"And where are you getting the idea he should be canonically younger looking?"
Astarion is high elf and became a vampire at the age of 39 according to his translated tombstone, which is considered to be very young for an elf. That why some players feel he should look younger to fit his backstory, though others also believe his vanilla appearance fits with the hard life he's led as a spawn. Both are valid viewpoints.
No need to explain the reasoning anyway. If you want a character to look a certain way that's good enough reason to do it lol. Anyone who rages about what someone else does with their game is a pathetic child.
I'm sorry but what?? no, he actually looks like a little bit less wrinkly astarion, not jimin edward #3. bro still looks like he hasnt slept in 10 days (/affectionate)
and even if this mod did edwardify him .. while i do think that those edits suck, it's none of our business. you choose what you put in your game
According to Larian, the tombstone was wrong and he's supposed to be 150 years old when he was turned. Their official stuff about him in other things, including Idle Champions, is that he's 350, same as Halsin
Just wanted to say thanks for making a lore friendly head edit! While I love older looking Grinchy ass Astarion, this is honestly a perfect replacement for multiple lore reasons: on a steady diet of sentient blood (either from PC or bandits), post love confession, post Cazador, etc. Thanks for putting the option out there!
Are his facial animations intact? Editing Astarion's head mesh in Blender used to screw up his facial animations, but that was before patch 7, I don't know if that is still the case.
They are, as far as I've checked. I used the vanilla base for the animations and the mesh edits are very slight. I added more LODs to his head too, so the animations should look better from a distance
That's great! I really like how you smoothed out his face. Now he actually looks like an elf who was barely adult at the time of his death. However, I already have my own custom textures that I use for his face, is there any chance you could upload only the head mesh?
you can swap the textures inside the mod if you unpack it with the multitool, just paste them where I put my textures and change their names to exactly the same as my textures and done
I did that, and it looks great... until he smiles. This model also suffers from the medium animation detail which is automatically applied whenever his head mesh is edited. It is apparent the most in his smiles, which are wider and cut into his cheeks more sharply, opposed to high animation detail which subdues his expressions and makes them more fluid.
Your mod still looks more natural than any other I've seen so far, so either way, great job 💝
Do you know something more about the animation details? I could maybe edit this with a toolkit, but I only touched the genome instance and animation resources, copied them from vanilla
I have learned most of it from magnetuning, they've explained this issue in detail in the comment section of De-grinchifier. I've been digging through the issue on my end as well, but apparently the only way to properly edit Astarion's head mesh is by using the modeling tool Larian had used - Maya. Honestly, I'd be happy if only smile animations could be fixed, but I don't know how to edit facial animations.
I was never paying much attention to the "grinch" smile honestly, I rather like Astarion's vanilla facial animations, even when they're weird 😄 But what does bother me is the Joker smile that cuts through his face on a modded head 😞
The one on the right is one of my edits, and the one on the left is default mesh. I haven't touched the position of the mouth and yet the animation is so crooked it displaces his mouth upwards when he smiles, and the corners cut into cheeks (and this smile is one of milder ones, it can get a lot worse). This happens on every single modded head mesh for Astarion, and only his facial animations differ so wildly when his head is modded. It's truly baffling.
Ooooh this is perfect for having any visual change after the bite scene, since our guy should be looking healthier and better fed once he's got regular meals. Vanilla Astarion is the just-freed version on a diet of rats and bugs, and this is when he's getting a steady diet of Tav/Durge blood and looking like an elf in his late 30s again!
Supporting this because while I'm fine with older Astarion, I'm in my thirties, whereas I can imagine that to an 18- or 20-yr old having Astarion or Halsin hit on you might feel a bit pervy and is one of many valid reasons for having mods like these.
I love your mods btw, your head presets are so frikken cute! Using Chloe on my current playthrough and her face goes so well with the facial animations. I'll upload some screenshots later, thank you for sharing your work with us!
29 comments
Astarion is high elf and became a vampire at the age of 39 according to his translated tombstone, which is considered to be very young for an elf. That why some players feel he should look younger to fit his backstory, though others also believe his vanilla appearance fits with the hard life he's led as a spawn. Both are valid viewpoints.
I'm sorry but what?? no, he actually looks like a little bit less wrinkly astarion, not jimin edward #3. bro still looks like he hasnt slept in 10 days (/affectionate)
and even if this mod did edwardify him .. while i do think that those edits suck, it's none of our business. you choose what you put in your game
(jk...unless?)
does metallic eyeliner count?
Not knocking on your work, its well done.
Editing Astarion's head mesh in Blender used to screw up his facial animations, but that was before patch 7, I don't know if that is still the case.
I really like how you smoothed out his face. Now he actually looks like an elf who was barely adult at the time of his death.
However, I already have my own custom textures that I use for his face, is there any chance you could upload only the head mesh?
Your mod still looks more natural than any other I've seen so far, so either way, great job 💝
Honestly, I'd be happy if only smile animations could be fixed, but I don't know how to edit facial animations.
But what does bother me is the Joker smile that cuts through his face on a modded head 😞
The one on the right is one of my edits, and the one on the left is default mesh. I haven't touched the position of the mouth and yet the animation is so crooked it displaces his mouth upwards when he smiles, and the corners cut into cheeks (and this smile is one of milder ones, it can get a lot worse). This happens on every single modded head mesh for Astarion, and only his facial animations differ so wildly when his head is modded. It's truly baffling.