Altering NPC looks

[valloittaja]

Can anyone point me good or best ways to alter npc looks? Like for hairstyles, skin color or recreate face structure. Alternate actors brings too much of trouble and always ends up not working properly with me. Any good advice is welcome

[Husky1o1]

There is no simple way to personally change the appearance of NPC unless you know how to create mods.

But there are tons of mods on Nexus which overhaul the NPCs, just do a search there.

[Psalam]

47 minutes ago, valloittaja said:

Can anyone point me good or best ways to alter npc looks?

You can check my blog here:

 

The post following this one includes more information.

[KoolHndLuke]

There is a way to export what you create in Race Menu and use that for npcs, but I don't remember what I found- and I never tried it because I do them in the CK. If I remember, I let u know.

[Husky1o1]

• When you create a character in Racemenu you can export the head.
• You will then find two files in your overwrite folder \SkyrimSE\overwrite\SKSE\Plugins\CharGen (assuming you use mod manager)
• One will be called ...*.nif the other ...*.dds - These two files are needed to make the head of the character, the first being the mesh, the second the texture.
• For it to work you need to rename them to whatever the ID of the NPC in the corresponding mod is, but you use only the last digits for that. Depending on whether it comes from an ESM/ESP or ESL you use the last 6 or only the last 3 digits:
  • If the NPC has the ID 20FD1234 it comes from an ESP/ESM with the ID 02, hence the ID of the NC is 00FD1234 and you need to name the two files 00FD1234.nif and 00FD1234.dds
  • If the NPC has the ID FE020123 then it comes from an ESL-flagged ESP with the ID FE:020 and the ID of the NPC is 00000123 and you need to rename the two files 00000123.nif and 00000123.dds
• Also, the files need to go into a specific directory to work. If your mod is called "mymod.esp" then the files need to go into the folders:
  • \meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\mymod.esp\00000123.nif
  • \textures\actors\character\facegendata\facetint\mymod.esp\00000123.dds
• Important to know: If your mod does not create these NPCs by itself originally, but if it overwrites exiting NPCs from the vanilla game or some other mod, then the folder structure above must not contain your mod's name but the name of the original mod, as you are overwriting those, not creating your own.
• Finally, in the NPC entry of your mod you need to list all the head parts which you also find in the nif (use NifSkope to check that). If this listing is not identical, Skyrim may ignore the entire nif and you will probably get a black face or potato head.

 

I hope this helps.

[Tlam99]

changes the body

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19353

 

changes the face

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41135

 

 

[KoolHndLuke]