RaceMenu or ECE ?

[ettorg]

I use both...work fine together for me

[JaFinmongrab]

I've been using ECE

 

I've tried using RaceMenu and I like HUD. Especially when selecting race as you don't have to scroll through them and can just click and load but aside from the Vertex editing absent, it's really just a matter having a bunch of character saves that I can't port over to RaceMenu, unless someone knows of a way. I'm no modder by any means.

 

Although the patch for RaceMenu that bypasses preloading all the hairs and such to avoid CTD when accessing showracemenu and for better overall performance, works with ECE as well.

[kuromahou]

ECE, morphs give a better shaped face (due to rans content built into newer versions), nice round cheeks, and facial features persist through change into vampire.

[Expired6978]

Reinstalling Ningheim, RaceMenu, and CharGen, fixed problem B., but A. continued to persist. And it all started at CharGen 2.0.0+

There are several spots where the game decides it's going to morph the face, all of them are hooked and the extended sliders get iterated and applied after the vanilla morphs are applied. Does this still occur on the latest version? The custom morphs didn't get loaded from the slot file correctly on a previous version, this has been fixed since.

 

I switched to ECE when all the additional sliders were added. I never was really satisfied with the various face parts available before that. I have tried Race Menu a few times since but the menus seemed rather disorganized. If I cared about the warpaints and stuff I probably would have stayed with it. As for everyone not liking it because of the extra race there is an option in the installer to not add it.

Other than some scaling sliders, there shouldn't be any facial sliders missing. CharGen has basically all of the ECE sliders in the plugin. I fixed some menu control Papyrus functions in the newer version (my current build, not release) so you're likely to see those scaling functions become more workable, the reason the scaling sliders from ECE are not in RaceMenu is because they use formulas to compute opposing scales, formulas that aren't necessary to compute natively and could be done via Papyrus. Many of the scales unavailable in RaceMenuPlugin aren't there because they cause huge clipping problems if you don't balance the opposing scales when you change a particular one. For example, anything below the waist when scaled clips through the floor, so you have to downscale a different bone to offset that problem. ECE accounts for this via formulas.

 

ECE, morphs give a better shaped face (due to rans content built into newer versions), nice round cheeks, and facial features persist through change into vampire.

RaceMenu facial features don't persist through vamprisim? Other than the vampiric cheeks, but you can get a replacer that removes this feature.

 

 

 

The idea of CharGen is to implement the CME functions of ECE in a cleaner, more vanilla tied manner (as in the way the game normally does this) and require no file replacements (Version 2 achieves no replacers). The reason RaceMenu probably runs better is that it is a complete re-code of the menu, there isn't anything from the vanilla code left other than the slider code and the object structure (the game sometimes makes explicit hardcoded calls to particular paths, so the object path structure needs to stay the same). 

 

Morphs created with RaceMenu despite being labeled the same as ECE may appear slightly different, this is due to the CME morphs prefixed with 'base'. RaceMenu doesn't make use of any of these files because they are presumably not additive morphs, they are replacement morphs. Using those morphs as additive results in really weird behavior and major clipping in areas, using them as replacers defeats the purpose of the whole no replacements goal. By replacers I mean they overwrite memory, not actually replace a file. 

 

While the two may appear to have the same functionality, their internal workings are VERY different. 

 

Here's some comparisons to shed some light as to what actually goes on:

 

ECE: Adds custom sliders by calling a Scaleform native function to acquire the slider data that was loaded internally and then makes the menu itself load the sliders.

CharGen: Hooks game calls where sliders are created and pushes new ones onto the slider argument list, completely independent of the actual menu. Some CharGen sliders should actually work with the vanilla menu.

 

ECE: Makes morphs work by merging the custom morph data directly onto an existing morph (NoseType33?) which means if you make a custom race, its morph file has to actually have that NoseType exist, also you can't alter the game setting telling the max number of presets it gives you an error from Papyrus if this value is unexpected.

CharGen: Makes the game load custom morphs as though they were regular morph files (just more of them), they are non replacers and don't require the custom preset.

 

I only have a few concerns regarding 'lag' with the next version of RaceMenu, the next version has a display for the UV like ECE, except RaceMenu actually reads the entire head mesh into the menu and renders all the triangles there (Flash uses Scalable Vector Graphics so these essentially have infinite resolution) the 3D mesh of the head is really laggy when rendered because AS2 doesn't support native 3D rendering, so it has to transform 2D to 3D via projections (and there's a ton of computations going on). I've restricted rendering to only when it changes, or you rotate it but it lags massively during this time.

 

I haven't actually provided an API for vertex editing yet (I have no idea what ECE does for this cubic/flat/linear interpolation stuff) but the foundation for it is already laid out in CharGen, the concept for it is essentially to allow you to actually create your own sliders rather than just moving vertices around (because that's what it's doing anyway). The vanilla morphs work by giving an array of offsets stored in 16 bits, along with a base multiplier. The base multiplier multiplies the 16 bit value then adds the result onto the original mesh vertex position, so this gets confusing as you're limited to two extremes of 32767 and -32767 multiplied by a float, usually this float is much less than one as the head mesh coordinates are actually very small, so you have two options, to dynamically change all the numbers whenever you exceed these ranges (which would probably be slow) or to have a fixed multiplier and have a min and max range of your slider. I don't know enough about the TRI format to make a decision as to how this works because I've noticed that not all morph files have a fixed base multiplier, which implies that it's somehow computed (I'm just not sure how). 

 

Here's a mockup of the existing vertex displays: http://i.imgur.com/oOxv0CI.jpg and working on Argonian http://imgur.com/0hJ9lJR without any extra configs or files

-'windows' can be moved via dragging and scaled via mouse wheel.

-Head mesh below can be rotated by dragging the white

-UV display above has a button for every vertex, each button can be selected (will probably allow multiple to be selected as well, and likely do some mirroring somehow).

The panel on the left where the regular editing occurs won't be visible in the final, this will be replaced by other tools for vertex editing. It's also distracting when it's not really relevant to the current editing task.

 

CharGen's vertex editing is also very generic, so it should be possible to morph any part on your face that has an associated TRI file (brows, beards, hair, eyes) I'm not sure how ECE deals with male vertex editing with beards, if at all? Unfortunately I don't think it's really possible to morph those parts automatically when you vertex edit the face, but manually is better than not at all.

[Handsome Squidward]

I have used both programs and both are admirable. One doesn't need ECE to create a gorgeous character, but ECE goes into the fine aesthetics with the face while RaceMenu has a more advanced skeleton and texture manipulator, and is functional with races that are not ECE compatible. I suggest using vanilla skyrim sliders before going into further detail with ECE to keep proportions aligned. Once ECE has made the face, one can install RaceMenu to manipulate textures?

 

I believe much of the aesthetics come from the texture mods which are easily obtainable. SG and The Eyes of Beauty are the basic textures needed.

 

[EternalDamned]

The question for me isn't which or even both. I can make great looking PC's with either or combined. The question is how do you get them exported from PC to imported as NPC while maintaining their looks?!?

[Kasumidoll]

I'm using both. Is that bad?

[Expired6978]

The question for me isn't which or even both. I can make great looking PC's with either or combined. The question is how do you get them exported from PC to imported as NPC while maintaining their looks?!?

If you're using RaceMenu and CharGen you can export the NPC head to a Nif mesh and then merge it onto a CK exported head. There's a mod that helps with this process:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/40494/

 

It doesn't cover creating an NPC completely from scratch but it covers exporting and merging the changes to the face, which is where the looks mostly come from. If you use an exported head you don't even really need to use the .npc file that you export with SPF; these are just base parameters FaceGen uses to generate the head. Once ingame it completely ignores those parameters and loads the head you exported, if there is no head, or there was an error loading the head it will generate it from those parameters (you don't want this, you want it to load the external head, this is where the infamous dark face bug was occuring, when the npc had no exported head and it tried to generate the head with no tintmask).

[Mordyn]

I used ECE, I'll try both of possible

[pyrosushi]

Used to use Racemenu but I wanted to use cme save slots so I switched to ECE. Also, the compatability was quite problematic for me. ECE, it is.

[WizzyD]

ece if you want a ton of face options.

 

race menu if you want the pretty ui.

 

i can't wait for the day that they combine.

[Kodiak]

This! This is good! IR Noob when it comes the CharGen mods so this conversation is proving educational. So please... continue to disagree on which is better. Its giving me a good idea of the pros and cons of both.

 

Honestly though, I was very close to installing RaceMenu today. I have it downloaded already when ECE was brought to my attention. Just seems a lot more user friendly and straight forward.

[Veladarius]

RaceMenu has the reworked menus and can do more things with tattoos and such but doesn't have all the options for adjusting parts of the face. ECE uses the standard menus and standard facepaints but you can adjust pretty much every part of the face. Currently I use ECE myself.

[horse]

I don't use either mod.

 

For some reason, I was able to play Skyrim without any issues (except minor glitch that stop the wagon from proceeding int the intro.). I've logged had over eight hours of game time, already got to level 3. 

 

Not sure what I missed out.

My character is female: I'm not attracted to her, I do identify with her, but she doesn't need to be attractive for that. That's just cosmetics.

Do you need these mods for some other reason?

 

I really don't know. No offense to people who do, but maybe such people can share their reason as well?

 

[Cezul]

Well, I use both. Installed ECE first then Racemenu, dis b da results, homie g dawg.

 

  Although I will say ECE has more face tweaking options.

 

 

 

 

 

She's a Breton, I used ECE for the face and ears, Racemenu for the tattoo and beauty mark and all that jazz. I'd say the two mod authors should really come together and make something that has all the best aspects.

[Taskmaster]

 

Reinstalling Ningheim, RaceMenu, and CharGen, fixed problem B., but A. continued to persist. And it all started at CharGen 2.0.0+

There are several spots where the game decides it's going to morph the face, all of them are hooked and the extended sliders get iterated and applied after the vanilla morphs are applied. Does this still occur on the latest version? The custom morphs didn't get loaded from the slot file correctly on a previous version, this has been fixed since.

 

 

Yeah it still persisted at the time of that post, but I learned in another thread that nif files actually store texture paths. That doesn't seem very intuitive to me(it's some Bethesda thing I guess), but, that fixed the problem I had with CharGen 2.0.0 when that was identified. However, I still had consistency issues when it came to loading saved preset slots, where not all of my slider changes loaded(and probably saved) so I had switched back to ECE.

 

I'll be hard pressed at the moment, because I've made Jann look even better than my original iteration that was done through pre CharGen 2.0.0 with current ECE.

 

I wouldn't just be torn like this, but once I create faces I like to have them saved so I can go on new adventures with these "characters" on new saves and rerolls and such. In other words I'm invested in the ECE system right now.

 

I guess I'll just wait for if you or the ECE team updates first and what features come out, and decide on if I'll stay or switch. I enjoy both mods/plugins for different reasons and even UI styles and there are some pros and cons to both, but I'm just more invested in ECE at the moment due to using that over RaceMenu when I ran into those problems I couldn't find solutions to at the time.

 

Jann's face took a long time to make and I learned a lot about face creation that I can benefit from either mod/plugin now. I'm not playing any mer/elven characters at this time(I'm using EEO and it's fine for NPCs), but that would easily be a reason for me to switch out of ECE(huge ECE con).

[Pepper201]

Ece for me. I've used them both but ece just seems to have more options in my opinion. I think they both are good mods . Its mostly just a matter of preference I think for the user.

[Golod]

Does anyone get noticeable freezes while moving sliders in ECE with one of the latest ENB (0.236 for example)? Any way to fix it?

[Asakaze]

Mine's with Racemenu is having freezes while ECE is okay ^^

[dje34]

I don't use either mod.

 

For some reason, I was able to play Skyrim without any issues (except minor glitch that stop the wagon from proceeding int the intro.). I've logged had over eight hours of game time, already got to level 3. 

 

Not sure what I missed out.

My character is female: I'm not attracted to her, I do identify with her, but she doesn't need to be attractive for that. That's just cosmetics.

Do you need these mods for some other reason?

 

I really don't know. No offense to people who do, but maybe such people can share their reason as well?

 

My character is not who I'd like to be but who I'd like to be with, so she is attractive, strong and slutty ! Well actually I wouldn't really like to be with her because she would eat me on full moon nights and she is not really trustworthy, fuckin' and stabbin' around you know. But it's a cool character to play with ! Weak, submissive and useless at the beginning of the story... Wicked, deadly and merciless in the end. A true warrior !

The cool thing with a Custom Character Menu is that you can change your character when you feel like doing it, for example after each 10 levels my character gets more muscles ! And scars ! 

 

 

Does anyone get noticeable freezes while moving sliders in ECE with one of the latest ENB (0.236 for example)? Any way to fix it?

 

Didn't have this problem, did you try RaceMenu to see if it changes anything ?

[The DarkSlayer]

I'm using both. Is that bad?

 

Same here. Haven't encountered any issues.

 

[dje34]

 

 

While the two may appear to have the same functionality, their internal workings are VERY different. 

 

 

Here's some comparisons to shed some light as to what actually goes on:

 

ECE: Adds custom sliders by calling a Scaleform native function to acquire the slider data that was loaded internally and then makes the menu itself load the sliders.

CharGen: Hooks game calls where sliders are created and pushes new ones onto the slider argument list, completely independent of the actual menu. Some CharGen sliders should actually work with the vanilla menu.

 

ECE: Makes morphs work by merging the custom morph data directly onto an existing morph (NoseType33?) which means if you make a custom race, its morph file has to actually have that NoseType exist, also you can't alter the game setting telling the max number of presets it gives you an error from Papyrus if this value is unexpected.

CharGen: Makes the game load custom morphs as though they were regular morph files (just more of them), they are non replacers and don't require the custom preset.

 

I only have a few concerns regarding 'lag' with the next version of RaceMenu, the next version has a display for the UV like ECE, except RaceMenu actually reads the entire head mesh into the menu and renders all the triangles there (Flash uses Scalable Vector Graphics so these essentially have infinite resolution) the 3D mesh of the head is really laggy when rendered because AS2 doesn't support native 3D rendering, so it has to transform 2D to 3D via projections (and there's a ton of computations going on). I've restricted rendering to only when it changes, or you rotate it but it lags massively during this time.

 

I haven't actually provided an API for vertex editing yet (I have no idea what ECE does for this cubic/flat/linear interpolation stuff) but the foundation for it is already laid out in CharGen, the concept for it is essentially to allow you to actually create your own sliders rather than just moving vertices around (because that's what it's doing anyway). The vanilla morphs work by giving an array of offsets stored in 16 bits, along with a base multiplier. The base multiplier multiplies the 16 bit value then adds the result onto the original mesh vertex position, so this gets confusing as you're limited to two extremes of 32767 and -32767 multiplied by a float, usually this float is much less than one as the head mesh coordinates are actually very small, so you have two options, to dynamically change all the numbers whenever you exceed these ranges (which would probably be slow) or to have a fixed multiplier and have a min and max range of your slider. I don't know enough about the TRI format to make a decision as to how this works because I've noticed that not all morph files have a fixed base multiplier, which implies that it's somehow computed (I'm just not sure how). 

 

Here's a mockup of the existing vertex displays: http://i.imgur.com/oOxv0CI.jpg and working on Argonian http://imgur.com/0hJ9lJR without any extra configs or files

-'windows' can be moved via dragging and scaled via mouse wheel.

-Head mesh below can be rotated by dragging the white

-UV display above has a button for every vertex, each button can be selected (will probably allow multiple to be selected as well, and likely do some mirroring somehow).

The panel on the left where the regular editing occurs won't be visible in the final, this will be replaced by other tools for vertex editing. It's also distracting when it's not really relevant to the current editing task.

 

CharGen's vertex editing is also very generic, so it should be possible to morph any part on your face that has an associated TRI file (brows, beards, hair, eyes) I'm not sure how ECE deals with male vertex editing with beards, if at all? Unfortunately I don't think it's really possible to morph those parts automatically when you vertex edit the face, but manually is better than not at all.

 

 

Hi, Great Modder Expired ! 

 

I didn't know you were a member of LL ! Thank god I've found these forums where I can have a lot of informations directly from the authors and talk to so many great modders ! Even if I don't always understand what they're saying...

 

I've got 3 questions : Are you still working on Race Menu ? When will the next version be released ? Will it include vertex editing ?

[dje34]

 

I'm using both. Is that bad?

 

Same here. Haven't encountered any issues.

 

 

You mean you installed ECE + Race Menu and you are using both at the same time ? How could 2 different Customization Menus work together ? I don't get it ! I mean there should be functions not working and issues with the sliders values as they are not the same ! I really don't get it ! Could anyone explain please?

[dobmc]

 

 

 

 

I'm using both. Is that bad?

 

Same here. Haven't encountered any issues.

 

 

You mean you installed ECE + Race Menu and you are using both at the same time ? How could 2 different Customization Menus work together ? I don't get it ! I mean there should be functions not working and issues with the sliders values as they are not the same ! I really don't get it ! Could anyone explain please?

 

 

 

If you think logically, there will be obvious conflicts. What they meant by not encountering any "issues" are CTDs, savebloats and such. I suppose you are interesting in combining both mods, but it'll get complicated explaining the repercussions to you so don't do it.

 

@Vol2 Thanks.

[Taskmaster]

I was able to finally convert back over to Race Menu, even when I had faces invested in ECE. It took awhile, though, but now, I have assets I can use in Race Menu or ECE depending on which one I install and want to use.

 

One thing I must say though is that, the more you figure out Race Menu, you can create almost virtually the same face you can in ECE, although the limitations is on the head mesh - which is holding Race Menu/Chargen back at the moment - that is, until the Vertex Edit is released. What I mean by this is that, it's not easily switchable like it is with ECE where you can change head meshes on the fly such as RAN's edits. To change the head mesh nifs on RaceMenu Chargen it runs into a texture loading problem due to the meshes having texture paths baked in them(which would require nifskope I guess). And, not having a Vertex Editor hurts possibilities.

 

Also, when it comes to custom races that have their own custom head meshes, ECE has an advantage there over the Chargen Ext, EXCEPT ones that have their own chargen(EEO comes to mind).

 

ECE is easier to use I think, because the faces almost sort of make themselves and it can actually be difficult to make a "bad" face - but with that comes the possibility of many player's characters looking the same as other players(you guys know exactly what I'm talking about).

 

I guess what it comes down to is that Race Menu/Chargen starts from one direction and ECE starts from another, and they can come to the same end result.

 

tl;dr: The choice I feel is essentially if you're more into the Vertex Editor and unconditional head saves go ECE. If you're more into body manipulation and extra texture plugins go Race Menu/Chargen Ext.