One body type for female NPCs, another for myself?

[Fredas]

(I mistakenly posted this to a separate forum, to my considerable embarrassment.)

 

So I'm at the point where I need to actually have the game in a playable state before I can finish developing my mods, and I realize I don't quite know exactly how to go about it.  Here are my goals:

 

1: Use "Dream Girl" body for all female NPCs except the elderly and other scenarios where it may not make sense.

2: Use a different body for my own character.  (Still undecided; waiting on developments with HDT Body, Bodyslide UNP, high-vertex CBBE, or whatever can do a good job with puffy nipples.)

 

Right now I need to work Dream Girl into the game (again, not with old women, and other cases like Cairine, the sick woman in Markarth Warrens), because the first of two mods I've been putting together is going to involve creating a custom armor mesh and testing it out.  (EffectShaders ends up being a bust for various reasons.)  I'm hoping knowledgeable folks will be able to point out my options in this regard.  I am comfortable with assigning files manually if it can be as simple as that, but since my goal here is probably one shared by a lot of folks, I suspect there is some streamlined and simplified process to get it done.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[Jormungandr]

I'm currently sitting at a similar riddle with textures, there's no way without literally destroying the game engine to enable custom bodyparts for your own character if it's a vanilla race. You'd need to "expand" the functions of the engine and even the CK itself to mod 2 mesh pathes for a vanilla race.

 

Custom races however are a piece of cake, as they use their own path for stuff.

 

Unless you're using a custom race, this isn't possible.

 

 

If someone knows better, please by all means correct me and show us the way to do what we're trying to do.

 

 

Edit: you could however, edit EVERY single female npc to use different meshes i think.  You can probably imagine yourself what a pain the ass that'd be.

 

Also, NPCS from mods, would need to recieve the same treatment.

[hryh23k9823u]

The only way I know is using a custom race. This mod I link you allows you to be, for example a CustomNord race, and that race uses diferent meshes/textures.

 

Edit: Ah, and female olds uses own textures, but same body mesh, really disgusting

 

Edit 2: Well to be honest, in the CK you can make an NPC have its own body/textures. You'd need to make it for each old female NPC. Unless there is a way to make it for all old ladies that I'm not aware of...

[Fredas]

Okay, yeah, I guess it's safe to assume that whatever solution I happen upon is going to involve the use of custom races for every character (myself and NPC) that uses a non-vanilla body.  I have no problem with that as long as the game doesn't. ;p

 

So the question evolves into: How to tell the game to use a certain custom race for female NPCs universally, with a handful of exceptions which will maintain their vanilla look.  And how to tie the custom vanilla armor to said race.

 

(And, while I'm at it, how to trick the game into treating my character as though she is part of a particular race (Breton) despite being custom.  Ie for racial abilities, and dialogue acknowledgment such as right at the beginning of the game where the guards make comments based on one's race.)

 

[lidowxxx]

It's possible to have unique face/body textures for your character without using custom races, try this: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34637/? It's not that hard to do despite of the lengthy description and instructions. Be aware that some of the mod features like distributing hair/eye mods to NPCs can be very performance taxing, but if you just want to use different body textures for NPCs, you won't have such problem.

 

[Invictusblade]

you can use this mod "PS Universal PC NPC Body Changer"

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/47791/?

[hryh23k9823u]

Is not that complicated, just use the main body (default path) dream girl in this case, and your body for your PC custom race.

The only problem is the armors, right. In the current solutions I haven't found how to separate the armor meshes between races. So at the end I only use them to have diferent skin textures. You'll need a lot of CK work...

 

 

you can use this mod "PS Universal PC NPC Body Changer"

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/47791/?

 

Yeah there are diferent skyproc patchers that does that, but the results arent quite satisfactory.

Also:
 

 

- NPC body meshes (humanoid races, males and females); script free. This feature works only in combination with the above texture feature. Furthermore it only replaces the meshes of the naked body, no armor/clothes meshes.

 

 

[blabba]

To add-on to Lother's Wonderful suggestion, these guys have made a working armor swapper the likes of which patches up the problem with Lother's suggestion.

 

The problem is that the author's have yet to release it as a standalone modder's package so you might have to wait a bit.

Read their section on the 'ARMA' swapper, really cool stuff, and if you know your ck/papyrus scripting you can probably rip their tech and use it for your own purposes (I think they included a skyprocpatcher as well)

 

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/22395-wip-skykids-child-races-other-technical-goodies-vanilla-npc-replacernew-followersb3-release11914/

[hryh23k9823u]

Well that would be a very good solution. Currently I have several copies of HDT Body.xml, just directing to a diferent custom npc's and custom races (including my PC's). This would make possible to simply have diferent armor slidersets too (let's say different CT77's Remodeled Armors copies, poiting at diferent paths). Would be so easy if these guys does what you say

[gvman3670]

It shouldn't matter with the old ladies. Just don't take their damned clothes off! If you leave the vanilla clothes on them they'll still appear to have vanilla bodies....and be clothed.

[Fredas]

It shouldn't matter with the old ladies. Just don't take their damned clothes off! If you leave the vanilla clothes on them they'll still appear to have vanilla bodies....and be clothed.

 

Well the goal here is to force a universal body swap for all females except a select few.  The body being swapped in would hypothetically already have all vanilla armor converted to it, and a method would be found to ensure that the game uses these conversions for its NPCs wearing vanilla armor (aka all of them).

 

So as far as I can tell, the way this is going to have to be done is to define a brand new race, or series of races (like neoNord, neoBreton, etc.), force most female NPCs to change race to the new ones, and let the old and wounded women retain their vanilla races.  I don't think this could be done manually, because randomly generated NPCs like bandits would also need to spawn as the new races.  Some sort of universal method would still be needed.

 

I am stumped.

[hryh23k9823u]

No no, you don't need custom races at all. You'd only want a custom race for your character, if you want a quick way to use diferent meshes and textures. For the old women I think the easiest solution would be creating a .esp that define a diferent mesh path for the specific old women npc (not like skyirm has lots of npc's preciselly so it wouldnt be that hard) or maybe even easier, since all old people in skyrim actually uses a diferent race, called 'ElderRace' so maybe you could set a specific mesh path for the entire race. Like this one but for elder people.

[delgathar]

Mod Organizer is win in this situation. Esp if you want to play different races with different characters.  First make your default profile that will have mods in all profiles.  Then start with your races/textures. This way you can, as example, install CBBE for all the vanilla races and succubus race as your play race with custom armor support.  Then create another profile with RCotS and UNPB/7B/or whatever.  It also makes it easy to see where there are conflicts and to decide which module you want to win.  

Very good for not needing to keep multiple copies of the skyrim folder.

 

Make sure to dl bodyslide 2  for the CalienteAdvanced body and if the sliders dont' give you the values you want, don't forget you can enter manual values.  So if 100 isn't big enough for your nipples, or nipple perkiness you can enter 200, or more.

[Bonnie Lass]

For default races, Unique Character is what you're looking for: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13712/?

 

There are a few limitations, but nothing major. You can have your own body/face textures but not tintmasks or eyes.

 

As for armor, PCEAr will do you just fine: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16815/?

 

It takes a little bit of time to set up but 2.0 is a lot more compatible than the older versions were.