Cheat Sheet: Head

Summary

This page lists various properties of the player head. Use the Table of Contents or your browser's search (Hotkey: Ctrl+F) to quickly find what you're looking for.

Check Cheat Sheet: Character Creator for color values and appearances

Wait, this isn't what I'm looking for!

• If you want to edit the player's head, you need meshes and morphtargets.

• If you want to make a custom NPC, check NPV - V as custom NPC

• You can find much additional information about the player head under NPV: Preparing the head in Blender

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Head file paths

female	.mesh	base\characters\head\player_base_heads\player_female_average\h0_000_pwa_c__basehead\
female	.morphtarget	base\characters\head\player_base_heads\player_female_average
male	.mesh	base\characters\head\player_base_heads\player_man_average\h0_000_pwa_c__basehead\
male	.morphtarget	base\characters\head\player_base_heads\player_man_average

The folders contain the entire player head. The minimum amount of meshes rendered is 3 (head, teeth, eyes), and can go up to 13 (fem V)/14 (masc V).

Head file prefixes

h0_	head (with ears)
hb_	male V only: beard
heb_	eyebrows
he_	eyes
ht_	teeth
hx_	applied on top of h0: cyberware makeup freckles pimples tattoos scars
l1_	ear ring (01-04)

Complexions

Every complexion has its own associated texture file. These are sorted by body gender under

base\characters\head\wa\h0_001_wa_c__basehead\textures\h0_000_wa_c__basehead_d0X.xbm
base\characters\head\ma\h0_001_ma_c__basehead\textures\h0_000_ma_c__basehead_d0X.xbm

The files are ending in 01..05. Each complexion has its own appearance in the head mesh, e.g.:

03_ca_senna
03_ca_senna_d02
03_ca_senna_d03
03_ca_senna_d04
03_ca_senna_d05

Skin definitions

Skin materials are defined in the base head file:

female body gender	base\characters\head\player_base_heads\player_female_average\h0_000_pwa_c__basehead\h0_000_pwa_c__basehead.mesh
male body gender	base\characters\head\player_base_heads\player_man_average\h0_000_pma_c__basehead\h0_000_pma_c__basehead.mesh

You can find the definitions in the localMaterialBuffer. Each material overrides the following properties locally:

• Normal (bump/height map)

• Albedo (diffuse/complexion)

All other properties are pulled from a .mi file in the following folder:

female body gender	base\characters\common\skin\character_mat_instance\female\head\
male body gender	base\characters\common\skin\character_mat_instance\male\head\

Head: material instances

This section only lists .mi files used by the player head. To see which skin is which, check Cheat Sheet: Character Creator -> Skin tones

About half of these files are shared by NPCs. Editing or replacing these will affect all of Night City!

File name (use male_head for masc)	Shared with NPCs
female_head_01_ca_pale_00_warm_ivory.mi	❌
female_head_01_ca_pale.mi	✔
female_head_02_ca_limestone_00_beige.mi	❌
female_head_02_ca_limestone.mi	✔
female_head_03_ca_senna_00_amber.mi	❌
female_head_03_ca_senna_01_honey.mi	❌
female_head_03_ca_senna_02_band.mi	❌
female_head_03_ca_senna.mi	✔
female_head_04_ca_almond_00_umber.mi	❌
female_head_04_ca_almond.mi	✔
female_head_05_bl_espresso.mi	✔
female_head_06_bl_dark.mi	✔

Freckles / cheek make-up

For a list of freckles and make-up sorted by colour and skin type, see NoraLee's NPV guide.

Eyebrows

Every eyebrow option has an associated texture file, normal map, and alpha map.

These files can be found in the following folder:

base/characters/common/character_customisation_items/eyebrows/textures/

Provided below is a table with the eyebrows and their associated texture files.

Eyebrow	Diffuse Texture
01	heb__base_d01.xbm
02	heb__base_d02.xbm
03	heb__base_d03.xbm
04	heb__base_d04.xbm
05	heb__base_d05.xbm
06	heb__base_d06.xbm
07	heb__base_d07.xbm
08	heb__base_d08.xbm

Eyebrow	Alpha mask
01	heb_wa__base_ds01.xbm
02	heb_wa__base_ds02.xbm
03	heb_wa__base_ds03.xbm
04	heb_wa__base_ds04.xbm
05	heb_wa__base_ds05.xbm
06	heb_wa__base_ds06.xbm
07	heb_wa__base_ds07.xbm
08	heb_wa__base_ds08.xbm

E3/Marketing Assets

Assets made for the purposes of E3 demonstrations/trailers and other gameplay demos remain in the game, including player heads. These heads will not work with the character creator system as they are, but they'll be listed here for the curious.

Please note that while there are texture folders, though their folders will be noted, the textures themselves will not be listed here. They are relatively self-explanatory with one thing to note regarding male V, which is mentioned at the bottom.

Female V

E3 2018 Head

base\characters\main_npc\demo_vicky\h0_001_wa_c__demo_vicky\

base\characters\main_npc\demo_vicky\h0_001_wa_c__demo_vicky\textures

In these folders, you will find the assets used for V as seen in the 43-minute 2018 gameplay demo.

File	Description
h0_001_wa_c__demo_vicky.mesh	Head
hb_001_wa_c__demo_vicky.mesh	Eyebrow/eyelash (Note: this is different than the traditional eyebrow mesh the game actually uses, these are fully modelled 3D meshes.)
he_001_wa_c__demo_vicky.mesh	Eyes
heb_001_wa_c__demo_vicky.mesh	Eyebrows (Note: same format as the final game eyebrows.)
ht_001_wa_c__demo_vicky.mesh	Teeth
hx_001_wa_c__demo_vicky_makeup_eyes_01.mesh	Eye makeup
hx_001_wa_c__demo_vicky_makeup_freckles_01.mesh	Freckles
hx_001_wa_c__demo_vicky_makeup_lips_01.mesh	Lip makeup
hx_001_wa_c__demo_vicky_pimples_01.mesh	Pimples

2020 Marketing Head

base\characters\head\pwa\h0_000_pwa_c__basehead\

base\characters\head\pwa\h0_000_pwa_c__basehead\textures

These folders contain the V used in the early 2020 marketing materials and "The World of Cyberpunk 2077", the assets here more closely resemble the final game.

File	Description
h0_000_pwa_c__basehead.mesh	Head
he_000_pwa_c__basehead.mesh	Eyes
heb_000_pwa_c__basehead.mesh	Eyebrows
ht_000_pwa_c__basehead.mesh	Teeth
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_cyberware_01.mesh	Cyberware
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_cyberware_02.mesh	Cybeware
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_cyberware_03.mesh	Cyberware
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_cyberware_04.mesh	Cyberware
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_cyberware_05.mesh	Cyberware
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_makeup_01.mesh	Lip makeup
hx_000_pwa_c__basehead_makeup_02.mesh	Eye makeup
i1_000_pwa_c_earring__basehead.mesh	Earing

Male V

When compared to female V, male V has fewer remaining assets left over from development (mostly 2018 is missing). However, what we saw of male V in the 2019 Deep Dive demo, early 2020 trailers, and "The World of Cyberpunk 2077" remain behind.

2019 Deep Dive/2020 Marketing

base\characters\head\pma\h0_000_pma_c__basehead\

base\characters\head\pma\h0_000_pma_c__basehead\textures

base\characters\head\pma\h0_001_ma_c__player\textures

Note that not everything in the foremost folder will be listed, only what's important. There are simply too many assets to list here, most of which are identical to the final game if not straight duplicates.

h0_000_pma_c__basehead_scar_01.mesh	Head scar (Note: potentially what we see in the 2018 trailer)
h0_000_pma_c__basehead.mesh	Head
h0_000_pma_c__short_spiked_cyberware_01.mesh	Hair with cyberware cutout(?)
h0_000_pma_c__short_spiked.mesh	Hair
hb_000_pma_c__basehead__e3_demo_reduced.mesh	Beard
he_000_pma_c__basehead_cyberware.mesh	Eyes with cyberware cutout(?)
he_000_pma_c__basehead.mesh	Eyes
heb_000_pma_c__basehead_01.mesh	Eyebrows (Note: Like 2018 Female V, these are 3D modeled eyebrows!)
hh_000_pma_c__basehead_haircap_01.mesh	Hair cap
hx_000_pma_c__basehead_cyberware_01.mesh	Cyberware (Note: Same as used in the trailer/gameplay videos.)
i1_000_pma_earring__basehead_01.mesh	Earing

Important exception; outside of the above folder, somewhere else in a different folder is a beard mesh that is combined with 3D eyebrows and eyelashes.

base\characters\head\pma\h0_001_ma_c__player\hb_001_ma_c__player.mesh

Textures

Textures for male V here are scattered across two different folders, h0_000_pma_c__basehead and h0_001_ma_c__player respectively.