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Geck Tips - USE REFERENCES

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Something I learned from my art friends is that you should *use references* literally all the time for anything.

There's not better a tool for creating something than a pre-existing example of what you're looking for. And generally speaking, no, your memory is not good enough.

Even master painters and sculptors like to have a live human being to base their work upon.

9 comments

  1. JimboUK
    JimboUK
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    It's also important to keep checking it in game and in various lighting conditions, what's rendered in the GECK is rarely anything like what appears in game and some faces can look good in one kind of lighting and horrific in another.

    You can also use a proper copy of Facegen to get the geometry from photographs, then use Facegen Exchange/Faceripper to get the FGGS data from the FG file.
    1. Worminator
      Worminator
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      This so much. There's such a huge disconnect between geck and game it's sometimes like it's two different people.
    2. cordelionreaver
      cordelionreaver
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      This.  When I design characters they look different from the geck and in game, and depending on the lighting they sometimes look terrible in game.
  2. BeastRU
    BeastRU
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    In my experience it's incredibly hard to do anything with geck facegen and the more you work with it the messier it gets and the face looks less and less like whatever you had as reference :D
  3. Esmerios
    Esmerios
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    That is something that hadn't occurred to me. I am not really that tech savvy. Thanks for this
  4. MysteryMachineX
    MysteryMachineX
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    Absolutely, but it's also good to not just copy from a single source (which could cause issues if you're ganking a real person's likeness). Often artists will have reference sheets compiled with a multitude of references they're pulling from for a single piece.
    1. Radioactivelad
      Radioactivelad
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      Thing is, unless you're literally tracing an image, it's going to inevitably diverge from the source through the resulting imperfections, your own artstyle, and the little bits of "micro-inspiration" over the course of production. I doubt this guy, wherever he is, would think this looks anything like him.

      The point is you shouldn't rely on your mind's eye, because it's not as dependable as one might think.
      Looking to life also helps you avoid falling in to repetitive or stereotypical designs. A lot of mods (and the base game for that matter) have a serious case of Same-Face on a lot of NPCs.
  5. Hectasword
    Hectasword
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    Holy carp. That face looks like an actual human being, unlike 90% of the vanilla NPCs.
  6. AusAllerWelt
    AusAllerWelt
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    I think it especially helps using a reference if you want a character to have a very specific look, it can make them more interesting and even believable. I wish people would also use custom textures and meshes more, there's a lot of neat stuff can be achieved by doing so.