I'm arguably in the home stretch on this project. Problem is that most of that stretch involves building locations and NPCs in the Creation Kit, which is stuff that's well out of my comfort zone so I have to very... slowly... figure out how to get shit working as I go along. I have a fair bit to say about that... but it'll have to wait until the next update because the screenshots for that me over the image limit and I've got some other, more interesting stuff that I want to get to first.

 

To start with, the main reason that I'm considering this to be nearly done is that I've pretty much gotten all the parts I can think to build for this put into the game. The rebuild of the Type XXX set is done, with full Beast race support, rubber versions, and the permanent modesty variants ditched in favor of removable panels. The Relic weapons have been folded into DMA proper, and the wig sets are about as done as I can get them. Even went ahead and fixed the weighting issue with the forelock of the Ellie wig where it'd clip into the face in some poses, since it popped up in the raised shield stance and was bugging the heck out of me. 

 

 

I also addressed the issue I brought up last time where figuring out how to recenter the pattern on the Edhildil bikini top left it looking lewder than I wanted for what's functionally the most clothing the Type XXX parts can wear. The solution was pretty obvious really; if I can use Outfit Studio to manipulate the UV mapping on a mesh, then I can just as easily use it to remap it to a completely different texture. Thusly:

 

 

Figured I might as well get some use out of that female Dwarven Armor texture. Took quite a few tries to get something I was happy with, but I ended up with a set using the scale mail elements for the bikini bottoms and the breastplate pattern for the tops, which works out pretty well and more than adequately fulfills my 'have some shame' requirement.

 

 

Of course, the problem with this method is that changing the UV like this means that I can't simply slap the modifications onto the bikini meshes I'd already built as a texture swap. I had to rebuild all of the Edhildil tops, and then generate an entire duplicate set of tops and bottoms for the Armor textures. So that took a bit of time, and doubled the parts count for these. But you can mix and match the tops and bottoms, which is always nice. I considered doing more variants, including one set remapped to the Dwarven banner texture, but that one kept crashing the game for some damn reason and I decided that two sets was more than enough for the parts count. 

 

Being able to mess with the UV mapping also helped me out with a problem I ran into on the ground models. I spent the better part of a couple of weeks getting all of those built and updated for the new pieces, and for the most part they were fairly straightforward.

 

 

The problem came when I started work on the ground models for the Vanilla masks. Yes, I do still intend to include those even if my focus shifted rather sharply to the Live faces; no sense in letting all that prior effort go to waste after all. The problem is that to make ground models using Outfit Studio you have to move the parts' meshes down into the positioning needed to fit into an existing collision box. Most of the time that's not a problem, but there's some meshes that for whatever reason simply will not respond to OS's move tool the same way as other meshes. So say you've got all the meshes in a model selected and are trying to rotate them backwards, then these uncooperative meshes will rotate forwards, stuff like that. And as it happens, one of those uncooperative meshes is the Vanilla head mesh. So to make a ground model out of one of the Vanilla masks, instead of just moving everything at once I'd have to move all the non-face structures and then manhandle the face back into place over them. For a couple dozen faces. Fuuuuuck. Thaaaaaat.  And then on top of that there's the issue with how the game won't render skin tints on the non-wearable models, so you wouldn't really be able to tell who half of these faces were supposed to be anyway. 

 

So with all that making 'proper' ground models for the Vanilla masks is pretty much out. But being able to mess around with UV maps made it much easier to go to my backup solution: Making gift boxes. 

 

Simply get some good close-ups of all the masks (ignoring how Umana's scars are the wrong skintone, as that's from a previously discussed issue):

 

 

Use those to generate a bunch of texture files, then find one of the box ground models bouncing around out there. Cut a slice off the top of its mesh and map it to your portraits, then paste it back onto a full box mesh. Remap that slice for each mask, and boom, boxed faces.

 

 

It's not as satisfying as having the full mask lying around like I can with the other face types, but hey, it works. And it gets them pretty much as done as they're going to get, in light of that shift to the Live faces.

 

And on the subject of the Live faces, there was one thing that I've had a suspicion about ever since I first discovered how to get them to work but that I was reluctant to try. You see, the process for making them relies on making various minor changes to a character's generated head model, but as a result of that it only seemed to work for NPCs. The player apparently doesn't get a discrete head mesh generated into an accessible folder the way NPCs do, so giving the same effect to your own character appeared to be a fair bit more complicated. But there is a default head mesh sitting around which appears to be used by the player character in some way, as manipulating that during my previous attempts to make a Live face from a mask-cut version of that mesh did produce some results. So what happens if you make the Live face texture changes on that default mesh?

 

 

Exactly what you want to happen, basically. 

 

On first blush, at least, this seemed to work pretty seamlessly. Unlike my attempt with the cut versions it's still fundamentally the same mesh, so it responds perfectly normally to the sliders and accepts all the existing presets while still maintaining the mask effect.

 

 

It even accepted an old existing Racemenu preset in the form of 12-16's original settings without any complaint. 

 

 

I did run into one wiggle when exporting the mesh, though. It shows up as expected in the sculpt tab, even to the extent of not having the invisible parts of the mesh colored in by the texture:

 

 

But the actual exported mesh in the SKSE CharGen folder doesn't reflect that. Oddly, while it maintains all the flag changes and added alpha property needed for the effect, it automatically switches the texture pathing from the specific mask texture that the default head mesh had been pointed to back to the original default texture paths. Which is annoying in that it means that using this to generate new NPC heads will be slightly less streamlined than I'd like, but otherwise not that big of a deal.

 

 

The bigger deal is that this particular method only seems to work on Nords. 

 

 

I didn't notice this at first, as during that first test I only went through the Nord presets. When I fired up the save for my existing Breton character after making the alterations to the default mesh and saw that they weren't being reflected on her, I initially assumed that the effect would only work on new games and not preexisting ones. But when I kicked it around in the chargen again and found that it universally wasn't showing up on the non-Nords, I realized what was going on. The Nords are the only ones who actually use the default pathing built into the .nif file. The other races use race-specific texture sets in the CK to do things like use alternate normal maps for the elves and so forth. To fix that I'd have to go into the CK and change those texture sets to redirect them to the mask texture, or... I could just replace the default face texture that they were pointing at with the mask's. 

 

 

 I didn't really want to try doing this, but I had a sneaking suspicion all along that it would work thanks to some of the issues I had with getting the Live faces running in the first place. Logically, replacing the head's texture with a version that's had a huge portion of it erased would be a problem. But there's a few factors in how the game works that seem to add up to bypassing that logic. First, this effect only works on a head mesh that's had an alpha property added to support it. All the game's NPCs, however, use existing pre-generated heads that don't have that alpha property, and as such don't have all the non-face areas of the head turned invisible like this. Second, and most confusingly, when a mesh that doesn't have that alpha property set is pointed at a texture that's been altered by erasing sections so as to have areas of the model rendered invisible, it acts as if those erasures never happened. So on head meshes without that alpha tagged in, the full head texture continues to be displayed even if the one in the default texture's folder has been replaced with one modified for mask use.

 

 

That previous concern about it not working on existing games was also proven false, as it happily adds the effect to an already-running character.

 

 

I don't understand why this works and it kind of annoys me that it does. But since it does, I might as well make use of it. I haven't exhaustively tested it, but so far everything I've seen shows the mask effect only applying to the player while all of the existing NPCs are normal. It seems likely that it would only be an issue for characters that don't have an existing or properly generated FaceGen model, but that's already noticeable through the grey face bug. And you'd have to revert the changes to the default head mesh and texture while working in the CK if you don't want them on your generated characters, as it does apply the effect to all the female NPCs in there. But as long as you don't run their FaceGen you're fine.

 

 

And as far as chargen goes, there's now no hiccups for any of the humanoid races. Aside from a lot of the Vanilla hair sets really not working well with the mask effect.

 

 

There is some question of what exactly I'm going to do with this, though. Obviously it can't be a default part of the mod, since it's a fairly intrusive change to any and all player characters, but it also seems to be the only effective way to get a functional player Automaton. It's probably possible to use it alongside the original defaults by making a set of separate Automated races, but that's a whole bucket of worms that I don't really want to stick my hands into. Might just release the modified defaults as a separate add-on pack, especially since that wouldn't need an .esp file to work. Or I might just give you instructions on how to use the mask texture already packaged into DMA to do it yourself, since it's really not that hard to do at all once you know the steps for it. Iunno.

 

In the meantime, one thing I can do with this is streamline building new NPCs like I've been wanting to. Yes, I've already got a bunch in here, but I've been wanting a few to showcase specific parts and body layouts. The Javelin helmet/mask in particular kinda needed one, as I rather like the look of it but its fit on characters with larger noses or cheekbones can be just a bit iffy and it needs a good balance with the mouth.

 

 

Another one blatantly cribs from the bandit expansion mod Breton I used to try out the Gladiatrix helmet and a mostly robotic body, as I quite liked how the look turned out.

 

 

And yet another is just a quick sort of pseudo-Samus thrown together to go with the Metroid-inspired arm set I made for shits and giggles. Those arms could still use a little work; I got the weighting on the shoulders fixed so that the right one isn't rolling around while firing magic, but the cannon's still not lined up with the magic effect. That's not really a huge priority to fix, though.

 

 

I also rolled that cowgirl version of the Dawnguard Redguard that I was amused with in my prior testing into the mod (by treating her like a chargen import, as I'd like to avoid having anything besides Skyrim.esm set as a master file here), but she prompted a few other additional parts. The first ones should be fairly obvious.

 

 

That prior version of her just used a playable copy of the Being A Cow horn/ears set that I had put together for use elsewhere, but that didn't entirely work for the Automated setup. Some bronzing, mesh edits, and a few mounting parts later, though...

 

 

These are set up like straight circlets, so they're usable with the wig sets. I had originally intended for the same to be true of the last batch of headgear I made, but the skullcaps they were built on to make them more effective as helmets ended up not working well with a lot of the wigs, so they're now just set up as plain helmets. These horns are intended to appear more as clip-on type things. 

 

 

They were also made pretty quick and dirty, so while I tried for a certain degree of compatibility between the faces I can't really guarantee it. And they'll absolutely get a bit clippy if you try to use them with a full head, or even just one of the skullcaps.

 

 

And of course while the cow horns were the reason for doing this, why would you ever think I would stop there?

 

 

There's a few more of these already, including a version of the cow horns without the ears. I miiiiight add more. Depends on what I find that fits. 

 

But aside from this amusement, adding this character in also prompted me to do something about her chest. I like the MC torso, there, but it has a bit of a flaw as far as using it with these NPCs goes in that it only comes in the pre-expanded 'milker' size or as a Variable part. The permanently big bosom works well enough for a thematic character like this, but I also wanted to use the chest on characters like that Gladiatrix-based one above where a more modest bust would be more appropriate. At the same time I'd like to avoid using the Variable parts as much as possible on NPCs in light of them not being wholly compatible for CBBE users. And while I was at it I could also use a more compatible version of the D2 chest to use on characters with non-mask heads, especially after seeing how well it was working with the Gynoid parts on that Nord up there. I absolutely did not want to do a whole slew of fixed-weight versions of them to match them up to the existing presets, though. In fact I couldn't do that for the D2, since the neck weighting would be completely off for characters at anything less than 100 weight. So the obvious thing to do was to build normally weighted versions of the two torsos. Based on the UNPB preset, for personal preference.

 

 

The complication here was that this also required me to make weighted UNPB versions of the various chest coverings, since the existing ones are either fixed weight or the Variable versions that wouldn't be guaranteed to fit. But that wasn't a huge burden, as all I had to do was batch build everything in BodySlide to UNPB and copy & rename them to tuck them into the 'DMN' catch-all that I've been using for the NPC-specific parts. Doing it like that also let me grab .tri files for them, so they should continue to work with SLIF and the like.

 

 

Since I did base this on UNPB and made it with the express purpose of using the D2 torso with the Type G pelvis, though, I kinda had to finally get around to fixing the issue with the top ring around the pelvis' mid-torso connection clipping through the back of the UNP-based torsos. Just squeezed it forward a little bit and it looks much nicer. The Type G's are still hopeless with the xF torsos, though. The waists on those are far too narrow for the G's top. 

 

 

As has so often been the case in the course of this project, doing all this to get a non-Variable version of the D2 ended up opening a new line of inquiry. Despite having gone to the trouble of adding Beast race support to the Type XXX parts, Beast characters have been conspicuously absent from whole mess of NPCs I've been throwing together. The main reason for that has simply been their heads. Back when I was working on the Vanilla masks from the humanoid races I also made an attempt at making ones for the Beasts. I haven't really talked about it much because it did not work out well at all. It was technically possible, but the cutlines on the meshes were not in particularly opportune places, especially not for the Argonian head mesh which had the cleanest division running right through the middle of where the ear membrane is on the texture. They just really didn't look good. That said, that particular problem could likely be bypassed using the Live face method, as it doesn't rely on the mesh layout and is just a matter of how the texture gets edited. But there's still the other problem that I ran into during that attempt at making masks, which is that the beast heads don't really fit over the human-shaped head frames all that well. They have a lower 'dome' than the humanoid heads, so the tops of the frame structures tend to clip up through them. That could be fixed by making Beast-specific versions of the frames, but ehhhhhhhhh... 

 

So basically I've written it off as a pain in the ass. But with the non-Variable D2 torso, I can just do the Beasts as a full-thorax Automated with an intact neck. In fact, thinking on it further, I can just set the weighted D2 to be their default nude body and staple DMA parts on to that.

 

 

Once you've got that going, well, tossing together these generic NPCs is fairly trivial.

 

 

Having them set up like this is both effective and kind of elegant. It amuses me to be able to strip their parts down to the core like this.

 

 

But of course, this took me down yet another line of thought. When I took these poor Beast generics off to be killed in the name of science, I also dragged along the one based on Susanna who accidentally ended up as a test corpse a while back to serve as a comparison with the humanoid Automated. The nude body I had been using for them was actually one that I built before I got the Live faces working, and thus was made with the assumption that it would be used on characters using the masks for faces like the first couple of NPCs I put together. I was working with the idea that should they be stripped they'd be stripped down to the bare frame of the torso, so that's what their nude body was. But when used with the NPCs built with Live faces, stripping them bare left a torso frame with a flayed face hovering above it. Not exactly ideal.

 

 

So I got to wondering if I could just add in the head frame as part of the nude body. I wasn't entirely certain about it, since it uses a non-standard slot (59), but I threw it together to test it out and what do you know, it works fine.

 

 

In fact, doing it like this I don't even need to add the head frame on as part of the outfit, like I'd been doing, as the different slots on a nude body get displaced by outfit parts separately from one another. As long as nothing else is taking up the neck's slot, it'll be visible. This actually streamlines things a bit, as it means I can have a different nude body for each head type- brain, armored, crystal- and distribute them appropriately among the NPCs instead of stressing over building different versions of an outfit with different heads. It'll mean that the brain and armored heads especially won't be lootable, but that's fine since they'll 'belong' with the character's face. The crystal inserts are a bit more questionable, but then I'm thinking that would also be true in-lore.

 

The dead don't really need a pulsing heart crystal, though. Let's take that out.

 

 

Yeah, that's better. Now she looks properly out of commission. 

 

That bulky bit around the neck popping in after removing the Type XXX torsos with their nice, svelte necklines was still annoying me, though. It also didn't really make much sense from how those torsos were built for them to clamshell open or whatever and have that frame inside. So that was in the back of my mind when out of the blue at work the next day I thought, 'Hey, do the nude bodies even need to have the torso piece?'

 

 

As it turns out...

 

 

They do not.

 

 

This... Is basically perfect. This lets me leave the head frame and the Live face as the permanent body and just build everything else around that. This is actually pretty similar to what I wanted to do in that abandoned 'detachable head' experiment from the DCC project ages and ages ago, albeit in in a completely backwards way from the approach I attempted there. About the only downside is that there doesn't seem to be any good way to block SoS add-ons when the body is empty like this, since they use a similar 'default nude bodypart' system. That'll take some manual editing if you're using the SoS pubic hairs like me, but that was already generally true with the Automated since they're likely to have pelvises that don't match up to the SoS part's bodyslide.

 

And of course, this doesn't only just work when they're dead.

 

 

The obvious problem with stripping them while they're standing being that you're left with a head just floating here in space like this, though. This is really begging once again for some kind of forced animation locking them down onto the ground when nude or something, but that's still a ways outside of my knowledge base. Or maybe some kind of head-specific pedestal, if I can think of a good design for it. I'll have to play around with things a bit. For now the only thing I can really do with headlander here is to perch her on a Display Model rack.

 

 

Hey, it's something. Really, truly something.