I've just posted the various facial feature sets to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha. These include Eyes, Eyebrows, Mouth, Nose, and Ears. I ported over all the FaceMaker items, all the items from the Minis that made sense, and drew a bunch of new stuff based on the 2.x options. Of particular note, I tried to include at least one "manga-inspired" item in each set.
Here's a quick look at the kind of head you can now put on your characters:
I used rotation on the eyebrows to make him look worried. And here's the closest I could get in 2.x:
A few things to note:
- The Eyes, Eyebrows, and Ears are all split into matched pairs. This is a pain in the butt at the moment since there is no "keep pairs matched" feature. Yet. There will be, but item creation comes first. Until then, I admit that creating a good face is going to be irritating, as you add pairs and then have to delete the old ones. On the plus side, you can create some really cool looking faces.
- I have the Eyes classified as Skin for the purposes of the "Color all skin" feature. This isn't ideal, as the iris color you choose is unlikely to be the same as the skin color on the rest of the body. Holler if you'd prefer the Eyes to not be so grouped.
- Ditto for the Eyebrows being classified as Hair for the purposes of "Color all hair".
- Because Eyebrows don't really lend themselves to two colors when each item is only one eyebrow, I instead basically used the secondary color to blob out a "brow ridge" area. In the limited playing around I did, I would bet you're probably going to set that to the lighter of the two skin shades you choose, if you choose different skin tones. It makes kind of a nice outline effect.
- I need to figure out where to put freckles in ... probably in Noses?
I'm very pleased with the way the various Facemaker bits have turned out when brought into the actual HeroMachine. I think breaking the eyes and eyebrows and ears out into separate left and right items is going to be helpful as well, allowing you to create a lot more emotion than you could in 2.x.
I'll be spending the next couple of days adding in facial items I left out, based on your comments, so if you see something missing, let me know. Or if you think of something new, or see something broken. You know, the usual.
I'll also probably be addressing the massive backlog of Caption Contest Prizes remaining to be completed. So yeah.
Hope you like the new stuff!
I sense a long late evening and night playing around with HM3 instead of writing. Thanks a lot, Jeff! 😀
Ooooh – Manga inspired faces?!? I can’t wait to have a play over the easter weekend.
Argh! May be accurate on the “that creating a good face is going to be irritating”. The good ol’ “Save (code)” feature would ease the pain by breaking up creating over a couple sessions (hint, hint). =:-o
On the fourth page the bottom right mouth and the one to the right of it bring up the wrong mouths.
Jeff,
Would it be possible to add a few animal facial features (i.e. cats eyes, muzzles, etc) for when you want to make a lion man or lizard man?
Sorry should have looked before I typed. I see the muzzles thanks for adding them!
Man, that’s a lot of new items!
Also, in the second last slot in Mouth, the last and second last previews/items are messed up.
Thanks for the heads-up, the errant mouth is now working. I’d actually left one out, so that’s in there now too.
Is there any way to make some eyes with non-white backgrounds but still have a colored pupil? It would be cool to have yellow or red eyes with different colored pupils, for example.
Also, I would love some more lizard or dinosaur like facial features. Like bone/spike ridges on the forehead/eyebrows, or along the jaw-line, etc.
Some Mechanical facial features would also be awesome.
Facial tattoos would also be cool, but I’m not sure what slot they would naturally fit in.
So far, you should be very proud of this. Thanks.
@ Jeff i
don’t know if you have any Ubuntu (OO-B-OOn-T-OO) Linux user but i am and it works decently. if you could get some more kinds of facial hair that would be cool too.
Hey Jeff, great job on the facial items. Could you add in this mouth as well?
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?f1d4f31759.jpg
Thanks.
Considering how we can now have multiple items from the same category, and we no longer have to choose one or the other, I’d have to say that freckles would fit in the facial hair section. Relatedly, about the only specific thing I felt missing from the new face stuff were the additional lines one could add to give a character an older appearance. Crow’s feet, laugh lines, those sorts of little touches that help differentiate a villain of fifty from a hero of thirty.
It’d be great if you could make those something you could mix and match with different features, but if you have to attach them to a set pair of eyes or a mouth that’d be fine too. Whatever you need to do. These new face additions and headshot view option are fantastic! I can’t wait to see the female version! Still, don’t burn yourself out or anything awful like that.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t just my laptop or browser doing this, but the headshot option, when clicked on, simply takes the entire program away and gives you the character you were working on, at the same size it was in normal mode, with nothing but the introductory header at the top. I’ve tried it multiple times, closed it, waited awhile, tried again, and it’s still doing it. Probably temporary, but it hasn’t done this before now.
Oh, and a mouth request: Something like the normal open-mouthed smiles you have already, but with pointed teeth. Not outrageously pointy, but more like a vampire mouth that isn’t fully open and coming at you. It’d be much appreciated.
RSC, you’re using the “Widescreen” mode. The portrait mode is the button just above it. You can click anywhere on the screen or hit any key and it’ll snap back to regular mode from being in widescreen.
I changed the portrait mode button to look like a close-up of a stick figure’s head and shoulders. Widescreen mode’s button looks like a complete stick figure on a big wide screen of yellow.
Maybe you could create a face category that contains stuff like scars, freckles, wrinkles, acne, etc. Maybe call it skin accessories or something. I’d love to have facial scars on a hero, it looks cool. Also, what about body scars? Maybe a category for tattoos and piercings. It’s looking awesome so far!
Well…at least now it makes sense, albeit in a highly embarrassing fashion. Uh, thanks.
Jeff,
Is there plans to add more Medieval Helmets to HM3. I myself wanted a little more than was offered in HM2. Also, a little suggestion you could add generic helmet pieces that would allow us to make our own style of helmet.
Doing an awesome job on this program! I can’t drag myself away from it.
Thanks Paul! It’s safe to say that, provided I get renewed, there will be a lot more of every sort of item in HM3. There’ll also be a lot more bits and pieces of things so you can create customized items.
One more glitch I found. In the transformation section under the rotation and scale, the arrow buttons do not cycle through the numbers…in otherwords they are dead buttons.
Paul, those buttons are the “set the value to the number manually entered in the text box” buttons. You type in whatever value you want, click the button, and that value gets applied. They’re not supposed to cycle through anything.
Hi Jeff, One little personal quirk for me, but… The “skin” that you put around the eyebrows… They now prevent me from putting the eyebrows really close to the eyes… for example.. here is a face I did with your old “facemaker” app…
http://picasaweb.google.com/ricardo.m.almeida/Stuff#5322780026864243778
Now I can’t get the eyebrows that close to the eyes anymore. look at this:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ricardo.m.almeida/Stuff#5322780734135272722
on the left eye the eyebrow is on top of the eye (looks like some flabby skin covering it) on the right eye, the eye “skin” is covering some of the eyebrow…
I don’t know about the rest of the people here, but I’d be ever so grateful if the skin on the eyebrows just disappeared….
Thanks, that’s what i’ve been waitin’ for!
@Worf: Just turn Color2 to an alpha of 0. In other words, make that color invisible. That should do ya.
@Jeff: Thank you for that slap on the hands… How did I not think of that one???
the face items look great. you still havent added all the spandex legwaer items yet!
hey jeff the hm3 is really good so far, are u planing to do some weapons?
by the way did ugo extended ur contract? *fingers crossed*
Three things:
First and foremost, this is awesome! I can create some amazingly realistic faces with this.
Second, I ran across this glitch that should be simple to clear up. I was in Headshot view (of course) and accidentally went directly to Full screen view. This gave the disconcerting view of only half the face I was working on. I then exited that view, and it looked as if I had nothing done. I had to then exit Portrait view (Which was still on) To see everything normally again. Not sure that made sense, but I repeated those steps several times, and it happened each time.
Last, and least, a item request. You have one set of pointed “elf ears” that go out sideways (very anime-ish). Can we get a set of standard elf ears like we have in 2.5? I tried just contorting the current ears to make it look more verticle, but can’t quite make it look right.
@Tristan: Other than the wave pattern, what legwear spandex are you waiting for?