How do you make non-unique NPC face changes permanent?

[Durante]

This irks me for some time now. Every time you change location the NPC's get the same original facepaints, grimes, dirts, makeup on them  until you open them in looksmenu and hover over the option, then they instantly revert to the changes you made

[MrFuturehope]

I am interested in this as well, although as a player more than a modder as I'm not much of a modder myself, so if the solution could be applied globally, that would be great and useful for me as well. I'm not sure if you're a modder, but perhaps this information may be useful to you at least as a theory. There is a mod which changes Codsworth into a human and as a bonus you have a holotape which allows you to change him from robot to human and vice versa as well as change his human appearance. Dialogues were also fixed with some lip sync treatment which is always very nice little touch that adds immersion for mods like this. The only problem with this mod is that you may have trouble to change his appearance and then keep it applied. Changing his appearance in looks menu doesn't seem to have any effect, but it actually does change the values, you just can't see it and in order to see the changes, you have to use the holotape to change him back to robot and then back to human and he will show up with his new face then. However, when you save your game and load it up again, he will have the old appearance again and so to restore his new look, you need to use the holotape to change him back to robot and then back to human again. This procedure was described in a forum post on the nexusmods page of this mod. My theory is, if you could somehow automate the refresh of his appearance in all those cases when he could lose his new appearance, it would have the same effect as saving his new appearance permanently. The question is - can this be done through modding, preferably on all characters with custom appearance at once? I don't know.

[Durante]

On 4/28/2021 at 10:23 PM, MrFuturehope said:

I am interested in this as well, although as a player more than a modder as I'm not much of a modder myself, so if the solution could be applied globally, that would be great and useful for me as well. I'm not sure if you're a modder, but perhaps this information may be useful to you at least as a theory. There is a mod which changes Codsworth into a human and as a bonus you have a holotape which allows you to change him from robot to human and vice versa as well as change his human appearance. Dialogues were also fixed with some lip sync treatment which is always very nice little touch that adds immersion for mods like this. The only problem with this mod is that you may have trouble to change his appearance and then keep it applied. Changing his appearance in looks menu doesn't seem to have any effect, but it actually does change the values, you just can't see it and in order to see the changes, you have to use the holotape to change him back to robot and then back to human and he will show up with his new face then. However, when you save your game and load it up again, he will have the old appearance again and so to restore his new look, you need to use the holotape to change him back to robot and then back to human again. This procedure was described in a forum post on the nexusmods page of this mod. My theory is, if you could somehow automate the refresh of his appearance in all those cases when he could lose his new appearance, it would have the same effect as saving his new appearance permanently. The question is - can this be done through modding, preferably on all characters with custom appearance at once? I don't know.

 

Yes it probably could be done, and would require some amount of scripting to make a function similar to EBD spell on skyrim, where it reapplies tint masks on an npc's face when used.

 

However, I also have to share an observation. Now that I remember, changes made to npc's like Nora from Nora mod stay permanent. My guess is unique npc's might not suffer from these issues, only non-unique ones like settlers.

[Karna5]

I think it's because non-unique NPCs don't have their own appearance but use a template of several shared appearances. When I decide I want to change a non-unique NPC, I take the lengthy steps of using FO4Edit to find all the appearances used by the template, and I write down the IDs. Then I create an override plugin of all those IDs (ESL-flagged ESP, but must have ESP extension). Next I use FO4 Face Ripper to put the LooksMenu presets I want into each of the IDs in the override plugin.

 

However, there are some mods (Just Business comes to mind, but I'm going off an old memory) which let you change the appearance of people you've enslaved. You could use a mod that lets you do something like that.

[Olmech]

If you SLM a non unique NPC and save their original look in looksmenu, then build their new look from that face it will stick providing they can be altered at all. Some cant.