Mods for changing NPC looks?

[Lara89]

I'm searching for new ways of modifying the appearance of NPCs and followers. I've tried Proteus but its really buggy, the face resets after a while and the character have the glitchy neckline. I've also tried exporting Racemenu presets to the textures/meshes folders. And tried the "savepcface" command and loaded the presets into esp files through the Creation kit. But nothing seems to work fine in my case, the faces reset every time I load a save file. Is there any other way of doing it?

[Lara89]

16 hours ago, 1whirled said:

 

 

Post some of your files and I can show you where you went wrong. Npc replacement is very easy once you get the hang of it.

 

A bit more involved if using a custom head mesh (HPH, Citrus, CotR, etc), but nbd either way. Low poly doesn't even require a plugin at all, unless the aforementioned heads are used, or any other record parameter is varied straying from original values. Those listed necessitate a plugin.

 

 

A quick tip, if you rename nodes in the .nif to match original values in the plugin or master, the engine doesn't care what it is, as long as it's in the same family of headparts, only that the set name within matches the mesh parameter in the facegen record. e.g.  having a corresponding named node. Additional nodes above & beyond don't matter either. All of which is best done in nifskope, you need no other tool. Sounds complicated at first glance, but it really, really isn't.

 

Getting down in the weeds about how the engine knows what from what? That's the complicated part.

 

With Proteus I tried doing these steps:

 

- Saving a Racemenu preset and exporting the Racemenu sculpt of the preset (nif and dds).

- Going to the textures and meshes folder of the character, replace the old nif and dds for the new ones with the same ID.

- Load the game, go to the NPC and load the preset with Proteus.

 

This works fine with original/new NPCs (For example, Toccata from her mod). The hair, skin and face details are all preseved nicely. But if I try to do the same with a NPC from the base game (Aela for example) it doesn't work. It maintains the facetint, and all the changes are reverted when the game restarts. I've tried saving the preset with the "savepcface" command, and loading it into the character esp with the Creation kit. It changes the hair and the skin, but all the detail in the face is gone (eyes, nose, lips size, etc). Also it reverts some changes into default ones (loading default eyebrows instead of modded ones).

 

I was experimenting with these steps with Lydia yesterday, and somehow managed to do it. Her face/fair/colors are all changed. And it maintains the face details including modded makeup and eyebrows. I'm starting to think that Proteus is making the things worse instead of helping. Maybe if I relied into only using the Creation kit since the beginning I wouldn't have these issues.

 

UPDATE: I deleted all the files from the JC's Proteus folder from "My games" and after loading the game I loaded the presets again with Proteus. Now the changes are permament (Even after reseting the game). I modded three npcs (Lydia, Aela and Delphine) and they seem to work fine for now. 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2024 by Lara89