New Custom Bodies for NPCs?

[Demonwise]

Ok so I had a thought and not a very original one mind you. Right now I am using the Custom Races mod. Great mod. Upside -- custom body meshes and textures for every race playable by the player. Downside doesn't affect npcs. Well I guess this isn't a downside is it because that was the entire purpose of the Custom Races mod to begin with. But lets say for instance you actually wanted the opposite. Instead of these custom meshes and textures only being able to be used by the play, make the custom meshes and textures available to the npcs. Now your probably saying, "yeah well how is that any different than the way Skyrim is normally set up?" Well the idea would be similar to the Realistic Body system. A mod that creates 'randomly generate' bodies for npcs. That mod is great but it is HUGE and pretty buggy. The innumerable meshes make it vary difficult to make any sweeping changes to the races. AND there is no way to identify unique races (Nord, Breton, Imperial, Orc, etc.) by unique body meshes and textures. It just randomly assigns a body mesh and texture, all willy-nilly like, to each npc. What I want to do is model this mod on Custom Races where there is a folder for each race and each race has its own body mesh and textures. So then all the Nords in the game would share a unique body mesh and textures. Orcs would have there own unique set and so would the Dark Elves, so on and so forth. In this way instead of having 100+ body meshes to mess with like in RBS you would only have 10 body meshes to work with like in Custom Races. 

 

Now the author of the Custom Races mod says on his nexus page that they tried to do it for NPCs but every npc ended up with a dark tinted face. Apparently a common problem. However, the guy who made the Realistic Body System clearly found a way around that problem. So I am hoping that this could feasibly be done. 

 

Also I should point out that this would not only be a body replacer. I would think that this system should allow for custom head meshes and face textures as well, though at this point I would be happy just to see custom bodies with textures. 

 

I have tried to do this so far on my own using TES5Edit and studying both RBS and CR but have failed. Spent 5 hours just to come up with an alpha test and the result was absolutely nothing in game. >

 

 

All this being said I would like to know if people would be interested in this mod and if there is anyone who would be willing to help me out on this?

 

 

As a proof of concept, will show you guys some of the textures that I came up with for each race. (mind you these are my own creations using different skins and different tattoos from different mods, aka probably shouldn't download these and claim them as your own, because I made these for me and show you just to show off the idea. GO GET YOUR OWN SKINS! LOL!)

 

 

 

 

[jap2015]

I like the idea, but

 

Sounds similar to EDB EveryBodys Different from The Nexus.

Says he is working on adding custom racing

 

[Demonwise]

Well as I said I didn't have an original idea but still if there is something already in the works great! However, I think it would be cool to try and do this one on my own with the help of the LL community as well.

 

EDIT: I have looked at this EveryBodysDifferent mod. It looks promising but also very complicated. It appears to be trying to achieve even more than the Realistic Body System. I like the concept that the guy has and the fact that he even has a working version of it but it is also pretty confusing. It appears that in the current state that it is that mod will randomly distribute various meshes and matching textures across all NPCs. As the previous poster pointed out, the mod author does want to make race specific features but those are not incorporated into the mod yet. 

 

I still believe that my idea is much, much simpler than either Realistic Body System or the Every Body's Different mod. 

[Cyndi]

Are you just trying to say ..

Make all nords use cbbe with such and such texture (all the same)

Make all bretons use unpb with some other texture and so on etc?

 

It may sound overly simplistic, but why not just edit the naked armor, and armor add-on? (being naked is an armor as far as the ck is concerned)

As in each race has its own naked armor add-on, and set it to be used only by that race, and maybe that specific race plus the vampire of it.  x3  (torso, hands & feet)

Then just stuff all those armor add-ons onto the naked armor.

I imagine the head would work the same way, I just haven't actually looked.

Each races body would need it's textures repointed with nifskope though, so it would use the right one. Shouldn't get and dark faces or grey faces that way, because the facegen data hasn't been touched.

 

You'd be screwed for custom race stuff if you did it that way though.

 

 

 

Edit: You would have to do the same thing for vanilla armor I would think, unless you left it really really vanilla, so it hides all the texture weirdness from different bodies.

[HyperMix]

Snap. I was thinking about this today and what I would like to see or plan to do but I am in no rush as I have no skills really. I am learning scripting through oblivion but once I finished writing the scripts I want to write for it and completing the quests I plan to give Skyrim a shot from scratch. But first thing before coming back is writing a UI mods for myself.

 

Another mod you might want to look at: Universal Body Change

 

I had an idea where you have different bodies for different jobs/classes. And the clothes meshes too boot to go with them.

Example Seven Base for more physical classes. A round assed CBBE for tavern ladies, some skinny mesh for archers. Some NPCs will be fixed, some will be selected by class with an element of randomness. Armour for all different body meshes will have to exist.

 

anyhow that's the idea.

 

 

[Demonwise]

Are you just trying to say ..

Make all nords use cbbe with such and such texture (all the same)

Make all bretons use unpb with some other texture and so on etc?

 

It may sound overly simplistic, but why not just edit the naked armor, and armor add-on? (being naked is an armor as far as the ck is concerned)

As in each race has its own naked armor add-on, and set it to be used only by that race, and maybe that specific race plus the vampire of it.  x3  (torso, hands & feet)

Then just stuff all those armor add-ons onto the naked armor.

I imagine the head would work the same way, I just haven't actually looked.

Each races body would need it's textures repointed with nifskope though, so it would use the right one. Shouldn't get and dark faces or grey faces that way, because the facegen data hasn't been touched.

 

You'd be screwed for custom race stuff if you did it that way though.

 

 

 

Edit: You would have to do the same thing for vanilla armor I would think, unless you left it really really vanilla, so it hides all the texture weirdness from different bodies.

 

When I started off doing this myself I looked at the skyrim.esm in TES5Edit and saw the 'naked' Armor Addons. However for the Breton, Imperial, Orc and Nord races they all share the same naked armor addon. It is simply called NakedTorso, NakedHands, NakedFeet. If I wanted to get the 4 human races (including orcs and excluding elves) to each have their own naked armor and armor addon then I need to make new armor addons for each race and somehow tell the game to point to those armor addons instead of the ones default in the game. Buuuut I have never been good at creating new entries in TES5Edit and there so many interlocking variables I am sure that I have overlooked many of them.

 

But in a nutshell, yes, I want to make it so that ALL the Nord woman use one mesh and one texture. ALL the Imperial use another mesh and another texture. so on so forth. I know THIS IS WAAAAY MORE SIMPLE than other npc body replacers. So far I started this thread having experiance with two mods and since then 2 more have been suggested. Both suggested mods (Every Body's Different & Univeral Body Change) are great but what they lack is a functional system to do exactly what I have mention with ALL npc and for each RACE. 

 

Every Body's Different affects ALL npcs but DOES NOT affect each race differently.

 

Universal Body Change affects only ONE NPC at a time and requires interaction with the npc to change.

[Cyndi]

It would be a ck kinda job from what I know, and really REALLY repetitive.

I have no idea how that could be done with tes5edit, I only installed it.......  like 4 or 5 days ago? lol.

The other problem, would be finding a base texture that matches across all the bodies for neck seams, unless you wanted to edit the heads too.

[Demonwise]

It would be a ck kinda job from what I know, and really REALLY repetitive.

I have no idea how that could be done with tes5edit, I only installed it.......  like 4 or 5 days ago? lol.

The other problem, would be finding a base texture that matches across all the bodies for neck seams, unless you wanted to edit the heads too.

 

hmmm well I thought by creating a mesh pair (femalebody_0 and femalebody_1) it wouldn't matter as the game would just find the right cobination of the two meshs for each npc. This is what it does anyway right? I don't think that would change with my mod. As far as CK. Well lets just say that a baby born yesterday with no eyes and no arms would have a better chance of understanding CK. I took a look through CK and my brain almost instantly started hemorrhaging. 

 

[Cyndi]

 

**snip**

 

 I took a look through CK and my brain almost instantly started hemorrhaging. 

 

Then you are way ahead of the game \o/

That's about how much fun the ck is when you know (sort of) what you are doing. 

 

The ck is actually pretty easy to figure out...  it's just ridiculous how tedious it is to get something done with it. 

[Demonwise]

 lol, I whipped out CK again to give it another try. When I look at the Armor Addon section I am still presented with the fact that Bretons, Nords, Imperials and Orcs share the same NakedTorso, NakedHands and NakedFeet entries. I can create new entries named NakedTorsoNord, etc. but the other problem is that, when editing the actual armor addon entry I don't see how to set a custom directory path for the Female biped model. I see the box with the path but it is un-editable.

 

And assuming that I can successfully create new armor addon entries for each race with custom directory pathes to custom models and skin, how do I get the game to go looking for those entries instead of defaulting back to the vanilla NakedTorso entries and such?

[Cyndi]

Give me......   10 mins + coffee + ck tedium + cigarettes + foul language.......

 

 about 147 billion hours and I will stick a quick template up....  or go insane whichever comes first. no promises.

[Demonwise]

I am a very patient man.

[Cyndi]

Hope so, 

I won't likely finish the .esp file today.

 

Should have a template for you to start putting your meshes/textures into in a few mins though.

   ~    not going to upload meshes & textures, just ultra tiny place holders for you to fill in, to save me some file size uploady that thing there.

 

Leaving heads alone aswell....  cus   I ran out of swear words 

[Demonwise]

Heh, cool. Thanks. I have continued to work in CK. I figured out how to edit the directory path for the custom body meshes. In fact the answer was sooo obvious I wish I had a giant dildo so that I could liteally screw myself. That was how stupid I felt. Now that all being said I have accomplished one mighty victory! Now instead of the game using the default model and skin for the Bretons, Nords, Imperials and Orcs..... IT USES NO SKIN OR MESH AT ALL! JUST A WALKING SET OF HANDS, FEET AND A HEAD!

 

UPDATE! LOLZ! An unintended side effect of the game not knowing what meshes or textures to use for the default race is that I have screwed Bodyslide as well! Hah, when viewing the preview window the meshes are no longer rendered with any textures!

[lordofthedread]

Keep looking at EBD, I finally managed to get it work and while it does not change the mesh by race it's very nice once is working.

 

The only issue so far is you can't distribute weight (he tries to solve that but that might invoilve heavy scriptiing).

 

The next version looks a lot more user friendly and it should have a race option, now this mod deserve way more attention IMHO.

 

 

[Demonwise]

True, I think you present a very valid point. There is every possibility that by the time I will have completed this, WHEN IT GETS DONE BECAUSE, DAMN IT, IT WILL BE DONE, one of these other fine mods will have accomplished already what I set out to do with this mod. Of course the upside would then be that I would have access to a mod that does WAAAAY more than my measly mod could ever do. And in the end if I get nothing else out of this fiasco then at least my patience and hopefully skill with Creation Kit will have increased.

[Cyndi]

Template of where your files should go.....    probably:

Phase1R4.7z

 

I have a couple more things to break errrr.... plan out better. Then the icky part.

Depending on time.... probably a day or two to finish.

 

Vanilla armor will likely look .....    fucking strange on some things.

 

 

 

I mean when the next part is done anyway, that file shouldn't change anything yet.

 

[hryh23k9823u]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16964/?

[Demonwise]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16964/?

 

son of a bitch. This looks like exactly what I was suggesting. That sneaky bastard must have read my subconscious mind and created this mod for the exact purpose of being available when I consciously thought up the idea! Anyway, the mod looks great, I will have to give it a whirl to see what it is like.

[Cyndi]

 

Saves me figuring the rest of it out. Think my brain was about to implode... and I only got the torso's and textures in so far lol.

 

 

Worth messing with to learn the texture sets though.

[Demonwise]

Agreed, I'm sorry that this leaves you hanging but then perhaps we both learned something new in CK. I think this mod will be a great tool to examine in CK and TES5Edit to see how this guy did his mod. At least it will probably tell me where I went wrong in deleting all npc and player model meshes/textures.

[hryh23k9823u]

Well I dont know, that mod hasnt been updated in a while. I didnt test it. I'd say that should work, but who knows if there is any problem with dlc's or sexlab etc. At least you can use it to check how he did it. Also, could be possible to add a diferent mesh/texture folder for ElderRace (the old people)? Because Fredas was asking preciselly that in other thread.

[Cyndi]

Agreed, I'm sorry that this leaves you hanging but then perhaps we both learned something new in CK. I think this mod will be a great tool to examine in CK and TES5Edit to see how this guy did his mod. At least it will probably tell me where I went wrong in deleting all npc and player model meshes/textures.

 

Yuppers, 

Anyway here's what I got so far if you want to poke at that too:

Phase2R1.7z   (just an esp and only for the torso + 1st and textures for them so far)

I wouldn't try to run it the way it is, without pathing in proper meshes/textures to where I pointed them from that other file though.

Would crash the game or make everyone into walking triangles.

 

Well I dont know, that mod hasnt been updated in a while. I didnt test it. I'd say that should work, but who knows if there is any problem with dlc's or sexlab etc. At least you can use it to check how he did it. Also, could be possible to add a diferent mesh/texture folder for ElderRace (the old people)? Because Fredas was asking preciselly that in other thread.

 

ElderRace, would work the exact same way.  They might look weird if they aren't naked though, unless you went through and made new AA's and meshes for everything old people wear.  It's just like adding an armor to the game, just a little more involved as you are telling a specific race to use a specific mesh. Think how argonians and khajiit use different helmet meshes from the more normal human races -> exact same idea, just a hell of a lot more tedious.

[Demonwise]

@Cyndi

 

Thanks, I'll take a look at how you did yours and compare to see how far off I was.

 

@Lother

 

Well I installed the mod and so far it is pretty damn promising. I am in the process of seeing whether or not it is really working for all the races but so far it looks like it is. I have yet to see if this will conflict in any way with other mods like Sexlab. My thoughts are that it would not. It isn't like you are saying that the Nord race is no longer the Nord race it is actually CustomNord race. THAT would probably screw up SexLab. Near as I can tell this ONLY replaces the textures and meshes. It doesn't alter races or race properties.

 

Anyway here is a couple of screenshots of one of the new Nord textures and meshes:

 

 

 

 

[Cyndi]

@Cyndi

 

Thanks, I'll take a look at how you did yours and compare to see how far off I was.

 

 

I wouldn't say the way I went about it was exactly perfect, and I think I had a few things off with the afflicted and maybe astrid race