Prettier Bandits

[EinarrTheRed]

54 minutes ago, tutch said:

Indeed, it's the clear colour change from neck to body, that I saw on "Imperial Captain" and Vigilant of Stendarr" generic NPC's for now. I'll edit to add a screenie as soon as I get back into Skyrim, but I reckon your CK trick will work.

Keep in mind the current Imperial Captain is a unique NPC with a face done in Racemenu.  The Vigilant's of Stendarr are not but Keeper Carcette is another done in Racemenu.

 

55 minutes ago, tutch said:

I just wonder why some appearance mods look just fine and others have this issue, it isn't just yours of course. I made sure all ESP records win in my tweaked smashed patch. This game baffles me sometimes. Maybe it's the "skin tone" values or something.

Could be some of those mods are packing their own skin textures in, that's one way around it.  I used Bijin's skin when making the mod, so you might look at how what you use compares to the skin tint of that, closer it matches probably the better results.  I thought it was a pretty good "middle of the road" option.

[Pfiffy]

@EinarrTheRed I think you are the right one to ask: How about some female dremoras? I need a basic reference to modify the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers from the AE mods. And I'm looking for someone that can 'improve' the girls from the BBL mod. I'm not familiar with that part of the CK. 

 

I'm going to check out if I get into trouble with the new version in SE/AE. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Pfiffy

[karlpaws]

On 4/8/2022 at 3:24 PM, EinarrTheRed said:

There are.  For now its random wilderness encounters, either a Vigilant of Stendarr fighting a dremora OR a witch fighting a dremora.  Its the same encounter as where they might be fighting an atronach, I just added a 1 in 4 chance of it being a dremora instead.  The dremora, for now, are all male and use the same leveled lists used for the ones you encounter inside Mehrunes Dagon's shrine.   But that's just for now while I work out the issues and get everything working properly.  Once I get that done I would like to...

• add female versions of the male dremora
• add female mazken
• possibly add other types of daedra
• look for other encounter locations I could add dremora spawns where it would make sense but still keep them fairly rare... this isn't another Oblivion Crisis after all.

 

 

On 4/8/2022 at 3:34 PM, kalador said:

Just a note since I was reading the posts about the possibility of female Dremora.

 

nachtdaemmerung77 used to have a female dremora stand alone follower available on Nexus before he pulled all of his mods from that site, and is now hosting his Maelstrom-Norse Dungeon quest in this forum.  Possibly ask if you can use his follower as a base for Dremora females?

?

 

1 hour ago, Pfiffy said:

@EinarrTheRed I think you are the right one to ask: How about some female dremoras? I need a basic reference to modify the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers from the AE mods. And I'm looking for someone that can 'improve' the girls from the BBL mod. I'm not familiar with that part of the CK. 

 

I'm going to check out if I get into trouble with the new version in SE/AE. 

 

 

EtR is planning to add some dremora, if I understood your post correctly.  The discussion started about 2 pages back but I quoted some posts from one page back.

 

[EinarrTheRed]

6 hours ago, Pfiffy said:

 I think you are the right one to ask: How about some female dremoras? I need a basic reference to modify the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers from the AE mods. And I'm looking for someone that can 'improve' the girls from the BBL mod. I'm not familiar with that part of the CK. 

Female dremora and female mazken are planned.   Here's where things stand currently.

 

I've modified the leveled lists and two quests so that either WE witches or WE Vigilants can be encountered fighting daedra in addition to atronachs.  There is currently a 1 in 4 chance it will be a daedra rather than an atronach.

 

Currently the daedra are only dremora using the existing leveled list that is otherwise only used for the interior of the Mehrunes Dagon shrine.  This does NOT include Dremora Lords, but does include some "lesser" dremora not otherwise seen in Skyrim.  They are currently all male.

 

I've gotten the initial problems with these encounters smoothed out, so they are hostile to the witches and Vigilants and was able to do so by altering the RefAlias in the quest rather than the races and main factions, lower impact on the game that way.

 

Next thing will be to update those dremora with some KS hair and maybe a bit more variety in their face paint.

 

On the to do list is to add some female dremora, female counterparts to those male dremora.  Then after that add a new group of female mazken.  Both of those projects have gotten delayed because I'm having to finish reinstalling Skyrim (some how my game install got screwed up... personally I blame Microsux... may not actually have been their fault but I'm blaming them anyway ?) and I'm also busy building two new bandit camps for SBC plus rebuilding my HF dungeon (not to mention real life and taking some online courses).

 

Somewhere amid all that I've got to get back to learning the process of converting my LE stuff over to SE. ?  BTW, Blackbird and I have had trouble with converting facegen done in LE Racemenu over to SE, if you have any advice or insights on that... we're all ears!

[Pfiffy]

7 hours ago, EinarrTheRed said:

Female dremora and female mazken are planned.   Here's where things stand currently.

 

I've modified the leveled lists and two quests so that either WE witches or WE Vigilants can be encountered fighting daedra in addition to atronachs.  There is currently a 1 in 4 chance it will be a daedra rather than an atronach.

 

Currently the daedra are only dremora using the existing leveled list that is otherwise only used for the interior of the Mehrunes Dagon shrine.  This does NOT include Dremora Lords, but does include some "lesser" dremora not otherwise seen in Skyrim.  They are currently all male.

 

I've gotten the initial problems with these encounters smoothed out, so they are hostile to the witches and Vigilants and was able to do so by altering the RefAlias in the quest rather than the races and main factions, lower impact on the game that way.

 

Next thing will be to update those dremora with some KS hair and maybe a bit more variety in their face paint.

 

On the to do list is to add some female dremora, female counterparts to those male dremora.  Then after that add a new group of female mazken.  Both of those projects have gotten delayed because I'm having to finish reinstalling Skyrim (some how my game install got screwed up... personally I blame Microsux... may not actually have been their fault but I'm blaming them anyway ?) and I'm also busy building two new bandit camps for SBC plus rebuilding my HF dungeon (not to mention real life and taking some online courses).

 

Somewhere amid all that I've got to get back to learning the process of converting my LE stuff over to SE. ?  BTW, Blackbird and I have had trouble with converting facegen done in LE Racemenu over to SE, if you have any advice or insights on that... we're all ears!

I'm having the same problem here. I had a CTD on entering the Jarl House in Falkreath and didn't find the  mod, that caused it. Now I switched over to AE and rebuild my whole setup. I need a base for playing around with the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers for a little expansion of the Daedra of Cold Harbor and The Daedric Museum of Artifacts. (My favorite playround for training for Paradise Halls) This would be much easier, If I had some presets... 

[Pfiffy]

Which ones make the problems? From what I saw so far, I have some Dark faces, so I tried to reexport them from the CK, but I had some crashes when I did them all at once. I try to isolate the trouble makers...

[karlpaws]

ETR posted in another thread that his monitor died and he's limping along with a TV screen. Should be back at full power in a couple days.

 

If you are asking with faces were not converting to SE, I don't know if any in PB were affected, as they were mostly working on BW's SBC mod and faces for that. I think ETR took a couple of his own and tried using them for tests to help BW, but I don't think they were included in the mod here.

 

If you are running SE and trying to convert the PB mod to SE, I would think the named, special NPCs would be the most likely to have problems. The Necromancers for Wolf Skull cave, the Vaermina "Dreamgirls", Minorne, Carcette maybe, Anska and Eisa, and Salma were handmade, I think.

[Pfiffy]

Ok... Strange problem: the CK reports an error in the maleheadorc_msn.dds. Wrong texture format and closes down. I was able to export all other facegen files, but the imperial Captain broke. It worked unconverted, so this should not be a major problem. Haven't tested the Keeper Carcette. But my guess is that she will also be fine without converting. (In fact i never hat problems with unconverted Facegen files. Another thing I want to say is that Appachii and KS are usually both in my load order, so why don't use them together and have more variation?

[karlpaws]

You could use both, but I think ETR's idea on KS vs Apachii vs both is one esp vs three.

 

Not sure why the male orc head would cause problems, as I think there are none in use in PB.

[Pfiffy]

2 hours ago, karlpaws said:

You could use both, but I think ETR's idea on KS vs Apachii vs both is one esp vs three.

Why? Both mods are some of the major dependencies. I can't remember a load order where I didn't use both for years now....

2 hours ago, karlpaws said:

 

Not sure why the male orc head would cause problems, as I think there are none in use in PB.

This is why it is a strange problem. The file is in the game's original BSA so it should be working... I don't think that extracting the textures from the BSA will solve this problem, but it will for sure cause others. Anyway: LE Headmeshes usually work fine in SE/AE without converting. As long as I don't stumble over any other problems, I'm going to use the unconverted version in my game and see if I have problems somewhere. For making a release for SE/AE I think it would be a good idea to resave the .esp and export only the headmeshes that can be exported without any trouble. For testing: use the resaved esp with the LE headmeshes and then export them one by one and look at them in-game, to see if they show up as expected. I made a screen shot of the Imperial captain in the opening scene: Is this the way she should look like?:

[karlpaws]

10 hours ago, Pfiffy said:

Why? Both mods are some of the major dependencies. I can't remember a load order where I didn't use both for years now....

 

I will leave that for him to answer.

 

10 hours ago, Pfiffy said:

I made a screen shot of the Imperial captain in the opening scene: Is this the way she should look like?:

 

Yes, that is how she looks in my game.

[Pfiffy]

3 hours ago, karlpaws said:

 

I will leave that for him to answer.

 

 

Yes, that is how she looks in my game.

ok, in this case less seems to be more.... Less converting, more fun... I will try to spawn a few more chars from PB to see if I find problems, but so far every thing is ok...

So the Mazken are Dark Seducers. They are already introduced with the CC content Beth added with AE. There is already a good beautification patch.  

[Pfiffy]

Some more screenshots: I reinstalled PB to make sure that I have it as it is.

Load order:

 

Babes of Skyrim

Botox SE

Prettier Bandits

 

 

Valana:

 

Carcette:

 

And an unnamed orc:

 

After installing Tempered Skins, I was able to export the headmeshes of the orcs and now it looks like this:

 

 

Didn't have any further errors in the CK, so I re-saved the .esp and created a new archive with the exported headmeshes. Note I skipped the Imperial Captain and the Keeper. Hm... I haven't seen female orcs....

 

For further testing:  Prettier Bandits SE v1.0 (loose).7z

 

 

 

[karlpaws]

Well, Carcette looks right but I think the orc pic shows that is more of a skin problem or conflict with other mods.

 

@EinarrTheRed posted that he has a new monitor now, so when he works through his backlog of real work and play work, I'm sure he'll chime in.

[EinarrTheRed]

Yup... catching up on things fast as I can. ?

[EinarrTheRed]

On 5/4/2022 at 5:52 PM, Pfiffy said:

Ok... Strange problem: the CK reports an error in the maleheadorc_msn.dds. Wrong texture format and closes down. I was able to export all other facegen files, but the imperial Captain broke. It worked unconverted, so this should not be a major problem. Haven't tested the Keeper Carcette. But my guess is that she will also be fine without converting. (In fact i never hat problems with unconverted Facegen files. Another thing I want to say is that Appachii and KS are usually both in my load order, so why don't use them together and have more variation?

I don't recall doing anything with that dds in PB, but I'll double check to be sure tomorrow.

 

As for Apachii and KS, like you I have both in my load order and both have been there a long time.  Personally I like using both, but I get a LOT of requests to replace Apachii with KS so since I'm making this mod as much for others as for myself I'm just rolling with the popular requests.   There may be a few Apachii hair models I keep, if so, I'll just pack those few into PB and remove the requirement for Apachii hair esms.  KS Hair offers plenty of female hair options, not quite as much for males but for the most part in all the years I've worked on this mod just about nobody had cared about male NPCs.  Like... 2 people in 6 years.  ?   An one of those didn't want long hair on men so... ??

 

On 5/4/2022 at 11:02 PM, karlpaws said:

Not sure why the male orc head would cause problems, as I think there are none in use in PB.

There are a few male orcs, but no female orcs.  I did a few of the male orcs (the old males you see by the road) a LOOOOOOOONG time ago because... I can't remember exactly... but those were the only ones and it was only a few of em.

 

On 5/5/2022 at 1:58 AM, Pfiffy said:

Anyway: LE Headmeshes usually work fine in SE/AE without converting. As long as I don't stumble over any other problems, I'm going to use the unconverted version in my game and see if I have problems somewhere. For making a release for SE/AE I think it would be a good idea to resave the .esp and export only the headmeshes that can be exported without any trouble. For testing: use the resaved esp with the LE headmeshes and then export them one by one and look at them in-game, to see if they show up as expected. I made a screen shot of the Imperial captain in the opening scene: Is this the way she should look like?:

So... my LE, Racemenu generated Imperial Captain works fine in SE/AE as is without conversion?  An yeah, from what I can see, she looks okay... I'm not sure if she has all the details without a close up.  You can compare her to this screen cap and see what you think.

 

Spoiler

The Imperial Captian from LE

 

Keeper Carcette

 

Eisa Blackthorn

 

Fjola from Mistwatch

 

Anska in Highgate Ruins

 

So if they look like that then... you may have just removed one headache for me, converting these over to SE might be easier than I had thought.  Which leaves me wondering why Blackbird is having some much trouble with the new SBC captives, we both used the same process (Racemenu > Nifskope > Nifmerge). ?

 

If that part of the conversion goes well, then I might be able to get an official SE version out sooner than I thought, that'd be nice!

 

Valana generally looks right, but there's so much shadow on her face in the screen cap I can't really tell if all her make up is there.

Spoiler

Valana center front, you can perhaps tell she's got some blush on her cheeks, some contour shading under the cheeks.  For comparison.

 

16 hours ago, Pfiffy said:

Didn't have any further errors in the CK, so I re-saved the .esp and created a new archive with the exported headmeshes. Note I skipped the Imperial Captain and the Keeper. Hm... I haven't seen female orcs....

People are welcome to try it out, I don't yet have SE installed, been a lil busy so I can't test it yet.  Its one of the 101 things on my to do list.

 

 

[Pfiffy]

@EinarrTheRed Results vary according to the Skin used and/or the ENB. Impy (My favorite name for the Imperial Captain) looked a bit different, when I started with a slightly different load order. I will check how Anska and Fjola look like, to see if the warpaints work. 

 

Edit: I get a message on the screen about '3BA something' when I spawned them from the first SE Version. They where broken: The unconverted versions work error free.  I see it as a prove of concept: It's better to don't convert working things, instead of converting them to death.... 

 

So here we go: Resaved .esp, untouched Headmeshes: I spawned Valana, Fjola, Anska, Impy and Carcette. They look good here, 

 

Prettier Bandits SE v1.0 (loose).7z

 

For me converting headmeshes had always been a self-made problem: Original headmeshes usually (98% of the time) work fine without doing anything. My opinion is: Re-save the esp to stop the ppl from complaining about the header and skip the rest... (In your case, you don't even need to re-save the .esp, but the good old Header discussion doesn't lead anywhere)

The only thing, that you have to care about are the textures. If you make sure that they are compatible with the SE standards you are good to go with LE, too.  

 

For the orc: It isn't your fault, that Bethesda's CK complains about a file that Bethesda didn't set up properly in it's own game data. Are they used in the Vaermina Quest?

(If so: replace them with females... You are doing a good Job on females... And we need more female orcs...)

 

hm... Sexy bandit captives... Has anybody checked it in SE without converting? 

 

Right now I'm working on The Daedra of Cold Harbor. I turn all NPC's into females, making them use the in-game body and kick out the unnecessary stuff. Then I plan to replace the Dremora guards in the Deadric Museum of Artifacts with them. I stumbled over one race there, where I could not change males into females and I had sometime problems with adding the Horns to the Hair so that they are part of the Body and don't get removed if you strip them. It worked half of the time, so I don't know what I did wrong. I need some advice here.  

[chaimhewast]

10 hours ago, EinarrTheRed said:

So... my LE, Racemenu generated Imperial Captain works fine in SE/AE as is without conversion?

My tests with combining your mod with Disparity and Diversity were done in SE. I don't remember doing anything to convert the assets to SE, only patching the texture paths so the faces used the racial textures instead of the shared ones.

 

It didn't immediately explode, but I admittedly only did quick tests.

[Blackbird Wanderer]

On 5/7/2022 at 5:33 AM, Pfiffy said:

hm... Sexy bandit captives... Has anybody checked it in SE without converting?

It usually causes a CTD without the convert, but that was done converting both the NIF and the DDS files.  Haven't tried converting the DDS and leaving the NIF as is.  Interesting.

[Blackbird Wanderer]

On 5/7/2022 at 5:33 AM, Pfiffy said:

hm... Sexy bandit captives... Has anybody checked it in SE without converting? 

At least it was a quick experiment.  Instant CTD with only the mesh changed to the unconverted version.

[Pfiffy]

1 hour ago, Blackbird Wanderer said:

At least it was a quick experiment.  Instant CTD with only the mesh changed to the unconverted version.

Well, If you created the headmeshes in the same way that Einarr did them it should also work... This means as long as you only have Headmeshes.... Other Nifs still need you attention, of cause... Interesting thing is that you convert the .dds files... If they are set up correctly they should also work without any problems... I take a look at it...

[EinarrTheRed]

I got so much to catch up on. ?

[Blackbird Wanderer]

53 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

Well, If you created the headmeshes in the same way that Einarr did

Same method, yes.  However, many of the SBC meshes were not created from scratch and were adapted from other NIFs as starting points.

 

53 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

it should also work...

Agree, however the game engine did not agree.

 

55 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

Interesting thing is that you convert the .dds files... If they are set up correctly they should also work without any problems...

Even if they are set up correctly, it harms nothing to run it through a conversion step.  Also, not sure what compression or mini-map generation was included in the source which was an output from a RaceMenu export, so the additional pass will take care of that as well if needed.

[Pfiffy]

21 minutes ago, Blackbird Wanderer said:

Same method, yes.  However, many of the SBC meshes were not created from scratch and were adapted from other NIFs as starting points.

 

Agree, however the game engine did not agree.

 

Even if they are set up correctly, it harms nothing to run it through a conversion step.  Also, not sure what compression or mini-map generation was included in the source which was an output from a RaceMenu export, so the additional pass will take care of that as well if needed.

Ok... For a test I will download both versions and replace the SE Headmeshes with the LE ones... 

[Pfiffy]

On 5/8/2022 at 10:23 PM, Pfiffy said:

Ok... For a test I will download both versions and replace the SE Headmeshes with the LE ones... 

 

On 5/8/2022 at 10:00 PM, Blackbird Wanderer said:

Same method, yes.  However, many of the SBC meshes were not created from scratch and were adapted from other NIFs as starting points.

 

Agree, however the game engine did not agree.

 

Even if they are set up correctly, it harms nothing to run it through a conversion step.  Also, not sure what compression or mini-map generation was included in the source which was an output from a RaceMenu export, so the additional pass will take care of that as well if needed.

I don't have a crash if I spawn NPC'S from SBC, but I have the same strange results that I got after exporting the PB headmeshes with the CK. the only time that I have seen this, was when a part of the Nif is missing.