How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

[Syrdeth]

So, another Sunday goes by and I don't post. But, I have an excuse this time! I was working on fixing Maria Shepard's face! She's my Paragon Shepard.

 

You may or may not know that on a Saturday, sometime back, I worked on Maria to fix her eye clipping issue. I didn't fully know what I was doing, and even though I was given clear instructions, I still somehow ended up messing it up. I had fixed the clipping, but she didn't look quite right. Take a look. All the following screenshots can be clicked for a larger view.

 

 

She's using a facetex made for her (Thanks, Ottemis!), but you can see the issue. Her eyelids are down a little too far. She looks like she's always half asleep. But, if I put them up any higher, they start clipping again. I also had to move her eyeballs down to compensate and as a result, she no longer looks directly at people. And there was also something about her that wasn't quite "right". But, I figured there was nothing I could do about it and just dealt with it.

 

Then Sagequeen comes along with her awesome blog post and I get motivated to fix her again. If you want to work on your Shepard, follow her post, not mine. I'm only going to document what I did, not how to do it.

 

So, Sunday afternoon, I started to work on her. I had to start "fresh", so I imported her yet again, and this time using the Gibbed save editor, pulled the headmorph out and put it into the current save(s) that I had been using. Since I wasn't in ME3 very far, I used saves from the Mars and Manae missions.

 

Here she is with her "old" face, no mods, no tweaks.

 

 

No real clipping issues when she is looking straight on, but in order to appreciate the final result, you have to see what I started with. Here's a better image, showing the clipping in the intro.

 

 

Following Sage's blog post, the first thing to work on was the skin tone. I followed her instructions exactly, not really stopping to think that maybe the skin tone on her Shepard and mine just might be different. This is the result.

 

Feeling a little blue there, Shepard?

 

Okay, back to the drawing board. Some trial and error later, and I discovered that the major issue was simply too much red in her skin tone. I dialed that back by a mere .1 and the results were stunning.

 

 

She no longer looks like she's perpetually blushing. Progress!

 

Next in the instructions was the eye color. Well, I love Maria's deep green eyes, no need to do anything there. In fact, none of the color options I needed to tweak since I either was happy with how they looked (hair color) or they were non-existant (blush color).

 

Next up was the Scalars. Again, very little bit to change except for the HED_SPwr_Scalar. Yeah, I don't know what it does either, but I did exactly as the instructions asked. No screenshot of that change, sorry.

 

On to textures.

 

Since Maria (and also Kendra) use Complexion 3, I followed Sage's instructions for this fix and then tested in game. The difference is slight, but it is there.

 

 

Next up was Offset Bones. This was the most scary change for me. I mess this up and I have to start over. Oh, did I forget to mention that I forgot to save the headmorph periodically? Yeah...

 

I changed the eyebrows, eyes, sneer and lower eyelids (a specific fix for eye 7 which Maria and Kendra use) exactly as instructed. I did NOT touch her cheekbones. I love her cheekbones and there was no reason to touch them. I also didn't need to touch the mouth. No issue there, either.

 

And, the final result!

 

 

Well, okay, not the final result. Still need to add her texmods, but the major work is done.

 

And, here she is with all texmods added:

 

 

How about some shots of her "in action", from the intro? Because of the bad lighting in the intro, she looks pale. She doesn't look that way in the rest of the game. And, hey, redheads don't tan well anyways, right? :)

 

 

The shot I use for my avatar. I can't not get this screenshot every time. :)

 

 

 

 

 

And, a bonus shot from Manae. See, she's not so pale outside of the intro. :)

 

The great thing is, since Maria and Kendra share the same face, the same fixes will work on Kendra! I even have one less step. I won't touch Kendra's skin tone. I'll see if I can post a "before" and "after" pic of Kendra later this week.

Edit: As promised, Kendra's fixed face.

[SageQueen]

she looks awesome! so glad that worked out for you. and yeah, i think that change to the skintone looks great. nice to see maria back in action