How to change hair color of specific NPC or Wig in either NifScope or Creation Kit

[Aki K]

Creation kit only provides limited selection for NPCs based on vanilla haircolors. I tried nifscope but the changes didn't take despite my best efforts.

 

Literally all I want to do is make it so that a specific wig, when equipped, is white hair. Right now it changes to whatever the character's hair color is. So I either need to change the wig or a specific NPC who i plan to equip it to.

 

I tried:

• Going into nifscope, finding bshader for the NPCs hair, changing it to the desired color (white) and saving the .nif over the old one. In game result was that nothing changed.
• Using creation kit to change the NPCs hair color, but the only options are a specific set of vanilla hair colors (none of the options allow for white hair. Closest is a light blond but it isn't nearly close enough).

 

[Alessia Wellington]

Have you tried going to BSLightingShaderProperty and changing the colour in Hair Tint Color?

[Aki K]

4 minutes ago, Alessia Wellington said:

Have you tried going to BSLightingShaderProperty and changing the colour in Hair Tint Color?

Yes. I may have misnamed it in my above post. In game effect was no change.

[Alessia Wellington]

4 minutes ago, Aki K said:

Yes.

 

Try changing the shader type to default, set emissive colour to white and emissive multiple to 5.

[Aki K]

4 hours ago, Alessia Wellington said:

 

Try changing the shader type to default, set emissive colour to white and emissive multiple to 5.

I'll try it. I hope it works.

 

EDIT: No effect. NPC still has the exact same hair color as original.

Edited February 25, 2024 by Aki K

[Alessia Wellington]

4 hours ago, Aki K said:

No effect. NPC still has the exact same hair color as original.

 

And if you adjust the hair's textures as well?

[Aki K]

9 hours ago, Alessia Wellington said:

 

And if you adjust the hair's textures as well?

I thought I did. Could you give a more step by step as to how you do it?

[Alessia Wellington]

1 hour ago, Aki K said:

Could you give a more step by step as to how you do it?

 

I'm using paint.net so I don't know how it'd work with other programs.

 

Set the primary colour to white. Select the 'Recolor' tool. Set the brush size to something reasonable for the texture you're editing. Usually 100 works quite well. Depending on what spot you're starting recolouring, it may take a few tries to get the colour you want. Once you're satisfied with the result, save the .dds file. Check the result in-game.

 

Repeat the recolouring if necessary 'till you've got the desired colour for your hair.

[bnub345]

If you are trying to change the texture for a certain hair mesh, that won't do what you want. What you need to do is find the facegen mesh for whatever NPC you are trying to edit and change the rgb values for the hair in nifskope. Facegen files are stored by baseID for the NPC. Let's say you want to change the hair color of Ysolda. Her baseID is 00013BAB. So open the data folder to meshes\actors\character\FaceGeom\skyrim.esm\00013BAB.nif. Open this .nif up in nifskope. Under the face node, you should find a NiTriShape header for the hair. Open this header and select the BSLightingShaderProperty header. At the very bottom of the window is the hair color entry, double click this and enter the rgb values you want. Note that nifskope uses a range of 0-1 for color value instead of 0-255. 

 

Also, the face mesh will be under whatever plugin added the NPC. So if you are using a follower mod, the folder path will be followermodname.esp instead of skyrim.esm. 

 

Spoiler

 

Edited February 26, 2024 by bnub345

[Aki K]

2 hours ago, bnub345 said:

If you are trying to change the texture for a certain hair mesh, that won't do what you want. What you need to do is find the facegen mesh for whatever NPC you are trying to edit and change the rgb values for the hair in nifskope. Facegen files are stored by baseID for the NPC. Let's say you want to change the hair color of Ysolda. Her baseID is 00013BAB. So open the data folder to meshes\actors\character\FaceGeom\skyrim.esm\00013BAB.nif. Open this .nif up in nifskope. Under the face node, you should find a NiTriShape header for the hair. Open this header and select the BSLightingShaderProperty header. At the very bottom of the window is the hair color entry, double click this and enter the rgb values you want. Note that nifskope uses a range of 0-1 for color value instead of 0-255. 

 

Also, the face mesh will be under whatever plugin added the NPC. So if you are using a follower mod, the folder path will be followermodname.esp instead of skyrim.esm. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I believe this is what I've been trying to do, since the face is visible when I load the file in nifscope. It is a character from a mod though.

 

ModOrganizer\Skyrim LE Instance\mods\Aymar and Friends\meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Aymarandfriends.esp\0000291F.nif 

 

Note: Aymarandfriends.esp is a folder name, not the esp file. I didn't make the mod and did not name the folder lol.

 

 

There is also a file 0000291F.NIF.bak  I don't know how this is different from the above 0000291F.