(I posted similar thread on 400ss forum)

When I first saw the faces in TPF (i guess even screen-shots of TDCB) I thought they were amalgamations of individual pieces; eyes, hair, cheeks, mouth, etc etc. I thought this was very nice and it would lend itself to endless combinations of faces. But, come to find out, they are actual images. Many of my players had the same image, and that almost makes it worthless to me.

I thought it would be sweet to have players created from a DNA of sorts where the combination of their attributes and playerID would somehow be used to create a unique face from individual parts, almost like the computerized police sketch app you see in the movies.

Or you can just use Facegen and if TPF allows it, just add to the repetoire of faces so the chance of repetition is few and far between.

In the JBL we have, hmm, probably 700-800 original and unique faces that will never duplicate. Pretty neat.

How much does Facegen cost? How long does it take to make each face.

There are several program available on their website, which one do you use Shorty?

Originally posted by Senator
How much does Facegen cost? How long does it take to make each face.

There are several program available on their website, which one do you use Shorty?

Sen, I use the Facegen 3.0 Demo (http://facegen.com/demos.htm). I can't afford to pay the full price, so I just work around the hassles of the demo. The demo keeps a FG on the character forehead, but I just use the color tool and color in the letters with a color of their forehead. It is not perfect, but with resizing to smaller sizes for say OOTP 90x135, you cannot tell a difference.

I usually do a bunch of faces at once, like generate, screenshot, cut out, resize about 10, then get out all the uniform templates and add them in. Then I mess with hair and facial hair, but it really doesn't take too long after you get the hang of it. Each probably takes 5, some take longer if I want to add things like glasses which can be tough to create.

bump for the sen

I downloaded the demo but cannot see where you change the hair style or color. It seems to have everything else. Am I missing it?

bump for shorty

Ok, you can add only 2 hair styles (well, three, but the other one is terrible). To get different hair styles I have had to create them from scratch.

I thought it would be sweet to have players created from a DNA of sorts where the combination of their attributes and playerID would somehow be used to create a unique face from individual parts, almost like the computerized police sketch app you see in the movies.

That's actually a pretty damn cool idea. A little more advanced than what I (or probably more indie game developers) can do on my own, but that is a really neat idea.

Bonegavel - the faces for the game are unique - there are 200 in all. They were generated individually in FaceGen (200 in all times 3 facial expressions each for a total of 600). The FaceGen program we purchased was about $500 but we figured we could use it across the whole range of .400 games, making the investment worthwhile.

Shorty mentioned the hair and is absolutely correct. There is really only one good male hairstyle included - I am still trying to learn how to create the hairstyles within FaceGen - involves wire frames, etc. and I have no idea yet. So what I ended up doing was going on the net and finding hairstyles then taking the generated player faces into Photoshop to apply the hair and the jerseys.

It would be incredibly cool if we could take the individual pieces and create the players on the fly, but I don't know of any technology that can do that right now. As is, it's a pretty arduous process - but FaceGen allows you to edit just about everything - facial symmetry, coloring, eyes, bone structure, etc. It's actually a ton of fun. My favorite part was finding corn rows and GQ haircuts for the players - trying to make it look as realistic as possible.

Thanks,
Angie
.400 Software Studios

Thanks angie, and also, thanks to maximuseses' info, I checked out the facegen program and, apart from its $500 price tag, seems like the perfect program for the job.

My idea for generating on the fly probably isn't as radical as I made it sound. Each face part would be named something like this:

eyes1001.xxx (whatever graphic ext you want)
hair1023.xxx
nose1003.xxx
etc

then, each player would be assigned a set of "DNA" which would maybe look like this:

nDNA1 = 1002
nDNA2 = 4201
nDNA3 = 3225
etc

with nDNA1 maybe being the hair, nDNA2 being the nose etc.

then it is just a matter of calling up the appropriate body part and placing it in the proper place in the pic place holder. E.g. above, it would call hair1002, nose4201, etc. and then just plop it on the screen. I would imagine DirectX allows for the layering of images.

I haven't tried out TPF yet, but having these images in the demo of TPB was really nice for the familiarity and immersion factor...

For those who have played the online soccer sim Hattrick, I believe the player images (for those who have payed the supporter fee) are made of individual pieces.

dola. Yes, the hattrick faces are made of individual pieces. I can't post a screenshot from here, or I would.

to me, it is the only way to do it so there is a minimum of effort (don't have to create 3000 indi-faces, just parts) with a maximum of combinations. I'm at the point where I have plenty of players (in TPF) with the same image that I don't look at the images anymore.

Ok, show me a screen of Hattrick faces. I'm interested. I am afraid Bonegavel's idea just wouldn't work using Facgen, with all the lighting and what not, you would notice the eyes, and each feature being a little off of color and stuff..

Originally posted by Shorty3281
Ok, show me a screen of Hattrick faces. I'm interested. I am afraid Bonegavel's idea just wouldn't work using Facgen, with all the lighting and what not, you would notice the eyes, and each feature being a little off of color and stuff..

i'll take a screenshot when I get home. The faces are 2d and cartooney, but I frankly like that better than "real" looking faces in games.

It's easier to let the imagination run wild with the 2d characters.

Yeah, I figured that much and agree they might be cool looking.

Originally posted by Shorty3281
Yeah, I figured that much and agree they might be cool looking.

they're also small, probably about the size of the logos we now have in FOF (or smaller even). I think the smaller potential images would be, the more likely Jim would be to implement something like that. I know he is always reluctant to give up any screen real estate.

Good god, small as the logos in FOF?? How are the faces even descrepable?

Originally posted by Shorty3281
Good god, small as the logos in FOF?? How are the faces even descrepable?

My SAT verbal scores weren't the best....what the hell does descrepable mean??

I didn't think that was what I was looking for.. I don't know. Heh, I guess the 28 I got on my English or the 31 I got on my reading in the ACT doesn't mean a whole lot.. :)

and when you sign up for a website for your team on HT-arena, you can create faces, as many as you want if you take screenshots and save them somewhere else, with the same Hattrick components... Shorty, I'll try something with it and will post a few tonight if you want.

FM

my player faces:


http://lovetohate.us/fofc/faces.jpg

whoa! something went wrong with the upload.

You can make 'em all green like that?

I like the guy at the bottom middle... looks like Jesus.

ok. fixed.

if anyone wants to make a mock example of what the pictures would look like in-game, feel free.

I think it might look alright if it was set up

*team logo* player name *player image*

The player name could be centered between the two, and it wouldn't be much different than it is now.

Shorty - I think 'discernible' is the word you were looking for :) It would be awesome to generate from a group of features - as it is, it takes a long time to make it look realistic the current way. Because we don't have an NFL license, we thought it was important to have 'players' in the game that people would get accustomed to, similar to what Subby mentioned above. Bonegavel, I'm sorry you're getting that many repeats - we tried to do as many as possible. Although I've noticed that some of the guys do look like they could be brothers or uncles, so it may be different images with very subtle differences.

Another challenge we would have versus the soccer game (which looks cool!) is that we actually used 'body types' for different positions - ie lean and muscular quarterbacks, heavy-set offensive linemen, etc. so adding in the features on that many canvases may be confusing. So if any of you guys invent a program that can do that, we'll buy it :)

Originally posted by Bonegavel
My idea for generating on the fly probably isn't as radical as I made it sound.

You're right, the idea that you put in my head was not what you described. :D

(But still, both ideas are good ones. The "pieces" one is definatly do-able for the indie developer, the question time and what in the game will not be included in order to have this.)

If you could combine the "more human" quality of your face-gen images with the build-your-own-burger style of HT, that is what I am talking about.

No problem Angie, to have 50,000 faces and making them all unique and in the game would be ludicrous. But, that is why I was thinking about doing the Police Sketch Artist type thing.

Would be even nicer if you could get Facegen to auto-gen X number of faces without having to tweak each one yourself.

Is Denny Green's image in the game?

one potential implementation:

http://lovetohate.us/fofc/denny.jpg

http://lovetohate.us/fofc/bulger.jpg

any further thoughts on this anyone?

I can't decide if I think it would be fine sticking player images in that spot, or whether the whole player page would basically need to be redesigned, in order to put it somewhere else.