Removing custom body/skin from standalone followers

[Andy14]

For players and playable races: Only the shader settings are relevant in the nif. Textures don't matter at all there, because they are defined within the ESP/ESM/ESL using TextureSets.

 

And the default skin (SkinNaked) is the armor that already uses all parts (Hands, Feet and Torso ArmorAddons and the associated TextureSets) - there is no mismatch.

Removing the WNAM - Worn Armor will result in the armor of the race being used - and that is SkinNaked. This means - the textures and meshes used by the player are used.

 

The only mismatch that can happen is that the facetint/headtexture doesn't match 100% (color tone).

But it doesn't match even when I manually edit all the standalone junk (Nif for Armor Addons and Textures for TextureSets).

[bnub345]

The facetint will never match 100% unless you remake it with the same skin texture as the body. But then you would have to apply all of the same makeup/scars/etc as the original, and some NPC replacers might even have manually painted facetints. 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

Just deleting the WNAM leaves her looking like this:

Spoiler

That dramatic neckseam clearly isn't really an acceptable solution.  

 

So I guess what you're saying is that the facegen has the custom skin baked into it, so removing the skin from the body is causing the problem?  Is there any way I can fix this, or is it just insurmountable?

 

I guess, in the case of some followers—Nasli here included—the authors also release the presets, so maybe the answer is that I just need to learn how to create followers from scratch myself, and then just use the presets?  That's somewhat daunting, but I guess it's doable.  Doesn't help with the most bloated followers of them all, though—all the stuff from the prolific "Coldsun1187" fellow—as there are no presets there. 

 

I know when I've praised mod authors on the Nexus for offering non-standalone versions, I've been told it only takes a couple extra minutes for them to offer that option; maybe I should just ask, I guess.  Somehow asking for help learning to fish feels a lot more comfortable than asking for a fish, though.  

[Tlam99]

Face uses skin provided with follower, body uses default.

I made you a lenghty description where to find the facegen nif and how to edit and why it's important.

Guess I will stop here.

[Antiope_Apollonia]

43 minutes ago, Tlam99 said:

Face uses skin provided with follower, body uses default.

I made you a lenghty description where to find the facegen nif and how to edit and why it's important.

Guess I will stop here.

Sorry, I'm trying to keep up, but this is a lot to take in, especially with trying to disentangle the conflicting things different people are saying.  I really appreciate your taking the time to explain this stuff.

 

So I guess you're saying that editing the NIF is how I make the head and body match, right?  I went back through your last couple of posts, and I've tried to follow your instructions there.  This is what I found, as I found it:

Spoiler

So the first thing is just to make sure I'm in the right place here.  I found this NIF at:

\Skyrim Special Edition\Data\meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\Nasli_Follower_Vampire.esp

It's unclear from the way things are named in the mod you used as an example, but I'm assuming it's the "GirlHead" line that I should be editing, right?  Is that the only line, or should I be messing with anything else here?

 

So I've tried to replace each part with the default equivalent.  Here's what I've come up with so far:

Spoiler

I think I've found the right textures for all but one of them.  I don't see any default equivalent to the "01_mily.dds" line.  Am I correct in understanding I'm not supposed to mess with this one?  So does this look like I've done it correctly?  Am I missing any Nifskope steps?  I'm pretty sure I understand your xEdit instructions at this point.

Edited June 21, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[Tlam99]

 

Only the part shown in nif scope example are skin textures.

Change this part only.

The texture you show is the face tint.

If the npc would have been made according to rules it would be under

textures/...........<nameofmo>.esp

But this guy put the face tint under body textures.

It works, but ....well ..not a good idea of creator to put it there

So check texture folders until you find something modname.esp.

This is the pkace where the engine searches.

[bnub345]

If the neck seam bothers you, the only way to fix it is to generate a new facetint. You can export from the CK, although I find it easier to work in racemenu and export from there. As I said before, this means you would have to do all of the makeup and scars and other facial details on your own as well. In fact it's one of the reasons these followers use custom body textures, so the facetint and body match without creating a seam. I guess you could try to edit the existing facetint and get it to match the body, but that's a lot of repetitive trial and error that will never match perfectly. 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

Sorry for abandoning this thread.  Trying to wrap my head around all this was giving me a headache, and I needed to step away for a couple days, then I got busy with offline stuff—including a girl!—and neglected to come back to it.  

 

So anyway, I can confirm that @bnub345 seems to be mistaken about this—seems to be a first—and @Tlam99's approach seems to be the right idea.  Following Tlam99's instructions, I was able to get Nasli looking mostly correct:

Spoiler

That's obviously my body, and there's no neckseam in the traditional sense—the skin matches on the body and face.  But the neck isn't meeting the body correctly.  Maybe you'd call it a seam, but it appears to be some kind of mesh issue rather than the typical texture neckseam.  Interestingly, I seem to have managed to do this successfully once or twice with other mods, but anything from this author, I'm getting the same issue.  The next NPC of his I tried shows the issue more clearly:

Spoiler

 

Any idea what I'm doing wrong with these?  Like I said, I can confirm that your method works, as I've managed to get it right at least once, but I can't seem to do it specifically with this author's work.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[bnub345]

@Antiope_Apollonia

 

Might be a weight bug. Look up the weight of the NPC, select them in the console and enter setweight xx (xx being the weight). This will fix the weight issue, might also need to disable and then enable in the console to fix the face.

 

As far as being wrong... I can't confirm or deny that it happens sometimes. But here, I tried to tell you how to do it the easy way... and you chose the hard way. What Tlam suggested isn't wrong, but it is a lot more effort than just deleting the WNAM entry and exporting a new facetint. And now you run into issues like the facegen being set to the wrong weight. Plus all of the makeup and face overlays are either gone or different from what the mod author created (not entirely sure what you did for this part). 

 

[Andy14]

It is important to know the weight of the NPC from which you want to use the face preset. The weight can be found in the CK or TESV edit.
Your follower needs the same weight.

 

If you want your own follower to have a different weight (according to the screenshot, your follower has a lower weight than the preset follower), then you can use setnpcweight xxx in the game using the console, as @bnub345 has already described

However, this is only a temporary solution and can cause a black face etc. at the next cell change.
And it causes that your followers don't have the weight you actually want to give.

 

Basically, Skrim works with a weight of 100. All other weights are scaled using morphs.

So in order to use the preset head properly, it must be available for weight 100.

 

You can do this by setting the body weight in RaceMenu that the preset Npc has.

Then import the preset head nif, set the body weight to 100 and then export the head again.

[Antiope_Apollonia]

12 minutes ago, Andy14 said:

It is important to know the weight of the NPC from which you want to use the face preset. The weight can be found in the CK or TESV edit.
Your follower needs the same weight.

I'm not making a follower from a preset.  I'm just modifying an existing follower. 

 

I haven't touched the weight in any of these examples—I haven't touched anything not directly related to trying to strip away the custom assets—so they have whatever weight their creators set for them.  But my experience has been that, as long as you don't do it in an existing game where the NPC has already been loaded, you can set NPC weights to whatever you want in xEdit without creating any neckseams or other issues.

 

3 hours ago, bnub345 said:

But here, I tried to tell you how to do it the easy way... and you chose the hard way.

Maybe I don't understand your advice, then, but it definitely seems like yours is the hard way.  It could well in fact be easier if I knew how to do it and knew how to use the relevant tools, but I wouldn't know where to begin with modifying or creating face tints.  Whereas Tlam's approach uses the tools I'm more comfortable with, and I feel like I'm starting to develop a working conceptual model of what I'm doing here.

 

3 hours ago, bnub345 said:

And now you run into issues like the facegen being set to the wrong weight.

I don't see how that can be the issue when I haven't touched the weight, but if that's it, then how would that happen, and how would I fix it?

[Andy14]

2 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

but it definitely seems like yours is the hard way

No it is not!

As @bnub345 and I wrote before, removing the WNAM would have been the easiest way. You have now used your textures there, which it would have used anyway without WNAM. This is called redundant data, which also makes no sense.

But it's your game - feel free to clutter up the RAM and VRAM as you like.

 

8 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I'm just modifying an existing follower. 

 

I haven't touched the weight in any of these examples

Is okay. I wrote you the solution how to fix neck gap. Obviously there is a neck gap - I don't care if you or the author made the mistake. This can be fixed with RaceMenu and the Sculp Tool + Mask. You now have the basic information you need to do this. Do what you want with it. I'm out of here.

[bnub345]

4 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I haven't touched the weight in any of these examples—I haven't touched anything not directly related to trying to strip away the custom assets—so they have whatever weight their creators set for them.  But my experience has been that, as long as you don't do it in an existing game where the NPC has already been loaded, you can set NPC weights to whatever you want in xEdit without creating any neckseams or other issues.

 

The facegen nif (which is literally the head of the NPC in game) will have a different neck size depending on the weight of the NPC it is generated from. If this weight is the same as the weight listed in the esp when the NPC is loaded, no seam. If it's not the same, you may get a seam. I think it's supposed to automatically fit the weight morph, but skyrim things happen and it doesn't always work. 

 

8 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

Maybe I don't understand your advice, then, but it definitely seems like yours is the hard way.  It could well in fact be easier if I knew how to do it and knew how to use the relevant tools, but I wouldn't know where to begin with modifying or creating face tints.  Whereas Tlam's approach uses the tools I'm more comfortable with, and I feel like I'm starting to develop a working conceptual model of what I'm doing here.

 

If you know how to use racemenu, you make a character in racemenu. And then export the face. That's it. Then all you have to do is move the files from the export folder to the facegen folders matching the NPC's formID and rename them.

 

10 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I don't see how that can be the issue when I haven't touched the weight, but if that's it, then how would that happen, and how would I fix it?

 

Something went wrong or the head wouldn't be floating above the neck. So you can either set the weight in the esp to whatever the facegen was made with, or do what Andy said and import the head > set weight to whatever > export the head, then set that weight in the esp.

[Tlam99]

4 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

I'm

check your pm 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

10 hours ago, Andy14 said:

As @bnub345 and I wrote before, removing the WNAM would have been the easiest way.

I've done this, and doing so is one of the steps in the process I've successfully used a couple of times.  But as we saw with Nasli earlier in the thread, if you just delete WNAM without also editing the head NIF per @Tlam99's instructions, you get a texture mismatch neckseam.

 

10 hours ago, Andy14 said:

This can be fixed with RaceMenu and the Sculp Tool + Mask.

But I'm editing existing followers, not creating new followers from a preset.  So how am I supposed to use RaceMenu?  I don't understand how you're suggesting I do this.  It's entirely possible I'm just missing something obvious—you guys are obviously way more knowledgeable than I am—but it seems like you're answering an entirely different question with this advice.  Learning to make followers from scratch is on my to do list, but that's not what we're talking about here.

 

10 hours ago, bnub345 said:

If this weight is the same as the weight listed in the esp when the NPC is loaded, no seam. If it's not the same, you may get a seam. I think it's supposed to automatically fit the weight morph, but skyrim things happen and it doesn't always work. 

For all the many dozens of follower mods I've experimented with—mostly not used as actual followers, but rather just populating Skyrim with appealing NPCs—I've yet to encounter one for which I couldn't edit the weight in xEdit safely without causing a neckseam as long as I did the edit before loading the NPC in game.  Including the Nasli follower we were looking at throughout the earlier discussion in this thread.  So, at least to a novice like me, it would seem that it can indeed, reliably, match the weight morph.  But it seems possible that something in my editing process has broken that functionality in some way, although it may be significant that the neckseam I'm getting from this project is of a very different sort than the kind of neckseam you get when you change NPC weights when they already exist in game.

 

10 hours ago, bnub345 said:

If you know how to use racemenu, you make a character in racemenu. And then export the face. That's it.

But again, I'm editing an existing follower, not creating a new one.  So how am I supposed to edit someone else's follower mod with RaceMenu?  Am I just missing something painfully obvious here?  I don't know of any way to do that.  If I'm supposed to be able to do so, then there's a step you guys are taking for granted that hasn't been explicated, and I guess that's probably where I'm getting hung up.

 

10 hours ago, bnub345 said:

So you can either set the weight in the esp to whatever the facegen was made with

Well, I haven't touched the weight in the ESP.  The facegen NIF works fine with the pre-set ESP weight before I mess with the textures, and I haven't touched the weight with anything I've done.  So I don't know how there could be a weight mismatch.  And I don't know how I would know what the "correct" weight is supposed to be other than to go by the weight set in the original ESP, which again, I haven't changed.  Is there some earlier step I'm supposed to know that I'm missing here?

 

6 hours ago, Tlam99 said:

check your pm 

Will do.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[bnub345]

1 hour ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

So how am I supposed to edit someone else's follower mod with RaceMenu?

 

Open racemenu, go to the sculpt tab in the top right, and hit F9 to import head. This pulls from data\skse\plugins\chargen\ by default; if your racemenu doesn't have this folder, just make it yourself. Put the facegen nif in this folder to edit the NPC head in racemenu. Keep in mind that heads made with high poly won't work with vanilla heads and vice versa. 

 

1 hour ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

And I don't know how I would know what the "correct" weight is supposed to be

 

Should be whatever the esp is set to, but only the mod author could tell you what the weight was that they made the head with. 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

1 hour ago, bnub345 said:

Open racemenu, go to the sculpt tab in the top right, and hit F9 to import head. This pulls from data\skse\plugins\chargen\ by default; if your racemenu doesn't have this folder, just make it yourself. Put the facegen nif in this folder to edit the NPC head in racemenu. Keep in mind that heads made with high poly won't work with vanilla heads and vice versa. 

Wait, so does this mean that I can copy the NIF for a follower from the data\meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom folder into that folder, then change things like the makeup, hair, etc. with Racemenu, re-export it, and replace the original NIF with the new one?  Could I even go so far as to replace the head part with the vampire head part, for example, to make a vampire version of a mortal follower?  If so, that's a bloody revelation!  Or would there be additional steps involved in editing the face like that without breaking things?  My working conceptual model of how FaceGen works in Skyrim is still shaky at best—although at least it's getting to be better than non-existent. 

 

At any rate, this seems to be the missing link in your and @Andy14's advice and explains why I've been so confused this whole time.  Thanks for clearing that up, and sorry for my thickheadedness.

 

So, I think I understand what you two have been telling me to do now.  Please correct me if I'm still off track:

1. Delete the WNAM line from the NPC record in xEdit.
2. Copy the head NIF from the data\meshes\... into the data\skse\... folder.
3. Import the head NIF into RaceMenu.
4. Am I missing a step here?
5. Export the head NIF from RaceMenu.
6. Copy the head NIF from the data\skse\... back into the data\meshes\... folder.

This seems too simple if for no other reason than that, if it's so easy to import a follower into RaceMenu, why does every follower mod on the Nexus have a dozen people in the comments asking for the author to release it as a preset?  I feel like I must be missing something, but maybe people are just even more ignorant than me—seems hard to fathom in the context of this thread.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Antiope_Apollonia

[bnub345]

@Antiope_Apollonia

 

Yes, it's that easy. With the caveat that you need to have all of the same face parts the mod author used. So if they have some eyebrow mod and you don't, racemenu won't properly import the brows. As for nexus comments, I think those speak for themselves. The amount of people that can't even install a texture pack is pretty amazing. 

 

There are multiple steps to make someone a vampire, it's actually a separate race. And there are various checks the game makes for flags and factions to determine vampire status, it isn't just the head part. 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

11 minutes ago, bnub345 said:

There are multiple steps to make someone a vampire, it's actually a separate race.

Is it difficult?  How do you access the correct race?  From the vampire followers I've been looking at, they don't seem to be using different races, but maybe I'm not looking in the right place.  Honestly, this whole thread started because I wanted a nice vampire follower to explore SLTR's vampire Mistress features, and there just aren't really any out there that both have a face I love and don't force a body on me with proportions completely out of line with my taste.  If I could turn followers I like into vampires, that'd be a game-changer.

 

35 minutes ago, bnub345 said:

With the caveat that you need to have all of the same face parts the mod author used.

That's not a trivial catch, but it's certainly workable.  How does this work with followers ported from LE to SE, though, which is a substantial fraction of them?

 

40 minutes ago, bnub345 said:

And there are various checks the game makes for flags and factions to determine vampire status, it isn't just the head part. 

The main things I'm aware of are ActorTypeUndead and Vampire keywords, which are trivial to set in xEdit.  I haven't seen any special factions on vampire followers; what would they be, and what would they be needed for?

 

I know SLTR only checks the Vampire keyword, so conceivably any follower could fill that role without even changing the head part, but that'd look mighty strange.  But I'd guess changing the head part from Nord to VampireNord or whatever would change the teeth and unlock the vampire eye options?  What would be missing at that point in practical terms?

[bnub345]

19 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

Is it difficult?  How do you access the correct race?

 

You have to set the playable flag for something to show up in racemenu. I think the vampire head part option in racemenu only switches the head nif itself. You don't get the vampire textures or fangs, that's only with the vampire races. I guess the race isn't necessary though, if you manually switch out the meshes and textures in nifskope. Like the vanilla vampire Alva in Morthal isn't actually using the nord vampire race, she's just a nord. So it's up to you whether to use the race or just add the parts you want. 

 

22 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

How does this work with followers ported from LE to SE, though, which is a substantial fraction of them?

 

Shouldn't make a difference. If some part they used isn't ported, it's trivial to convert the meshes to SSE format with CAO or NifOptimizer etc. 

 

24 minutes ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

The main things I'm aware of are ActorTypeUndead and Vampire keywords, which are trivial to set in xEdit.  I haven't seen any special factions on vampire followers; what would they be, and what would they be needed for?

 

Yes, those are the keywords. I don't think anything else matters as far as followers are concerned, it's more of an aesthetic thing. 

[Antiope_Apollonia]

On 7/26/2022 at 8:48 PM, bnub345 said:

You have to set the playable flag for something to show up in racemenu.

Is there any downside to doing this, aside from very slightly cluttering the character creation process?  I had a little rummage around in SSEEDit, and it looks trivial to do.  Evidently, this would also allow for solving the annoyance of not being able to sell slaves to the elderly with AYGAS.

 

On 7/26/2022 at 8:48 PM, bnub345 said:

I think the vampire head part option in racemenu only switches the head nif itself. You don't get the vampire textures or fangs, that's only with the vampire races.

I'd assumed the fangs and eyes were the whole point of the vampire head.  If the vampire head doesn't even do that, then what does it do?

 

On 7/26/2022 at 8:48 PM, bnub345 said:

Shouldn't make a difference. If some part they used isn't ported, it's trivial to convert the meshes to SSE format with CAO or NifOptimizer etc. 

Well, you say that... ? One thing to learn at a time.

 

---

 

So, all this raises another question.  If I can use Racemenu in game to generate a new NIF, and then just replace the original NIF with this new one, well, what are the limits of this idea of NIF replacement?

 

Evidently, I don't fully understand how NPC replacers work.  For that matter, I'm not completely clear on exactly what "FaceGen" refers to—is it just a name for the head NIF?  Or the NIF plus the corresponding DDS file, I guess?  That seems much simpler than I've always imagined.  I've noticed most NPC replacers, including those that use default body and skin, come with an ESP.  But some don't.  Some are just the NIF and DDS.  Why do some default replacers need ESPs and some don't?  And beyond that, how far can one take this "just replace the NIF" strategy?  Could one, for example, just take the head NIF from one NPC replacer, rename and repack it, and use it for a different NPC?  Again, that seems too easy.  I feel like I must still be missing something here.

[bnub345]

3 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

Is there any downside to doing this, aside from very slightly cluttering the character creation process?

 

It shouldn't do anything bad, but there may be some obscure situation where it breaks the game. Only Todd knows for sure.

 

3 hours ago, Antiope_Apollonia said:

If the vampire head doesn't even do that, then what does it do?

 

 

Makes the cheeks more sunken (unless you use a mod to change that).

 

Facegen is just the program Beth used to export head models. The mesh is exported to FaceGeom and the texture to FaceTint. I throw the terms around rather loosely, I guess it can be confusing. Anyway, it's actually kind of stupid the way facegen works. The head is exported as a pre-made mesh so the game can render it faster than loading all the separate head parts defined in the esp. But it still checks the esp records, and if they don't match with the facegen, you get the dark face bug.

 

Also, you can't import the facetint into racemenu. The player is the only actor that actually has the separate head parts and textures loaded on the fly rather than using the premade ones from facegen. 

 

Some things you have to set in the esp rather than the nif, because they add extra parts. Like the one blind eye thing, it actually uses two different eyeball meshes so it has an extra part compared to normal eyes. Or hair with HDT physics, extra part. The number of headparts is defined in the esp, if the number doesn't match the facegen mesh you get dark face. 

 

You can swap out facegen files between different NPCs but there are some rules to it.

• The names and numbers of the head parts in the facegen mesh and esp must match or you get dark face
• The NPCs must be the same gender and race. There are different tri files (morphs) for different genders and races, weird things happen if they don't match
• The facegen mesh must be made at the same weight the NPC has or you get a neck seam

And the head part number thing adds some limitations. Vanilla hair is all one part, but KS hair almost always has at least two. There is a naming convention to get around this. So let's say you have an esp with the hair listed as HairDefault, but you want to change it out with a hair that has two parts. You can name the parts HairDefault and HairDefault2. If you needed a third part, it would be HairDefault3, etc.