Getting the most out of RaceMenu?

[DarknessRain]

After absolutely mutilating my game with a ton of unstable mods, I did my first full/clean reinstall -- and also took the time to organize my mods. During my previous setup, I was using ECE because it happened to be the first editing mod I found, through SG Textures Renewal. However, I've heard a lot of really great things about RaceMenu, so I decided to give it a shot. 

 

Honestly though, I wasn't impressed! I feel like I must be missing something because so many people swear by it and love it. I definitely saw a lot of functionality in the vertex editing, which was overwhelming compared to the simple vertex editing in ECE--but very cool! However, it felt like I literally had to use those features to make my character look decent. Every change I made with the sliders, every time I turned my head I had all of these awful polygonal edges and inconstancies across my character's face. And while I could create a cute, loli styled character in ECE in 15 minutes, after several hours of fiddling with RaceMenu I still can't get it right. 

 

TBH, I'm reinstalling ECE at the moment... But what I want to know is--what was I doing wrong? Is there something I was missing? 

 

I know there are a lot of topics on the differences between ECE and RaceMenu (I was looking at half of them yesterday), so please understand that I don't want this thread to turn into that... I just want to know how to use RaceMenu effectively--or if it's worth giving a second chance.

[Zerosleepless]

I've never used ECE before but I've heard it's easier to make a nice character using it rather than Racemenu.

In the beginning i was extremely overwhelmed with the sculpting feature and i'm still learning to use it (mostly by trial and error), and i definitely used to get a lot of those inconsistent polygons but only when i start sculpting the face, never had them with sliders.

In general I'd say Racemenu offers much more possibilities if you're willing to sink in the time and effort of learning  the tools and tweaking every small detail.

I recommend you use Citrus heads as well as the smoothing tool , it fixes S**** up nice and quick .

I'd say if you give Racemenu a real chance and invest more effort and time into learning how to use it , you'll never go back to ECE .

[azerty852]

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/36607-share-your-racemenu-preset-slot-file/. The preset sharing topic. It is highly unlikely that you don't find something good in there. 

[blabba]

I'll answer your semi-cryptic question with a semi-cryptic answer of my own.

 

No, it's not worth giving a second chance unless you want to give it one.

 

Use whichever one suits your needs/tastes whatever. And live with that choice. Also,  don't seek internet strangers opinions. Only you know what you want, your technical expertise level etc... Have confidence in your own decisions and stop second guessing yourself.

 

Inb4 the inevitable ece vs rm war.

[Guest toymachine]

You could always do what I do and export your presets through ECE and import the head in RM. I have ECE on one profile and ECE + RM on my main profile to do the imports.

[Aenid]

Is there a way in racemenu to input the skin/lip/...colors by keyboard FF23DA3B33... INSTEAD of playing with the sliders (as one slider affects others)?

[ousnius]

Inb4 the inevitable ece vs rm war.

 

There's not enough ECE people left for a war.

 

 

 

 

 

Objectively speaking, if you care about customizing your body in more detail (morphing the shape, tattoos) or having brushes available to sculpt the face, you're gonna have more tools in your hand with RaceMenu.

[gvman3670]

Keep in mind that what I say is coming from a strong ECE supporter that switched to RM a while ago and have no reason to change back.

 

ECE uses a different head mesh. You can just use one of Ran's meshes (on the Nexus) with RM or do what I do and use Blabba's CITRUS heads (they have a lot more polygons for a smoother result).

 

In RaceMenu there are often two sliders that do the same thing or are list the same (but with a 2 after the name). The second one is generally the exact morph that ECE uses, so the newest RM is, more or less, both old RM and ECE wrapped up in one package.

 

There are a TON of other features that RM has that ECE won't ever get. That alone is enough reason to use RM. The body morphs, in game BodySlide and CITRUS body sliding, ability to play nicely with custom races, tattoo/freckle/warpaint/makeup overlays, and lots of other things.

[DarknessRain]

You could always do what I do and export your presets through ECE and import the head in RM. I have ECE on one profile and ECE + RM on my main profile to do the imports.

 

I was actually going to do that, but prior to my big wipe I got impatient and couldn't figure out how to do the ECE imports and back them up, soo... My ECE heads were goners. I'm not that sad because they were newer characters and half the fun is making them. 

 

I'll answer your semi-cryptic question with a semi-cryptic answer of my own.

 

No, it's not worth giving a second chance unless you want to give it one.

 

Use whichever one suits your needs/tastes whatever. And live with that choice. Also,  don't seek internet strangers opinions. Only you know what you want, your technical expertise level etc... Have confidence in your own decisions and stop second guessing yourself.

 

Inb4 the inevitable ece vs rm war.

 

It wasn't a cryptic question and if you thought it was, you're overthinking it. I honestly want to know why my experience with RaceMenu was subpar; if I was missing a vital mod or if something else was going wrong. I'm perfectly capable of making the decision, so I'm not/wasn't really looking for someone to say; "Just choose one." 

 

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/36607-share-your-racemenu-preset-slot-file/. The preset sharing topic. It is highly unlikely that you don't find something good in there. 

 

Fantastic resource, I didn't know it was there. Lots of inspiration and downloads, thank you! Maybe if I can get halfway decent I can create some faces to put in. ^^"

 

I've never used ECE before but I've heard it's easier to make a nice character using it rather than Racemenu.

In the beginning i was extremely overwhelmed with the sculpting feature and i'm still learning to use it (mostly by trial and error), and i definitely used to get a lot of those inconsistent polygons but only when i start sculpting the face, never had them with sliders.

In general I'd say Racemenu offers much more possibilities if you're willing to sink in the time and effort of learning  the tools and tweaking every small detail.

I recommend you use Citrus heads as well as the smoothing tool , it fixes S**** up nice and quick .

I'd say if you give Racemenu a real chance and invest more effort and time into learning how to use it , you'll never go back to ECE .

 

I'm giving Citrus a shot, we'll see how it goes! I swapped over and installed it earlier, but I'm not sure it took (potentially because I use NMM). I'm going to try it again here in a few minutes. Thank you for the advice! I had never heard of Citris and it seems like it would help tremendously. 

 

Anyways... I'm having much better luck with it this go around regardless. After getting XMPSE installed and configured correctly, I love being able to adjust my body sliders the way I am. I had some of that functionality with ECE, but it was definitely more limited. I'm also still figuring out the overlays, but I think it's a really incredible feature as well. 

[ousnius]

Keep in mind that what I say is coming from a strong ECE supporter that switched to RM a while ago and have no reason to change back.

 

ECE uses a different head mesh. You can just use one of Ran's meshes (on the Nexus) with RM or do what I do and use Blabba's CITRUS heads (they have a lot more polygons for a smoother result).

 

In RaceMenu there are often two sliders that do the same thing or are list the same (but with a 2 after the name). The second one is generally the exact morph that ECE uses, so the newest RM is, more or less, both old RM and ECE wrapped up in one package.

 

There are a TON of other features that RM has that ECE won't ever get. That alone is enough reason to use RM. The body morphs, in game BodySlide and CITRUS body sliding, ability to play nicely with custom races, tattoo/freckle/warpaint/makeup overlays, and lots of other things.

ECE doesn't have a different head. It is the vanilla head with a different default shape. You can get the same default shape in RM using the Head Shape slider.

[gvman3670]

 

ECE doesn't have a different head. It is the vanilla head with a different default shape. You can get the same default shape in RM using the Head Shape slider.

 

Gotcha'. I figured the shape was achieved through using a different head mesh. In older RM versions I used one of Ran's to get a similar effect.