Retexturing

[Meem0]

Hello!

 

I really like how the character Tania looks, so I tried out the mod that makes her a playable race.  I think I installed it correctly, but I didn't really like the texture - I thought her skin looked a little too bumpy (here's an image - it looks a little worse than the screenshots on the mod page... do I have a different setup, or is this just a case of "screenshots vs in-game"?).

 

So after a bit of Windows Explorer-foo (very advanced, I know), I managed to replace her textures with different ones that I like (Fair Skin Complexion), by putting all the "female [body/hands/head] [_sk/_msn/...].dds" files into textures/actors/character/Enhanced/Female.  I was delighted to find that it worked ...kind of.  She now looks like this.  Her eyes are kind of messed up, as well as her mouth and nose, to some extent.

 

I looked around a little more (my modding knowledge is limited to a basic understanding of what types of files do and where they go - I know very little about how various files work on the inside), trying to either fix her eyes, apply her head to a different race, and so on.  I figured out that her head structure (which is what I like about the character) is caused by a file called FemaleHeadraces.tri (in meshes/actors/character/character assets), which seems to be a very non-modular sort of thing - I can't easily apply it to other races or whatnot like I did with the textures.

 

Moving on to solutions, here are the options I can see.  Any advice about whether any of these are feasible?

1. Fix her eyes, mouth and nose.  This seems tricky, because I get the impression that the .tri file has kind of "baked in" her facial features - everything starts to look really wonky as soon as I try to move some sliders or use different eyes.
2. Somehow make the head structure usable for other characters.  I have no idea what I'm talking about, but maybe you can "reverse-engineer" a .tri file to make other characters look like it?  Maybe convert it to an ECE preset?!?! (how's that for wishful thinking!)
3. Find an alternative character!  If you can't tell, I'm into unrealistically pure and youthful-looking elfish characters, with a moderately angular lower face (seems like round, oval faces are a dime-a-dozen!)... is there a good place to search through ECE presets?  I know the characters are out there - every time I stumble onto an Asian site, half the characters fit my bill.
4. (edit) Ditch the retexture idea, and just make her look like she does on the mod page.  Her skin texture looks totally different there - I want that!

 

Thanks in advance!  At the very least, it would be educational to know if/why my solutions are impossible 

[Nergui]

Option 5. Start over. (hopefully you can undo all your changes)

 

Then based on what I think you're trying to achieve, move only these files -

femalehead_msn.dds

femalebody_1_msn.dds

femalehands_1_msn.dds

 

Edit - no, I was right the first time, sorry. Replace Tania's files with the ones from the Fair Skin mod. You may need to copy the _s files as well.

[Levionte]

Hi meem0,

 

To address the other questions first: I believe there's a mod on Nexus that lets you edit TRI files, but it's not really recommended for a beginner unless you're experienced in using Blender or 3ds Max. Plus, I'm not sure how the mod is setup, but the folder structure suggests the TRI files are replacing the vanilla ones and should therefor apply to all races. It's the exact same size as the vanilla ones and, since it's set to replace them, I would guess they're just the vanilla files if it weren't for the quote I'll mention in a second and the fact that they could break other races by tweaking it. So, I'm not really sure what to make of it to be honest.

 

Anyways...

From the mod page: "Replaces ygNord race, currently supports ECE and RM, using the TRI file import deformed face, it does not change the head model, compatible with the original." Doesn't the mod come with an ECE and Racemenu preset? It seems to me, that would solve most of your deformity problems.

 

If the preset doesn't work, I suppose the first step would be to ask the mod author / read the readme etc.. If that didn't work, I would install the new Racemenu and test out the new sculpt / import head feature on the head from the Tania follower (Data\meshes\actor\character\facegen\ESP Name.esp). As I understand, the import head feature was created specifically for situations like this. You should be able to import the head onto whatever race you want. I haven't used ECE in a long time, but I don't believe it has a feature like that.

 

 

All of that being said, I'm not completely convinced there's anything wrong with the mesh, though I will admit it looks a lot different without the textures.

The eye textures are definitely not the green ones from the official screenshot and you seem to be missing a lot of makeup.

 

From the mod page:

"How to Use for ECE:
1. Slot Load-> Presets1 and makeup"

 

I don't know how you load makeup sets in ECE but you should try that. I assume there's at least some sliders to add the makeup manually. I opened up the BSA that came with the Tania follower that I have used without issues in the past, and it seems to have the same diffusion textures (femalehead.dds) as the race mod does. The problem is the makeup, which is not actually part of the base textures but are applied as overlays on top of them.

 

@Nergui

I don't see anything wrong with the normal maps. No neck seam, no weird lines, and looks pretty similar to the official screenshot aside from the lack of color.

 

But if, for some reason, you wanted to undo all of your changes you could simply uninstall and reinstall the mod.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zzz72w3r]

Why not just import the face nif from the original Tania mod using RM3's sculpt function? 

 

Tania Project was created when in-game nif import was impossible.  The mod does more than that but if all you need is the face then RM3 is now the far superior option. 

 

After you have the face in RM3, use whatever texture you want.

[Meem0]

Thanks for the detailed responses!

 

The RaceMenu Sculpt thing worked on Tania, but she still had slightly weird eyes and mouth area.  It looked like it was easier to modify, though, so if I had better skills or tried for longer I might have been able to fix it.

 

While I was Googling for RaceMenu/Tania stuff, I found the Agatha follower mod, which looks similar.  I used the RaceMenu feature you guys told me about, and it worked beautifully!  Thank you very much for the help!