Do creation kit Chargen presets use actual NIF vertex geometry or just import slider settings?

[goaway]

So... for anyone who has worked with custom races before, I could sure use some help with the topic question.

 

I couldn't really find an answer in any creation kit documentation, but I'm working on a custom race mod and building presets for use as racial presets, and I just noticed that every custom race mod I have installed has no FaceGenData folder... so basically does that mean racial presets aren't stored as nifs?

 

If so... I'm having a sudden and horrifying realization that if it doesn't load vertex positions I may have just spent dozens upon dozens of hours manually tweaking/moving triangle vertices with sculpt to create shapes that can't/won't get imported as a preset and are essentially useless for this project.

[Andy14]

Spoiler

 

On 8/13/2018 at 4:54 AM, goaway said:

So... for anyone who has worked with custom races before, I could sure use some help with the topic question.

 

I couldn't really find an answer in any creation kit documentation, but I'm working on a custom race mod and building presets for use as racial presets, and I just noticed that every custom race mod I have installed has no FaceGenData folder... so basically does that mean racial presets aren't stored as nifs?

 

If so... I'm having a sudden and horrifying realization that if it doesn't load vertex positions I may have just spent dozens upon dozens of hours manually tweaking/moving triangle vertices with sculpt to create shapes that can't/won't get imported as a preset and are essentially useless for this project.

 

 

 

 

 

I am not sure if I understood correctly.
FaceGen nifs are exported from the current morphs of the NPC in the CK - but not automatically.
For this the Actor in Object window has to be selected and with CTRL + F4 all current meshes (hair, eyes etc.) and the Head with the current Morphs are exported.
If the master file is Skyrim.esm only (ie no dawnguard npc etc), the nif is usually saved in

Data \ Meshes \ actors \ character \ FaceGenData \ FaceGeom \ Skyrim.esm \

 

Similarly, the FaceTints in
Data \ Textures \ Actors \ character \ FaceGenData \ FaceTint \ Skyrim.esm \

[goaway]

I know the how the process works in theory, you build an NPC and set it to be the chargen preset and export the nif/tints.  I guess what I mean is this: when you are loading a preset slot in game from the racial preset menu, does it reference a saved nif file for vertex settings, or does it just copy the slider values that are associated with that NPC in creation kit? 

 

The reason this would be a problem is that I have been sculpting preset slots by adjusting vertices in sculpt instead of using sliders.  Thus, if the preset slot only imports slider settings, the in-game preset won't look anything like the face I have sculpted.

 

If I can build a set of reference NIFs and have those load along with the preset in racemenu, there's no problem! 

 

Obviously I could also include a list of racemenu jslot presets or nif imports for an advanced user to load manually, but I was hoping for it to be more integrated and user-friendly than that.

[Blaze69]

Vanilla CharGen presets only load the slider data indeed, they simply ignore any FaceGen nifs for the NPCs.

 

If you want the presets to use anything that is not part of the vanilla sliders as shown on the CK character data (i.e. manual sculpts or custom sliders in RaceMenu), those will need to be saved as jslot presets, no way around it.

[goaway]

Ah, that's what I was afraid of.  Bummer.

 

Is it possible to re-define the default head mesh for a custom race?  Like, if I copy a morph to the race's base femalehead.nif, and then build presets as slider variations of that?

 

Feels silly asking these kind of questions that might seem obvious but I've never worked with custom races before now.

 

Thanks for your help, either way.