A Skyrim Player Creates a Hyper-Realistic Version of Themselves

A dragon blasts a man with a shield in Skyrim — (Image credit: Bethesda)

A Skyrim player has managed to create a hyper-realistic version of herself with the game's character creation tools.

Everyone likes trying to recreate themselves in a game, but Reddit user AureliaRiddle has taken it to another level by making an almost like-for-like iteration.

It took her two hours to create her avatar and she did so using mods that gave her more sliders to control, which helped her improve the skin texture and make the eyes look more realistic.

Article continues below

She said the first step to creating a realistic avatar was to take two photos of yourself: a profile and a portrait picture. The face must be as expressionless as when you take a passport photo, after this, you have to choose which side to focus on. Customization is symmetrical, and our faces aren’t, so preferably choose your best side and recreate that. After folding the photo in half, hold it up to the screen and begin working, you know you’re close when “you get a pretty uncanny feeling looking at the screen”.

In addition to doing her own Skyrim character, she also did her dad’s character and the avatar is equally as impressive.

Her photo idea isn’t actually a new concept, as it's been implemented in games like EA Sports titles. Players could upload a photo, placing markers where the nose, eyes, and mouth were, and then wait 10 minutes for it to process. If you weren’t happy with the result you could fine-tune the avatar, but the system was very good at rendering a clunky look alike on the PS3.

Skyrim is well known for its modding scene, with the community always creating various ways to tweak, improve, and add to the game. For example, there are mods where players can pet the dogs or players can recreate Daenerys the Dragonborn from Game of Thrones.