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About this mod
Replaces all 500 portraits in the game with realistic-ish AI generated variants. Stays mostly faithful to the original character designs.
- Permissions and credits
This pack replaces all 500 portraits in the game with realistic-ish AI generated variants. This is only a visual mod and does not add any new characters or change existing stats.
These are static images. You have to disable councilor portrait videos in the options for these to work.
Care has been taken to ensure that the portraits correspond to their original variants or improve on their designs. For example, asian characters should now look more asian, old people should look more old whereas in the original game some might just have had slightly gray hair. This was not simply a matter of running the pictures through an AI filter. I extracted their gender, age and ethnicity through the file name to have the system use that information to improve the prompt. It's not perfect however, as for example middle eastern and indian characters are clumped into the same ethnicity in the game. In such cases I had it randomly pick between middle eastern and indian, or for asian people I had it pick between chinese, japanese and korean in order to add some more variety to the looks. For the most part it looks good enough though.
The Hydras also had to get a facelift to not look out of place now, and they should look a bit more frightening now, even if they may diverge a bit from the original designs and have some greater variability between each individual. It was not easy to get the AI to understand what it was supposed to be.
For the faction leaders I took some creative liberties as they are more important characters that deserved some extra attention. I wanted to make them more unique than the regular characters in the game and inject some extra personality into them. I began with the most prominent factions, and so The Servants and The Resistance got the biggest changes. I wanted to make Judith a more zealous, mysterious, evil and charismatic antagonist, like something out of NOD from the C&C universe. She might have become a bit too pretty though. Fiona is also definitely more good-looking as I based her partly on Rihanna from her role in Battleship from 2012. I understand that some might not like these changes, but give it some time and it'll soon feel like the new normal. The other faction leaders are more true to their original designs, mostly because the original designs already were good enough caricatures of what they stand for.
Questions and Answers:
Q: Why was this mod made?
A: I always thought many of the original characters looked rather unrealistic and goofy, and it somewhat ruined the immersion. For me the added realism tricks my brain to think of the councillors more as real people, and so I care more for them.
Q: What tools/AI models did you use?
A: Stable Diffusion with the ComfyUI interface to set up a workflow and automation was vital in order to process all 500 images. As for models, I believe it was mainly JuggernautXL.
Q: They're too pretty/young/old! Racial biases etc!
A: Blame the models in that case. All I was concerned with was making them stay true to their original appearances while improving details and realism. The dataset was most likely skewed toward beautiful faces especially when it comes to the Asian nationalities. Also if it helps your immersion, think of these people as the 1% of the 1% in a near future. These are billionaires, celebrities and spies that need to be able to charm people in their line of work and can afford the best plastic surgery.
Q: I see artifacts! Weird outlines, double irises!
A: The weird outlines is an issue I tried hard to, but ultimately didn't manage to solve. As for the irises... how do you know they're not secretly lizard people?
Q: Does it work with mod X?
A: It should work with all mods that don't affect the councilor appearances.
Q: It doesn't seem to work!
A: You have to disable the councilor videos in the options.
Q: Can you change th...
A: No. I've put this game on hold so I don't even have it installed any more. This pack is what it is.
These are static images. You have to disable councilor portrait videos in the options for these to work.
Care has been taken to ensure that the portraits correspond to their original variants or improve on their designs. For example, asian characters should now look more asian, old people should look more old whereas in the original game some might just have had slightly gray hair. This was not simply a matter of running the pictures through an AI filter. I extracted their gender, age and ethnicity through the file name to have the system use that information to improve the prompt. It's not perfect however, as for example middle eastern and indian characters are clumped into the same ethnicity in the game. In such cases I had it randomly pick between middle eastern and indian, or for asian people I had it pick between chinese, japanese and korean in order to add some more variety to the looks. For the most part it looks good enough though.
The Hydras also had to get a facelift to not look out of place now, and they should look a bit more frightening now, even if they may diverge a bit from the original designs and have some greater variability between each individual. It was not easy to get the AI to understand what it was supposed to be.
For the faction leaders I took some creative liberties as they are more important characters that deserved some extra attention. I wanted to make them more unique than the regular characters in the game and inject some extra personality into them. I began with the most prominent factions, and so The Servants and The Resistance got the biggest changes. I wanted to make Judith a more zealous, mysterious, evil and charismatic antagonist, like something out of NOD from the C&C universe. She might have become a bit too pretty though. Fiona is also definitely more good-looking as I based her partly on Rihanna from her role in Battleship from 2012. I understand that some might not like these changes, but give it some time and it'll soon feel like the new normal. The other faction leaders are more true to their original designs, mostly because the original designs already were good enough caricatures of what they stand for.
Questions and Answers:
Q: Why was this mod made?
A: I always thought many of the original characters looked rather unrealistic and goofy, and it somewhat ruined the immersion. For me the added realism tricks my brain to think of the councillors more as real people, and so I care more for them.
Q: What tools/AI models did you use?
A: Stable Diffusion with the ComfyUI interface to set up a workflow and automation was vital in order to process all 500 images. As for models, I believe it was mainly JuggernautXL.
Q: They're too pretty/young/old! Racial biases etc!
A: Blame the models in that case. All I was concerned with was making them stay true to their original appearances while improving details and realism. The dataset was most likely skewed toward beautiful faces especially when it comes to the Asian nationalities. Also if it helps your immersion, think of these people as the 1% of the 1% in a near future. These are billionaires, celebrities and spies that need to be able to charm people in their line of work and can afford the best plastic surgery.
Q: I see artifacts! Weird outlines, double irises!
A: The weird outlines is an issue I tried hard to, but ultimately didn't manage to solve. As for the irises... how do you know they're not secretly lizard people?
Q: Does it work with mod X?
A: It should work with all mods that don't affect the councilor appearances.
Q: It doesn't seem to work!
A: You have to disable the councilor videos in the options.
Q: Can you change th...
A: No. I've put this game on hold so I don't even have it installed any more. This pack is what it is.