[Updated w. info] How to make follower races playable?

[guk]

There are so many fantastic follower mods out there - but getting them to dress up, pose in the right place and use facial expressions is such a chore that i'd like to simply make their races playable.

 

I would prefer a quick & dirty fix for this, like setting a few flags via tes5edit. But from downloading some of the "playable follower" mods here, i already know that it's not enough to just tick "playable" under the race settings.

Being able to actually PLAY the race for a playthrough (racecompatibility) is NOT required.

 

Most important is functionality to select the race in RaceMenu, preferrably have the follower's face as preset but that can be fixed with FaceCopy from RaceMenu.

Also being able to select at least the installed hairstyle mods just like vanilla races, and of course wear all outfits.

[guk]

Update on this matter:

With RaceMenu v3+ you can simply import any head on your character.

 

What this means is that you can copy any .nif from

meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/...(folder of any mod)

into the folder

SKSE/plugins/CharGen

and then use the "Import Head" feature in the Sculpt Editor of RaceMenu. I suggest renaming the .nif to something you can recognize ingame.

 

Before you can import the head, you have to set your character to the same weight as the NPC, then use the "mask" brush to prevent a neck seam. Paint a mask of 1-2 strength at the bottom of the neck, then import the head.

 

Now this is not the same thing as playing exactly the NPC you want, since recreating an 1:1 identical facetint is likely not possible.

The exact shape of the head however seems to work on any race i have tested this on. Only the textures and normalmaps create a different look, but you can still imitate that by using a dummy race (like Custom Races) packaged with the textures and normalmaps from the NPC mod.

It is also possible that the head shape is not 100% compatible with the race, for example the Ningheim teeth were clipping a bit through the face when importing the Tania follower's head.

 

 

Thanks for expired6978 for explaining how it works over in the RaceMenu thread.

[speckledsnake]

Update on this matter:

With RaceMenu v3+ you can simply import any head on your character.

 

What this means is that you can copy any .nif from

meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/...(folder of any mod)

into the folder

SKSE/plugins/CharGen

and then use the "Import Head" feature in the Sculpt Editor of RaceMenu. I suggest renaming the .nif to something you can recognize ingame.

 

I don't have a "CharGen" folder (this is in mod organizer/mods/racemenu/skse/plugins?), just 4 loose files. Is that folder the result of a mod I don't have, or, something I create manually, or, something else entirely?

 

Would someone trying to move an ECE preset to RaceMenu have to create an entire character? (Last I used ECE, the preset saves were like "...trisaves.slot" or...something. Not a .nif file though, I don't think?

 

Sorry, I'm new to the more technical aspects of modding.

 

Edit: As a matter of fact, I just popped on and made a preset save, thinking this would generate the folder to stick the save into, but it didn't, and I have no idea where my preset saved to.

[guk]

The CharGen folder is from RaceMenu (the mod). See the topic in the adult forum "RaceMenu V3B".

Don't know about exporting head meshes through console or ECE, but i think you can try to run both ECE + RM once just to transfer the head.

 

And yes, if you import a head you'll have to go through everything you usually do when creating characters like hair, eyes and so on. But the stuff where most people suck (facial sliders and sculpting), you don't have to touch them at all.

Check under "beautiful women and how to make them", i posted a couple of pics from importing Kamille Shy without even having that mod installed.