip augmentation surgery, while TE Morrigan looks much more 'real' with a wider mouth that better expresses her nature when she gives you her wry smile in cutscenes.

That's just one example. To rule out all such mods, cart blanche, is to your own detriment.

[Povuholo]

As for the teeth... I didn't like the teeth that looked like wood, it was distracting. As for medieval times, I'm sure that a world like that of Dragon Age with its magic and what not would have some way to keep your teeth white. It's not very far fetched.

 

I find that the recommended settings of the Dragon Age Redesigned project do a great job at improving the faces, but not with the intention of simply beautifying them (aside from the elves), so I definitely approve of that kind of facial improvements. He did an excellent job making the looks match the character.

[elyparanoid]

Interesting opinions here =)

 

I can say that I'm a huge fan of many of those beautification mods, because I like to look at aesthetically pleasing characters. Especially when I have to look at them the whole playthrough.

Be it my male Dalish, my female Mage or whatever character I play, regardless of gender.

 

Regarding the teeth-discussion: When the character is able to maintain a perfect hairstyle, they should be able to clean their teeth, no?