Tips To Improve Your Game Face
by inertSpark81Original Post
- last edited by
Straatford87
Hi everyone.
I just want to draw your attention to the difference in-game between the Game Face I've been using for 3 years, and the one that I made this morning. It's not perfect by any means, but the difference is still night and day. What I learned was:
- Ditch your old and poorly lit low-res photos. Seriously. You can't zoom your screen in when creating the face so you want everything to be sharp and easy to make out. Shadows everywhere and blurry details will almost guarantee that your Game Face will look terrible. Not to mention the uneven lighting will make the skin look blotchy. It might have worked with FIFA but UFC demands care in order to make those faces look half way serviceable because it renders many more polygons than Game Face was developed for (yes, EA will probably need to completely overhaul Game Face going forward).
- Take HD photos!! I took 1080p portrait pictures from my Galaxy S5's rear facing camera. Granted it's not a DSLR but heck, it's more than enough to provide the sharpness and clarity that you really need for this kind of task. Game Face will accept HD photos so to ensure you arent nuking the quality by zooming, make use of it if you can
- Make sure the light is natural and even! Don't shoot your pics under lightbulbs, ALWAYS make sure you shoot in a room evenly lit by daylight. Use HDR if needs be. You do not want any major shadows, light patches or incandescent tinting from a bulb. Remember, this is a 3D model that will be lit independantly by the game engine. The only real shadows or highlights you want to be seeing is while playing the game. Keep it natural.
- Tame that hair! I had a shave not too long before taking my latest pics, and I remommend that men all do the same if they can bear to though if you are proud of your bushy chin fur you may not want to. Without facial hair, those game face pics will last an eternity because you can choose the facial hair in the creator software as and when you want to, but a light stubble beard can only take a few days to grow back. See the dark neck on my original Game Face? That was caused by the beard/stubble. You don't want that! :D
- Use a side photo too! Lot's of people don't do this and their faces look fine fron the front, but it looks like their face is melting away from the skull when viewed from the side.
- Crop out the backgrounds! - The single greatest thing you can do to help you judge where to place those green crosses. I cropped my pics carefully by zooming in and using the lasso tool in Photoshop so there was only really the skin of my face left over a white background. No shadows or objects there to obscure the outline of the face! :D
- Take care when placing the green crosses. Read the instructions for each on the right and spend a bit of time making sure they are placed correctly. I dont care if it takes 5 mins more, and neither should you. It will save you 10 mins of rework if you got it wrong!
- Finally, theres a tickbox for extra processing right before you generate the Game Face. Tick it. It makes the generation process more accurate.
As you can see though folks, the difference between my old and new pics are as much as night and day. There is a proper skin tone, and it just generally looks more accurate. I can't pretend that my likeness is perfect in UFC, but there is a likeness for sure, and it does the job well enough. Until there is an update for Game Face, an absolute likeness is a pipe dream, so the best you can really do is help things along.
Hope this is of use to a few of you at least :D
Please see the following thread for specifics on that particular issue:
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/GameFace/td-p/5791202
