So has Racemenu "beaten" ECE?

[dryuya]

I keep seeing mods pop up here and there that require and/or are only compatible with Racemenu. Custom race mods are a big example of such.

 

ECE on the other hand barely seems noticed anymore. The support for it amongst modders seems minimal.

 

Is it worth it then to switch from a character set made with ECE to one with Racemenu?

[LaEspada]

I keep seeing mods pop up here and there that require and/or are only compatible with Racemenu. Custom race mods are a big example of such.

 

ECE on the other hand barely seems noticed anymore. The support for it amongst modders seems minimal.

 

Is it worth it then to switch from a character set made with ECE to one with Racemenu?

 

It's because Racemenu has far more features and has the ECE AND nuska's sliders built into Racemenu. People who don't want to switch to Racemenu to ECE is because they don't want to lose their amazing looking characters/presets since it took a long time to make them and there is no way to convert them to Racemenu. They'll have to recreate from scratch.

However, Racemenu has far more features and better overall than ECE. And is being updated far more constantly and supported than ECE.

 

 

So yes, I would recommend switching over.

[gvman3670]

I use Mod Organizer and have multiple profiles. Some of those have ECE and some RM. So when I say what I do it's based on my own observations using both.

 

ECE is still my preferred character editor. Why? It's faster, less confusing for most people, the XPMS Extended skeleton (pretty much a must have for decent physics) adds a ton of extra sliders to ECE (including weapon placements ), and it makes a far better looking character both more quickly and easily.

 

I do use RaceMenu because some profiles require it. But I do find it more difficult to make an attractive character and it takes longer as well, it doesn't have all the skeleton sliders without a PITA adding another mod to give it some, and its interface is just too "busy". But in all fairness I do have to admit that it works in the end (for the most part), and its updates have added a lot of very cool details in the newest version. The overlays system is nice and the new camera system during chargen is cool, too.

 

RM may be updated more often, but keep in mind that ECE hasn't actually "needed" any updates in forever. So which you choose is a toss up really. If you are using a race or other mod that requires RM go ahead and use it because it will work. If you're gonna' use a vanilla race then ECE is a slightly better alternative.

[Teruke]

I finally managed to recreate my characters with Race Menu, and they look exactly as they would with ECE, BUTT for that to happen I have to keep the assets of ECE active in mod organizer below RaceMenu... and the eps of ECE deactivated.... weird stuff but it works great... if I don't do that the face outline is a bit distorted

 

So mr gvman3670, that pretty much hits against your post... the only thing standing from what you said is that it's more comfy, faster and less confusing... a far better looking character... no you can make the exact same with Race Menu mow... different scale for weapons? i never used that anyway... if you find it confusing the best way i can put it is like this... first sliders are pretty much the vanilla ones, and then comes the ECE ones... that's why there's so many... and some are renamed... there is no Lips Tilt up in Race Menu, but you have mouth corners height and mouth smile which do pretty much that

 

Expired would be so happy to see me saying this hohoho

[Highborn]

I use ECE.

[Gagoloth]

Ill switch from ece to racemenu when vertex edit is fully implemented. but until then i have way more creative freedom over an ece's overall shape of a face then i ever would with racemenu.  

 

The reason why ECE has fallen so far behind racemenu is because ECE was abandon by the op of the mod. Iv used racmenu on and off while racemenu was still semi-compatible with ece. Even though ece is very very far behind now i still believe it to be still relevant until the day racemenu adds a fully functional vertex edit.  

[Tepi]

I'm sure more ppl will switch over to RM as soon as the vertexedit thingy is up and running. It really is the only thing that ECE has over RM. Until then, it really doesnt matter. RM has a lot friendlier ui to use with mouse (imo) and a much better compatibility with other mods. Ive been using RM since its launch and couldnt live without. I have tried ECE a few times but it just seems so... clunky, in comparison. But as mentioned, you can achieve stunning characters with both. I would still vote for RM.

[LaEspada]

I'm sure more ppl will switch over to RM as soon as the vertexedit thingy is up and running. It really is the only thing that ECE has over RM. Until then, it really doesnt matter. RM has a lot friendlier ui to use with mouse (imo) and a much better compatibility with other mods. Ive been using RM since its launch and couldnt live without. I have tried ECE a few times but it just seems so... clunky, in comparison. But as mentioned, you can achieve stunning characters with both. I would still vote for RM.

 

Pretty much everything I forgot to mention in my original post

[urielmanx7]

 

I finally managed to recreate my characters with Race Menu, and they look exactly as they would with ECE, BUTT for that to happen I have to keep the assets of ECE active in mod organizer below RaceMenu... and the eps of ECE deactivated.... weird stuff but it works great... if I don't do that the face outline is a bit distorted

 

So mr gvman3670, that pretty much hits against your post... the only thing standing from what you said is that it's more comfy, faster and less confusing... a far better looking character... no you can make the exact same with Race Menu mow... different scale for weapons? i never used that anyway... if you find it confusing the best way i can put it is like this... first sliders are pretty much the vanilla ones, and then comes the ECE ones... that's why there's so many... and some are renamed... there is no Lips Tilt up in Race Menu, but you have mouth corners height and mouth smile which do pretty much that

 

Expired would be so happy to see me saying this hohoho

 

 

If you char wasn't very complex to begin with, you can obviously have more chances to recreate it on RM, that says very little about the potential of a mod over the other.

 

RM is for casuals (no offense), and ECE is for ppl that like to take their options to their limits (vertex edits).

If you compare them in regards of features, RM wins.

But if you compare them in regards of potential, ECE wins, you can make tons of different looking chars, like really different, like you can make a totally Asian looking girl, and then you can make an African one, and then

an European, whereas in RM all the different chars you could make have that distinct "vanilla based" look to them.

 

But I can understand why ppl use more RM, it's easier to use, while to use ECE, while is still easy to use, if you want to fully explore it, you have to invest a lot of time, literally sculpting your char into existence.

[gvman3670]

I finally managed to recreate my characters with Race Menu, and they look exactly as they would with ECE, BUTT for that to happen I have to keep the assets of ECE active in mod organizer below RaceMenu... and the eps of ECE deactivated.... weird stuff but it works great... if I don't do that the face outline is a bit distorted

 

So mr gvman3670, that pretty much hits against your post... the only thing standing from what you said is that it's more comfy, faster and less confusing... a far better looking character... no you can make the exact same with Race Menu mow... different scale for weapons? i never used that anyway... if you find it confusing the best way i can put it is like this... first sliders are pretty much the vanilla ones, and then comes the ECE ones... that's why there's so many... and some are renamed... there is no Lips Tilt up in Race Menu, but you have mouth corners height and mouth smile which do pretty much that

 

Expired would be so happy to see me saying this hohoho

 

I never said RM didn't work. I was pointing out what I see as important features of each and their strong/weak points. For me ECE offers me what I need more than RM does, and I do use both. You can make decent characters with both obviously. It's a matter of choosing features you want or need.

 

And earlier I didn't mean weapon scale, although ECE with the XPMSE does have that (so does RM), but skeleton scaling and weapon placement sliders. RM doesn't have the three breast scaling tweaks, the shoulder scaling, finger/palm thickness, butt scaling, leg length/scale (and so on and so forth) that ECE has. The weapon placement sliders I mentioned above don't change scale/size, but move the weapon in/out, forward/back and up/down for all the various weapon carrying positions and types. RM does have a couple skider

 

And vertices editor of course.

 

These features alone are a worthy tradeoff for tattoo overlays. At least they are for me.

 

[Groovtama]

You could always use ECE without CME with RM, ECE is just textures and facemaps, only CME (slider part) sucks because it's syntax.

 

 

 

I never said RM didn't work. I was pointing out what I see as important features of each and their strong/weak points. For me ECE offers me what I need more than RM does, and I do use both. You can make decent characters with both obviously. It's a matter of choosing features you want or need.

 

And earlier I didn't mean weapon scale, although ECE with the XPMSE does have that (so does RM), but skeleton scaling and weapon placement sliders. RM doesn't have the three breast scaling tweaks, the shoulder scaling, finger/palm thickness, butt scaling, leg length/scale (and so on and so forth) that ECE has. The weapon placement sliders I mentioned above don't change scale/size, but move the weapon in/out, forward/back and up/down for all the various weapon carrying positions and types. RM does have a couple skider

 

And vertices editor of course.

 

These features alone are a worthy tradeoff for tattoo overlays. At least they are for me.

 

All ECE sliders are coming to RM I just need time, you don't know how much time they all costed me in the ece ini files. With RM I'm a lot quicker and don't need as many test runs to get it visually as it should, and I can also move Havok controlled bones. Also RM already has the weapon position sliders.

[afa]

I thought the sliders in ECE behaves differently from RM? Didn't Expired mention that once?

So even if the sliders names are the same/similar they will morph the face differently between RM and ECE

 

I don't see how RM has beaten ECE yet, I still see most available presets require ECE rather than RM. RM has more features with overlays by default but I think people have figured out how to tag that onto ECE.

 

Personally I still have an easier time making a decent looking character with ECE, most of my RM creation from scratch has been a train wreck.

Although I am using RM with a tweaked RM preset that looks somewhat decent...

 

Oh I suck at making characters by the way

[Brapboi]

Until someone makes it so I can transfer my character to RM, I'm not switching over. It's taken me months to finish my character to get to where I'm content with how she looks.

 

That Familiar Faces mod is making it very difficult for me though. RM compatibility and since someone said ECE characters can be done in RM, it's making me think. But if my character took me months to make, I don't think I want to take longer than that with RM. :/

[dryuya]

Yeah...all these responses are about what's expected.

 

Problem is Skyrim is my effective movie studio now and not so much a game. I don't just pick a character and play them. I like to have the best character editting menu possible for the purpose of creating many characters from multiple races.

 

Racemenu seems like it better serves that function...being compatible with Lovergirl and Demonica races is great. Also that project Citrus thing I've read about only seems compatible with Racemenu.

[Guest endgameaddiction]

Since I'm debating on reinstalling Skyrim. I'm thinking of choosing RM this time. Just to test it out again. I normally would use ECE over RM.

 

If I was capable of creating a tool with a render window like FaceGen and like Body Slider where I could import meshes and textures to get a more total control of not just editing the face, but better visual control like zooming in, I would. I would somehow make it compatible with ECE and then export the face values back to the ECE save. If that's even possible.

 

I know it's possible, but I'm no programmer or coder so I'll have to wake up and choose one of these two.

[Teruke]

Until someone makes it so I can transfer my character to RM, I'm not switching over. It's taken me months to finish my character to get to where I'm content with how she looks.

 

That Familiar Faces mod is making it very difficult for me though. RM compatibility and since someone said ECE characters can be done in RM, it's making me think. But if my character took me months to make, I don't think I want to take longer than that with RM. :/

 

you'll never be able to use the ECE slot files in Race Menu.. as Expired mentioned ECE uses a spaghetti code... all them sliders had to be recreated to have em in Race Menu and that's why it's taken so friggin long to reach this stage...

 

if you want to mange to remake your char, then load ECE and Race Menu in Mod Organizer, load the save of your character, use showracemenu, you get the Race Menu interface and on the last tab called "ENHANCED" you'll see all your current ECE slider values... make screenshots or copy them values to a piece of paper, then go to the other tabs and match the values that you noted with those you find in Race Menu... NOTE: there's more likely 2 sliders for the same thing... Eye Height for example has 2... always modify the second one, basically just scroll to the bottom  of the tab and modify the first slider you find with the respective name while scrolling upward... that's it, move to a preset slot you want use f5 to save it... then close the game, load mod organizer, deselect ECE plugins, while leaving ECE on the left side still ticked, you'll need them assets otherwise the cheeks will look weird... that's it... maybe it'll take you one hour the first time, but then do you want Familiar faces to work on your char??

 

 

I thought the sliders in ECE behaves differently from RM? Didn't Expired mention that once?

So even if the sliders names are the same/similar they will morph the face differently between RM and ECE

 

well... what part of me making the exact same ECE char in RM wasn't clear?

 

 

 

RM is for casuals (no offense), and ECE is for ppl that like to take their options to their limits (vertex edits).

 

 

ohh FFS, all this time while I was using ECE I felt that it was for casuals; now you're telling me it's not

 

 

anyway, about that vertex edit... show me some shots of characters made with it please

[bahamut2119]

I personally tried rm again after grove updated his/her skeleton and liked it more since he/she added the sliders that i've always wanted in rm. But I have ADD and dont have the patience to mess with stuff till I get the look I like so swapped back altho its still installed for a overlay trick that expired taught me I just don't enable it untill I want them then disable and the overlays stay. 

[afa]

 

I thought the sliders in ECE behaves differently from RM? Didn't Expired mention that once?

So even if the sliders names are the same/similar they will morph the face differently between RM and ECE

 

well... what part of me making the exact same ECE char in RM wasn't clear?

The part where you are still essentially using ECE asset 

Silly details aside when you boot a fresh game using your set up does the preset looks like an ECE present and the sliders move as if it is ECE?

Or is it only good for recreating a character that was made using ECE?

[Teruke]

i don't know what assets i'm using, and i won't be scouring the whole files to check what it is.... how can it move like an ECE slider if the plugins are not enabled, RM for me moves to values of 3.0... my ECE only went till 1.5 if that's what you mean...

only good for recreating the ECE char.. no... you can use Race menu as intended... with race menu alone you get the same face... but the cheeks are not looking the part when you move the head to the side... that's the only thing you need the ECE assets

[Expired6978]

The reason why ECE has fallen so far behind racemenu is because ECE was abandon by the op of the mod. Iv used racmenu on and off while racemenu was still semi-compatible with ece. Even though ece is very very far behind now i still believe it to be still relevant until the day racemenu adds a fully functional vertex edit.  

The SKSE plugin part of ECE was never done by the author. It was done by kaeper. The ECE part is just all the assets for the ygnord race and the additional morphs. RaceMenu is getting a sculpt mode, where you can edit selections of the face rather than 1-2 vertices at a time. I tried the vertex edit, the major stutter between movements got on my nerves editing only a single vertex at a time, and the fact it used hacky shit like having a DDS with a red dot on it for every single vertex.

 

RM may be updated more often, but keep in mind that ECE hasn't actually "needed" any updates in forever.

You have clearly never seen the sourcecode, ECE has "needed" an update since day one. This is the entire basis for the CharGen extension.

 

 

Until someone makes it so I can transfer my character to RM, I'm not switching over. It's taken me months to finish my character to get to where I'm content with how she looks.

 

That Familiar Faces mod is making it very difficult for me though. RM compatibility and since someone said ECE characters can be done in RM, it's making me think. But if my character took me months to make, I don't think I want to take longer than that with RM. :/

 

you'll never be able to use the ECE slot files in Race Menu.. as Expired mentioned ECE uses a spaghetti code... all them sliders had to be recreated to have em in Race Menu and that's why it's taken so friggin long to reach this stage...

 

if you want to mange to remake your char, then load ECE and Race Menu in Mod Organizer, load the save of your character, use showracemenu, you get the Race Menu interface and on the last tab called "ENHANCED" you'll see all your current ECE slider values... make screenshots or copy them values to a piece of paper, then go to the other tabs and match the values that you noted with those you find in Race Menu... NOTE: there's more likely 2 sliders for the same thing... Eye Height for example has 2... always modify the second one, basically just scroll to the bottom  of the tab and modify the first slider you find with the respective name while scrolling upward... that's it, move to a preset slot you want use f5 to save it... then close the game, load mod organizer, deselect ECE plugins, while leaving ECE on the left side still ticked, you'll need them assets otherwise the cheeks will look weird... that's it... maybe it'll take you one hour the first time, but then do you want Familiar faces to work on your char??

 

 

I thought the sliders in ECE behaves differently from RM? Didn't Expired mention that once?

So even if the sliders names are the same/similar they will morph the face differently between RM and ECE

 

well... what part of me making the exact same ECE char in RM wasn't clear?

 

 

 

RM is for casuals (no offense), and ECE is for ppl that like to take their options to their limits (vertex edits).

 

 

ohh FFS, all this time while I was using ECE I felt that it was for casuals; now you're telling me it's not

 

 

anyway, about that vertex edit... show me some shots of characters made with it please

 

You won't be able to transfer slot files in the future no, but you may be able to import the facial differences using the Sculpt mode by running the CharGen plugin alongside ECE, exporting the head, then uninstalling ECE and installing RM, then import the head mesh (which will take the differences between your characters head, and the imported head, this won't work for completely different heads obviously). The thing with Sculpt mode is you want to use it last, you never want to use Sculpt mode then go back to using sliders. Sculpt mode will give you morphs relative to where you started, rather than relative to the base head, so if you morph the face, then undo a slider the vertices you moved may not end up where you want, I'm sure this occurs with ECE as well.

 

I also intend to integrate the Citrus head for RM3 for smoother morphing when using Sculpt mode. You won't be able to import ECE heads using the Citrus head at all though, the topology simply won't be compatible. Whether the head is enabled will be an ini toggle as it will overwrite Race entries at runtime to ensure compatibility with NPC morphs.

 

As for the morphs being different, the differences are very subtle, the morphs themselves are identical (meaning they behave the same). ECE has a number of morph files that are prefixed with "base" these files are loaded differently in ECE, they actually replace morph entries entirely (Which you shouldn't be doing anyway as the database entries are temporary). RM does not make use of these morphs, they are not drastically different anyway. RM doesn't replace any morph data because it's capable of making completely new entries.

 

I too, would like to see some screenshots of characters actually created using the vertex edit. I'm pretty sure that it's a VERY SMALL minority of people actually make use of it, people like to make the argument that this is a main feature and advantage. I sincerely doubt these same people are even using it themselves. "But it's got electrolytes! It's got what plants crave."

[zzz72w3r]

Hopefully those very small few with the skills to use ECE vertex edit will be drawn to CITRUS high poly head and start sculpting some amazing unique faces to share with RM3.  The one thing I am most looking forward to is seeing what skilled people will release using CITRUS/XPMS2/RM3.  Until then I will stay with ECE and using others' presets.

[Gagoloth]

Hopefully those very small few with the skills to use ECE vertex edit will be drawn to CITRUS high poly head and start sculpting some amazing unique faces to share with RM3.  The one thing I am most looking forward to is seeing what skilled people will release using CITRUS/XPMS2/RM3.  Until then I will stay with ECE and using others' presets.

 

 

I noticed citrus a while ago and it looks great. when racemenu gets vertex edit ill be spending a couple of hours seeing what i can do with it. Iv always thought i could make some really good looking faces, so hopefully i can do something with it when it comes out.

[Kastagir]

Without clear instructions on a viable method for at least partially retaining an ECE-generated face in Racemenu, there will continue to be holdouts, whether they use vertex edit or not. The CITRUS head, while promising, doesn't appear to be done. I'd like to see it bundled with RM3 because at least then I'd expect to see some comprehensive support for getting it to actually work with your particular race. For now, I'm not particularly inclined to adopt something that is difficult to install properly, has inadequate installation instructions and may even be incompatible with future (release) versions. That's purely conjectural but not without precedent.

[blabba]

Without clear instructions on a viable method for at least partially retaining an ECE-generated face in Racemenu, there will continue to be holdouts, whether they use vertex edit or not. The CITRUS head, while promising, doesn't appear to be done. I'd like to see it bundled with RM3 because at least then I'd expect to see some comprehensive support for getting it to actually work with your particular race. For now, I'm not particularly inclined to adopt something that is difficult to install properly, has inadequate installation instructions and may even be incompatible with future (release) versions. That's purely conjectural but not without precedent.

 

Yea, even when CITRUS head gets integrated into RM3, it doesn't mean your going to just get automagical compatibility between it and CITRUS heads.

 

You'll still have to know enough CK work to add it yourself via esp or replacing files (if there's no NPC's)

 

Nothing about RM is hard to install. Citrus head isn't that hard to install either by itself (literally just place in MO, or know enough about manual install to drag and drop), but you lose NPC facial animations currently.

 

The RM integration will fix it so the CITRUS head is only applied to the PC and the npc's continue to use normal heads (thus can animate correctly, without you needing to regen every npc's head and cause a huge performance drop by giving them all CITRUS heads).

 

[Jexsam]

Please tell me this CITRUS integration thing you're all talking about doesn't mean I'll be forced to use a CITRUS headmesh, or at the vert least it won't fuck up my existing characters.

 

I don't want a new headmesh, but moreso I don't want to lose my characters because I was forced to use a new headmesh. I don't care if it's compatible, I don't even care if the changes would be "minor". I don't want my characters' faces messed up because I had something I didn't want shoved down my throat.