Creating Operator Accessories

As creators, you’ve had access to Warframe and Weapon skins, alt helmets, and even Syandanas -- but nothing related to the child behind the curtain. We’re excited to finally give you the ability to create your own Operator accessories to be added to the TennoGen workshop!

The Basics

Operator Accessories come in three categories:

• Eyes
• Facial (relating to all areas of the face BUT the eyes)
• Ears (earrings, ear cuffs, etc.)

All accessories should respect the current TennoGen Style Guide and Basic Art Guide. You should make sure to incorporate the visual language of a faction currently available in the TennoGen program to help it fit the Warframe aesthetic -- mixing factions (unless it is an Infested Corpus/Tenno/Grineer) is not allowed!

Avoid the following:

• Anything that covers the entire face,wi like face masks (Nakak owns the rights to those!)
• Facial hair
• Novelty glasses
• Pop culture references

Category Guidelines

As a general guideline, items in these categories should aim to respect the boundaries seen in the image below. You can find these bounding boxes in the “OperatorHeads.fbx” file for easy reference:

It’s important to remember that these are just guidelines to help ensure that your pieces perform as well as possible with the existing Operator accessories. As with all TennoGen creations, pushing the boundaries is fine, but you need to be prepared with a plan B if your ambitious project breaks the rules a little too hard.

If your item goes past these boundaries it will not be immediately rejected, but we recommend that it does so purposefully and creatively. Adding extra details outside these guidelines for the sake of adding extra details is not a good excuse! You may look to Operator accessories already available in game as examples of items that extend past these boundaries in respectable manners.

Accommodating for Different Face Shapes/Sizes

Much like our Warframes, our Operators’ Faces come in a variety of shapes. As a result of the personalization offered via the face blending system, it will be important to design your items so that it respects the variety of facial structures in-game. Extremely close-fitting accessories will not perform well -- just like how Syandanas need to be designed to fit into a variety of Warframe backs, the same philosophy needs to be taken here.

We have included both extremes for Operator faces in the “OperatorHeads.fbx” file. Note how much variation you need to account for and plan your accessory wisely to work best on both the biggest and smallest heads.

Ears and hairlines for both male and female Operators are now the same size, allowing for more freedom in designing pieces that attach to these areas. With this change, we still recommend comparing the extremes of all head sizes for your accessories to ensure they fit well.

Technical Specifications

Operator Accessories are quite the change from regular Warframe or weapon cosmetics due to their size and the difference in tint channels. Please make sure to follow the correct Technical specifications, which you can find below:

• Triangle budget: 1500
• Accessories only have two tintable channels: red channel and alpha channel. The rest will be untintable.
• Emissive colour is controlled by the Operator’s Eye Glow.

Maps:

• Maps are authored at 2048 x 1024 (you have choice of vertical or horizontal orientation)
• Maps in-game will be 1024 x 512. Please keep this in mind with the fidelity of your details! Operator accessories are much smaller than other TennoGen content so you will need to adapt to the level of detail that is viable after compression.

• Requires a full set of textures as per our Texturing Guide.

Screenshot Requirements

As tempting as it may be, using screenshots with custom hair is not allowed! It is important to be accurate in your portrayal of these cosmetics -- we wouldn’t let you include your own unique armor sets in a Warframe skin’s screenshots, the same principle applies here.

In addition to any of your glamour shots, the following screenshots are required for us to properly review your creation.

• One screenshot with your creation on the largest and smallest male heads. Profile and face-on views are highly recommended.
• One screenshot with your creation on the largest and smallest female heads. Profile and face-on views are highly recommended.
• A tint breakdown showing the red, alpha, and emissive channels.
• Make sure these are well-lit with a 50% grey background! If we can’t properly see your accessory, we can’t properly review it! :(

If you have any questions or would like any clarification, please use this thread! We will update this post with any frequently asked questions for visibility, and to help our creators make the best of this new content!