TNR FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q) What is TNR?
A) TNR is an acronym for Tamriel NPCs Revamped. It is best described as an ambitious Oblivion mod that drastically improves the visual appeal of nearly every NPC in Tamriel - 1,201 of them, to be precise. Almost all humans, orcs, argonians, khajiit, and elf NPCs have received "nips and tucks". This mod does not contain new textures. Rather, it radically transforms NPCs into better and more visually appealling game characters by modifying their facial geometry. This is the way Oblivion was meant to be experienced, as players can now tell from a distance an NPC's race.

Q) You can tell races apart in TNR? How?
A) Indeed you can. The racial checklist is as follows:

Imperials now possess Greco-Roman features. They are stern and austere in appearance and have classic facial symmetry.

Bretons, on the other hand, are a mixture of Celtic and Irish. They also have more or less prominent Elvish traits.

The Nords...well...the only way I can describe them is that they are a product of their environment and culture. They have broad, muscular faces. Extremely strong jawlines and piercing eyes also set them apart from other races. They now seem quite intimidating in appearance too. They prefer to wear their hair in long, loosely flowing styles, and their cheekbones are set quite high.

Dark Elves (Dunmer) were brought back as close to Morrowind in style as possible. I also borrowed elements from films/series such as Planet of the Apes, Stargate, Star Trek, and Predator. For the warriors and fighters, I decided quite early to give them a strong Native American look, since that culture tended (in my mind at least) to most closely resemble the Dark Elf world of conflict, harmonious living in nature, and magic. TNR's Dunmer are now often lionlike in appearance, and irritated and/or fierce looking. They have pronounced and somewhat gaunt features due to enduring the harshness of the Ashlands of Vvardenfell - even though they now live in Cyrrodil. Their lips are small and thin, and their foreheads are often pushed back. We're also looking at somewhat hawkish noses and flared nostrils. Much care was given to their eyes. I wanted them to look like they were yearning for the past and kind of disgusted with the present. Their hair is often in manes or tribal appearing styles.

High Elves (Altmer) presented a special challenge because I could find no real world equivalent for them, thus requiring pulling ideas from my imagination and (most often) forum member's input. I knew they had to appear otherworldly - like they didn't really belong in Cyrrodil, or that their time had come and gone, and now they were just waiting to return home. Something like a mix between Lord Of The Rings style Elves mixed in with spiritual beings and extraterrestrials (the Nordics of course). In the end, I decided to also infuse within them a mixture of Germanic, Morrowind style High Elves, Vulcan, and Japanese traits. In my eyes, they now appear much more ethereal, all-knowing, detachingly self-confident, and condescending in appearance. The difficulty of course, is that I felt they should not resemble humans too much, but more like a race that was in Tamriel long before the other races came into the picture. I wanted them to look lithe and somewhat angelic. Have I succeeded? In my eyes, yes - but again, much credit goes towards forum member's input.

The looks of Wood Elves (Bosmer) were the easiest race to conceive of, and the most difficult to master. Try as I might, I simply could not change their incredibly wide and prominent chins and hawkish noses significantly enough to make a strong difference. After many dozens of hours spent struggling with the Construction Set, I rested up for a bit, came back to the computer, and dug in my heels. Nearly a hundred hours later, Tamriel's diminutive race now bore pixiesh and often highly mischievious looks. For inspiration, I looked to the Gremlins series of films, as well as Rhedd's Heads from the Morrowind modding community.

Redguards were a real pleasure to make in contrast with the Bosmer, as the average default Redguard face was already in a fairly decent condition (why do dark skinned people just naturally seem better looking?). The job was to make them look like tough, hardy seafolk. Their features blend elements and styles from varied cultures such as African American, Caribbean, African Indigenous peoples (Bushman, Masai, Zulu), Morrocan, and Egyptian. In TNR, Redguards emanate much more wisdom as well as ferocity and confidence.

The Orcs and I had a great time too since they have no real world equivalent as well (I found I could go in nearly every direction conceivable - as long as the end result gave each particular NPC a face that resonated with his or her occupation and attitude). Many of TNR's Orcs have somewhat canine features, and can tend to look somewhat feral. Others have thicker, almost deformed Ogrish traits, and look like they can pick up a sixty-five pound warhammer with one hand and start swinging. A few even resemble well known characters like Dr. Zeuss' Grinch and Disney's Shrek. The only complaint I have with the Orcs is that in general, barring the use of custom meshes and an entirely different facial skeletal structure, I found it nearly impossible to give the females that sought after sexy look some of the Morrowind mods had given them. Still, their once puggish looks are now gone, and have been replaced by much leaner and more defined features.

The Argonians are divided into three groups: The first one resonating along the lines of Morrowind's Argonians with their somewhat flattened heads and gently sloping jaws. The second group look rather toadish and have large, wide mouths combined with very thick necks. And the third group look surreal - they look like dangerous venomous snakes, vipers and cobras in particular.

The new Khajiit have now been brought closer in appearance to lions and lionesses, housecats, bobcats, lynx, and some very wise looking pumas (cougars or mountain lions).

Q) Is TNR compatible with mods such as Martigen's Monster Mod (MMM), Francesco's, Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul and other large overhaul mods?
A) No, it isn't. However, Wrye's excellent WryeBash program seamlessly imports TNR faces into any mod without conflict. For detailed instructions on how to perform this, please jump to this site's Wrye Bash page. It may look difficult to understand and install, but the instructions are simple enough for most people to comprehend. All you really need for Wrye Bash to work properly are the program itself, and two little programs called Python and Python 2.8. Once installed to your hard drive, Wrye Bash can perform its magic. Like Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM), Wrye Bash is considered by most Oblivion gamers as an essential tool.

Q) Why did you change so much on each NPC? Didn't Bethesda do a good enough job with most of them?
A) Well, no. They didn't. In fact, as much as I love what Bethesda did with creating the game, I honestly feel that due to reasons unknown, they skimped on giving the faces of vanilla NPCs any character at all. Eyes were slanted at abnormal and unrealistic angles, hair color was off, and a whole slew of other stuff was wrong with them. Now, having said that, I must also state that given how long it took to make TNR, I can understand perfectly well why Bethesda chose not to assign more time to NPC's appearances. They needed a dedicated and competent face artist to do the task, and if one was not available at the time during development (and when the publisher is screaming at your heels to make the deadline for release), then they had to pass. In regards to why I strayed so often from certain NPC's original looks, the reasons are many and have to do with an NPC's occupation and race, clothing, and social class. Also, I developped my plan sort of on the fly, so a lot of quick changes occured. That's the way this works. Overall I believe that Bethesda did an "adequate" job with NPC's faces, but much improvement could have been done.

Q) I installed TNR and I get a wierd skin discoloration on a particular NPC. What gives?!
A) What other face/texture mods are you running besides TNR? Try unchecking everything except TNR and relaunching the game. If the coloration is normal, the fault is with your other mods, not TNR.

Q) Does this mod change all NPCS?
A) The mod changes just about every in-game NPC except for guards and vampires. In total, 1,237 NPCs have been revamped facially.

Q) Why didn't you change the guards?
A) When spawned in HawkHaven (Oblivion's in-game mod testing grounds), the guards moved around too much even when I had toggled the A.I. This made it incredibly difficult to figure out who is who when the game is relaunched. I may do them at a later date.

Q) I'm a little confused on what TNR mod does what. Which ones should I download?
A) If you like the TNR looks of all the races on this website and want to use them in your game, then download the "All Races Final" mod. If there are certain races you do not enjoy or think that could have been done better, then you can choose individual race TNR mods. It's your choice. The only thing that will be left for you to do after that is use Wrye Bash to get the faces into your favorite overhaul mod (or any other mod that changes NPCs).

Q) Did you modify NPC scripts, inventories, dialogue or anything not related to their faces?
A) No, just faces.

Q) Where did you get your ideas and inspiration from? Morrowind? Oblivion? Daggerfall? Lord Of The Rings? World of Warcraft? Where?
A) For the most part I stuck as closely as possible to Morrowind's style, occasionally bringing in concepts and ideas from various films, previous ES games (Daggerfall, Arena) and of course, Oblivion concept art. Bethesda, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to reinvent what the races should look like with each installment. While keeping the series fresh, this also tended to make it difficult to standardize the race's visual appearance, and has created a few dissapointed fans in the process. The best weapon by far to date has been reason; Imperials had to be stern simply because they are a military race. Bretons should appear eccentric and highly intelligent due to their familiarity with magick. Nords should look like northern peoples - hardy, and tough. Redguards must portray both wisdom and ferociousness in their faces, while orcs should emphasize the latter. The elves on the other hand, had to appear totally different than every other race. They are neither human nor beasts. Rather, they are closer to being divine than mortal, and their faces had to have a somewhat surreal look and portray wisdom passed down through the ages as well as extreme perception and intellect. Music also played a key role during the modding process. it would have been difficult to give correct features and traits to a race for example, with heavy metal music blaring. So for the Imperials I listened to grandly symphonic melodies - often military tunes. The Bretons resonated well with western European medieval tunes, also Celtic. Etc.

Q) Why are so many of the NPCs old?
A) With age comes character. I tried making a lot of the NPCs younger - like between 15 to 25, but the end result was rather bland and featureless. No battle scars, no experience, no real "character" yet. I changed that and decided to implement an "aged to young" ratio of roughly four to one. The women are slightly younger than the men, so it balances out.

Q) What aspects of this mod were the most difficult?
A) LOL - you mean besides the fact that I wasn't able to squeeze in a single hour of Oblivion gaming during TNR's development? I guess I would say that the sheer tedium involved in sitting at a computer for long hours every day and looking at face after face after face - deciding for each one what features and traits would make it stand out from the next - while also making sure they stayed within their race's expected look. That was extremely dificult. I also have to admit that at times I got a little frustrated with the wide range of expectations voiced by members in regards to how certain NPCs and races should look. Try as I might, I found it was impossible to please everyone (Miriamel, you were right). And yet I also knew that if I stayed too focused on my own vision I would wind up with a product that pleased only me. In the end, I decided to keep plugging away and simply do the best I could, carefully weighing what I felt were essential traits and styles and what forum members expected or liked. If I uploaded a number of screenshots and forum members provided input, it gave me the feedback I needed to relaunch the Construction Set and tweak or redo what needed improvement. When people gave stellar reviews on a certain NPC, it was like sunshine on my face.

I also found that making new faces was quite easy (especially after having done so many). The hardest part was getting the skin tones and coloration right between the face and the rest of the body. That easily took up to a half hour per NPC because even just a little difference in the editor seemed gargantuan in-game. Other than that, the sheer size of the work involved was overwhelming, but I tried not to think about it. I did a quick calculation of how many hours TNR took to make. At an average of six hours a night (sometimes less sometimes more) I figure over 1,550 hours went into the mod. Unreal. I will probably never undertake such a massive project (for free) again. However, I liked doing this and people provided constant feedback, so it remained fun. Another difficult aspect to accept was that despite working for three weeks or more on each race, the ESPs almost invariably came out being less than a mere tenth of a Megabyte in size. That's good of course, but the work/result size ratio was tremendous.