Prettier Bandits

[Ohyes]

Can we get more screenshots of the npcs?

[EinarrTheRed]

Its on the to do list.  I agree, the current screen shots are crappy and out of date.  So one of my goals by next build is all new screen shots of everything, especially after the KS Hair conversion.

 

 

[Du8i0us]

Thanks for this,

Much needed variety and beauty for the generic NPCs. Couldn't find anything similar on Nexus. Glad to hear you're working on a KS Hair version. Look forward to it.

 

I noticed a lot of requests for screenshots. Will leave a few here for people to get an idea. Taken with Fair Skin Texture. Feel free to use them, if you like.

 

Spoiler

enb 2019_11_26 23_36_41_21.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_36_18_64.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_57_07_46.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_24_20_43.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_14_37_79.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_14_37_79.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_04_13_98.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_20_32_61.bmpenb 2019_11_27 00_18_07_55.bmpenb 2019_11_27 00_18_26_12.bmpenb 2019_11_26 23_09_43_64.bmp

 

[EinarrTheRed]

Thank you for sharing the screenshots.  I do plan to do all new ones after the KS Hair conversion, which should make them look even better.

 

For anyone unsure about installing the mod, consider this.  The entire mod is just 2 files, the esp and a bsa.  Installing is easy, either manually install by dropping those to files in your Data folder, or use a mod organizer... either works.  Uninstalling is just as easy, just delete the two files or remove them with a mod organizer or use Wrye Bash to uncheck them from your load order.  Its that simple.

 

There are no scripts so its not going to wreck your save game.  But that said, modding 101, before trying ANY new mod, make a save point, install the new mod, try it out and if you don't like it uninstall and go back to your save point.

 

Enjoy!

[NordicLord]

"I removed some changes to Luah Al-skaven, the boss NPC at Ansilvund.  I'd incorrectly set her to use a leveled list as her template and this caused the quest there to bug"

this is still something i still encounter. the quest wont start and it also breaks a quest from Amorous Adventures mod

[Tekumze]

As someone that uses a number of other beautifying mods I would really appreciate if you could make a FOMOD installed where you can select which modifications you want.
For example a simple checkbox where you enable:
Bandits
Hunters
Guards
...

That way we (the users) can avoid many conflicts that may arise with our existing mods that may all modify the same NPCs

 

I also have a personal dislike of huge warpaints that cover otherwise beautiful faces.
I am mentioning this in hope that you also add a checkbox for enabling/disabling warpaints on NPCs you modified.

 

PS: Have you ever considered using any of the HDT hair mods?

[EinarrTheRed]

To do what you want would require I break the mod into multiple esp and have a FOMOD to install them individually at which point I would get a lot of hate mail for making a mod with more than a dozen esp files.

 

War paint was removed from most NPCs, I'm not a fan of it either.  The only ones I left it for were the Forsworn because its very characteristic of them, however I did try to make it a bit less... well... ugly.  I have plans for something else in the future but that's still in the concept stage.

 

[Tekumze]

NPCs have resources which you can replace with new ones thus making them look better.

 

I am guessing that some things need to be changed in their characteristics as well to make the transformation complete (hair and skin color probably being one of the few) and that's what contained in the ESP

Oh well I guess I'll have to live with it

 

Thanks for reducing the warpaint. I have a mod that (among others) replaces guards as well... but many have warpaints which look weird on somebody performing a peace time guard duty.
It's like the police would walk around with face camo.

 

I am definitely looking forward to your version of beauty.

[EinarrTheRed]

28 minutes ago, Tekumze said:

NPCs have resources which you can replace with new ones thus making them look better.

I don't understand what you mean?

28 minutes ago, Tekumze said:

 

I am guessing that some things need to be changed in their characteristics as well to make the transformation complete (hair and skin color probably being one of the few) and that's what contained in the ESP

Oh well I guess I'll have to live with it

Its all in the ESP, each actor file has to be edited to make the changes, and then the facegen data has to be re-exported which is what takes up most of the space.  However, I don't think what you're asking for is necessary.  I packed the whole mod into an esp and a bsa, just two files.  Part of the advantage of that, besides making installation and uninstillation easy, is that it makes solving conflicts with other appearance mods easy.  Let's say you had a mod that turned all the witches in the game into supermodels (just for example) so you wanted to use that instead of my witches (which are definitely not supermodel quality), just put that mod after mine in your load order and that should be it.  If the other mod uses a bsa as well then it will override my changes and you're good.  If the other mod uses loose files, those will override any facedata and that mod MUST be after mine or you'll get a grey face bug.

28 minutes ago, Tekumze said:

 

Thanks for reducing the warpaint. I have a mod that (among others) replaces guards as well... but many have warpaints which look weird on somebody performing a peace time guard duty.
It's like the police would walk around with face camo.

 

I am definitely looking forward to your version of beauty.

You're welcome.  By next version I plan to include full documentation on everything that has been changed as well as a new and upto date set of screen shots.

 

For all NPCs *except* the Forsworn I removed face dirt and grime and any warpaint.

For all factions *except* the Vigilants of Stendarr, only the female NPCs got an appearance overhaul.

Only the Forsworn have face paint, because that's very characteristic of them and I wanted to stay lore friendly.  But I tried to use more variety in their face paints (I mixed in various other tattoos and tried to get a little creative with both the combinations and colors).

Only the Vigilants of Stendarr males got an appearance overhaul because I had to redo all the NPCs anyway so figured I'd go ahead while I was at it.

 

And hopefully this will show up (I've been having issues attaching screen shots to posts lately) but this is a screen shot of a Forsworn Shamaness (level 51) with her current Apachii hair mesh hanging out in my character's bedroom.  She's wearing the Forsworn Natural outfit I recommended on the front page and of course the skin, eyes and brows I recommended.  She does have facepaint but Its more subtle.  An I think we know why she's hanging out in the bedroom. ? 

Spoiler

 

Oh and one thing I did not mention in the update, the new unique bosses already all have KS Hair.  The few hair models I used I packed into the bsa temporarily until the conversion is done in next version, at that point they'll be removed along with the Apachii dependency and instead the mod will simply require KS be installed.  But for now, to keep things simpler I just included those few models.

[Tekumze]

15 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

I don't understand what you mean?

I was referring to loose files. Skins, body mesh and similar can be overwritten without needing to change the ESP but you're doing it differently.

 

No worries here. I was just used to me changing the body and skin of some companion mods to one that I liked better.

In theory you could have different versions of the same ESP/BSA instead of actually having different files. It's more hassles than it's worth in your case.

 

20 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

An I think we know why she's hanging out in the bedroom

She's you're cleaning lady.. right

 

Compared to original forsworn she has no warpaint to speak of.

 

Not sure if you saw my question from before but have you considered any of the hair mods with physics.

Some longer hair styles look weird if they don't flow especially if they clip through the body in some situations.

It's why I prefer short hair on my characters.

[EinarrTheRed]

9 minutes ago, Tekumze said:

 

 

 

Not sure if you saw my question from before but have you considered any of the hair mods with physics.

Some longer hair styles look weird if they don't flow especially if they clip through the body in some situations.

It's why I prefer short hair on my characters.

Same reason I removed helmets from many female NPC outfits in PB  LOL.

 

I did look at HDT hair once but the first problem I ran into was the ones I looked at all had to be equipped and that doesn't always work so good with NPCs (so instead of a bouncy pony tail on a bandit, you end up with a bald bandit).  The second issue is that not as many people use those mods so it would be another dependency and I'd probably get complaints about that.  I'm also concerned that with a town full of female guards with bouncy HDT hair the extra load processing the physics would impact peoples games.  Its one of the reasons I don't do custom skins, a world full of NPCs with 8k custom skin textures would probably be a guaranteed game crash.  Even if it didn't it would chew up enough memory to limit people using other script heavy mods and I don't want to do that.  So I'm trying to compromise and make them look nicer without any serious impact on peoples games.

 

Personally I love the longer hair meshes, I just live with the clipping.

[Tekumze]

59 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

I'm also concerned that with a town full of female guards with bouncy HDT hair the extra load processing the physics would impact peoples games.

Good point. Would only be worth it for unique bosses I guess.

 

59 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

the ones I looked at all had to be equipped

Wigs? Ya those don't really work for me either.

 

I use "New HDT Physics for KS-SG Hairs"

I obviously use the actual hairs even though it has wigs in the mod as well.

 

As you said it does introduce another dependancy so it just depends how far you wanna go with it.

I am here just to offload my ideas on you and see what happens

[EinarrTheRed]

I could look into it for just the uniques I'm doing, and if I can pack it in with the mod so it doesn't add another dependency I wouldn't have any issue with that.  I'll add it to the idea pile.

[Tekumze]

Hmm.. I tried the latest version 0.9 now that I finnaly had some time.

I replaced the 8.1 that I had before.

The bandit that used to look OKish now has a darker face then body. See the pics.

Spoiler

 

 

[EinarrTheRed]

Something is overwriting the facegen.  If I'm not mistaken that is a female nord bandit, lvl 1 (there might be a couple others, if you can open console and get a screen cap of her stats and RefID I can pinpoint exactly which NPC she is).  There was no change for her appearance between 8.1 and 9.0 (I didn't update any of the previous NPCs, I will be doing that for v1.0).  What did change was I went from loose files to everything packed in the bsa.  So its possible some other facegen is overriding the bsa with loose files.

 

Once I know which one she is exactly I can give you better advice.

[Tekumze]

This?

Spoiler

 

 

[EinarrTheRed]

Yup, that's the one.  In CK she's:  PB_EncBandit01Melee2HNordF and is one of the vanilla bandits from the Skyrim.esm that I redid.  So it is possible something else is overwriting her facegen.

 

There's several ways you can solve this.

 

Simplest solution, open Prettier Bandits.esp in CK and go to Actors and filter for the above bandit.  Select it (you don't even need to open the actor file) and press Cntrl+F4 to re-export the Facegen data.  It'll take a couple seconds for just one NPC and then you'll get a pop up box that says "Done", click OK and close CK (you don't need to resave the esp as you haven't actually changed anything).  That should solve the problem.

 

If I'm correct that something else is overwriting her with lose data you could go into the Data>Meshes>Actors>Character>FaceGenData>FaceGeom>Skyrim.esm folder and find 0003CF5C.NIF and delete it.  Then go into the Data>Textures>Actors>Character>FaceGenData>FaceTint>Skyrim.esm folder and find 0003CF5C.dda and delete that.  That will eliminate the grey face as well, this is the facegeometery and tintmask that's conflicting with Prettier Bandits.

 

Its likely some other mod is also attempting to modify her appearance and had the files in loose form and that's where it came from.  If what's in the esp and those two files don't match, you get grey face.

 

You may have noticed the ID # for the bandit matches the .nif and .dda files, that's handy to know if this comes up again.

 

Would also be a good idea for you to track down which mod the files came from.  Now that you know what files to look for and what folders you could check whatever other mods you use to see if their zip files contain that file as they may be overwriting others.

 

Okay did some digging and this one is on me ?  Turns out there were a total of 15 NPCs who's NIF data got put in the archive but somehow I missed the facetint files.  So here's a quick patch file to fix until I can update the bsa archive.  Just unzip this into your Data folder.

 

Glad you caught that.  It mostly affected Nord or Redguard 2H melee bandits, one Breton bandit mage and one Altmer WEAdventurer.

 

PB90TexturePatch01.7z

[Tekumze]

For some reason I can't download that atm. I'll retry later. Probably just a LL hickup.

 

Thanks for looking into it.

[Grey Cloud]

10 minutes ago, Tekumze said:

For some reason I can't download that atm. I'll retry later. Probably just a LL hickup.

Downloaded okay for me. (10 minutes after your post).

[EinarrTheRed]

I just updated the main file to v0.9.1 with the missing tintmasks added to the bsa.  Appologies about that, not sure how those got missed.  Then again PB is currently at about 1,200 total NPCs to keep track of.  I also uploaded the patch on the main page.  You ONLY need the patch if you don't update to v0.9.1.  Since the patch is only 148 Kb vs 1.15 Gb for the full bsa I figured I'd leave that an option.  The patch files are loose files, so make sure when updating in the future that those get removed.

[Grey Cloud]

5 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

1.15 Gb

Groan.

[EinarrTheRed]

Yup... bsa's have lousy compression and even 7zip can't shrink them down much.  That's why I left the patch up, I figured not everyone would want to re-download for just for 15 NPCs.

[Tekumze]

6 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Downloaded okay for me. (10 minutes after your post).

It worked now. As I said it was a temporary hiccup. I just couldn't be bothered waiting an unspecified time at 1am on a work day 

[RomulusAugustulus]

Just dropping by to  say "Thank You!"

A small suggestion: Maybe Rigel Strong-Arm as described by her father: A face like a skeever and meaty arms.

 

 

[EinarrTheRed]

I think that's the first time anyone has asked me to make an ugly NPC! ?  I had thought about making a prettier version of her, but there's a bit more to it than just making an NPC.  She's something of a special case that would require enabling and disabling a couple of spawn markers with scripting.  Can be done, just something I need to learn more about.

 

I've also thought about doing a unique and prettier version of Eisa Blackthorn, encountered just outside Forelhost.