Defeat Shrek Syndrome in Oblivion

I've always been unhappy with the appereance of the Orcs in Oblivion, they look dumbass and pathetic. The face texture is too green and even, and for some reason the head mesh is flat on the forehead and stretched out!!! The result is that the Orcs look like they're affected by sort of a Shrek Syndrome and that's really annoying for those - like me - who get irritated each time they come across the crappy face of that retarded ogre by DreamWorks!



There have been previous attempts at making the orcs better looking by usually replacing the default Orc head mesh with the human's. Cute Orc Head Replacer by Nenina, for instance, really makes the Orcs attractive and good looking. However there's a price to pay: certain facial features like the nose, the large mouth and the prominent teeth are lost.

So I decided to start my own Orc overhaul project, taking a completely different direction. Orcs in my opinion should look aggressive and intimidating. Vanilla nose and teeth are perfect for that purpose and I wanted to keep them. The rest had to be changed.



I have made a new base texture featuring wrinkles and face lines. I tried to make it less green but If I had completely changed the skin tone head and body color wouldn't have matched anymore - and we already have the neck seam problem  to deal with everyday and that's already too much of trouble - so I kept the green but made it a little bit desaturated in the middle, in order to dim that radioactive Hulk-like look that's been bothering me since  the year 2006. I have also tweaked the head mesh altering the shape of the chin first, and of the top of the head later. This is better shown in the picture below.



This is a comparison between default head and my custom head. My texture is clearly much more detailed and also the head mesh has been changed dramatically: the jaw is much more defined and the forehead is not flat anymore. This makes it compatible with custom hairstyles for humans and elves. Of course I will adapt stock Orc hair too.



These are randomly generated Orcs faces using custom hairstyles. My textures are fully compatible with Django's  Unique Features. I think the result is pretty decent. The only downside is that you can't make attractive female Orc. Well, I never thought female Orcs should be attractive anyway.

Next step is converting stock hair meshes and making better age maps. I'm very motivated and have plans for a future public release.

3 Comments:

  1. TST said...
    Hi, I was diverted here by kingtitan after asking about improved Orc faces, and I must say what you've done so far is outstanding! I will definitely be keeping a close eye on this.

    As for the problem with making attractive female Orcs, you could solve that by taking the same route Makabresku did with Better Bosmers by supplying both masculine and feminine Orc races. Only downside is that you'd have to manually change the vanilla NPCs to use the Masculine/Feminine version where appropriate.
    TST said...
    Just saying that above comment was mine. I'm known as SailorTaurus on the Nexus. I created a Blogspot account just to comment, but no idea why I appeared as "Unknown" before.
    Room207 said...
    Ah, you also had the OpenID option which would have let you specify an url or an e-mail address...

    Thanks for your compliments on my better orcs mod. Let's say it's 70% complete, I just need to finish all the age maps before I release it.

    About the women, I've been thinking of the option you suggest but since I intend this as a mere replacer I'm not sure that I want to include a plugin.

    However, I might make an optional esp that will make this compatible with the Cute Orc Head Replacer by Nenina so that males use my stuff and females hers. That might be a good compromise I think.

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