Is it possible to turn body meshes into "armors"?

[rookie189]

Hey so I'm trying to give around 20ish npc's of a custom race (Vulpine) all unique tattoos and was wondering if it's possible to create a custom armor using the Type3 body mesh, for example, and then just assigning the mesh unique textures with nifskope?

 

I renamed the body mesh, pointed it to renamed textures with nifskope, and created a custom armor with the mesh in the geck thinking it would be that simple but it's like my default body texture keeps overriding the "armor".

 

My character has a tattoo by default:

Spoiler

 

So, I renamed the body mesh and gave it new textures in nifskope:

Spoiler

 

It acts like its working in both nifskope and in the geck model viewer and yet when I equip the armor in game, or give it to an npc, even though I'm getting the armor benefits from it, it's like my default texture just overrides it and I still see the tattoo. I've also tried making a custom texture set in the geck and assigning it to the armor with no luck.

 

I feel like I'm missing something obvious because the mesh acts like its working, like it's not turning my character invisible, it's just not using the right texture.

[A.J.]

I'd try to create a custom race per model. If you check the top menu you also find Races, where you can duplicate the Vulpine and then modify the texture path for the naked body, then you give a specific npc that specific race

[rookie189]

3 hours ago, A.J. said:

where you can duplicate the Vulpine and then modify the texture path for the naked body

 

I was afraid that was going to be the only way, so I tried playing around with it before and couldn't figure out how to rename the duplicated race from Vulpinecopy0000, Vulpinecopy0001, etc. but it occurred to me I could rename/edit it in FNVEdit which turned out to be way easier than creating 20 meshes.

 

I was also worried it would bork the tails since they're equipped via script but I can't even tell the script is race specific so I just added them manually and according to FNVEdit there's no issues so I guess 20 unique races would be the quickest and easiest.

 

Appreciate it!