Recommended realistic visual enhancement mods (for males)?

[ZeroListGram]

Hello.

 

I'm sure there are some people here who know a lot more about beauty mods than I do, so I'm asking you for your recommendations.

 

I'm looking to make my characters, first and foremost, realistic. Not necessarily realistic in the sense of our own world, but "realistic in Skyrim". So, I don't want to turn the males into fresh, clean and young boys, which most of the texture mods seem to do (aside from a few exceptions which are incompatible with SOS).

 

I know of a certain hidden gem, the 40 years old normal map. But sadly that applies that normal map to everyone, and I don't want to install a custom race (since that would cause other problems with other mods which rely on clean and clear race values/edits).

 

There is also Vitruvia - Skin texture overhaul for males, but I can't make it work; my character gets extreme neck seams (while other males in the game do not -- this never happened before). It's also a bit too clean and a bit too young, perhaps.

 

I know of a few others, although I haven't tried many of them. None of them seem too appealing, aside from the ones that would make my PC explode if I encounter more than 2 NPCs at once... i.e., they were made for custom races, which I do not want to use.

 

Can you recommend something that I might have missed? What I'm looking for is:

- 2k textures

- Skin textures that are fully compatible with SOS (no neck seams, etc.)

- Preferably something that doesn't turn men into boys (although this doesn't mean a total exclusion of textures named "younger", since often times it seems to me that modders just make these textures look different from the others, not necessarily younger).

 

I'd prefer to have most of the males in my game to look like adults (say, 25+) who are heavily worn out by a harsh life and war.

I'm also looking for female textures, and I have almost the same conditions for those. I want them to be "realistic in Skyrim", not looking like plastic dolls.

 

Note 1:

I'm not only looking for skin textures. I'm interested in the small, hidden gem type of beauty mods as well. This includes eye mods as well. I know the extremely popular Eyes of Beauty mod, but I'm not that interested in a huge variety, I'd appreciate a smaller list of high quality eyes (which is not to say that TEOB is not high quality, but I have used it in the past for a long time, and I think it's fame is, at least partially, deserved).

 

Note 2:

I'm also looking for mods that improve vanilla hair, since I don't plan on using any of the dedicated non-vanilla based hair mods (except if they look pretty damn vanilla). I know of Superior Lore Friendly Hair and Better Vanilla Hairs - Mesh Replacements.

 

Note 3:

If it matters at all, I'm going to use either Rudy ENB (for vanilla or for NLA most likely, with RS + ELE, or perhaps I'll try CoT before picking one of these) or NLA with its own ENB. I prefer performance and gameplay over looks, and I can hardly tolerate anything below 45-50 FPS (because I get stuttering, not because of anything else -- a solid 30-35 FPS without any stuttering would be fine -- sadly, this is not the case).

 

Thanks for anyone who can help.

[The First Lady of Hats]

Possibly somethin' like Windsong?

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52322/?tab=description

Admitedly 's been a while since I ran it and I forget how it ran with SoS. But I remember it been a pretty weathered/gritty overhaul for folks

[ZeroListGram]

15 hours ago, The First Lady of Hats said:

Possibly somethin' like Windsong?

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52322/?tab=description

Admitedly 's been a while since I ran it and I forget how it ran with SoS. But I remember it been a pretty weathered/gritty overhaul for folks

 

It looks too vanilla to me. I'm not an expert on beauty mods, but I think(?) it's the vanilla normal maps that I dislike. Problem is, in mods where the normal maps are better, usually the skin (diffuse map?) looks way too artificial, OR it has a very specific texture (like a specific scar or something) that just looks weird and stupid when you apply it to every single NPC and the player (variety is also greatly appreciated, if that's possible to create at all).

 

I have 8 GB of RAM, 4 GB of VRAM (GTX 1050Ti), and an i5-7400. I scaled back the graphic mods as that relates to the environment (due to stuttering) in favor of better characters and gameplay (I disabled parallax too, I guess I wouldn't be looking at it anyway during normal gameplay). So, my goal is to be able to play the game smoothly, and not screenarchery.

 

What kind of skin beauty mods can I / should I run in this case? There are certainly more than a few that are only intended for taking screenshots or otherwise not for general gameplay.

 

Also, if someone didn't know these mods already, these are pretty good ones (with retexture / remesh) and also have hairs for males:

Hallgarth's Additional (Vanilla) Hairs

Vanilla Hair Variety Plus

TD18 Lore-Friendly Hairs