What's wrong with faces and why they looked better in 2016?

[mikeboix]

It's something we talked a lot about years ago when the EA first came out, but it seems there is been no improvements during this time so I ask again. Why all the NPC faces look the same in Bannerlord in the current version and why do they all look like they are utterly dumb and braindead? Most of them only need a small gush of saliva down their lips to make the look complete. Not to mention the absolute absence of personality in their faces, looking all of them almost the same with tiny variations.

It's really been getting worse and worse since the EA release, as we can see by some complains here and there: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...faces-on-the-beta-look-real-bad-weird.415204/

Just look at the characters in this 2016 gameplay and how inmensely better they looked. For example in minutes 12:39, 14:38, 17:52, 19:24



Are the developers gonna do anything in this matter post-release? Are they at least aware of this "problem"?

Spoiler

 

[Danny5]

Yea I agree, they look more detaied and the devs put in a lot of effort for each npc, or at least the main ones, like lords and quest givers.

The current version looks like their all related somehow lol.

 

[mikeboix]

I would say that my biggest complain is with eyebrows. Real people, most of them at least, don't have that crazy eyebrows that go so far away from the eyes and do those crazy angles, they are most of times much closer to the eye. Just look at my avatar image, taken from an early gameplay and see how much better and natural it looks to the characters in the current build.

 

[Brano]

They would do better with 3D scanning several dozens of real human heads like Kingdom come Deliverance devs did.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

Nevermind the faces, look at them dialogue options. F*ck sake, what happened to the development that we went backwards this far from where we were in 2016.

That is the game they sold us on, and this is the game they gave us.

 

[relam10]

It was one of the things that caught my attention the most since day 1. If there is one word to describe the faces it is aberrant.

The eyes of all the characters are scary and the smiles look like something out of a serial killer. It certainly doesn't meet even the minimum standards that I would demand from a game at this time of year, just a few days before its full release.

All the characters are totally lacking in personality or distinctive facial cues, they are clones competing to be uglier or the weirdest.

I hope this is something mods can fix, because it totally breaks the immersion of the game.

 

[Schmutz]

Yeah, this always annoyed me. No matter what you do, you end up looking like one of the nation wide inbred family of calradians. It's so bad, I thought it was a bug when I first played the game. But here we are...

 

[Fistochat]

The faces we have in the game right now are ugly and yes, they look all related. I don't understand, why didn't they keep the faces we saw in 2016 ?

 

[Grank]

Yeah they all look very round and samey. Cartoonish? The lack of hair style variety only makes it worse. Can't wait for the inevitable "Remove Facial Dirt" mod to come out, if you know what I'm sayin'

 

[RozBritanicus]

I liked you UI seems more like warbands but new. Plus, the workshops you enter a building, and it looks like the like a workplace. I also like how you can use influence in the dialogue instead of just an army mechanic. Influence could real expand the game if TW worked on it. Like hiring spies to get information on someone you could us against them or give to faction leader. Hiring Assassins, borrowing money, arranging marriages, keeping a settlement calm or in sighting insurrection. Overall, it's a completely under used mechanic. Plus, yes, the faces need work.

 

[NPC99]

I'd be surprised if TW had changed the facial keyframes since that video to improve performance, but they might have. IMO its more likely that the video faces were individually generated manually to demonstrate the engine capabilities. However, the vast majority of faces in BL are randomly generated between preset minimum and maximum face codes (varied by culture), guaranteeing blandness but avoiding uniformity. In particular, there are only a limited number of eye colour codes that give a spark of life as opposed to dull hues.

 

[Fistochat]

I'd be surprised if TW had changed the facial keyframes since that video to improve performance, but they might have. IMO its more likely that the video faces were individually generated manually to demonstrate the engine capabilities. However, the vast majority of faces in BL are randomly generated between preset minimum and maximum face codes, guaranteeing blandness. In particular, there are only a limited number of eye colour codes that give a spark of life as opposed to dull hues.

You might be right, it's probably a matter of performance. Still, I hope they will allow the engine to work at it's maximum potential some day. I have to say that faces look incredibly realistic, compared to what we have now. It's is easier to memorize faces and therefore, it makes them more alive.

 

[NPC99]

You might be right, it's probably a matter of performance. Still, I hope they will allow the engine to work at it's maximum potential some day. I have to say that faces look incredibly realistic, compared to what we have now. It's is easier to memorize faces and therefore, it makes them more alive.

As I said, I doubt it was performance. Autogenerating faces in a range to avoid uniformity is bound to lack the creativity any of us could bring to tailoring a face in the character creator. BL needs thousands of faces.

 

[Brano]

BL needs thousands of faces.

Not really. As a starter they could 3D scan heads of all TW employees And frankly, how many faces would one really recognize? I only remember women faces, maybe like 3 or 4 (Ladogual ). The rest is a grey mass of horse faces and/or other weird anomalies

 

[NPC99]

Not really

Every warrior in a 1,000 vs 1,000 battle needs a face code.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

As I said, I doubt it was performance. Autogenerating faces in a range to avoid uniformity is bound to lack the creativity any of us could bring to tailoring a face in the character creator. BL needs thousands of faces.

This is my MP character face;

The engine is certainly capable of producing good looking face models. Hell I'd argue characters like Ira in-game look great. I have a feeling many of the starting characters were just run through the randomiser a few times and then nip/tucked.

 

[argon45]

Are the developers gonna do anything in this matter post-release? Are they at least aware of this "problem"?

No and No. At this point they'll never add anything that resembles 2016/2017 Bannerlord because that game is dead. Current Bannerlord is 2018/19 style/final Bannerlord.

 

[NPC99]

The engine is certainly capable of producing good looking face models. Hell I'd argue characters like Ira in-game look great.

I suspect autogenerated faces could be greatly improved by narrowing the ranges so that a number of face codes remained fixed, guaranteeing minimum features. This would require a lot more ranges than those currently coded.

There are also some thoughtless defaults that should be changed. Currently, in the xmls you can only change the percentage chance of tattoos in skins.xml or monsters.xml (I can't remember which). Pointless changing it for the whole race when you mainly want to guarantee its occurrence for instances of the same troop or bandit, rather than having them as a remote occurrence for everyone.

 

[Kazzan]

Could really use less white eyes, maybe bigger irises. That would be my quick fix to make them look a bit less crazy.

Lowering the eyebrows could also help, and a new face texture. The faces just seem made out of clay.

 

[NPC99]

Could really use less white eyes,

The underlying texture has blood tints and vessels. Unfortunately, these are too far back so completely hidden by the eyelids. Tweaking that diffuse to bring that detail forward into view at the edges would help.