Can someone teach me?

[OniKirin]

I am brand new to modding, and I have seen so many amazing mods to make the game better yet I have no idea how to properly mod without fucking up my game. I would love it if someone could possibly teach me on how to properly install mods from this site, and answer a few questions of mine. One big one that I have is:

 

Is it possible to assign skin maps to individual races? I saw a nice muscle mod for females that I'd like to give the Orcs women, but not to the other races.

 

Also, what would everyone recommend me using in regards to sex mods? I have seen the OSex mod which I definitely want, but uncertain what body types to get for men and women.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Sceadugengan]

One thing you definitely want to use is Mod Organizer.

It helps you keeping a clear view on what you have installed and which mods overwrite assets from others.

It also makes it easy to shift things around without having to reinstall mods.

If you haven't already, install it and watch some tutorials to get farmiliar with it.

 

If you know your way around TES5Edit you can edit the orc race to use a different texture set.

I've done this myself when I edited my installed follower mods to save on VRAM.

All the standalone follower mods using copies of the same textures is too wasteful...

Open Skyrim.esm with TES5Edit, find the entry for the orc race, right click it and choose "copy as override" as a new plugin.

Then find and copy the SkinNaked, NakedTorso, NakedHands, NakedFeet, and SkinBodyFemale*; all referenced to each other in this order.

Since you want to edit the race you need to copy it as override but you should copy the other things as new entries, since they're also used by other races and you'd end up changing their appearances, too.

SkinBodyFemale* is the actual texture set you need to change to use the textures you want and then replace the references for the stuff you've copied.

[OniKirin]

Have never heard of TES5Edit. I'll take a look at it. The skin I wanna use for the orcs is this one: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44/?

 

How hard is it to turn orcs into this kind of body type? Also, what bodies are recommended for females? I am looking for bodies that can be edited for different chest/bust sizes and such.

[Sceadugengan]

It isn't difficult.

All the playable races use the same assets for the body, so you just need to copy the things I mentioned previously, edit them and replace the relevant references.

What you need to pay attention to are FormIDs.

When you want to override something like the orc race the FormID must be the same as the original, when you want to copy something without it overriding other stuff the ID must be unique.

I'd suggest to download a standalone follower mod, open and investigate it using TES5Edit how everything works together.

 

Edit:

I personally use UUNP from Bodyslide 2, although that's up to your taste.

I'm also using a zeroed slider base body in combination with BodyGen for more variety, but I guess that's rather advanced.

If you're new to modding you should focus more on the basics for now.

[OniKirin]

Thank you so much for the detailed steps! Yeah it is pretty daunting but with all of this I think I can figure most of it out. The big step is me wanting to edit what the races look like, mostly orcs and nords being more muscular/fit compared to the other races. 

[Sceadugengan]

Give it a try.

If it turns out too difficult I can make a small plugin for the orc (and nord) race changes for you.