Character Creator & Character Customization (Official Thread)

My personal Shepard is what you see on my personal profile and it is the closest thing I could get to resemble myself. Would not have entertained the thought of trying it if my online friend didn't make a Shepard based off of everyone in his Facebook friends list. Self-insert is a thing.

Not being able to edit her is one thing (though I don't think it was because you couldn't edit Sheploo, because Femshep did have a default used in ME1/2 that you could edit), but not being able to use features present on her is another, much more annoying thing. You can very easily use her makeup/freckles/hairstyle/hair colour (any hair colour) using the Gibbed Save Editor, which although technically being qualified as modding, only alters existing save flags. So it wasn't that the game couldn't handle those things, it's just that Bioware didn't give us access to them, for no reason. It was the same deal with Hawke, they had hairstyles and a blood-smear texture that you couldn't use on custom protagonists even though they were made in the (dev) CC as well. Once again, modding makes it possible to use them, which is depressing.

Not being able to make a face resembling Vanderloo is probably just a limitation of the CC's architecture rather than anything deliberate.

Well, I won't be convinced until it's confirmed, but I suppose my main reasoning for why I didn't think it was scanned was that the quality was lacking. But I suppose it could be scanned and also look worse than ME3's Sheploo, from 5 years ago. Bioware has been known to regress, especially with their CC By "quality" I wasn't referring to the design/face shape, only the graphical fidelity, texture, and model quality. And I'm not talking about any professional standard or anything, only my own standard based both on their previous game (using the same engine) as well as the rest of the textures during the same video. By that standard, Male Ryder looked disappointing both because there doesn't seem to be an improvement from DA:I in the hair/facial hair department (as you pointed out) and because compared to the rest of the video, which looked amazing, it makes a strange contrast that personally takes me out of the game a bit and just plain looks odd. I just thought it was more disappointing in a tech demo since they're trying to show off the absolute best settings in the game... and certain aspects still look terrible

Aww, that's a bummer, I hope you can run it!

My girlfriend and I tried to make each other in DA:I's CC with moderate success. I don't have any screenshots of "me" though, which is probably just as well since it still looks better than I actually do and it's average at best

Heh, "CC me like one of your french girls"... That's actually kind of an awesome idea.

I think a feature like this would be pretty amazing, if it worked well.

I'm not sure why everyone assumes "self-imports" would be the order of the day. I'd obviously do it once, curious to see the result, and my non-gamer wife would likely want to see her own face replicated, as well. I'd never play with these faces, though.

How do you guys and gals come up with your characters' faces? Do you never look at images online, in print, or the like, for inspiration? (If not, that could explain some of the iffy results and "I suck at creating characters" complaints we always see in threads online.) Have you never come across the "perfect face" for a character while trawling the web? Imagine being able to import that face, rather than being stymied at every turn by a lackluster character creator in your efforts to create something similar.

I believe I'd want to be able to fine-tune even the imported face, checking angles, softening edges and so on. This would be a very cool feature, though. That said, I'm not holding my breath. BioWare has yet to deliver a CC that isn't severely limited and hair that doesn't look like plastic helmets.

I might find inspiration in certain features, or there might be a certain "look" that I want to achieve (basic bullet points like, 'strong jaw, dark hair, light eyes', or something) that I want to emulate, but I have personally never felt the desire to flat out recreate a real person for any character I've ever made. All the fine-tuning and the fiddling and the playing around with the character creator plays a huge role in forming the basis of my connection to them. Many times I might go in with a certain idea, but through the process of messing around with different options, come away with something very different that completely informs the character's personality and therefore how I end up playing them, in a way I would not have previously considered. Scanning someone's real face would, to a point, create a disconnect for me--like, they would feel less like my character. 

So, while I can understand the argument in favour, for me there just too much of an 'uncanny valley' factor in it that would put me off from wanting to use it.

Some people like to put a real face just for their own personal amusement, nothing more than that.  Who wouldn't want to make an amusing play through where someone's friend or significant other is their player character?

FM17 beta release,& my 1st Jackie Chan in football manager game.
base on this photo :

I did a test for this, and they were going to change the name to Mass Effect: Androgyna
Pre-order cancelled.

DA:I had a great character creation feature, but I often felt that it was too focused on the face. There were multiple other parts of my characters that I would have loved to customize. Here's my wish list for the ME:A CC, and I'm curious about what other people would add and how likely you think these things are.

· Different body types. Yes, we got that in DA with the different races, but I'd love to see that continued even now that we only play one species in ME.
· Body hair, scars, and tattoos.
· Long hair, even if it's mostly pinned up.
· A variety of casual clothes and, if we have another "Wicked Eyes, Wicked Hearts" type of mission, a variety of formal clothes as well.

I agree, I'd like to see all that.

And (not gonna happen but I can dream) two hairstyles-one for work/combat and one for casual wear. That way, characters with longer hair can have it pulled back or up out of the way during combat missions and down and loose for at home/date night and what have you.

And even if our PCs are based on models (I know this isn't gonna happen either) that we can tweak their look a bit in creation.

I want body custimization but I doubt its going to happen. It didn't for Inquisition. However, I am really really looking forward to getting into the guts of the CC feature as soon as the game comes out and hope we can really manipulate the face.

yeah I agree as while I must admit I like Sara's hair her face does look a bit too  cartoony for me. I've made better faces in DAI without mods so I don't think it'll be too hard. I can see myself using that hair on Sara at some point whether I do or not on my first run is another question as I won't know that until I see the other options but the fact they've got what I 'd consider a nice hairstyle for Sara and it moves as she runs gives me hope that at least some effort has gone in to improving this area because for me this was one of the areas which in DAI for me was found wanting. I have my finghers crossed but until the game is out we won't know.