EinarrTheRed Posted May 31, 2020 Author Posted May 31, 2020 I'm not familiar with any CBBE "facepack" but if it alters the head meshes, it will break things. The CBBE body (or any other body mesh replacer) will work fine. PB alters the facegen (head) and adds a hair mesh, it does not alter the rest of the body.
TheRightDoorIsNotTheLeft Posted June 21, 2020 Posted June 21, 2020 Since so many female bandits looked like they got smacked with the ugly stick, I was interested in using this mod, but I'm using Skryim SSE. Would this mod work as-is, or would I need to do conversions to SSE?
TheRightDoorIsNotTheLeft Posted June 21, 2020 Posted June 21, 2020 On 3/6/2020 at 2:27 AM, jb136 said: Looking forward to the SSE version. (Couldn't get the original ported or working.) That answers my question. Definitely looking for the SSE version.
skyquester Posted July 3, 2020 Posted July 3, 2020 Hi, Will this be ported to SSE. Or if anyone has ported it over to SSE can they send it to me. I want to do it by myself but my understanding of CK is pathetic. If you can send me a ported version that would be perfect.
Wolfshrike Posted August 3, 2020 Posted August 3, 2020 I, too, am getting the dark face bug on thalmor and bandits across all races- I've tried a couple different saves and it's coming from PB, sadly. Is there a fix I can do on my end, or is this the kinda thing I'll have to wait for a fix on? It's not really a deal breaker either way for me, but I know it can be. I'm using the most recent version (0.9.2) and the only other mod I'm running that affects faces is Better females by Bella- but starting two fresh saves (One without that mod, one without PB) showed no grey face on the one with BFB, and grey on the one with PB. IDK if it's gonna affect it, but I'm also running OBIS and the bandit equipment flexibility mod- IDK if that'd change anything, but it does modify bandits.
EinarrTheRed Posted August 3, 2020 Author Posted August 3, 2020 Wolfshrike, you're actually the first I'm aware of that's getting it that wide spread. Question: Do any other mods you are running have loose facegen data? If so, that's your problem. Here's why that could be the issue. PB has all the facegen packed into a BSA, makes it easier to install and uninstall as there's no loose files to deal with. Loose files will always override anything in a bsa. So if another mod is changing the facegen for common NPCs, you'll get grey face because the loose facegen doesn't match what my mod is looking for. If that's the case, you can solve it yourself in one of several ways. You could identify the loose facegen data from the other mods and delete it. Probably the easiest thing to do is uninstall the mod. Then go in and remove any facegen changes in the "Data/Meshes/Actors/Character/FaceGenData/FaceGeom/Skyrim.esm" folder (just delete the entire folder) and the same for any in the "Data/Textures/Actors/Character/FaceGenData/FaceTint/Skyrim.esm folder". Just the loose data for whatever mod is conflicting. Then reinstall the mod and reload your game. That should eliminate the conflict as now there's no loose files to override the PB bsa. If you don't want to do that, then you can open PB in CK. Go to the Actors/Actor folder in the Object Window. Set the filter to "PB_" This will give you all the NPCs modified by PB. Select all of those and then press Cntrl+F4. On the pop up msg window, click Yes. Then go make a sandwich while it works (depending on how fast your computer is it may take it up to a half hour or so to finish). You just re-exported all the facegen as loose data so it now overwrites everything else, that too will eliminate the conflict. (You can do this with my mod because all the face gen was done entirely inside CK, so it can rebuild it at anytime.). I can't think why else those mods would conflict with mine. But the widespread grey face suggest there is something conflicting with the facegen information for PB and loose data from another mod is the most likely culprit. If that doesn't work then this will take a much deeper dive to figure out.
Wolfshrike Posted August 3, 2020 Posted August 3, 2020 I'll try out those fixes and report back. I'm honestly not sure what it is- I'd thought it was BFB and PB not getting along, since that'd make sense as they both modify faces, but again- two separate fresh saves showed BFB working fine and PB having the issue. And thanks for not blowing up and trying to help out. Means a lot when a mod author is willing to do that. EDIT: Might have found it while using the CK method- an old hair mod I'd totally forgotten I had. I'll try killing that and report back again.
EinarrTheRed Posted August 3, 2020 Author Posted August 3, 2020 I'm not familiar with BFB and what it does and I'm only passingly familiar with OBIS (I don't use it, I have looked at it in CK a bit so I know more or less what it does). OBIS would only be a facegen issue if at all, lot of their stuff doesn't (or didn't when I looked at it) mess with the facegen. I took a quick look at BFB and I'm not sure why it would conflict, it modifies the skin texture, eyebrows and so forth, that shouldn't be an issue (I use different skin and eyebrow and eye texture replaceers and I made the mod so that it should be compatible with almost any of them). So that puzzles me. I'm also not sure why a hair mod would affect it, since I replace the hair with various Apachii hair anyway (which soon as I can find the time to do a complete overhaul Apachii will be completely replaced by KS Hair). Since you aren't sure which mod it is, I'd try just re-exporting the facegen method and see if that does it. My first guess is it will. An you're welcome, happy to help when I can. I'm not an expert but I don't mind passing along what knowledge I can.
Wolfshrike Posted August 3, 2020 Posted August 3, 2020 using CK fixed it. Not really sure what the cause was, but I reckon if it's fixed it's not too important. At this point I've got ~8 years of mods in this game, give or take, so... there's really no tellin. My best guess is it's something with a hair mod, since I'm also getting the darkface bug on males- and I know PB doesn't touch them at all.
EinarrTheRed Posted August 3, 2020 Author Posted August 3, 2020 PB does do a few males now, the male vilgilants (I redid the entire Vigilant faction group), but other than that no it doesn't do other males. Nobody has ever had any interest in the guys. My guess is you had some old mod that did a lot of loose face gen and that got left behind. If you really want to clean things up, you can. Go into that same facegen mesh and texture folder in your main Data folder where you installed Skyrim. Delete any loose files there, nifs and dds files. Now for some mods you may need to reinstall any updates to the facegen, you'll have to figure those out one at a time. PB no longer has loose files so nothing to worry about there. Once you've copied back the loose facegen from mods you actually use, you should be good to go and that should get rid of the other grey faces you're seeing. I can relate to having lot of old files, same here. I learned to clean stuff out out of necessity, never hurts to tidy up a bit (well, almost never hurts, I have managed to screw things up a few times that way!). Glad PB is showing up the way it should now. Enjoy!
EinarrTheRed Posted August 4, 2020 Author Posted August 4, 2020 Long as I'm posting, might as well share a progress report. The short version is... there hasn't been much progress. ? I was really hoping I'd figured out a way to use a few base NPCs, dynamically add hair color and change voice type and that would have allowed me to make literally tens of thousands of NPCs out of about 800 base figures and KS Hair. That would have meant a smaller mod but so many NPCs you could literally go an entire game an not see the same one spawn twice. Unfortunately, its looking like a no go on both. There is a way I can dynamically add hair in game when the NPC is spawned (actual hair mesh, not a equippable one, I thought about having hair that just gets equipped but its BAD for not equipping stuff so... no), but it has a habit of end up with grey face... sometimes, its been very frustrating. That might be a possibility still for the future if I can ever figure out how to eliminate all the issues. But changing the voice types just doesn't work, its baked into the traits and that's linked to the base body and face stuff so its all or nothing, in this case that means nothing and that one really buggered the whole idea. That means I'm back to my current method of building NPCs which means basically every different NPC has to be done separately and the facedata exported for each one, which means as I add more and more NPCs this mod will keep growing in size, if I do everything I'd like... it'll easily hit 3 GB in size. We'll see. I may think of something else, some other way of reducing that a bit, still working on it. That's the bad news... but there's also some good news. The good news is I'm going to set aside some time to start the KS overhaul... soonish. It'll take months to do because now I'm stuck redoing over 1,200 NPCs. Also, I don't just want to swap the hair, I want to work on the face sculpts. I had considered trying to do face sculpts in Racemenu, you can get some *really* nice results that way which you've all seen in various custom follower mods. But its also too time consuming and just doing 1,200 NPCs in CK is going to take long enough (here's the math, if I spend only 10 min on each one that's about 12,000 min of work or 200 hours or if I spend 8 hours a day (which I can't) that'd take 25 days of constant work). Reality is its more like 20-30 min on each one... its gonna take awhile. Some won't take as long because they were done more recently and are already pretty good, I think some of the Vigilants and the Forsworn turned out pretty nice on the face just need newer hair. But almost all the bandits, warlocks, and witches which were done a long time ago when I was less skilled need to be overhauled. If you want an idea what I'm hoping the end result will be... well... take a look at Immersive Wenches (and just that mod), Koz did that with just CK (not Racemenu) so that's where I'm headed in appearance, at least as a goal (but to be clear, just quality of appearance is all I'm talking about. None of the special powers, custom spells and stuff; this mod doesn't do that). While I've kept the various NPC encounters pretty vanilla as far as stats and abilities go, I'm looking into adding some new level groups to the bandits and other factions. What does this mean? Well, means I got even more NPCs to make... ugh. But, what it means for you is you get stronger bandits when you reach higher level. How things work in Skyrim goes something like this. When the game spawns a bandit it pulls from a leveled list. In that list there are bandits that can spawn when you are level 1, then it bumps up when you hit level 9, then again at level 15 and so on until about level 26 or 30 (give or take, some factions like the Forsworn go as high at level 50)... and then that's it. These are collectively called "Level Groups". Once you get higher than that level, there aren't any stronger bandits because there are no more level groups beyond that. But there could be. It just means adding new level groups that can spawn when you are... for example, level 40 or level 50 or level 60 (that would be 3 groups). Each group, for a faction, may have anywhere from 6-50 NPCs in it; witches don't have many, bandits have the most and warlocks are fairly large as well (which means more variety for you guys). I can add more level groups and I've been thinking of doing so, the game uses them fine in tests and it makes bandit camps and stuff a lil more challenging a bit deeper into the game because they get higher level bandits, but its not unbalancing and doesn't wreck the game or immersion (things I want to avoid). So that's another option I'm seriously considering. Higher level groups can also have more perks (perks make a big difference in how tough a NPC can be, a level 16 archer with no perks isn't very dangerous, give that same archer some good bow perks and suddenly they can really hurt you, all without changing anything else about their stats, level or gear... perks make that much difference), which will make them tougher without getting nuts or giving them super powers. I could give the mages some better spell combo's so they cast and summon things a lil more intelligently at higher level, even make them summon two atronachs instead of one and things like that. Nothing that isn't part of vanilla Skyrim, just... more like it should be I guess. I'm also tinkering more with the appearance of some of the Unique NPCs I recently added to the mod (want to try an make them look even better) and I'm thinking of adding Eisa Blackthorn to the list. I'm open to suggestions on others. I'm also willing to maybe do something more special (as long as its lore friendly) with certain factions, like for example the cultist at the Nightcaller Temple, or maybe something more creative with witches. Just don't expect anything too extra-ordinary, one of my boundaries for this mod is to keep it lore friendly, but long as it fits ES lore, I'm open to ideas. I'm also investigating setting the Orc marauders that inhabit Cracked Tusk Keep so that they respawn. Oh and I did a few tweaks with the ghosts in Yngvild. They will remain "ghostly" even if you enslave them with PAH now (this part is already in PB, and all ghostly NPCs were changes this way). They have appearances based on existing PB templates / NPCs (though its not easy to see since they're ghostly). They're all nude now by default cause the guy creating them is a perv (I may or may not be talking about the NPC in game ?) There are a few extra ones in the main room. This stuff will be in the next release. So that's the news for now.
karlpaws Posted August 4, 2020 Posted August 4, 2020 Quote There are a few extra ones in the main room. So, bow shots from the door to knock the soul gem off the pedestal are more prone to granting revenge? Good news. The rest, while bad news for you, and for the time required bad news for us, I guess we'll just have to deal. Higher level bandit groups make sense, and I wonder if you could just re-use some of the looks. Would also make it a little harder to determine whether that's a low or high level bandit, if you wanted to go that route. The armor should give it away though, if you're able to add glass or ebony armor (glass being more likely, some of the Thalmor have it later on and maybe they got jumped?) The other option I guess would be enchanted stuff more commonly on the "foot" soldier bandits. I suppose at that level you either have all of the enchants or don't want them and the increased value of the items won't matter much since you've probably got 3 houses anyway. Having more enchanted and better armor available for scavenge might be very appreciated by the people using the degradation and armor break mods... unless they gain ways to repair or strengthen their armor at higher levels that make turnover less of a thing. Random thought... I was editing a location and thought I'd try to put in "bunk beds" with two common beds, one above the other. The NPCs did use the top beds, so them floating 5 foot off the floor wasn't an issue, but since I'd lined them up right on top of each other I guess they couldn't "see" the lower use marker. I will have to try shifting (really, re-adding the bed back in because I took it out) and see if off set they work.
EinarrTheRed Posted August 4, 2020 Author Posted August 4, 2020 7 minutes ago, karlpaws said: So, bow shots from the door to knock the soul gem off the pedestal are more prone to granting revenge? Good news. LOL, something like that. I don't think I want to give spoilers away, some of what I added I was trying to "add" to the story being told there. Hopefully everyone will find the humor in it. It should only up the difficulty if you're low level. Otherwise they aren't much of a threat... unless you consider ghostly boobies enough of a distraction to be an problem. ? 7 minutes ago, karlpaws said: The rest, while bad news for you, and for the time required bad news for us, I guess we'll just have to deal. Higher level bandit groups make sense, and I wonder if you could just re-use some of the looks. Would also make it a little harder to determine whether that's a low or high level bandit, if you wanted to go that route. The armor should give it away though, if you're able to add glass or ebony armor (glass being more likely, some of the Thalmor have it later on and maybe they got jumped?) The other option I guess would be enchanted stuff more commonly on the "foot" soldier bandits. I suppose at that level you either have all of the enchants or don't want them and the increased value of the items won't matter much since you've probably got 3 houses anyway. Having more enchanted and better armor available for scavenge might be very appreciated by the people using the degradation and armor break mods... unless they gain ways to repair or strengthen their armor at higher levels that make turnover less of a thing. Yeah, its going to be probably 6-8 months or work so... next Spring maybe? But the upside will be better looking bandits with KS Hair, and more variety. I think the additional level groups makes good sense, they'll include upgunned male bandits as well even if I don't overhaul their appearance (which I'm not planning to cause as I mentioned, nobody seems the least bit interested in that). I could add more steel plate, nordic and ebony armor to the leveled gear for the higher level groups. I wouldn't use glass cause, I dunno... doesn't seem "bandit-ish" to me. Granted, given looting and stuff you could make a good argument for bandits wearing bits of Imperial, Stormcloak, Glass, Elven, and pretty much anything they can get their hands on. So... maybe the odd item from other factions might not be a bad idea, just not a full set on one guy. Good points to ponder. Enchantments are an option for higher level gear. I hadn't considered some of the other mods and play styles you mentioned, good points to keep in mind. I want this mod to be as broadly useful as can be while staying lore friendly, so if i can accomodate various play styles, I'm happy to do so. Witches are a faction that really need not just more level groups but a complete overhaul. For those that don't know, in vanilla Skyrim there are just two level groups in the witches faction... the lower level group are called witches and the 2nd higher one are called hags. That's it, their level progression stops pretty early. Each level group is split into 3 groups by elemental magic (storm, fire and frost), there are no necro witches which seems like a natural fit (especially if you read much ES lore). I might consider correcting a lot of that and adding at least 3-4 level groups to that faction. Forsworn have six level groups, but in vanilla Skyrim they only use the first five. PB currently uses all six (I included that when I added the Forsworn to the mod). Warlocks are an oddity in that they have seven level groups, more than any other and yet their top end on levels isn't as high as the Forsworn, so that probably needs fixing as well. Most magic could do with some tweaks, I don't mean changing the spells, but rather changing what spells they have and setting up combinations... for example, I can force a caster to cast both a cloak spell and summon atronach spell at the same time... the spell effects are vanilla as are the conjured atronachs... they just now always do both together (and no more constantly recasting cloak spells). It makes NPC caster seem a little more intelligent, mainly by forcing them to do something sensible and restricting them from doing a few stupid things. But tweaks like that can make them more of a challenge just because they're making better use of their magic instead of hiding behind a rock casting 50 cloak spells in a row. Changes like that are very lore friendly and so I've no issue with making them. One thing I've considering doing, is rebuilding how my template system works. If I do, then what I could *possibly* do is make a bunch of just naked NPCs, duplicates for each voice type (I dearly wish I could edit that separately, it would make my live SO much easier and allow me to offer so much more variety... but alas... ) and then use those as the base NPCs for various bandits, warlocks, etc. Part of the reason voice type matters is that different NPCs use different voice types. For example, female warlocks use the condescending unless Nord in which case they use the Nord voice or Dunmer in which case they use the Dunmer voice. So if I make female warlocks I need base NPCs that have the correct voice type. Bandits use specific voice types, same for witches, Vigilants, Forsworn, etc. I could use other voice types but then you wouldn't hear them say stuff, because not all voice types have the right recorded dialog and I want to avoid "silent movie NPCs" if I can (I think being able to hear them mutter, talk, shout, etc is part of both immersion but also warning you may be about to get an axe to the skull and you should duck). So... once I have the base NPCs, I could use templates to turn them, if they have the right voice type, into the various encountered NPCs. That would mean more variety... and less. What I mean is, if I have 100 Nord females of a particular voice type, they could all be encountered as witches... but also as warlocks, bandits, Vigilants and so on. So within each faction you'd get more variety but it would also mean you'd see them repeat in other factions. I don't know that that matters to anyone, just pointing it out. If I add more base NPCs later, I could add them to each faction and keep expanding each faction that way. I'm currently looking into what would be involved in doing this and then I'll do some testing. but it seems the best way to go.
Wolfshrike Posted August 4, 2020 Posted August 4, 2020 3 hours ago, EinarrTheRed said: PB does do a few males now, the male vilgilants (I redid the entire Vigilant faction group), but other than that no it doesn't do other males. Nobody has ever had any interest in the guys. It's male bandits. So... not a clue! Oh well, doesn't matter- most of them end up dead too quick to worry about it!
EinarrTheRed Posted August 4, 2020 Author Posted August 4, 2020 Like I said, it sounds like you've gotten some unneeded facegen from somewhere, could be a mod you tried and it didn't uninstall properly, I don't know. Call it an educated guess.
karlpaws Posted August 4, 2020 Posted August 4, 2020 Doing the set of "naked looks" would have another advantage: if you figure out an easier way to produce more of them, you would have a better way to integrate them into the leveling structure. Not sure how hard this would be, but could the boss (bandit chief, master wizard, ... maybe briarheart or shaman for the forsworn) have a slightly different template tree so someone could use either custom follower looks or some other overhaul? They would have to do some editing of their own because you couldn't plan for any of that, but maybe opening two mods in TesEdit you could make one a master and have the template point at the follower? I suppose that would get somewhat old seeing the same face at the end of every dungeon cave or middle of each bandit camp.
Jubbi123 Posted August 11, 2020 Posted August 11, 2020 Great work so far. I hope the SE version comes along soon. My bandits are the ugliest part in my current game. +1 for SE version ?
TheRightDoorIsNotTheLeft Posted August 21, 2020 Posted August 21, 2020 On 8/11/2020 at 2:08 AM, Jubbi123 said: Great work so far. I hope the SE version comes along soon. My bandits are the ugliest part in my current game. +1 for SE version ? In the meantime, I've been using Fresh Women on the Nexus.
MoJo-X Posted August 27, 2020 Posted August 27, 2020 I've been looking for a mod that overhauls the appearances of spawnable enemy NPCs for my next playthrough. Saw a link to your mod on Reddit, and I'm impressed with the scope of this mod. It's beyond what I hoped for. Your ambitions for your next core update are admirable as well. Adding different groups to each type of enemy and better equipment, skills, and enchantments is a solid idea. This will go nicely with mods that improve the way unique NPCs look such as Pandorable's, Bjin, Kalilies, The Men of Winter, and Euoogy. Thanks for the hard work, and take your time into developing a quality mod. I'll be patiently waiting for the SE version. I just have an off-topic question about the certain spawning areas/cells. Sometimes the spawning of the various enemies will just stop a certain encounter area. Being away from the area for a few in-game hours may fix, but sometimes that won't work. Do you know what causes this?
Stormfrost2 Posted September 10, 2020 Posted September 10, 2020 Certain bandits have differently colored face/body. What is the best way to debug this ?
Psalam Posted September 10, 2020 Posted September 10, 2020 6 minutes ago, Stormfrost2 said: Certain bandits have differently colored face/body. What is the best way to debug this ? Make sure that Prettier Bandits comes after (in your load order) anything else that might change the looks of your bandits.
Stormfrost2 Posted September 10, 2020 Posted September 10, 2020 I have Prettier bandits at the lowest level in my load order, do i need to visit a new area to test it out ? I think only some races like redoran npc etc are affected..
Psalam Posted September 10, 2020 Posted September 10, 2020 19 minutes ago, Stormfrost2 said: I have Prettier bandits at the lowest level in my load order, do i need to visit a new area to test it out ? I think only some races like redoran npc etc are affected.. Load a picture or two so I can see your concern.
Heroine HoneyCrotch Posted September 10, 2020 Posted September 10, 2020 If you think it's race related what does xedit say is overwriting vanilla races from skyrim.esm Load all mods into xedit, click Skyrim esm and click races
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