Ugly Korean/ Japanese presets

[kapibar]

I was hoping that the wise heads of this community would be able to explain to me the reason why Korean/Japanese presets look so repulsive when loaded?

 

In the screenshots, the characters look really attractive - delicate and girly. In my game, on the other hand, they look more like bastard orcs than Asian beauties.

 

What am I missing? Is it an ENB issue, skin textures, or is it some other beautification method?

[Mez558]

40 minutes ago, kapibar said:

I was hoping that the wise heads of this community would be able to explain to me the reason why Korean/Japanese presets look so repulsive when loaded?

 

In the screenshots, the characters look really attractive - delicate and girly. In my game, on the other hand, they look more like bastard orcs than Asian beauties.

 

What am I missing? Is it an ENB issue, skin textures, or is it some other beautification method?

 

Yes, very likely both skin and enb and possibly other mods and maybe even some manipulation after the screen shot is taken.

 

Some examples of what you are getting might help but bare in mind that when someone posts a screen shot showing their new follower/preset it's the equivalent of someone posting a pic of themselves on insta. It'll be the most flattering pic they can find with more than few filters on it for good measure.

[kapibar]

I suppose this is the only logical explanation. But it also begs the question: what's the fucking point? It's not like you can earn a ton of cash on a mod, definitely it is not a dependable source of income. So why the actual fuck would you want to lie to someone who's there to appreciate your work and take joy in what you have accomplished? If the recipient is unhappy with the product, there's little to no point in sharing the mod anyway.

[jfraser]

i agree with Mez - toss us a screenie or three. maybe it is just simple tweaks you can do.

[Mez558]

12 minutes ago, kapibar said:

I suppose this is the only logical explanation. But it also begs the question: what's the fucking point? It's not like you can earn a ton of cash on a mod, definitely it is not a dependable source of income. So why the actual fuck would you want to lie to someone who's there to appreciate your work and take joy in what you have accomplished? If the recipient is unhappy with the product, there's little to no point in sharing the mod anyway.

 

No idea. I can't say I think much of their presets anyway.

With ones on Nexus and here you will often see the author give a list of appearance mods they use with the disclaimer that without those YMMV I have no idea if the ones on Korean or Chinese sites do similar.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Mez558

[kapibar]

15 minutes ago, jfraser said:

i agree with Mez - toss us a screenie or three. maybe it is just simple tweaks you can do.

Well, there you have it. Pretty girl vs trans athlete. And my screenshot doesn't actually look as bad as what's on the screen, it already has a facelight on and for whatever reason the angle is pretty flattering. From the side it's much and I mean much more drastic.

[Mez558]

24 minutes ago, kapibar said:

Well, there you have it. Pretty girl vs trans athlete. And my screenshot doesn't actually look as bad as what's on the screen, it already has a facelight on and for whatever reason the angle is pretty flattering. From the side it's much and I mean much more drastic.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Is this a Racemenu or CME/ECE Preset?
You're right, ignoring that you're not using Nini skin (or whatever washed out version of pureskin is being used) the head geometry doesn't even look the same

Edited July 5, 2022 by Mez558

[kapibar]

28 minutes ago, Mez558 said:

Is this a Racemenu or CME/ECE Preset?
You're right, ignoring that you're not using Nini skin (or whatever washed out version of pureskin is being used) the head geometry doesn't even look the same

 

The geometry actually is the same. Or at least not very different. Take a look at proportions - they are more of less the same - cheek/nose, nose/chin... It's not vastly different if at all. The true difference is in the eyes. My guess is they have some specialized makeup tint that hides the upper eyelid (very prominent with normal makeup). Also the difference is in the facial expression - in the top image the character is squinting just a bit and her lips are delicately opened.

 

I loaded the nif with racemenu, so the geometry should hold. What really hit me is how bad was the overall sculpt. It's like it wasn't even sculpted at all, just bent to shape with sliders and the texture/makeup combo does the rest. This got me thinking - what kind of crap they're pulling if they're able to hide imperfections that are obvious on inspection of the geometry?

[Mez558]

48 minutes ago, kapibar said:

I loaded the nif with racemenu

 

So is this a follower who you have tried to import the facegeom mesh with Racemenu?

If so, even if the follower was made using Racemenu (and I would bet it was made using ECE) that has never worked perfectly for me. However it does provide a good starting point. I would make sure all face sliders are zero'd then import it then play with Racemenu to get it looking closer to what you want.

As for close, the nose is about the only thing I see that matches, the Jaw, eyes and lips are all off although the latter, as you said, could be just the make tints.

 

[kapibar]

5 minutes ago, Mez558 said:

As for close, the nose is about the only thing I see that matches, the Jaw, eyes and lips are all off although the latter, as you said, could be just the make tints.

 

Actually the nose is completely massacred. It has some semblance of shape, but from the side it's ridiculously big. It was one of the things that drove me to the conclusion that the whole thing is a pretty close match. That's why I didn't launch ECE in the first place (I know Koreans prefer it), beyond the usual import sloppiness there was nothing that made me believe this is not the same geometry. Tomorrow maybe I'll be able to take a printscreen in the open world and see how it compares.

[jfraser]

Try that and maybe post a profile shot

[kapibar]

1 minute ago, jfraser said:

Try that and maybe post a profile shot

You're gonna cry, man. It's really fucking bad. Like a brake pad of a carousel.

[PladinMike]

 Looks like you need better ENB like the Snapdragon Prime ENB 

 

The light of ENB will directly affect the texture of the skin.This is very important

 

In fact, most of the beautiful pictures are Photshop for later processing

 

 

[SmedleyDButler]

I've always been rather amused at how so many Asian presets manage to look barely Asian, if at all. Part of that is the predominance of this sort of cartoon babydoll K-Pop look so many modders prefer, but I guess also even high-poly head with full Racemenu sculpting can be kind of hostile to people trying to make actual Asian presets simply because the default structure is just so white.

 

It's the same way it's also uncommon to see Redguards with actual black features. Which, sure, not ALL Redguards would have as they're basically presented as an Arabian/African mix, but in the base game they're mostly white as, with a dark skintone.

[RohZima]

I think I know what might be up. It's a preset which is a load of meta data right? So in ECE if you have it configured for the sliders to have more detail the numbers might be different. That happened to me once. You'd either need to just offset the sliders to what the appropriate value would be or reinstall ECE with the default setting.

 

Maybe I am just talking nonsense though, as well. I'm just throwing it out there for your Trans athlete.

[kapibar]

1 hour ago, SmedleyDButler said:

I've always been rather amused at how so many Asian presets manage to look barely Asian

Well, if you dive deep into the beauty standards you'll see this is not just a modding thing. Asian facial features are pretty far off from what their own standards dictate, so those pretty girls in pictures either use heavy makeup, plastic surgeries or photoshop. Or even all three of those. It's not surprising that men - raised in those standards - design unrealistic characters. Also at a time I was very much into comics. It surprised me how many characters were actually Asians. And the reason for it was rather obvious - Asians share many characteristics of Caucasians, eye shape being the prominent exception. And this is not something easily transfered to a comic panel. Obvious example of this was Jim Lee's art. The guy is an Asian, so he should know how to draw women of this ethnicity. But nope, his ladies were all very much the same and if you didn't know Psylocke was in the body of a Japanese assasin, you'd say the chick is your typical European.

Edited July 6, 2022 by kapibar

[Mez558]

6 hours ago, kapibar said:

The guy is an Asian, so he should know how to draw women of this ethnicity. But nope, his ladies were all very much the same and if you didn't know Psylocke was in the body of a Japanese assasin,

I didn't realise that was what was meant to have happened?

This was the whole siege perilous storyline that had them turn Psylocke from an English Rose, Betsy Braddock to a Ninja Assassin in a Baywatch bikini.?

Thinking back on it, the ethnicity change was actually quite obvious but I think I just put it down to a huge character make over... And I was pretty much giving up on the X-Men comics... I think this also when they sort replaced Longshot with Gambit, or at least in my eyes they did. But to your point, no she didn't look Japanese but then neither did other Japanese female characters, Yukio for example. Or at least not in my opinion.

[Mez558]

8 hours ago, SmedleyDButler said:

It's the same way it's also uncommon to see Redguards with actual black features. Which, sure, not ALL Redguards would have as they're basically presented as an Arabian/African mix, but in the base game they're mostly white as, with a dark skintone.

 

As opposed to the Redguard followers that Modders make that don't even have a dark skin.

 

So much whitewashing in Skyrim modding ?

[kapibar]

1 hour ago, Mez558 said:

I didn't realise that was what was meant to have happened?

This was the whole siege perilous storyline that had them turn Psylocke from an English Rose, Betsy Braddock to a Ninja Assassin in a Baywatch bikini.?

Yeah. And it wasn't all that obvious, in this exact time Jim Lee took over from Mark Silvestri as a penciller, so the race change wasn't very obvious. And Lee's priority was obviously to show Psylocke as attractive female, so the whole thing became even less transparent to the reader.

 

1 hour ago, Mez558 said:

But to your point, no she didn't look Japanese but then neither did other Japanese female characters, Yukio for example. Or at least not in my opinion.

Exactly. It is really hard to draw a convincing Asian character without going overboard. The reason for this is the similarity in facial structure and skin color. There are also people that perfectly blend traits of both races, like Olivia Munn or Chloe Bennet. These in-betweeners exemplify why it is troublesome to sculpt character with Asian characteristics.

 

1 hour ago, Mez558 said:

As opposed to the Redguard followers that Modders make that don't even have a dark skin.

 

So much whitewashing in Skyrim modding ?

I know I'll sound like a huge nerd, but this is LL, so... Not that big of a problem. There are actually studies of attractiveness of specific races. And to nobody's surprise - black women are viewed as least attractive (even for black men). On the other hand - Asian women are viewed as most attractive (as opposed to Asian men, who are the least attractive). And that explains a lot. Attraction to traits of black ppl is a niche thing, with proportionally smaller chance of a skilled modder present in this group.

To see this, you just need to know anything about popculture. The most successful black women aren't typically black - like Beyonce or Halle Berry. Both of them could easily pass as white chicks by physical traits alone. So absence of black women in modding - very focused on attractiveness - doesn't surprise me one bit.

[27X]

9 hours ago, kapibar said:

Well, if you dive deep into the beauty standards you'll see this is not just a modding thing. Asian facial features are pretty far off from what their own standards dictate, so those pretty girls in pictures either use heavy makeup, plastic surgeries or photoshop. Or even all three of those. It's not surprising that men - raised in those standards - design unrealistic characters. Also at a time I was very much into comics. It surprised me how many characters were actually Asians. And the reason for it was rather obvious - Asians share many characteristics of Caucasians, eye shape being the prominent exception. And this is not something easily transfered to a comic panel. Obvious example of this was Jim Lee's art. The guy is an Asian, so he should know how to draw women of this ethnicity. But nope, his ladies were all very much the same and if you didn't know Psylocke was in the body of a Japanese assasin, you'd say the chick is your typical European.

 

Except the part where he drew both incarnations and it was painfully obvious which was which.

[kapibar]

23 minutes ago, 27X said:

 

Except the part where he drew both incarnations and it was painfully obvious which was which.

Sure, if you know what you're looking at. When Jim Lee took over in the 90's there was a gap in the storyline in my country. Psylocke didn't look any different to every other chick he drew. And for Jubilee? I learned many years later that she's Asian as well. My argument isn't that the man couldn't highlight difference between Psylocke and Kwannon. The argument is that she doesn't look radically different to any other X-girl and with no lore involved, could easily pass for a white girl.

[Guest]

I wasn't aware that those types of presets could not be repulsive. The more I know....

[Rayblue]

I must be late coming here, but most of those presets do need a lot of mods to make them look exactly as they were intended in screenshots. This includes high-poly head meshes,  high-quality skin textures, compatible body meshes, XPMSSE, and of course, they're made with ECE. Without any of those required mods, your character will look very off than you were hoping to expect.

 

As far as I'm concerned the authors of those presets also recommend other mods to complete the appearance, and therefore you cannot use any other mods that could conflict with those specified mods.