Making a Non-Vanilla Face?

[ZigNewton]

So I want to change my player character's face without affecting the game's other NPCs, or having to use a pre-made follower as a reference (unless I have no other choice).

 

I've gone on long enough settling for my character's vanilla face that's meant to look like a specific person. "Better Males" wasn't cutting it for me, so I photoshopped my own malehead.dds texture, and snatched a citrus head. I just dunno where to put them, or if it's possible to apply them only to me and not NPCs. If I can figure out the directories, I'll slap on the textures and RaceMenu sculpt the rest and that'll be the end of it (I hope).

I'm using Mod Organizer, and am hoping there's a non-ESP solution to this. If not, I can live with it. I'm not a flashy person, I'm not even using a custom/beast race, I just want a not-vanilla face that isn't "better males".

 

All my Google-fu has only turned up advice on how to make pretty followers, not much in the way of your playable character.

I do use SOS full, in case that's important to mention.

Suggestions? Tutorials? Anything helps.

 

 

Edit: I now realize how unclear i've been in describing what I'm trying to do, and how fucking stupid I sound, so I'll try again.

 

I made a male character using the vanilla assets given to me via RaceMenu etc.

I'm no longer satisfied with the vanilla look.

The most common recommendations to remedy this are Apachi skyhair, "better males" etc.

I don't like better males, and if I did, I would only want to apply the look to the player character, not an across-the-board change in the game's NPCs.

so I rigged up my own assets and want to apply them manually. To just the player character.

All attempts to do so have been unsuccessful.

 

I want to know how all these people making lovingly hand-crafted followers/presets with personalized normal maps and face textures are doing this successfully.

 

I'm sure I'll feel just as stupid about this edit when I wake up tomorrow

 

[Dorabella]

If I understand your project, you are planning to transform, for example, a follower into a PG
You need two files, a NIF file and a DDS file to put in this path:
Your Skyrim data folder / SKSE / Plugin / CharGen. Here the two files mentioned will go. From the game you just have to apply them with Racemenu Alternative (Sculpture and F9 to load the nif file), make the changes you think are appropriate and save the face (Preset) thus creating the JSlot file that you will then find in:
Your Skyrim data folder / SKSE / Plugin / CharGen / Preset

[ZigNewton]

I'm not using a follower as a reference, I'm just doing this by hand.

 

I can't for the life of me get the .dds texture to show up when I import the head through RaceMenu (When I have more time, I'll install and try it with the RM Alternative, I don't know what the difference is Racemenu Alternative was a no-go).

On top of that, I don't see a way to apply a different *_msn.dds to the face, which is also important.

 

I must be missing a few steps, but I don't know what they are...

[Grey Cloud]

On ‎10‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 5:18 AM, ZigNewton said:

So I want to change my player character's face without affecting the game's other NPCs,

That is what RaceMenu does. The character you create and alter there does not affect any other character in the game. Save it as a preset if you think you'll use it again.

If you want to alter your PC's appearance during the game then open the console and type 'showracemenu' without the quotes. Don't forget to close the console once RM shows up.

[goaway]

It sounds like what you want is to add custom assets like skin texture, hairs, beards, or body models, but you do not want to apply those assets to any characters besides the player.  Am I understanding this right?

 

The easiest way to do what you are describing is to create a custom race for the player, and then set the assets you have collected to be the defaults for that custom race.  If you're unfamiliar with modding however, there's an existing mod on nexus that creates clones of all the vanilla races for exactly this purpose. 

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8720

 

The guide in that mod's description explains the process better than I ever could.  The only downside is that it kind of clutters up your race list with races you may never want to use.

[ZigNewton]

1 hour ago, goaway said:

It sounds like what you want is to add custom assets like skin texture, hairs, beards, or body models, but you do not want to apply those assets to any characters besides the player.  Am I understanding this right?

 

The easiest way to do what you are describing is to create a custom race for the player, and then set the assets you have collected to be the defaults for that custom race.  If you're unfamiliar with modding however, there's an existing mod on nexus that creates clones of all the vanilla races for exactly this purpose. 

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8720

 

The guide in that mod's description explains the process better than I ever could.  The only downside is that it kind of clutters up your race list with races you may never want to use.

 

Yes, spot on. This will absolutely help me!

I don't run any extra race mods currently, so I can live with some race clutter. And if need be, I can crack open TES5Edit and just chop out anything I don't need (I might not worry about going that far though)

 

Thanks for pointing this out!