Amox's ChocoElf Recretaion Research

[Shizune]

Welcome fellow modders.

For past few days I've been trying to recreate the ryu44's ChocoElf which can bee seen of his promo screens of Xeo. Many of Wolfore and Hongfire modders were trying to make a copy of her. Sadly unsuccesfully. Here in this thread I want to share with you my thoughts and what I've learned. Let's start the discussion.

 

miniAKIBA at Hongfire suspected that ryu44 was using his private meshes for that face as his attempts were a failure. From the screens we can say that she has definetely different mouth than normal Chocolate Elves Xeo.

Comparison

As you can see, her lips are a bit triangle-shaped.

 

The other case that needs to be solved are face textures. As far as I'm concerned the released textures don't fit the actual ones presented on the screenshots. Our Chocolate Elves Xeo have a bit greyish face. It doesn't look like chocolate, that's for sure. Just look at it yourself!

Compared to these:

#1 #2 #3

You can definetely tell the difference now, don't you?

 

I've reinstalled the whole MBP and Xeo to see if I just missed something. NO! Apart from missing the Chocolate Elves Xeo (those with pierced ears) nothing has changed.. except one thing. I've discovered that Chocolate Elves with Ren's head mesh have pretty similar texture:

Difference between Chocolate Elf (Ren) and Chocolate Elf Xeo Female

 

The Chocolate Elf (Ren) looks almost exactly like ChocoElf from ryu44's screens! Now miniAKIBA's assumption that our modder has been using different head mesh may be true.

The lips comparison between ChocoElf and Chocolate Elf (Ren)

What do you think about it? Please, I'm open for a discussion!

[Guest Donkey]

The head mesh looks almost identical only difference is one use more flush and the other looked more pale. Also looks like major HDR is used to to get the skin shine like that. maybe he is using a something that enables antialiacing and HDR at the same time.

[Shizune]

Yes, from what I've read on his blog he's using the Oblivion Graphic Extender.

[Guest Donkey]

That would explain why i see so many great looking characters due to the high resolution by OBGE i am not sure my Nvidia 8800GTS 320 was never working with OBGE so never tried it again.

[Shizune]

Oh God! Today's discovery was a key to my problems.

[pink]

You probably already know this, but I came across something nifty to change the oiled/reflection thing on the body that I've seen in several Japanese modders' chocolate elf screenshots. I personally think it looks better, but (again, assuming you're not already doing this) you should give it a try.

 

After installing the Oiled2 skin for your respective race, and backing these files up, open up

    Data/meshes/Characters/_male/femaleupperbody.nif

    Data/meshes/Characters/_male/femalelowerbody.nif

    Data/meshes/Characters/_male/femalehand.nif

    Data/meshes/Characters/_male/femalefoot.nif

    Data/meshes/Characters//Head/

in NifScope, find the "skin" material property, right-click and select Material. Then set Diffuse and Specular to white, and change Glossiness to 100. Also it took me a while to realise NifScope doesn't save on exit, so do that :3

 

For the head, you might need to also remove the normal maps to get the desired effect. Do this by getting rid of the *_n.dds files in the character texture directory of your choice.

 

The result is a somewhat different look, but I believe that's how screenshots such as

http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/162284-1269434937.jpg

are made (since I could never get similar lighting without doing this).

 

Also, I would forever be in your debt for a savegame with that face, or the values of the sliders

 

edit: linked wrong screenshot

[galgat]

I was never into this type of skin, but I think you will find that a lot of the skin shine is done with the Normal map...

 

this is the texture for those that do not mess with such that has the same name as the main texture with _n.dds added to it.

 

    these are very touchy to work with, but with much copy, and pasting of many different normal maps of the same texture, but with varying deg.'s of transparency you can get some intresting results, like nipples that shine while the rest of the body does now... cheeks that shine, and lips that shine, and so, on, and so, on.

 

Very time consuming though..

[Shizune]

The result is a somewhat different look, but I believe that's how screenshots such as

http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/162284-1269434937.jpg

are made (since I could never get similar lighting without doing this).

I fucking love you.

Also, I would forever be in your debt for a savegame with that face, or the values of the sliders

edit: linked wrong screenshot

As soon as I'm finished I'm gonna post the face file and save file.

 

There is a thing I can't achieve, namely those small seductive eyes:

Current version | How it would look with the eyes

[Shizune]

Alright! Another day another dollar. I've taken a random face and redone. The ressult? Finally I got these small seductive eyes that I couldn't achieve. Now there's another problem - the Goddamned mouth, awww...

 

[Guest Donkey]

you mean the glossy look on the picture on the right ??

[Shizune]

Well too, but the key thing is to make the lips smaller.

[Guest Donkey]

lips smaller is done with face generater build in with oblivion. with that you inflate the lips or detract make it smaller.

This mod uses number making it easy to navigate the character face generator.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2170

 

 

[Shizune]

Yeah, I know! The whole thing was made by Oblivion's in-game facegen, because my CS Facegen is frozen and I dunno how to use this other one. Besides, I'm already using the Darknified UI which shows the exact numbers like in the ryu44's pic. The problem is that when you move one slider, the other which has a small reference to the one you're moving, moves aswell making it almost imposible to recreate her face.

 

After browsing hunderds of pages of SHY and Tamanegiii's Loda.jp I've discovered that this girl was made not by ryu44 but by karimasa (also known as kari, okarisimasu and R-18) or he shared his facefile with him. I'd love to get in touch with one of them.

[Guest Donkey]

that's hard coded, not much anyone can do. but looking at the picture on the right i dought he even made it in game with oblivion face generator. probably used facegen external program and wreybash to import it back in game.

 

The only thing i can advice use this site. tp make pretty faces. http://www.shsforums.net/topic/26339-how-to-make-a-beautiful-character/

 

This is the only real site dedicated in creating pretty faces within oblivion.

btw these are the same people creating celebrities for oblivion like Chuck Norris, Sean Connery etc..

 

[Shizune]

that's hard coded, not much anyone can do. but looking at the picture on the right i dought he even made it in game with oblivion face generator. probably used facegen external program and wreybash to import it back in game.

Probably. I'd love to get this damn CS Facegen working, eh.

The only thing i can advice use this site. tp make pretty faces. http://www.shsforums.net/topic/26339-how-to-make-a-beautiful-character/

Yeah, but this thread seems to be outdated. It's almost four years old and it doesn't say nothing about the latest facial feature mods like MBP, for example.

 

@edit

Posted it already on HongFire:

The character has this hot badass look but only from this camera angle. The rest looks like shit.

[Shizune]

Somehow I haven't done the thing that pink told me to. After changing glossiness in the NifSkope all the meshes suddenly have normal face textures. Thanks for the hint, man!

 

For those who're not on the HongFire:

[Guest Donkey]

Those character looks really good. any chance glossynes like this will also apply on the regular imperial, orc, breton, nord etc.. ??? I don't really play much with custom races only the regular.

[pink]

Happy to help! :3

 

Remember this is done per mesh, so depending on the type of armor used you might need to do the same thing to your armor meshes, otherwise the lighting won't look right.

 

Donkey: the face meshes are separate, but as I understand it the body meshes are shared by all races - unless you use one of the SetBody mods. So changing the face mesh glossiness will only work on that race, but changing the meshes in _male will work on all races when they're naked. Chainging armor meshes will change anyone wearing that armor. You can probably avoid this by using SetBody (change one of the SetBody meshes, then switch yourself to that mesh).

 

 

[miniAKIBA]

@ Amox: I truly admire your persistence in trying to achieve the same look as ryu44's Chocolate Elf. I remember obsessing over this months ago but stopped after much failure and feeling like there was just no way. And with the recent database crash at Hongfire as well as my own mod issues with Oblivion made things worse that I was forced to take a break from this game. But when I saw this thread and noticed how dedicated you were that I've found myself coming back to modding, even if the hiatus was only for about a week. (It's amazing how much content gets updated for the xLovers thread at Hongfire...) Therefore, I'll try my best to help you out with recreating ryu44's Chocolate Elf. 

 

Right now, I'm convinced that "Coolhair49" is used for the hair and "Moonshadow Gray" is used for the eyes. I've tried to the best of my abilities to manipulate the facial structure as close as possible to ryu44's Chocolate Elf without the use of the Construction Set. The lips and eyes are definitely tricky IMO and I'm almost positive that ryu44 had to use the Construction Set to break away from the "limits" of structuring, because as we all know parts of the face are dependent among each other so changing one slider will automatically change another. The good news about all of this is that it seems like ryu44's Chocolate Elf is definitely achievable without having to mine for private meshes and textures. Patience and a keen eye are really all what's needed at this point. The tools and materials are right there in front of us, after all.

 

I don't want to boast or anything, but I feel what I've done so far is pretty good and is probably the closest I can get to achieving this elusive and infamous look. Sure, I can probably mess around a little bit more with the sliders but the changes are either going to be minimal or drastic. Here's what I've done so far and I posted it already at Hongfire...

 

 

@ pink: If there was a reputation feature here at Lovers Lab then I would definitely give you some points. Your tip on the glossy effect for the skin definitely helped us out. I had thought about using the same trick before but I wasn't sure what values to change other than the glossiness so I stayed away from it altogether lol. But it does suck that this effect is done per mesh, I'll see if I can use that SetBody tip that you mentioned but I won't lie to you it'll be a hassle as opposed to having the effect take place universally.

[Nightwynd]

@ Amox: I truly admire your persistence in trying to achieve the same look as ryu44's Chocolate Elf. I remember obsessing over this months ago but stopped after much failure and feeling like there was just no way. And with the recent database crash at Hongfire as well as my own mod issues with Oblivion made things worse that I was forced to take a break from this game. But when I saw this thread and noticed how dedicated you were that I've found myself coming back to modding' date=' even if the hiatus was only for about a week. (It's amazing how much content gets updated for the xLovers thread at Hongfire...) Therefore, I'll try my best to help you out with recreating ryu44's Chocolate Elf. 

 

Right now, I'm convinced that \"Coolhair49\" is used for the hair and \"Moonshadow Gray\" is used for the eyes. I've tried to the best of my abilities to manipulate the facial structure as close as possible to ryu44's Chocolate Elf without the use of the Construction Set. The lips and eyes are definitely tricky IMO and I'm almost positive that ryu44 had to use the Construction Set to break away from the \"limits\" of structuring, because as we all know parts of the face are dependent among each other so changing one slider will automatically change another. The good news about all of this is that it seems like ryu44's Chocolate Elf is definitely achievable without having to mine for private meshes and textures. Patience and a keen eye are really all what's needed at this point. The tools and materials are right there in front of us, after all.

 

I don't want to boast or anything, but I feel what I've done so far is pretty good and is probably the closest I can get to achieving this elusive and infamous look. Sure, I can probably mess around a little bit more with the sliders but the changes are either going to be minimal or drastic. Here's what I've done so far and I posted it already at Hongfire...

 

[img']http://www.hongfire.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=187904&stc=1&d=1298730718[/img]

 

@ pink: If there was a reputation feature here at Lovers Lab then I would definitely give you some points. Your tip on the glossy effect for the skin definitely helped us out. I had thought about using the same trick before but I wasn't sure what values to change other than the glossiness so I stayed away from it altogether lol. But it does suck that this effect is done per mesh, I'll see if I can use that SetBody tip that you mentioned but I won't lie to you it'll be a hassle as opposed to having the effect take place universally.

 

You should post a save file!

 

Also, ack I hit modify instead of quote ;_; my apologies, miniAKIBA

[Shizune]

@ Amox: I truly admire your persistence in trying to achieve the same look as ryu44's Chocolate Elf. I remember obsessing over this months ago but stopped after much failure and feeling like there was just no way. And with the recent database crash at Hongfire as well as my own mod issues with Oblivion made things worse that I was forced to take a break from this game. But when I saw this thread and noticed how dedicated you were that I've found myself coming back to modding, even if the hiatus was only for about a week. (It's amazing how much content gets updated for the xLovers thread at Hongfire...) Therefore, I'll try my best to help you out with recreating ryu44's Chocolate Elf.

Haha, welcome aboard! It's good to have an experienced modder in the project.

The lips and eyes are definitely tricky IMO and I'm almost positive that ryu44 had to use the Construction Set to break away from the \"limits\" of structuring, because as we all know parts of the face are dependent among each other so changing one slider will automatically change another. The good news about all of this is that it seems like ryu44's Chocolate Elf is definitely achievable without having to mine for private meshes and textures. Patience and a keen eye are really all what's needed at this point. The tools and materials are right there in front of us, after all.

Yeah, that's a relief. Suddenly my Construction Set went back to normal so everything like facegen works now. Kari (because that's the actual name of the modder who did this gal) used the CS Facegen to make these seductive eyes and small lips.

 

These are my tries (you've probably seen them on HF).

 

I don't want to boast or anything, but I feel what I've done so far is pretty good and is probably the closest I can get to achieving this elusive and infamous look. Sure, I can probably mess around a little bit more with the sliders but the changes are either going to be minimal or drastic. Here's what I've done so far and I posted it already at Hongfire...

You surely are right! That's a nice one. Now it's CS's role to fix the eyes.

[miniAKIBA]

 

You should post a save file!

 

Also' date=' ack I hit modify instead of quote ;_; my apologies, miniAKIBA

[/quote']

 

Lol no worries. I should also apologize for sounding absolutist about quitting Oblivion back at Hongfire. If anything, I've returned and hopefully here to stay.

 

Here's my save: http://rapidshare.com/files/449948875/Saves.rar

 

I'm assuming you have the Chocolate Elf Xeo Female mod. (Should have come with XEO5/XEORC4 already.) Also, to get the same glossy effect please follow pink's instructions.

 

Haha' date=' welcome aboard! It's good to have an experienced modder in the project.

 

Yeah, that's a relief. Suddenly my Construction Set went back to normal so everything like facegen works now. Kari (because that's the actual name of the modder who did this gal) used the CS Facegen to make these seductive eyes and small lips.

 

[img']http://i.imgur.com/3TpxO.jpg[/img]

These are my tries (you've probably seen them on HF).

 

Thanks for the welcome.

 

Ah, I didn't know she used FaceGen. I've been playing around with it as well since Nightvision had mentioned it back at Hongfire but I couldn't quite get the same effect with it either. I'm pretty sure there was a certain Asian (Japanese, maybe?) model whose face was used for the Chocolate Elf. I've tried it myself but none came close for me, unfortunately.

 

And those are really nice pics! Does she have on of Flonne's eyes on? Personally, I wanted to put that on my Chocolate Elf but since I was trying to demonstrate the similar appearance I ended up using Moonshadow Gray, which again I'm like 90% sure is what is used on Kari's elf.

[Shizune]

Ah, I didn't know she used FaceGen

Well, it isn't oficially confirmed but from what I've been trying to do there it's likely that he did use that kind of stuff.

I'm pretty sure there was a certain Asian (Japanese, maybe?) model whose face was used for the Chocolate Elf.

I'd love to see her, hehe.

And those are really nice pics! Does she have on of Flonne's eyes on? Personally, I wanted to put that on my Chocolate Elf but since I was trying to demonstrate the similar appearance I ended up using Moonshadow Gray, which again I'm like 90% sure is what is used on Kari's elf.

Yeah, I used them because there were no other similar. The race I'm using here is Chocolate Elves Xeo x117, because I'm too lazy to do the .esp stuff yet. I want to finish this face so I can get back to the normal Oblivion (which ended about week ago as I started to look for the clues how to make super-hot face for the Choco elves ).

[miniAKIBA]

Yeah' date=' I used them because there were no other similar. The race I'm using here is Chocolate Elves Xeo x117, because I'm too lazy to do the .esp stuff yet. I want to finish this face so I can get back to the normal Oblivion (which ended about week ago as I started to look for the clues how to make super-hot face for the Choco elves ).

[/quote']

 

Haha I see, I see. I don't blame you though, I literally spend hours (if not days) when I'm trying to create a new character. The look has to be perfect and I'm not afraid to admit how anal I am about that. But once you get a nice-looking character it makes Oblivion all that much more pleasing to play, so it's worth the time spent.

 

Only reason why I feel Moonshadow Gray eyes were used was due to the "redness" around the sclera. And of course, the gray color was a dead giveaway.

[Shizune]

Only reason why I feel Moonshadow Gray eyes were used was due to the \"redness\" around the sclera. And of course, the gray color was a dead giveaway.

Yeah, also notice these four interrupted lines which are around the pupil. And please, don't bring these old tries of making this gal So embarassing ^^

 

@edit

Here is another of my tries. I feel like I'm stuck in one place, making the same looking characters over and over again. We really need to fix these eyes, gentlemen.. and ladies (sorry Nightwynd )!