Custon Follower Mod Creation Help

[Soranua]

Hello!

I want to request some assistance in creating a custom-voiced follower with a new body and face. I have been following a collection of tutorials to get the mod up and running, but I have hit a few snags. I am relatively new to creating mods, so please bear with me.

I'll go over them here. 

My first attempt at the mod was trying to have my mod rely on the mod with the included assets I require, which I will refer to as the "Base mod." Basically making my mod dependent on the base mod. This did not work, however, as every time I would every time I attempted to test the mod in the game, it would immediately crash whenever I entered the cell where the follower was located. Upon further inspection, I noticed that whenever I reopened the Creation kit, the follower's race would default back to "FoxRace." 

So for my second attempt I decided to make an addon to the base mod that gives it a custom framework and voice. This however did not work out as I could not get the mod to apply to the base mod.

For the third and most recent attempt, I tried to import the assets directly into my mod and attempted to get it working that way. This again did not work as I ran into multiple issues. For context, I use SkyrimAE with a downgrade patch to bring it to SE. The mod to export a model's face that the third tutorial I used was defunct in SE and only available in LE. Attempting to use it anyway did not yield good results. The second issue was with the body. Whenever I attempted to show a preview of the model or place it into the world, I would get this error. "MODELS: Bone 'Clitoral1' not found for 'BASE meshes\LeafKeq2\body\femalebody_0.nif'. Reqested by 'Keqing' model 'NPC'." I tried to dig through and find out how to fix this, but I am coming up blank. 

I'm aware I could just use the base mod itself for the custom framework, but as the OP has yet to get back to me, I would like this to be a last resort until I can import my own assets. 

If anyone is willing to help, I would appreciate it. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Load order: 
You really only need the base mod for the assets and then any modding tool you use.

Base mod: https://www.patreon.com/posts/keqing-race-se-67933713

Defunct mod attempts if anyone is curious:
KQ01: https://mega.nz/file/blEB0D5B#djiDA97FNLWfyR5J7rh9loWDXm1nuz4Y1lqZTq9sQYk
KQ02: https://mega.nz/file/b5Vg3Bpb#szBg7QTb6mHX6Qq_GqTfC3DcjlpvY4qHqje47cKvQjI
KQ03: https://mega.nz/file/j8MCyIzD#xTrOQH_-GlTQF74EEkyiy468_Si9MdqEdEEVp3zimCY

Tutorials I used:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJB7eLcCo0c
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/1100
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVPc1FPruhk&t=564s

[traison]

8 hours ago, Soranua said:

whenever I reopened the Creation kit, the follower's race would default back to "FoxRace."

 

Most likely you're not running the Engine Fixes equivalent for the CK. Without the patch, the CK will remove all non-esm flagged plugins from the master list of the loaded plugin. You're not supposed to have any non-masters as masters; I mean the hint is in the name. Technically however there is nothing stopping you afaik. I generally try not to break this rule, I feel like it keeps things a bit more tidy.

 

8 hours ago, Soranua said:

my second attempt I decided to make an addon to the base mod

 

How was this different from the first attempt?

 

8 hours ago, Soranua said:

The mod to export a model's face that the third tutorial I used was defunct

 

I assume you mean NPC's face. If it was made properly, there's a facegen mesh. It will work as-is, no need for witchcraft here. If you want to use the same face for your own follower, then copy the mesh and its texture(s), rename them to match your followers form id and update the texture paths using NifSkope. If in doubt, select your follower and hit Ctrl+F4. Locate the files it generated and replace them. Remember to update texture paths in the mesh.

 

8 hours ago, Soranua said:

I tried to dig through...

 

 

...what? Did you open the mesh specified in the error in NifSkope? Does it have the node its saying is missing?

 

[Soranua]

Thank you for your reply.

 

Quote

Most likely you're not running the Engine Fixes equivalent for the CK. 

 

Are you referring to this plugin? 
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20061

 

If so, whenever I try to apply it, I get the error below. I attempted to apply a downgrade patch, but I got the error in the second image. I eventually gave up and continued with the mod without it. 

 

 

 

Quote

How was this different from the first attempt?

 

The first attempt was to apply the custom race, which had the assets pre-applied, to a new NPC. For the second attempt, I tried to give the NPC included in the mod an add-on mod. I'm probably explaining this part poorly, but that is the best I can describe it with my current level of inexperience. The basic result, however, is the same.

 

 

Quote

I assume you mean NPC's face...

 

I will likely need to look into this a bit more when I get the time, and after I get some sleep, as when I used the dropdown for the face only to see the race (Imperial in this case) and vampire, I attempted to duplicate and apply the custom facegen mesh to the Imperial head. Unfortunately, when I applied it to the NPC, CK immediately crashed. I'm probably doing something horribly wrong, but at this moment, I don't know what that would be.

 

Quote

...what? Did you open the mesh specified in the error in NifSkope? Does it have the node its saying is missing?

 

Everything seems to be in order, though I don't have a lot of experience with Nifskope, so I'm not sure how I would find an error if I encountered one.