Specific questions re: "unique" FaceGens...

[DCG Moo]

Hey all, back from a much-needed spur-of-the-moment weekend vacation. After getting away, not thinking about the game, then coming back... I had a couple questions about FaceGen that came to mind that I don't recall seeing answered before on the forums. So, OOTP fans, let the soon-to-be-feared DCG Moo rant begin...

So... FaceGen supposedly creates entirely unique images with every face generation, ensuring no two faces look alike, right?

1. What if I _WANT_ twins?

Being more specific, what if I want brothers/cousins who look very similar but have slight facial differences (say, the Alomars). Is it at all possible to use one created FaceGen to either directly generate, or indirectly "inspire" the creation of a similar-looking player? Obviously, for identical twins, you could simply manually go in and copy/rename the photo file from one brother to another. However, that brings up the next question...

2. If I take a created FaceGen picture, copy it to another player (therefore creating two different "twins" with the same picture)... how will aging be affected? Will they age the exact same way? Or is there a possibility that an identical image can "age" in a variety of ways? Basically... will my 21-year-old identical twins still look identical when they're 41?

3. The family/relation issue brought to mind another thought... children. Say, for example, I create a fictional league that includes the 31-year-old John Smith. I know past OOTPs have played briefly with parenting and offspring of ML players... but is there any way to actually directly "connect" FaceGen images to show relation? So that, for example, a young player comes into the league as John Smith's son Rick Smith... with Rick's image being created using similar (though not identical) features to his father John?

Well... since the only people still reading this far are the diehards and the developers... all three things boil down to one feature: the idea that one FaceGen-created image can be used to influence the creation of another, to keep similar family features among relatives and, possibly, even have a situation (see: Griffey, Ken Sr./Jr.) where relatives appear strikingly similar in appearance... without being clones.

I don't know the FaceGen software at all, so this is where the true question comes... is _ANY_ of this possible? Does the FaceGen software (and it's uses in OOTP) allow any inspiration to be used other than the basic .fg file? Maybe there could be a loophole (even if it must wait until 2008/2009) that allows a created FaceGen image to fill-in on a one-time basis for the .fg file, with reduced randomness options?

I keep thinking, from a programming standpoint, that there are probably a couple of ways this could be done... but only if there's some way to do so within the FaceGen software itself. So, those more informed than me on the issue... care to share?

[Deft]

FaceGen can do this but the way it is implemented into OOTP you do not have much control over how each player looks.

I did something like this in the ATHL when I used FaceGen for my templates. These are two brothers Andrew and Arthur Eggleston.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by DCG Moo

2. If I take a created FaceGen picture, copy it to another player (therefore creating two different "twins" with the same picture)... how will aging be affected? Will they age the exact same way? Or is there a possibility that an identical image can "age" in a variety of ways? Basically... will my 21-year-old identical twins still look identical when they're 41?

Since aging is partly related to their intangibles (good work ethic = gains less weight, etc.), over twenty years you SHOULD see some differences creep in.