[size="6"]OFF-Optimized Facegen Files[/size]
Version: 1.2
Date: 02/09/2011
Category: Hair and Face Models
Recommended: [size="3"]Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM)[/size] (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2097)
Author(s): the_philanthropy
Source: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35487


[size="5"]Table of contents[/size]

• Updates
• Description
• Details
• Usage
• How the mod works, what it can and cannot do (READ THIS!)
• Installation
• Archive Invalidation (Important!)
• OFF for Custom Races or Head06 meshes
• Uninstallation
• Creating Mods with OFF (Modders, read this!)
• (In)compatibility
• Known Issues or Bugs
• History
• Contact
• Credits
• Tools Used
• Licensing & Legal
  

[size="4"] 1. Updates[/size]
[size="3"]Version 1.2:[/size]

• Added support for the [size="2"]head06[/size] (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20166) mesh by throttlekitty
• Revamped v1.1 agemaps.
• Re-wrote the ReadMe (apparently I was drunk the last time ^_^)
  

[size="3"]Version 1.1:[/size]

• Added support for all vanilla NPCs
  

[size="4"] 2. Description[/size]
This mod makes the whole facegen business more predictable and streamlined. No more going back and forth between all the sliders!

[size="4"] 3. Details[/size]
Anyone who's ever played Oblivion knows that creating a new character takes longer than it should. Implementing facegen features into Oblivion was a great idea. A great idea poorly executed:

• Skin tones jitter and jump around like crazy, all the time.
• Facegen sliders affect textures/facial features that they really shouldn't (changing the eyebrows should not change the lip-color, etc).
• Quick and satisfying configurations are very difficult to achieve when every new change messes with previous changes.
• Face and body skin tones almost never match up.
  

These problems practically cripple facegen. It's almost impossible to get your character to look the way you want.

OFF aims at exactly these problems. By optimizing all the files responsible for how the facegen functionality is applied, OFF offers the following advantages:

• You gain more control over the skin tone.
• Facegen sliders no longer mess with each other as noticably (changing the eyebrows doesn't change the lip-color, etc).
• Faces are smoother, i.e. less blocky/fragmented.
• Face and body skin tone match up almost always.
• All NPCs gain the same benefits.
• Creating a new character takes much less time and becomes more enjoyable.
  

OFF is not completely side effect free, though.
Due to how this mod works there are a few minor drawbacks you ought to consider beforehand:

• Overall the effects of facegen sliders on your character's appearance is weaker now. Seeing how part of the original problem was that they were too extreme, this might not be so bad.
• There is a tendency for characters to look a little more feminine than before. This is not necessarily bad, unless you like bearded women o_O.
• If you plan to use OFF with an existing game, be warned that your character and everyone else will look a little different.
  

OFF does not replace actual face textures for the different races and should be compatible with all mods that do.
However, OFF provides optional optimized agemaps (they control how characters of different physical age appear). These agemaps were smoothed out to decrease the blocky/fragmented appearance of faces. Furthermore, they guarantee the best possible head/body transition (less of a seam).
It is highly recommended to install them, unless you already use a replacer. Use your own judgement.

All 4851 of the vanilla NPC face textures have been edited to receive all the benefits that the player character gets without sacrificing much original detail.
They are optional, but it's still highly recommended to install them.

A description of how the mod work is found further down.

Enjoy!

[size="4"] 4. Usage[/size]
Nothing special. You will notice the difference immediately.

Note that switching from vanilla to OFF will alter your character's appearance!
Note that switching from OFF to vanilla will alter your character's appearance as well!

Characters created with OFF active and played with OFF inactive will most likely look horrible. Bear that in mind.

[size="4"] 5. How the mod works, what it can and cannot do (READ THIS!)[/size]
All that OFF really does is replace textures.

EGT files control how the facegen fuctionality is applied. Each EGT is actually an archive containing 50 uncompressed tga textures. These 50 textures are blended together by Oblivion to create a face texture that is rendered on top of the default face texture. How that texture turns out depends on how visible each of these 50 textures is. The visibility is controlled by the facegen sliders.
By a process of elimination I mapped out how each single slider affects the face texture. I then made sure that each texture contained only the information relevant to the slider it is affected by strongest. E.g. if the slider "Eyebrows thick/thin" affects texture 3 the most, then texture 3 was edited so that it only contains the eyebrows part now. This way unintentional changes are less likely to appear.
Sometimes several sliders conflicted so strongly with each other (one texture affected by several sliders) that one of the textures had to be omitted entirely.

The body meshes also use similar EGT files. I made sure that these two sets of EGTs match up as well as possible.

NPCs work a little bit different in that they also use pre-rendered facegen textures, meaning that they not only use the EGT files for coloration, but also previously calculated texture maps.
I edited these textures so that the transition from head to body was as smooth as possible. This necessarily destroyed some of the original detail (e.g. extreme discolorations, etc). I tried to keep the damage at a minimum.

One issue this mod cannot fix is that occasionally the player character will show very ugly fragemts, expecially in the neck region, when playing with the sliders. This is a vanilla problem and it seems to be hard-coded. If that happens just change the slider it's happening with only minimally until the fragments disappear.

And while this mod helps a lot with eliminating the infamous neck-seam, it is not in its power to do so in all cases.
The reason is that OFF does not deal with all the files that contribute to that issue. The actual racial face textures (e.g. headhuman.dds) and their respective body textures and corresponding normal- and light-maps need to match up as well.
If those do match up, OFF will be the icing on the cake.

But even if all the textures in the world match up there will still be the actual seam in the geometry. And OFF does not deal with that.

[size="4"] 6. Installation[/size]

• Read this ReadMe in its entirety.
  

[size="3"]OBMM: [/size]

• Make sure OBMM is installed.
• Doubleclick "OFF - Optimized Facegen Files 1.2.omod", OR open OBMM, click "load" and select the OMOD.
• Activate it.
• Follow the instructions. Click yes if you're asked to overwrite anything.
  

[size="3"]Manual: [/size]

• Extract the contents of the archive to your Oblivion directory, overwrite when prompted.
  

[size="4"] 7. Archive Invalidation (Important!)[/size]

• Using OBMM, click "Utilities > Archive Invalidation".
• Check "BSA Invalidation" (the only mode that works here).
• Check "Textures".
• Uncheck "only include files which already exist in a BSA archive".
• Click "Update Now".
• Wait for it to finish.
  

If OBMM tells you that more than 4851+ entries have been created, everything worked out.

[size="4"] 8. OFF for Custom Races or Head06 meshes[/size]
Some custom races come with their own head meshes.
For these mods, you will have to copy and rename some files manually, namely head and ear EGTs:

• Locate the head mesh of the custom race directory (e.g. "Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Characters\<custom>\<custom>head.nif").<li>Determine which base model it is derived from. This can be done visually using <font style="color: ">[size="2"]<u><strong>NifSkope</strong></u>[/size] (http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/NifSkope)</font>.</li><li>Overwrite the head egt in the same directory (e.g. "<custom>head.egt") with the corresponging egt from the archive's "Custom" directory.<li>Locate the ears mesh of the custom race directory (e.g. "Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Characters\<custom>\<custom>ears.nif").<li>Overwrite the ears egt in the same directory (e.g. "<custom>ears.egt") with "ears.egt" from the archive's "Custom\vanilla\" directory.<li>Optionally, overwrite the agemaps (e.g. Oblivion\Data\textures\characters\<custom>\<custom>10.dds, <custom>10_n.dds, etc) with the corresponding files from the archive's "Custom" directory.<br></custom></custom></custom></li></custom></li></custom></custom></li></custom></li></custom></custom>

[size="4"] 9. Uninstallation[/size]
[size="3"]OBMM: [/size]

• Deactivate the OMOD using OBMM
  

[size="3"]Manual:[/size]

• Delete all files from the archive present in your Oblivion\Data directly.
  

[size="4"]10. Creating Mods with OFF (Modders, read this!)[/size]
Normally you do not need to take any special precautions when creating new NPCs while OFF is installed.
Just keep in mind that the NPCs will look different for people who don't have OFF installed. To avoid issues, just list OFF as prerequisite for your NPC.

The above should cover 99,9% of all cases. In the odd event that the Construction Set created a texture for your NPC in the "Data/Textures/faces" directory, you will need to make sure the texture is on par with OFF manually.
Here are some pointers on that:

• Make sure that the color of the texture is as close to 127,127,127 as possible towards the lower portion of the texture. (to minimize the color difference of head/body).
• Make sure that the transition from this new edit to the rest of the texture is smooth without destroying too much detail. Adjust saturation/brightness as needed.
• Make sure that the overall tone of the texture is not too far off from 127,127,127. The actual coloring and details should be done in a proper (non-facegen) texture.
• Smooth out the texture a little to avoid ugly specks and fragments.
  

[size="4"]11. (In)compatibility[/size]
This mod replaces vanilla files. This should not be a problem unless you already use replacers for these files. If so, OFF will have to overwrite them to function.

Let me know if anything bad happens.

[size="4"]12. Known Issues or Bugs[/size]
None so far.

Let me know if anything bad happens.

[size="4"]13. History[/size]

• 1.2, 2011/02/09 - Added Support for Head06 mesh; overhauled agemaps; better ReadMe
• 1.1, 2010/11/03 - Added Support for NPCs
• 1.0, 2010/10/31 - Initial Release.
  

[size="4"]14. Contact[/size]
You can find me on TESNexus as 'the_philanthropy'
You can send me an email here: [email protected]

[size="4"]15. Credits[/size]

• Thanks to Bethesda for creating Oblivion.
• Thanks to TESNexus.com for the a one-stop-shop resource for authors and players.
• Thanks to LHammonds for the Readme Generator this file was based on.
• Special Thanks to throttlekitty for the [size="2"]head06[/size] (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20166) resource!
• Super Awesome Special Thanks to scanti for creating the tools needed to edit EGT files!
  

[size="4"]16. Tools Used[/size]

• [size="2"]7-Zip[/size] (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15579)
• [size="2"]Oblivion Mod Manager[/size] (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2097)
• [size="2"]Photoshop[/size] (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/)
• [size="2"]Readme Generator[/size] (http://LHammonds.game-host.org/obmm/tools_readme_generator1.asp)
• [size="2"]scanti's EGT tool[/size] (http://www.psychodogstudios.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5103)
  

[size="4"]17. Licensing & Legal[/size]
You must contact me and obtain my permission before re-packaging any part of this mod.

If I do not respond within 2 weeks, feel free to do whatever you like with this mod. Just give credit where due.