Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback All BG3 Heads Shown Together (visual)

I've been meaning to do this for some time and finally decided today would be the day.

Below is just about every female head in BG3 available for the female custom PC...

The file was about 10mb with each head cropped at just around 400x400 pixels so I will spoiler it to aid in future discussion (if there are many replies). For a preview header here is the row for female elf heads, which in-game is actually displayed twice (also as Drow) so gives a sense of the doubling.



The female heads are shown here all together (you can click in for a higher resolution):


I very deliberately selected the same skin tone, eye color, and hairstyle with no makeup for each, to avoid unnecessary distractions and make it easier to focus on the morphology rather than the cosmetic elements like coloration. I used the same crop for each at around 400x400 pixels, and presented them in order by the numbers head 1, 2 etc for each Race. I have excluded Githyanki for now, because unlike the rest, those head models were very obviously sculpted using a fantastical template, rather than being 'scanned' from actual faces. In art terms we'd say that the Githyanki have be drawn from the imagination, whereas all the rest are representational or 'drawn from life.' So it seemed more fruitful for this discussion to set them aside for the time being to focus on the bigger picture. (added Gith at the bottom)

Clearly it is very possible to give a very different impression and present a sort of faux variety by altering colors. The game attempts to do this (as you may have noticed yourself) by choosing a random hair style and color, eye color, skin tone and makeup combination for each race or sub-race as it's first default. It was pretty tedious to undo that randomization, so that we could get a clearer picture here, and also to show where things like complexion and makeup have been more or less baked-in to the heads on offer. So again I used Skin Neutral 6, Eyes Brown 1, No Makeup, and the wild hair in Brown-Black (which conveniently covers most of the ears, while still showing the brow in full focus, and which was also available for all the races.) Just like skin tone, a different haircut can give a very different overall impression too, but in this thread I want to offer for your consideration the actual shapes of the skulls and main features, the structure as it were rather than the surface.

I wanted to begin with the Female heads, because it is a frequent criticism in popular cartooning and animation that female heads/faces are typically approached with a greater degree of formalism and less variety on offer than male heads. While BG3 adopts a different sort of formalism than most cartoons, I believe the same is occurring here, and it becomes pretty clear when you see them presented all at once. Later when I have more time, I will edit in the males as a point of contrast. Also so we can see that, there too, there is high degree of continuity and homogeneity, though not quite as extreme as with the females. So here you go, have a look... hehe

I have proposed many times in various places that the magic number for heads is 250 (or 125 heads for each sex). The number is not arbitrary, it is what is needed at the low end, to create the requisite impression of variety that we see on offer out there in the real world. That 125 number assumes that for each of those heads, the morphology is sufficiently distinct such that there is not a high degree of overlap. Right now in BG3, and for the females especially, we see a significant degree of overlap.

Note just how different the impression is when we are able to see all these heads presented together in rows, rather than cycling through them one at a time. Also how much more difficult it is for the player to find what they want (or at least something close to what they want), when they can't see the heads arranged together for a more comparative selection process. How frustrating it is to have the various cosmetic features reset for each race, and also how there is no way to "clear all" to get back to the default.

Note how all the faces (sans Gith) are actually Human faces, despite Larian gatekeeping them into different Fantasy race categories. Each of these faces would be viable for Humans, even if right now some of them are expressly for Elves or Dwarves or whatever.

Finally, I'd also like to suggest that most users will not have a ton of technical language at the ready to really describe what they're seeing here or what they'd like to see when it comes to more facial morphology or skull shape. I think it would be nice if a game could actually provide some of this language and educate us a little, so users would be less inclined to use inexact analogs like racial language, and could instead adopt terminology that is somewhat more appropriate and fruitful for design elements. For example, the basic face shapes (how the jawline, cheekbones, brow relate to give an overall shape) round, square, oval, kite etc. How the orbital shape of the eyesocket (square, round, trapezoid) relates to the brow shape. How shape of the nasal cavity relates to the width and length of the nose. How the height of the nose bridge relates both to the shape of the nose and the shape of the eyelids. How jaw width relates to the shape of the lips etc. In reality these are not discrete features that can be "slid" independently, they are in fact integrally related to each other. This is why games with sliders tend to fail, because they treat different aspects of the core facial morphology as independent from the shape of the skull, when they are not. There too, players typically will not know what they want and are forced to mix and match at random, then find themselves frustrated that they cannot produce what they want, or end up with odd combinations that look a bit off, because they actually are off. The morphology of the skulls and core features there should be separated from other stuff that occurs on the surface such as where fat is deposited say, or how one might pluck their eyebrows to create a particular shape there, which is not the same as the actual shape of the brow line. Or how any of those various things could be tweaked with a different surface complexation, use of makeup etc to give different impressions. This is where virtually all RPG games fail in the primary goal of allowing the player to create a reasonable approximation of their own face for their PC, and where BG3 is also failing right now. The work so far is admirable, but to attain the highest heights, I'd propose that the modelling team focus on the fundamentals and seek to provide sufficient variety there to cover all the bases before moving to the surface elements which can then provide even further differentiation. I believe this is a necessary first step to producing the ultimate goal of an actual 3d Portrait. So far, no game company has been able to deliver this, but the first one that actually does will be legendary, so I'd offer it as a development goal.

I wanted to do a straight profile view and 3/4 view for each as well, but it was taking forever. Maybe I'll get there a bit later lol
Since the boards will likely do some scaling here there are again in rows by individual race:

Elf (5 female heads)

Tiefling (6 female heads)

Human (8 female heads)

Half-Elf (5 female heads)

Dwarf (5 female heads)

Halfling (6 female heads)

I believe there is an image attachment limit, so I'll replace these with the Males later, and the profile and 3/4 views if I get that far. But just for now it gives a quick read. I'd be curious to here if anyone has any impressions or thoughts about this stuff. I know there have been numerous threads discussing the various heads, the desire for more heads, different fantasy heads etc. But I thought this might be a helpful way to approach it from a comprehensive perspective.

Best Elk

ps. Here's the Gith row... You can see that Neutral 6 presents a lot lighter there, with an ochre yellow-as-a-toad undertone. Also shows the basic patterning for the baked-in spots and such. The Gith heads have undergone the most transformations and look the most fantastical of all the fantasy races currently available.

Githyanki (7 female heads)