Removing custom body/skin from standalone followers

[Antiope_Apollonia]

How hard would it be to strip down so-called "standalone" followers that are packaged with custom bodies and skins to just basically be a custom facegen and an NPC record?  

 

Obviously there are some meshes that would become redundant; should I expect it to be intuitive to figure out which meshes and textures to delete, and which are needed for the face?  And once they're deleted, the ESP will presumably need to be edited to remove references to these meshes and textures.  Can that be done with SSEEdit, or do I need to mess around with the CK?  Can anyone talk me through what edits I'd need to make?

 

Furthermore, in cases when followers are packaged with completely egregious FOMODs, how hard is it to strip that down and just make a normal archive?

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited June 18, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[Fotogen]

If you learn enough to remove custom body from follower, sometimes even custom race, then you should have enough know-how to make a new follower and just copy/paste face.

 

Just "copy-paste" face would be faster and easier.

 

Don't install "monster" follower and google how to transfer only face?

[27X]

If you're on glorious ultra 64 with glorious infinite mods you shouldn't be needing to do anything about whether a follower has custom assets or not.

[Antiope_Apollonia]

24 minutes ago, 27X said:

If you're on glorious ultra 64 with glorious infinite mods you shouldn't be needing to do anything about whether a follower has custom assets or not.

What does that have to do with anything?  I don't want those custom assets—I want my own body that I've worked hard to tailor to my taste.  And I don't want to waste SSD space on a bunch of 50-100mb mods when 5mb mods would suit my preferences better anyway; it's not much for any single mod, but it adds up.

[Andy14]

10 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

How hard would it be to strip down so-called "standalone" followers that are packaged with custom bodies and skins to just basically be a custom facegen and an NPC record?  

 

Obviously there are some meshes that would become redundant; should I expect it to be intuitive to figure out which meshes and textures to delete, and which are needed for the face?  And once they're deleted, the ESP will presumably need to be edited to remove references to these meshes and textures.  Can that be done with SSEEdit, or do I need to mess around with the CK?  Can anyone talk me through what edits I'd need to make?

 

Furthermore, in cases when followers are packaged with completely egregious FOMODs, how hard is it to strip that down and just make a normal archive?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

A few clicks in the Creation Kit:
 

Step 1: Open the NPC in the Actor Window. (Sort by Form ID by clicking on the Form ID column to find faster)
 

Step 2: In the Actor switch to the Traits tab and select the Default Armor Form "SkinNaked" for Skin instead of the Standalone Armor Form "BlaBlaBla". Apply the change with OK and close the actor.
 

Spoiler

Before:

 

Spoiler

After:

Step 3: In the search/filter box, type * and switch to *All in the categories on the left. In the Object Frame, sort by Form ID again.
 

Spoiler

Step 4: Delete all forms that are no longer used - in the correct order.

First, the armor. Second the Armor Addons and last the TextureSets.

If you don't know where the nifs and textures are saved, open the Armor Addons and the TextureSets and have a look. Then you can later delete the Nif's and DDS from the hard disk (or the complete folder)
 

That's all to let the standalone follower use your body and textures.
 

Edited June 19, 2022 by Andy14

[Grey Cloud]

Or you could use TESVEdit.

[Antiope_Apollonia]

Here's a good example of the sort of follower I'd like to pare down.  Probably should have included that in the OP.  Lots of custom assets packaged into a FOMOD.  Ugh, I just want to simplify!  

 

15 hours ago, Andy14 said:

A few clicks in the Creation Kit:

So I tried following your steps, but something has gone horribly wrong.  The above follower ended up with this horrifying mess:

Spoiler

Any idea where I'm most likely to have erred?

 

I actually got closer attempting to fumble around blindly in SSEEdit; ended up with the most dramatic neck seam I've ever seen, but at least the body was more or less okay, and the face didn't get deformed.  

 

7 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Or you could use TESVEdit.

Elaborate?  I'd love to use xEdit instead of the CK—I know the tool better, and it's more intuitive generally—but "Just do the thing" isn't really an answer to "How do I do a thing?"

[Grey Cloud]

I'm assuming that you have your own body mesh and skin textures that you want the followers to have and that you want to get rid of the armour (and weapons?) they come with. I'm also assuming that you are talking about multiple followers rather than just one or two.

 

I had 260+ in my game, all using the body and skin I wanted and all wearing what I wanted. I did it with TESVEdit because it is a lot less frustrating than the CK.

 

There's various ways you can go about this but this is what I did.

 

Create a folder called, e.g. Follower Meshes in Data\Meshes or wherever. (I haven't got Skyrim installed any more so I can give you the file path). Put your body meshes in there. Do the same for the skin textures in Data\Textures.

 

Open up a follower's esp and point the meshes and textures to wherever you put those folders.

 

You can delete all sorts of stuff you don't want while you are in there - the ten thousand perks or spells followers come with and whatnot like setting default outfit and weapon.

 

You can delete the unwanted meshes and textures from the archive to cut down on unnecessary files. Don't forget to put your edited esp into the archive so you can just uninstall\reinstall to your heart's content without have you remember to swap over the esp.

 

Once you get your head around which are the relevant entries in TESVEdit then it is quite simple and your biggest enemy is typos.

 

I use Are you There(?) to beam straight to a follower in the game to check if my edits had worked.

 

When it was all done I had 260 followers using one set of meshes and one set of textures thus saving lots of memory plus I could easily change the meshes or textures with a simple copy and paste into the two folders.

 

With the right mesh you can get a good variety of shapes and sizes.

All with greatswords and Melodic outfits randomly assigned from a patch containing about 10-12 outfits.



 

Older version when everyone wore the same gear.

 

 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

I'm assuming that you have your own body mesh and skin textures that you want the followers to have

I just want them to use the default skin/body that all NPCs in my game—from my PC to vanilla NPCs to non-standalone followers like this—already use.

 

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

and that you want to get rid of the armour (and weapons?) they come with.

I have no problem editing gear, class, combat style, location, etc.  I routinely customise all of this to my taste with xEdit already.  But the visual attributes feel like something of another beast.

 

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

I'm also assuming that you are talking about multiple followers rather than just one or two.

I'd be quite happy with one or two for a start, but once I know how to do it, if it isn't an overly intrusive process, I'm sure the number will grow over time.  

 

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

Create a folder called, e.g. Follower Meshes in Data\Meshes or wherever. (I haven't got Skyrim installed any more so I can give you the file path). Put your body meshes in there. Do the same for the skin textures in Data\Textures.

This shouldn't be necessary for what I'm trying to do.  If you look at a follower that's released as non-standalone, there are no meshes or textures for body/skin at all.  It's just a head and an ESP, basically.  That's what I'm aiming for.

 

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

Once you get your head around which are the relevant entries in TESVEdit then it is quite simple and your biggest enemy is typos.

Well this is the part I need help with.  I don't really have any idea which are the relevant entries in xEdit.  And it's not an easy thing to figure out by trial and error.  My best effort guessing my way through how to do it with xEdit turned out less horrifying than my attempt to follow the CK instructions, but I'm left with this dramatic neck seam:

Spoiler

 

Another question worth asking here is, if this can be done with xEdit, is it possible to use xEdit to open an ESP without having installed said mod?  I haven't figured out how to do so—if I try selecting SSEEdit.exe as the programme to open the file, it still opens my installed load order—but that would somewhat streamline the process of building a new archive to install the stripped down version of the follower.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[Andy14]

6 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

Any idea where I'm most likely to have erred?

I have described what is necessary to use the current default body. I intentionally didn't go into facetints and headparts.

I suspect you either did more in CK than was necessary e.g. CTRL+F4 or

you deleted FaceGeometry ( meshes\Actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\Nasli_Follower_Healer.esp\00000807.nif ).

Because what you see in your screen is the ugly vanilla head.

 

This follower mod also uses custom headparts like eyebrows, hair and eyes. So if you only want your body and body textures to be used, just do step 2 above.

 

 

I know you can do that with TESVEdit too. I work with it often. But in this case, the slow CK is more appropriate.

You don't have to copy and paste an ID in the CK and you can see the changes in the preview.


PS: and if you describe what you want to use from the follower mod, then i can also tell you how to prepare this FOMOD so that you can also install the mod normally.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Andy14

[Tlam99]

Xedit

Open follower esp and check for another fllower using default skin.

Doubleclick  and only copy part before nif.

Should be something like actors/character/characterassets/female/

Paste this into follower, before nif (leave nif part intact.

Do same for texture path to use default texture.

(Do not delete textures in esp, as some heads might use it.)

Now you got in esp path set to default. Double check head, if there is a path setting.

Caveeat, some modders use a high map part in textures pointing to a female dds.

Use path setting as before but set to male (female).

As you use the default path now, delete worn armor of follower.

 

Now outside esp

Nifscope

Edit facegen nif and do same path settings for textures as in esp.

Click on right side face, expand on left side and last entry in the expanded you find texture path.

(remember little male part if you find 5 entries in nif)

 

Do NOT use ck ctrl f4 !

Ck does not use all resources on building head mesh, result vanilla head.

 

Now everything should be set to default and you can delete everything like textures, nifs (leave head nif if there, but check texture path)

This is for regular follower not using own race.

 

PS:

I wrote this out of head,  not sitting before pc, so forgive any wrong path, just ckeck it the way mentioned.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Tlam99

[Antiope_Apollonia]

1 hour ago, Andy14 said:

I suspect you either did more in CK than was necessary e.g. CTRL+F4 or

you deleted FaceGeometry ( meshes\Actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\Nasli_Follower_Healer.esp\00000807.nif ).

Because what you see in your screen is the ugly vanilla head.

I don't think so.  I tried to follow your instructions to the letter; I don't know what I'm doing enough in the CK to be taking actions like CTRL+F4 on my own initiative.  I just cleanly reinstalled the mod to start over, and without touching anything, the preview is the same deformed mess:

Spoiler

So I guess something else is going on here?  She looked fine in-game before I touched the CK, even after messing with her in xEdit, so I don't know what's going on.

 

1 hour ago, Andy14 said:

I know you can do that with TESVEdit too. I work with it often. But in this case, the slow CK is more appropriate.

You don't have to copy and paste an ID in the CK and you can see the changes in the preview.

Honestly, if it can be done in xEdit, I'd probably rather work in xEdit.  I have a pretty good handle on that tool, so the learning curve shouldn't be very steep, whereas in the CK, I feel pretty much lost most of the time—I'm definitely an easier student for xEdit.  Plus, I'm going to be doing other things with any follower I install in xEdit, anyway, so I might as well do everything in one pass if that's possible.

 

1 hour ago, Andy14 said:

PS: and if you describe what you want to use from the follower mod, then i can also tell you how to prepare this FOMOD so that you can also install the mod normally.

Well, thus far, I've been working with the Vampire Follower version, but I may end up using the basic Follower version.  I don't know for sure yet; once I get a handle on how to deal with this, it'll open up a lot of follower possibilities for me, so I don't know where the chips will land yet.  I need one vampire follower for what I want to do with my next playthrough, and not being able to find one I liked is a big part of what motivated me to want to learn to do this, so that's where I've started, but if I don't have to worry about avoiding custom bodies that I hate, I'll have a lot of options, so I don't know if Nasli will be the final choice of vampire or not.  She's cute, though, so I'll find somewhere to put her—non-vampire—if I'm not going to use her for that.  

 

Anyway, I digress.  I'd much rather just get rid of the FOMOD entirely and repackage the archive with only the components I need rather than "fix" the FOMOD.  

[Antiope_Apollonia]

So let's compare two followers.  I've linked both of them previously in this thread, but let's look at them side-by-side.  Nevermind anything else about them; let's just worry about their bodies.  Just to make sure we're all on the same page and have some common examples for reference.

 

Ichigo is non-standalone and correctly uses my bodyslide in-game.  

In SSEEdit, I see this:

Spoiler

And in game, I see this (after stripping her with NFF):

Spoiler

 

So now let's look at Nasli.  Nasli is a stanalone follower with custom assets (oof!):

In SSEEdit, I see pretty much the same records, but the big difference I can recognise is that WNAM is empty for Ichigo, but has the custom asset for Nasli.

Spoiler

In game, you can see the custom assets in play:

Spoiler

 

So let's just take that as the starting point lest there be any confusion.  What I'm trying to do is turn followers like Nasli into followers like Ichigo.  

 

1 hour ago, Tlam99 said:

Xedit

It's obvious from having read many of your posts that you possess a wealth of knowledge about modding that I can only aspire to.  But it seems like I very often see you have to answer questions twice, because—as often happens to experts when talking to relative novices—you forget about The Curse of Knowledge.  This is one such case.  I'm sorry, but I just don't know enough to know how to follow your instructions.  

 

1 hour ago, Tlam99 said:

Open follower esp and check for another fllower using default skin.

Doubleclick  and only copy part before nif.

Should be something like actors/character/characterassets/female/

Paste this into follower, before nif (leave nif part intact.

Do same for texture path to use default texture.

(Do not delete textures in esp, as some heads might use it.)

Now you got in esp path set to default. Double check head, if there is a path setting.

Caveeat, some modders use a high map part in textures pointing to a female dds.

Use path setting as before but set to male (female).

As you use the default path now, delete worn armor of follower.

I'm not sure where to begin here.  What records am I to be editing?  Is this where I should be (best I could come up with after bumbling around a bit)?

Spoiler

Having no idea what I'm doing here, I need a bit more specificity in the instructions.

 

1 hour ago, Tlam99 said:

Now outside esp

Nifscope

Edit facegen nif and do same path settings for textures as in esp.

Click on right side face, expand on left side and last entry in the expanded you find texture path.

(remember little male part if you find 5 entries in nif)

Again, I don't know where to begin.  In this case, I don't even know what to open in Nifskope, let alone what lines to be editing once I get there.  

 

Sorry if I'm being thick, but I need a little more handholding here.  I have a pretty good working knowledge of xEdit as a tool, but I have almost no experience messing with meshes, textures, nifs, etc. beyond extremely basic things like editing equip slots.  So I need explanations that don't assume background knowledge.  Illustrations are also extremely helpful, but I can follow step-by-step instructions as long as all the steps are explicit, without taking things for granted.

 

Thanks for your patience and ongoing assistance.  

[Tlam99]

5 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

Having no idea what I'm doing here, I need a bit more specificity in the instructions

This picture shows the default path to your default body.

Use this as reference, copy paste.

Wait, will be on pc later, in ca 3h.

Will make some screens.

[Tlam99]

1 hour ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I don't know where to begin

some screens what should clarify the description above

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Andy14]

Instead of setting the nifs for hands, feet, and body to the default path, it's easier to use the right armor right away. In this case, the SkinNaked. This armor consists of the ArmorAddon for hands, feet and body. And the right texture sets are already used in these Armor Addons.
It is therefore not necessary to use additional data sets for the same nifs and the same textures.

In TESVEdit and xEdit: Skyrim.esm -> Category Armor -> Search for EditorID SkinNaked.
In SkinNaked double click on FormID. Mark the ID in the window - right-click-> copy

 

Copy the id

 

 

Go to your follower mod and select the follower in category NPC

The armor is stored in WNAM - Worn Armor.


Right click -> Edit -> Confirm warning with Yes -> Paste the copied ID and Enter

This is how it should look now.

 

That's all.

[Tlam99]

51 minutes ago, Andy14 said:

rmor right away. In this case, the SkinNaked

you don't need worn armor on default skin and vanilla race.

It's even wrong, like skin on skin and causes invisible werewolf

[Andy14]

39 minutes ago, Tlam99 said:

you don't need worn armor on default skin and vanilla race.

It's even wrong, like skin on skin and causes invisible werewolf

If it's a vanilla race then what you say is true. In this case, the entry WNAM - Worn Armor - can simply be deleted with a right-click -> Remove. However, using the custom armor and the reference to the nifs and changing the texture sets is still completely unnecessary.

[Tlam99]

1 minute ago, Andy14 said:

If it's a vanilla race

 

We are talking about default skin and default mesh. This is what the TO asked.

 

Even on custom race worn armor is not needed. Then enter armor skin into race.

It is only needed if you use a special custom female body made e.g. in BS. Then you need to wear the new skin over the default skin defined in race.

 

[Grey Cloud]

10 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I just want them to use the default skin/body that all NPCs in my game

@Tlam99 seems to have posted on that.

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I'd be quite happy with one or two for a start, but once I know how to do it, if it isn't an overly intrusive process, I'm sure the number will grow over time.  

I didn't start with 260. Things just sort of got out of hand. ?

 

10 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

Another question worth asking here is, if this can be done with xEdit, is it possible to use xEdit to open an ESP without having installed said mod? 

Just drop the esp into the data folder (or the MO equivalent) and T5E will load it (make the esp is active).

[Grey Cloud]

10 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I don't really have any idea which are the relevant entries in xEdit.

Trial and error is an option here. As long as you have a back up of the esp then there's no harm done. You will only break that follower if you mess up. You can also do a 'compare and contrast' with two different esps, e.g. a standalone follower and a follower which uses your default stuff.

[Andy14]

7 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

So I guess something else is going on here?  She looked fine in-game before I touched the CK, even after messing with her in xEdit, so I don't know what's going on.

 

I don't use Skyrim SE, but I downloaded the mod. The only thing to do to use the default meshes and textures is (xEdit):

Right click on WNAM - Worn Armor -> Remove.

Spoiler

(just an example image from another follower mod. In your mod there should be AAA_GirlBody)

 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

Those illustrations helped a lot.  I don't think I'm quite there yet, but I'm definitely starting to develop a conceptual model of what we're doing here, and I think I've just about got it figured out.  Thanks again for your ongoing assistance!

 

So here's what I've done so far with Nasli.  I've taken the screenshots before saving, so all my edits are in bold.

 

The "Body" Armour Addon:

Spoiler

If I compare this to Ichigo, one question is whether I should mess with the Male textures or the "Female Skin Texture Swap" field.  If you look at the record from Ichigo, you can see that there are entries for all of these lines, although Nasli's record has nothing to replace in the rest of them:

Spoiler

 

The Head Part:

Spoiler

Not sure I understood your instruction here.  This edit matches Ichigo and seemed intuitively like maybe the right thing to do at the time, but I'm not sure.  Now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have touched anything in this record?

 

Non-Player Character (Actor):

Spoiler

Just deleted the WNAM field.  (I went ahead and deleted some unrelated things here, too, just to clean it up—I'll go back and customise that stuff once the texture/mesh stuff is sorted.)

 

Texture Set:

Spoiler

Your instructions were quite clear here.  Pretty sure I've done this correctly.

 

What about the Hands/Feet stuff?  I guess I should replicate exactly the same procedure there as I did with the torso?

 

If you want to see the current state of my ESP, I've attached that, too, but I guess the screenshots should cover everything.

Nasli_Follower_Vampire.esp

 

As for Nifskope, I need some more context for this:

13 hours ago, Tlam99 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

For a start, what NIF am I even editing here?  You lost me with this step.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[bnub345]

You're making this a lot harder than it needs to be. If you want a follower to use your standard body assets, delete the WNAM entry in xEdit like Andy said. The unused assets won't hurt anything and you're likely to mess something up trying to remove them. The meshes are probably only a couple mb anyway. If the texture size really bothers you, just delete the femalebody/femalebody_n/femalebody_s textures, or whatever the mod has named them. 

[Tlam99]

NPC consists of 4 parts.

Hands, feet, head, body.

If you use the default skin, it must be replaced on all parts.

Otherwise you will see a tone mismatch.

Head is special.

It got a facegen, because of hair eyes etc.

Click trough folders, you will find facegen and a folder Ichigo.esp.

Inside this you will find the head mesh. A nif with same ID as the follower itself.

As you changed all texture paths for body, hands, feed you must set the path to default in this nif.

If you use the default body, hand, feet mesh, this meshes are already set to default texture.

Otherwise (no default body, hand, feet mesh), you would need to open all in nifscope and set to default.

Custom body they look like .../femalebody_0     femalebody_1    femalehands_0    and so on.

Remember, the facegen nifs always are named with an ID, same ID as npc.

Like FE000800.nif. 

Do not fiddle around with facetint !

In doubt set it pure white. It's crucial to know what is the difference between tone and tint.

Tint shifts the spectrum of the hue, tint is not color, it does similar thing like saturation but more.

That's the reason a tint mask works even on changing to another skin.

An easy way to fix the tint mask:

Copy whole mod into a folder on e.g. desktop.

Open ck and select follower, activate a setting, but do not change.

Press ok and then ctrl f4.

Now a lot of garbage will be created (your backup for this reason) but one valuable thing, too!

The tintmask

Copy this one into your backup on desktop.

Never use the tintmask to fix tone mismatch, endless game as it shifts sprectrum (like daylight, bulb light

correction in photography)

Tone mismatch is caused by wrong path to different skins.

To give you a rough idea of hue and tint, if intested google for more info.

 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tint+hue+shade&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pngitem.com%2Fpimgs%2Fm%2F381-3814392_color-wheel-hue-tint-tone-shade-hd-png.png

 

 

Some clarifying info

In textures you will find a similar file, the tintmask.

Same as with nif, under Ichigo.esp. This is the texture file mentioned in the image of the nifscope you asked for more info.

So

ALL path for ALL parts must point to same textures to avoid tone mismatch.

 

I cannot give you the path to facegen nif, it's different on custom made followers.

Open meshes, click trough subfolders until you see one with same name as esp,

Like Ichigo.esp.

Inside you find the facegen nif <follower id>.nif.

As otherwise mentioned, it is not a good idea just deleting worn armor without editing 

facegen nif in nifscope. Results in the famous tone mismatch.

 

Facegen nif overwrites headmesh sometimes found under custom body meshes.

For me it is a bad behaviour to set textures path in head mesh to anything other than default.

Imagine, an error in facegen nif, like forget setting blank detail to male.

The nif will be aborted and the engine uses the head mesh instead.

But the textures pointing to are deleted, as you don't need them.

Famous dark face bug, can become even worse, the dark brown. 

Later is baked into save. You ne saveclean and remove/delete folliwer out of save.

So, ALWAYS work in a clean way, set everything as it has to be, never think, it works, the engine corrected it

as facegen overwrote head mesh.

A little glitch, lag can destroy the chain and results in wrong tints, whatever.

Set everything as it has to be, not just think, it works, it must be ok.

This is the quint essence in modding, clean up the chains, set everything as it has to be.

 

Edited June 21, 2022 by Tlam99