Cut Out Player Faces Megapack

Our Cut-Out Faces Megapack is the biggest collection of Football Manager Player Faces available. All players are available in the default cut-out style. When you download our Cut-Out Faces Megapack, you'll receive over 450,000 player faces to spice up your copy of Football Manager.

  • 459,521
  • 2024.06 - Released on 17 Mar 2024
Cut Out Player Faces Megapack

HRiddick
15 years ago
1 day ago
34,773
Help Needed!

https://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/YxbaW5aHOepSUGVI7VFApeRTzcUrpzs1YKUrFPSH.pnghttps://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/O8jU9kIVLtIsnlyVBtx7chHmjgdQqrboBNEwowVw.pnghttps://sortitoutsi.net/uploads/mirrored_images/6iDHuymfj3tvOZQNHZxpq9PreJ0HKgB1gUUOVEg6.png

Download Test Pack 1 Here


I think we can all agree that the 3D faces in Football Manager aren't what they could be, and for many people take away from getting truly immersed into the game. And while unfortunately there has been no effective way of replacing newgen/regen faces since the system was changed to from 2D to 3D generated faces in FM18, as a community it would be amazing to come up with an effective alternative if possible!

The end goal here is the following:
To provide a sister pack to the Cut-Out Faces Megapack that automatically replaces the in game 3D generated newgen/regen faces with a collection of high quality 250x250 pixel cut out images.

Above is a link to a small pack of about 850 cut out images, sorted into folders for the following different ethnicities: African/Caribbean, Asian (Central), East Asian (China/Japan), Mediterranean/Hispanic, Mixed Race (Black/White), North African/Middle Eastern, Northern European, Pacific Islander and South East Asian. These make up the bulk of the ethnicity categories from the official game database.

These images are mostly taken from US college sports portraits, futsal, handball, esports and other lesser known sports, so no chance of finding LeBron James or anyone well known from NBA/NFL appearing as your in game wonderkid! At the moment I still have about 6100 images stored and still to be cut and still have a lot more sources images to sort through and save from US college sports websites, so this is where the most help is required - more on that below.

For the time being, while there is no way of automatically replacing the in game 3D faces, this megapack could be used as either:
  • A database from which you can choose individual images and assign manually to chosen newgens, or
  • A system like that mentioned in this post where newgen faces are replaced automatically but with no discerning by ethnicity.
Here's how you can help!
  • Cutters - If you want to help produce cut outs to add to this future megapack, great! Let me know here or by PM and I can send over however many images you would like to cut.
  • Image Finders - The more the better really. As long as the image is a high quality portrait, not of a professional footballer that already exists in game (so essentially from other sports) and is not recognisable (so preferably not from top level American Football, Basketball, Rugby etc) then it would be perfect, so anyone willing to collect source images for others to cut or knows where to find good quality source images would be of immense help. Source images for Asian and Pacific Islander would be particularly useful.
  • Image Croppers - remove.bg is a fantastic tool and is perfect to get as many images cut as quickly as possible. If you are not a cutter yourself but still want to help, you can do so by cropping images already collected to include just the head and shoulders and put them through remove.bg - this drastically reduces the work required from a cutter who as this point just needs to re-scale and tidy the image!
  • Football Manager/coding experts? - If anyone has ideas as to a way of coding/assigning images from a folder to match a certain ethnicity in game then that would be a massive step forward - as far as I'm aware there are no current solutions to this and I wouldn't know where to start myself, so any expertise or ideas on this would be hugely appreciated.
If you want to help or have any questions, leave a comment here or send me a PM!
mons
17 years ago
16 hours ago
85,497
  • Football Manager/coding experts? - If anyone has ideas as to a way of coding/assigning images from a folder to match a certain ethnicity in game then that would be a massive step forward - as far as I'm aware there are no current solutions to this and I wouldn't know where to start myself, so any expertise or ideas on this would be hugely appreciated.

  • Interesting idea, not my cup of tea but best of luck with it

    I don't think there's a way of doing what you're asking above other than manually by the end user, I'm afraid. To aid them, I would strongly suggest doing a brief video outlining the steps which need to be taken, to be sure that people can actually see what needs to be done
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    Great concept and it's definitely doable to automate it. Genie scout is able to get all sorts of data from an open save, for example nationality, age and whether the player is a regen or not.

    As for image finding, thispersondoesnotexist.com is a great place for finding decent looking sources. It's basically an AI that makes a randomally generated portrait, so there is no chance of it being recognicable. Here is a google drive folder with 100k generated images,
    columbuscrewdude
    12 years ago
    12 hours ago
    242
    Premium
    My quick work around for this was to download megapack version 3 and just use old faces to then manually replace the new gens. There are plenty of images in it and not easy to recognise hardly anyone plus the images are already cut and only need upscaling to 250x250. Hope this helps as your idea is really good and would definitely add to the realism as I replace the regens now manually. Good Luck
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    Great concept and it's definitely doable to automate it. Genie scout is able to get all sorts of data from an open save, for example nationality, age and whether the player is a regen or not.

    As for image finding, thispersondoesnotexist.com is a great place for finding decent looking sources. It's basically an AI that makes a randomally generated portrait, so there is no chance of it being recognicable. Here is a google drive folder with 100k generated images,

    That's encouraging, hopefully there would be a way of incorporating a player's ethnicity or nationality to the config if that data can be exported. As for the AI generated portraits that's a fantastic idea. Could be a great way of working around sources if it could be trained specifically with footballer's/athlete's portraits, at the moment from that website it's a bit of a lucky dip with age/gender/too close a crop unfortunately.

    My quick work around for this was to download megapack version 3 and just use old faces to then manually replace the new gens. There are plenty of images in it and not easy to recognise hardly anyone plus the images are already cut and only need upscaling to 250x250. Hope this helps as your idea is really good and would definitely add to the realism as I replace the regens now manually. Good Luck

    The main problem I'd have with this would be the poor image quality from upscaling. Hopefully we can gather enough sources to not see repeats in game but without the need to upscale images!
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    That's encouraging, hopefully there would be a way of incorporating a player's ethnicity or nationality to the config if that data can be exported. As for the AI generated portraits that's a fantastic idea. Could be a great way of working around sources if it could be trained specifically with footballer's/athlete's portraits, at the moment from that website it's a bit of a lucky dip with age/gender/too close a crop unfortunately.

    You should pitch the idea to the guys over at fmscout as they are responsable for genie scout. Maybe they can help you out with the coding. I have almost no knowledge on this stuff but I figure the hardest part is to extract the data. Once you've managed that you just need to generate a config based on age, role, nationality, etc.

    As for the source collecting, thispersondoesntexist isn't perfect, but you won't run into problems where faces are recogniceable and you can get as many source as you'd like. The racial and age diveristy is not great though, it's mostly white or asian people between 30 and 40. Although, if you want all people ingame to have a real face, you'll also need staff pictures, which it can provide.

    Alternatively you could use some like this to edit current cuts.

    Edit:
    at the moment from that website it's a bit of a lucky dip with age/gender/too close a crop unfortunately.

    You can train this AI on your own images. Although I'm very unfamiliar with both phyton and tensorflow so it's best to leave it someone else. Just don't delete the sources you already cut so that we can use those to train the AI.
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    You should pitch the idea to the guys over at fmscout as they are responsable for genie scout. Maybe they can help you out with the coding. I have almost no knowledge on this stuff but I figure the hardest part is to extract the data. Once you've managed that you just need to generate a config based on age, role, nationality, etc.

    As for the source collecting, thispersondoesntexist isn't perfect, but you won't run into problems where faces are recogniceable and you can get as many source as you'd like. The racial and age diveristy is not great though, it's mostly white or asian people between 30 and 40. Although, if you want all people ingame to have a real face, you'll also need staff pictures, which it can provide.

    Alternatively you could use some like this to edit current cuts.

    Edit:

    You can train this AI on your own images. Although I'm very unfamiliar with both phyton and tensorflow so it's best to leave it someone else. Just don't delete the sources you already cut so that we can use those to train the AI.

    Would love to also include real images for staff later down the line but think that depends on the interest/success for just the players first of all. Would also have no idea how to train the AI myself so hopefully someone would be able to lend a hand there. Would be great to get it up and running though, could also include the abundance of player portraits out there, recognisable or not, as the end result would eventually be indistinguishable I'd imagine! Sites like transfermarkt would be a good place to start with images for the AI training.
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    Would also have no idea how to train the AI myself so hopefully someone would be able to lend a hand there.

    Have you posted this over at sports interactive's forum? Maybe you could get some coding/training help from someone over there.
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    Have you posted this over at sports interactive's forum? Maybe you could get some coding/training help from someone over there.

    Good idea, I've mirrored the top post over to a thread there
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    Another option is to use the export function on genie scout. If you tick the "is regen" box, you can generate either an .txt, .csv or .html file with all regens. If someone makes a simple program to read age, nationality and UID from one of the aforementioned file types and genereate a config file. It would require a lot less coding I would imagine.

    Edit:
    A exported html file looks for like this:
    https://i.ibb.co/8xDJ0fM/a.png

    The code used to generate the site is fairly simple so you can easily seperate the players from each other.
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    Another option is to use the export function on genie scout. If you tick the "is regen" box, you can generate either an .txt, .csv or .html file with all regens. If someone makes a simple program to read age, nationality and UID from one of the aforementioned file types and genereate a config file. It would require a lot less coding I would imagine.

    Edit:
    A exported html file looks for like this:
    https://i.ibb.co/8xDJ0fM/a.png

    The code used to generate the site is fairly simple so you can easily seperate the players from each other.

    @Footygamer Is this possible at all? If so how difficult would it be to make it?
    Footygamer
    17 years ago
    2 days ago
    75,258
    I imagine what you would need is a massive collection of images hosted on our servers tagged as different ages and ethnicities.

    Then each individual who wants to use the pack would upload their personal csv of regen ids/age/ethnicities and then a config.xml would be generated.

    An alternative might be a program that works on your computer and you just download the images once then the program generates a config.xml based on the regens in your game and the images you've downloaded (the images would come with a config stating age/ethnicity etc).

    One of the problems with this is that the regens will be different in every single game, so if you have two or three saved games going you'd have to swap out the configs all the time.
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    I imagine what you would need is a massive collection of images hosted on our servers tagged as different ages and ethnicities.

    Then each individual who wants to use the pack would upload their personal csv of regen ids/age/ethnicities and then a config.xml would be generated.

    The cuts can be hosted at an external site to limit the bandwidth usage and the site would just be used to generate a config.

    Would training an AI based on the cutout requests and other sites like transfermakt be possible with a mid-range desktop?

    An alternative might be a program that works on your computer and you just download the images once then the program generates a config.xml based on the regens in your game and the images you've downloaded (the images would come with a config stating age/ethnicity etc).

    Almost the same as fmxml then, right? The only difference being that it works for regens rather than pre-existing players? Does this take ethnicity, age, etc. into account?
    Footygamer
    17 years ago
    2 days ago
    75,258
    The cuts can be hosted at an external site to limit the bandwidth usage and the site would just be used to generate a config.

    Would training an AI based on the cutout requests and other sites like transfermakt be possible with a mid-range desktop?

    Almost the same as fmxml then, right? The only difference being that it works for regens rather than pre-existing players? Does this take ethnicity, age, etc. into account?

    It would need to get data from the game so slightly different from fmxml.

    And training an AI you'd use something like AWS (Amazon Web Services) rather than your personal desktop. I'm not sure on the costs involved.
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    And training an AI you'd use something like AWS (Amazon Web Services) rather than your personal desktop. I'm not sure on the costs involved.

    Pretty cheap it seems.
    Footygamer
    17 years ago
    2 days ago
    75,258

    Haha machine learning/AI has the potential to escalate very quickly, i'd be surprised if you could keep it to $1
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    @krissmed @Footygamer I think the ideal solution would be a download similar to the megapack, separated into folders for the different in-game ethnicities, with a small piece of software similar to fmXML that can take a list of regens from a save file and generate a config using a method along the lines of "if Player ID **** has ethnicity 'African/Caribbean' listed, then that player ID is assigned an image from the sub-folder 'African/Caribbean'" (whatever that would be in code speak ). I don't know if a single config file could assign to sub-folders within the main folder, or if a separate config file would need to be generated for each sub-folder.

    Of course the main problems with this would both what you previously mentioned @Footygamer that this would only work for one save file, and that you would need to repeat this process for every youth intake year in game when more newgens are generated, but this would all still be preferable to any existing alternative!

    Are you able to specifically export the assigned ethnicity of a player using Genie Scout, rather than their nationality? I'm on mac so can't use the software myself unfortunately - I assume not as the ethnicity parameter holds no relevance for what Genie Scout does, but hopefully from the same way they extract the save game data the ethnicity parameter can also be extracted.
    Footygamer
    17 years ago
    2 days ago
    75,258
    I have contact with Eugene and he's helped with some stuff before.

    I'll contact him.
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    @krissmed @Footygamer I think the ideal solution would be a download similar to the megapack, separated into folders for the different in-game ethnicities, with a small piece of software similar to fmXML that can take a list of regens from a save file and generate a config using a method along the lines of "if Player ID **** has ethnicity 'African/Caribbean' listed, then that player ID is assigned an image from the sub-folder 'African/Caribbean'" (whatever that would be in code speak ). I don't know if a single config file could assign to sub-folders within the main folder, or if a separate config file would need to be generated for each sub-folder.

    Of course the main problems with this would both what you previously mentioned @Footygamer that this would only work for one save file, and that you would need to repeat this process for every youth intake year in game when more newgens are generated, but this would all still be preferable to any existing alternative!

    Are you able to specifically export the assigned ethnicity of a player using Genie Scout, rather than their nationality? I'm on mac so can't use the software myself unfortunately - I assume not as the ethnicity parameter holds no relevance for what Genie Scout does, but hopefully from the same way they extract the save game data the ethnicity parameter can also be extracted.

    I totally agree with you. A simple fmxml type program would be the best option. And no genie socut doesn't have a column for ethnicity. But you can filter by region, e.g south european, south asian, east african, etc. So you should probably seperate the folders in those same regions.

    As for training, I found this software. @Footygamer Are you fimiliar with this at all? It seems really easy to and does exactly what we want. It does require a subscription though.

    Footygamer
    17 years ago
    2 days ago
    75,258
    @krissmed what's the program for? Generating faces?

    I wonder if it would work doing a face in the game type thing. I figure we could get a few thousand.

    Just also looked at age progression stuff, i.e. if we could age all 20 year olds 10 years and deage all 30 year old 10 years it'd be like getting 100,000s of new faces
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    @krissmed what's the program for? Generating faces?

    I wonder if it would work doing a face in the game type thing. I figure we could get a few thousand.

    Just also looked at age progression stuff, i.e. if we could age all 20 year olds 10 years and deage all 30 year old 10 years it'd be like getting 100,000s of new faces

    Yes, training an AI for each region. It says that we'll need 500-5000 images for the dataset. That age progression stuff is also available in that program. In theory we could also age the regens as they age ingame.
    laurentius
    16 years ago
    2 years ago
    18
    I can recommend generated.photos/ to create realistic AI-generated cut-outs easily. I use it to make manual replacements in my own game, but it could be very useful in project like this. You can even have the background removed from the images already at the website. For non-commercial use it's free too.
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    @HRiddick @Footygamer Apparently the guys over at fm-base.co.uk are already working on a project which does exactly what we want. The creator states "we hit a snag in writing up the code for XML style, we're in communications with people that can help, but translating the skin color codes to an XML might not be as straightforward as we hoped" in the thread, but that was a couple months ago. It could be beneficial to find out how far they've come on this.

    Edit: Forgot to link to the actual thread.

    Here you go: https://fm-base.co.uk/resources/zealands-real-faces-on-regens.205/

    Edit 2: "Hey guys,

    The reality about the ethnicity identifier, I can't for the life of me figure it out.

    I looked into using conditions like if skin colour = (skin colour ID) then display specific faces. No luck whatsoever.

    If anyone has any ideas, let me know!"


    They've given up (for now) it looks like. Still worth a shot
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    @HRiddick @Footygamer Apparently the guys over at fm-base.co.uk are already working on a project which does exactly what we want. The creator states "we hit a snag in writing up the code for XML style, we're in communications with people that can help, but translating the skin color codes to an XML might not be as straightforward as we hoped" in the thread, but that was a couple months ago. It could be beneficial to find out how far they've come on this.

    Edit: Forgot to link to the actual thread.

    Here you go: https://fm-base.co.uk/resources/zealands-real-faces-on-regens.205/

    Edit 2: "Hey guys,

    The reality about the ethnicity identifier, I can't for the life of me figure it out.

    I looked into using conditions like if skin colour = (skin colour ID) then display specific faces. No luck whatsoever.

    If anyone has any ideas, let me know!"


    They've given up (for now) it looks like. Still worth a shot


    Yeah I messaged the guy that uploaded that pack a while ago and I pretty much got the same message, think they're in the same situation of not knowing how to get past that hurdle of discerning by ethnicity. Either way good to know that other people are keen on the idea and have thought of working on it!
    the_hdk
    11 years ago
    1 week ago
    41
    Premium
    awesome idea! I remeber there was such a pack back in the da for fm18 but it was pure random.
    laurentius
    16 years ago
    2 years ago
    18
    Auto assignment based on ethnicity works now. There is a script available that does it but there's a paywall involved, l so I guess I can't advertise it here specifically?
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    Auto assignment based on ethnicity works now. There is a script available that does it but there's a paywall involved, l so I guess I can't advertise it here specifically?

    Would you be able to PM me further details on this?
    krissmed
    9 years ago
    7 hours ago
    35,307
    @HRiddick I looked thorugh the ethnicities ingame and noticed that a lot of players doesn't have a assigned ethnicity. It could be an issue with my save or FM scout editor. Still, ethnicity isn't great to determine what a regen looks like. Mixed race for example. It includes players with light and dark skin. Therefore, I figure it would be better to use regions or skin color rather than ethnicity.

    @Footygamer I found these frameworks which can read FM savefiles. Could be helpfull if you want to make a FMxml type program.
    https://code.google.com/archive/p/fmsx/downloads
    https://community.sigames.com/topic/191264-fm11sx/
    https://www.fmscout.com/a-fmscout-framework.html
    https://github.com/ThanosSiopoudis/FMScoutFramework

    Edit: Just to clarify, these are the regions I'm talking about
    https://i.ibb.co/D5t3RWm/Regions.png
    HRiddick
    15 years ago
    1 day ago
    34,773
    @HRiddick I looked thorugh the ethnicities ingame and noticed that a lot of players doesn't have a assigned ethnicity. It could be an issue with my save or FM scout editor. Still, ethnicity isn't great to determine what a regen looks like. Mixed race for example. It includes players with light and dark skin. Therefore, I figure it would be better to use regions or skin color rather than ethnicity.

    @Footygamer I found these frameworks which can read FM savefiles. Could be helpfull if you want to make a FMxml type program.
    https://code.google.com/archive/p/fmsx/downloads
    https://community.sigames.com/topic/191264-fm11sx/
    https://www.fmscout.com/a-fmscout-framework.html
    https://github.com/ThanosSiopoudis/FMScoutFramework

    Edit: Just to clarify, these are the regions I'm talking about
    https://i.ibb.co/D5t3RWm/Regions.png

    Neither region nor skin tone would be a good way to sort the images. To use examples of real players, both Antoine Griezmann and Paul Pogba have the same region of birth assigned, whereas in game Griezmann has the same skin tone assigned as Shinji Kagawa, David Silva and Henrikh Mkhitaryan; all these players are from different ethnic backgrounds and all look very different. The ethnicity variable isn't great as you said (another example is how the East Asian category bundles in China, Japan and Korea together), but unfortunately it's still by far the best variable the game provides to categorise everything.

    I know that you can't view a player's assigned ethnicity in game, but every player in the database as far as I know has one assigned that you can view in the official Editor. I've always assumed this would also be the case for any newgen/regen generated, but I've never known for sure as you can't check this in game. If it isn't the case that regens have an assigned ethnicity then some sort of system that assigns images based on both region *and* skin tone would probably be necessary, although I imagine that would be a nightmare to get right.

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