Mass Effect Modding Tutorial: Custom Face Textures

Just like with any other texture, you can make custom face textures for your Shepard (or any other character for that matter). You can do a temporary replacement with Texmod or a permanent replacement with ME3Explorer. Just follow the same process as in my tutorial, but keep the following in mind:

1. When editing skin textures for Shepard, you will want to keep the base color the same as the original texture (a bluish-white color). If you change the color of the facial skin, it won’t blend with the body skin.
2. If you add features like eyebrows to the face texture, you will want to go for the no eyebrow option in the character creator.

Using custom textures, you can change the shape of the eyes, mouth, or nose and it can make a pretty big difference in your Shep’s features in-game:

Things that I love to add to characters: scars (so hot!), freckles (so cute!), face tattoos (if I’m feeling edgy).  Have fun and go crazy with it!

If you wish to do a manual replacement of the custom faces for Shepard, here are the files you need to replace using Texplorer:

For Femshep –

Go to the BIOG_HMF_HEDProMorph_R folder.  For diff files, go to the Diffuse folder.  For norm files, go to the Normal folder:

Skin 1 (left slider – regular skin)

Diff – HMF_HED_PROBase_Face_Diff
Norm – HMF_HED_PROBase_Face_Norm

Skin 2 (middle slider – “old” skin)

Diff – HMF_HED_PROCustom_Rough_Diff
Norm – HMF_HED_PROCustom_Rough_Norm

Skin 3 (right slider – freckled skin)

Diff – HMF_HED_PROCustom_Frek_Diff
Norm – HMF_HED_PROCustom_Frek_Norm

For MShep –

Go to the BIOG_HMM_HEDProMorph_R folder.  For diff files, go to the Diffuse folder.  For norm files, go to the Normal folder:

Skin 1 (left slider – regular skin)

Diff – HMM_HED_PROBase_Face_Diff_Stack
Norm – HMM_HED_PROBase_Face_Norm_Stack

Skin 2 (middle slider – “old” skin)

Diff – HMM_HED_PROMorph_Rough_Diff
Norm – HMM_HED_PROMorph_Rough_Norm

Skin 3 (right slider – freckled skin)

Diff – HMM_HED_PROCustom_Military_Diff
Norm – HMM_HED_PROCustom_Military_Norm

Well, that’s it for custom facial textures … Ready to read more about modding?  Read on …