Heads: To add or not to add

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:48 am

OK people. We have a problem here. With headpacks. SOme people want them in TR, some people don't. Vernon's probably doing the job which doesn't need to be done at all. Core is silent like always (except for Hermit) so we don't even know official position. So let's vote. All head threads are closed until I'll see a certain outcome of this poll. Discussion is welcome too.

Graff · Post by **Graff** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:17 am

Yes. There is only so much you can do with Bethesda's head, which quite frankly, compared to the head mods out there, look shit.

Graff.

kingfish · Post by **kingfish** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:26 am

imho making new heads is a waste of time, there are more important areas we should worry about. personally, i don't care what a person that is giving me a quest looks like, but i do care what the quest is like...

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:30 am

Not making ourselves but compiling TR pack from various headpacks our there.

Vernon · Post by **Vernon** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:31 pm

Not saying anything or voting until the core gives input. I have said enough already.

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 2:28 pm

I say yes. Majra said

as far as map 1 goes, we need fricken new NPC parts

so I guess he's for it too.

Eraser · Post by **Eraser** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:03 pm

And I of course feel the same way.

More heads and hair, means more variety and a more immersive world.

Vernon · Post by **Vernon** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:04 pm

Well what happens then? This should all be discussed because a bunch people don't want this stuff in it.

Eraser · Post by **Eraser** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:27 pm

The only person who's said anything against it is kingfish. and since we aren't making the heads ourselves, we can focus our time on making other stuff, and just collect heads from packs. of course with permission.

If anyone is seriously against it, speak up.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:50 pm

Dex and DKMW were against it. But I didn't understand their reasoning.

kingfish · Post by **kingfish** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:14 pm

to clear my opinion:
i'm NOT against new heads, i just don't see it as a priority. but of course i may be wrong.

Dexter · Post by **Dexter** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:18 pm

I don't see the point. The first mod that the vast majority of people download is a face mod. Everyone and their mom has a face replacer, trying to put our own together by picking and choosing through the other packs out there is just a waste of time.

Lady Nerevar · Post by **Lady Nerevar** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:31 pm

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 1:56 am

Dex, the point of these heads is not to make a TR heads replacer (for the game areas) but to use other than Bethesda stock heads for our NPCs. That's what this heads pack is for.

Dexter · Post by **Dexter** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:05 am

I know it's not a replacer. And if we are trying to re-create Morrowind the way the Devs would have done, doesn't it seem silly for everyone on Vvardenfell to have the deformed and mutilated stock heads and everyone one the mainland to have the beautifuly-rendered heads of LadyE and Rhedd?
I don't think this is a bad idea, I just think it is a waste of time. That's just one man's opinion though.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:35 am

I say put your effort towards more immediate concerns. If a head pack is needed, then it can be done later as a bolt-on or ESM update. Vvardenfel is also filled with clones, remember.

Aside from the fact that the mainland will suddenly have new, high-res faces, which resemeble Hollywood stars, people will be using their own headpacks regardless, and your work will be next to meaningless.

It should also be mentioned that you can pretty much throw unique race characteristics out the window with the new heads. How will you account for the vast differences in style of the old dunmer faces and the new ones? The same goes for wood elves. The Bosmer face pack makes them look like super models, which is where most of the face textures come from by the way. The orc faces also have this problem. The Bethesda Orcs have a pigish snout... the new faces have human noses.

If you're to peice together faces for use in TR, out of work done on the ES forums, you'll have to convert all of the faces on Vvardenfel too.. or we can pretty much throw any sort of consistancy plans out the window. Thus it would have to be a bolt-on, and as we've previously explained, that route is pointless.

If its absolutely necessary, and you have no other work to do on the project, you can make your own faces, which are unique to TR... however, you should keep them low-res, and using the original head models.

Kothloth · Post by **Kothloth** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:33 pm

New heads are good as long as they're *quality*. We shouldn't add just any crap, only heads that fit well with the style bethsoft started with Morrowind.

Hermit · Post by **Hermit** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:32 pm

Problem is that most headpack heads are of *higher* quality than Bethsoft heads (whichb is the reason those head packs came to be to begin with).

Greybeard · Post by **Greybeard** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:17 pm

Dexter and Morden pretty much nailed it.

If we use/require an existing head pack (I use one btw), then anyone who plays TR will be locked in to a single set of heads. Not Good.

If we make a TR head pack used only in our areas, the difference in faces between our work and the original game will be, well, ugly.

If we make our own head replacer, we'll modify the original area. Not allowed by our own rules.

Therefore, I'd recommend we drop the idea. The only possibility that I'd support would be a bolt-on head pack for those who want different heads in the TR area ONLY. But that would be a lot of work.

kingfish · Post by **kingfish** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:52 pm

but on the other hand, we are going to have new armors, clothes, weaps,architecture, flora, etc that are not in the original game [and will be placed on mainland only], how comes nobody is concerned about those, but only about heads?
i don't underestand this, even though i think new heads aren't that important...

Kothloth · Post by **Kothloth** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:53 pm

We can create our own heads, which might be the best choice if we can manage that. I already made one for the Telvanni grandmaster, and it isn't very hard. New facetextures can be made in a couple of minutes, and it isn't too hard to modify existing heads either and apply the textures to them

Majra · Post by **Majra** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:39 pm

soooo, if we can..... can someone get on this? I would do it also, but I already have too much to do. The point is, we need new faces and heads. There were supposed to be some made, but that never really got done.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:22 pm

What was the resolution on your faces Koth? Did it fit well with bethesda's heads?

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 9:39 pm

kingfish wrote:but on the other hand, we are going to have new armors, clothes, weaps,architecture, flora, etc that are not in the original game [and will be placed on mainland only], how comes nobody is concerned about those, but only about heads?

Exactly.

We can create our own heads, which might be the best choice if we can manage that.

Again. People talk about consistency. New heads - lack of aforemanetioned consistency. Either you make them crappy or not make them at all. Personally I won't even bother trying to make something to look like crap if I can make something to look good. You can see it with my books. Of course if you want you can lower the textures from 512x512 to 64x64 before addition. You'll get the same shit as Beth made. So what's the point of making TR than ? We must than scrap ALL meshes we made (they look good), all our interiors and exteriors (they are at least different from each other, not like in original game) etc.

Dexter · Post by **Dexter** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 9:57 pm

So what's the point of making TR than ? We must than scrap ALL meshes we made (they look good), all our interiors and exteriors (they are at least different from each other, not like in original game) etc.

Stalker, I think you're missing the point. The new weapon, armor, architecture, etc. meshes we make are not lightyears ahead of the stock Bethesda ones. They are made to fit in with the stock Bethesda meshes. 99% of the head packs out there, however, are far superior to the Bethesda hair and face meshes. The textures are often taken from photographs.
Now, if our architecture meshes were far beyond the Bethesda meshes, then yeah, you'd have a point, we would need to scrap them. But at the moment, all of our stuff matches pretty perfectly with the stock stuff.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 10:03 pm

Probably you're right after all...
Anyway. Less work for me and Vernon reviewing new meshes.

Lud · Post by **Lud** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 6:13 pm

If you look at the heads Bethsoft added for Bloodmoon, you can see that they are way better than the original MW ones.
There's no point in doing TR if it's going to be crappy.
Also, seeing as there are about 14 dunmer heads, and about 10 hair sets, there is little enough variation already between the 1000 or so proper NPCs in Vvardenfell. Without new heads, having lots of major NPCs without complete duplication would be impossible

CommonsNat · Post by **CommonsNat** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 6:41 pm

I think it would be a good idea to include them. As Ludovic said, we have to share the current faces and hair with more than 1000 NPCs (possibly and exaggeration). After a while, we'd be seeing clones of NPCs. I don't think we exactly have to make our own if we could find someone who'd let us use theirs and they were very good. Just my thoughts.

Menotex · Post by **Menotex** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:25 pm

Even though we have made several textures that appear like Beth's; those textures still are better and more detailed then Beth's.
Also the attack of clones already present in Vvardenfell is more then enough reason to just include new faces to TR. Also using the mainstream Faces that most players find (with permission and proper mention/notice) would not only make TR blend better; but also saves us from making our own.
The points against are pitiful in my opinion. So I say go ahead and add the in heads. I'm personally tired of finding the same Kajiit over and over again. not to mention how there is no difference between the 300+ Altmers.
Maybe we could retouch the new faces to make them more "old-ish" and "shiny/glaring" if we really like seeing the old heads so much.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:38 pm

New heads that fit makes sense to me. New heads that are to good doesn't. Only using old heads so that its clonetastic doesn't either.

Psyborg · Post by **Psyborg** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 10:26 pm

I vote yes, because of a simple reason: there's more and different places in Tamriel than Vvardenfell, so we're creating those... there's more and different creatures in Tamriel than Vvardenfell, so we're creating those... there would certainly be more and different people with more and different faces, so we should certainly either make those too.

umbra · Post by **umbra** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 2:16 am

its a waste of memory on ur comp they give u enoguh heads on the CD

Zalzidrax · Post by **Zalzidrax** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 3:39 am

for the dark elves, maybe... but for ther other races we might need a couple more. The argonians only have about three per gender so it seems like you're seeing the same slaves over and over again.

Vernon · Post by **Vernon** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 8:57 am

Heads will only take up as much space as the texture for each head in terms of HDD space. i.e. 75-200 kb max. As for RAM, in-game assets from each cell are unloaded when the PC is a certain number of cells away from the original one, depending on your Morrowind.ini settings. The point being that unless every head texture in the game is placed in a 9 cell radius (an absurd notion) there is no problem, unless of course you have a computer that does not meet the minimum specification requirements for Morrowind. I am fairly sure most people here have computers far exceeding these requirements (I know for a fact that some people here play Half-Life 2 and EVE online). By the time MW province is released, many here will have computers that can run Oblivion anyway i.e. faster RAM (and more of it), better CPU and quicker GPU (with its own onboard RAM).

The long and short being that memory is not the issue with heads, especially considering the relatively conservative mesh placement implemented in TR.

sirwootalot123 · Post by **sirwootalot123** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:52 pm

I think this is a great idea. Our "no touching vvardenfell" policy is way too strict in some senses, like the great void between the mainland and the island-rich vvardenfell half of the inner sea for example.
We should simply intergrate a really good head replacer into our mod, IMO.

Artemis Entreri · Post by **Artemis Entreri** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:45 pm

I agree with adding heads, but we can't make them too good. For ex.In many mods I found it added Dunmer faces that had Altmer eyes, not the red ones, this went completly against lore. You should add heads but use a limited number of new meshes, because yes, adding a bunch of beautiful faces, let alone all the new land, will completly crash some computers, or just slow down everyones game.

der gottlose · Post by **der gottlose** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:50 pm

For added controversy:

What about Better Bodies?

99.99% of Beth's meshes are not compatible, but many people want better bodies. But some of BB's meshes are nude, which can offend some people (or parents of some people...lol)

So, do we make our own bodies, use modded ones, or use Bethesda's?

Hmm...

I choose BB 2.0

*clicks on nonexistent poll*

Vernon · Post by **Vernon** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:04 pm

Hehe if you want to use BB, you can... I don't think TR will be using it, as it replaces the bodies on Vvardenfell. We can't have all of the better bodies on the mainland, can we? :) I think it BB 2.0 is quite a good mod and should probably be recommended in bolt-ons.

Thane · Post by **Thane** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 10:32 pm

Better Bodies is a must. Besides in installation you can choose not to have the characters nude.

Vernon · Post by **Vernon** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 11:55 pm

Did you miss my post? :P It affects Vvardenfell and so cannot be used unless it is a bolt-on.

Tamriel Rebuilt