How to install and use NewGAN to replace regen faces

Post after post after post, what do I notice? Terrible regen faces. "look at this wonderkid!" I can't, I'm distracted by how terrible the regen faces are.

Let's fix that! First things first, the usual disclaimer: Please read through these instructions BEFORE you do anything! I'm not responsible if you destroy your save (back that bad boy up!)

NewGAN is nothing new around here, but maybe a yearly post will remind people that hey, you don't have to live with terrible regen faces! Maybe it's the how-to that ties people up, so let's get into that.

  1. Download the 1.4.0 release here: https://github.com/Maradonna90/NewGAN-Manager/releases. If you have Windows, get "Installer-Win", if you have Mac get "Installer-Mac". If you have Linux? I'd try the Windows version and run it using Wine. EDIT: Thanks to /u/ArchOwl: "The 1.4 version of newgan does not work for older iterations of fm. You need to download the 1.3.1 version instead."
  2. Extract the zip to somewhere that's easy to work with, like your desktop or something.
  3. Open the "dist" directory and run the installer for the app.
  4. Copy everything in the "filters" directory into your filters directory. On Windows that's usually Documents --> Sports Interactive --> Football Manager <your_version> --> filters.
  5. Copy everything in the "views" directory into your views directory. On Windows that's usually Documents --> Sports Interactive --> Football Manager <your_version> --> views.

Alright, we're nearly done installing everything. At this point you'll need the facepack that this draws from. The GitHub link above has links to that, and I'd recommend the torrent.

Once you've downloaded the facepack, you'll need to place it in your graphics folder. If you've got kitpacks or anything like that, you've already got a graphics folder. It's typically located at Documents --> Sports Interactive --> Football Manager <your_version> --> graphics. If you don't have a graphics folder just make one! You can create the folder and place the facepack in it, no problem.

OK, so now you've got the app installed, the views and filters in place, and the facepack in your graphics folder. Now what? Let's get to replacing faces! These instructions will be geared towards FM24 but should apply for earlier versions as well.

  1. Open FM24 and load your save up.
  2. Open Scouting
  3. I'm going to use "Players in Range" here. There are ways to replace every regen face in the world, I'll mention that at the end.
  4. With "Players in Range" open, open your view dropdown (probably says "Overview"), go to "Custom", then go to "Import View". Then select "SCRIPT FACES player search.fmf".
  5. Select that view in the dropdown, it's listed on mine as NewGAN.
  6. Go to "New Search" and click the cog icon in the bottom left corner of the search pop up window. Click "Manage Filters", then "Import" and select the "is newgen search filter", then "Load".
  7. Now go back to the "New Search" popup, click the cog in the bottom left and select "is newgen search filter". NOTE! While you're here click the Exclude dropdown and uncheck your team.

Now we've got it all setup and almost ready. Your scouting search page should show the UID (a string of numbers), Nationality, 2nd Nationality, Name, etc. You may want to click around and just double check that you've got regens and not other players, because we're about to change all of these players faces.

At this search page, click a single line, then hit Control-A to select all. It may take a second if there's a lot of players. You can tell it's working on that if, as you mouse over lines (but don't click) they don't highlight. If they do highlight it didn't take and you'll need to leave that screen (just hit back) and go back to it. At least that's worked for me.

With all of your regens highlighted, hit Control-P to print. A pop up should come up and ask you how to print. Select "Text File" then save that file somewhere you can easily find it.

We're almost across the finish line, I promise! With that file saved, you'll want to open NewGAN. In Windows it'll be in your Start menu.

  1. Open it up and create a profile (just type in a name and click Create), then select that profile in "Select Profile".
  2. Now click the three dots next to "Select Image" and select the directory where you saved the facepack (for me it's Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2024\ graphics\FMNEWGANv2 + Update 1/).
  3. Click the three dots next to "RTF File" and select the RTF file you saved previously.
  4. If this is your first time generating faces, in the "Mode" dropdown select "Generate". To the right of that, click the "Allow Duplicates".
  5. Let it rip! click "Replace Faces"

Once you've generated the faces the first time, you can change the Mode dropdown to "Preserve". That will just replace the faces of that years regen crop.

Last step! Back in FM, open Preferences and click "Reload Skin". If you're dealing with graphics (NewGAN, kitpacks, logos, etc.) you'll want to just uncheck "Use caching to decrease page loading times". You can search for it if you don't know where it is.

And that's it! You should now have much better regen faces. Big shout out to Zealand for his videos on this, I'll link them below, and Maradonna90 for all the work on NewGAN itself!

About replacing the whole worlds regen faces: in the Zealand videos he mentions that you can create a second manager and on day one, do nothing other than look at the scouting center. You should see the entire player database there, including every regen in the world. I don't usually do this (I'm too lazy) so YMMV. Just passing it on.

This video is for FM21 but still applies

Here's the sortitoutsi video on installing this, if you're not a huge fan of instructions in a text wall.

EDIT TO ADD: If I missed something, there's a mistake, or the formatting could be better, please let me know! I'm not affiliated with NewGAN, Zealand, or sortitoutsi...I'm just a guy who wants people to have non-shitty looking regens.

EDIT 2: Massive thanks to /u/Apple-Pigeon for the Mac notes:

A few notes for Mac users who may encounter the same issues I did...

The Sports Interactive folder may be hidden from Library/ Application Support

if so, it's simply invisible. This will make it permanently visible: Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and paste the following at the command prompt:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

I didnt have any 'views', 'filters' or 'graphics' folders in /Library/Application Support/ Sports Interactive/ Football manager 2024 - So i just copied over the 'filters' and 'views' folders into there then created a 'graphics' folder into which I copied the face pack file folders (African, Asian, etc)