changing npc hair - what went wrong?

[Sephnroth]

did it with the placeatme command you mentioned. No difference looks wise - still default hair, still dark face. The new lydia was not married to me either, did not know me and started conversation as if just met with "the jarl has appointed me to you as housecarl" etc :/

[olnorton]

I think you should break the problem down to 1: Changing an NPC with custom parts, & 2: getting it working with your existing game.

Here's what I would do (and in fact did do)

Use showracemenu to make your players face look good with your installed mods. Press R and exit showracemenu

Bring up the console & type spf Test

Look in your Skyrim folder & you will see a file called Test.npc. Look at it with notepad.

 

http://i1368.photobucket.com/albums/ag187/johnandmonica/TestNPC_zpsa60a3615.jpg~original

For now look at my Test.npc

Notice most of the part numbers start with 00 (that means they can be found in skyrim.esm, which is always 00)

We're interested in the ones that don't start with 00

The first being HairColor:0A001DC4

This is telling the game this NPC has hair color 001DC4 found in the esp/esm loaded at position 0A.

A look at my load order at the time that file was saved shows 0A was EnhancedCharacterEdit.esp

Looking down you see the complexion also comes from the same esp.

Then we have HeadPart:030038AB, load order says that's ApachiiHair.esm

And again HeadPart:0A0012 (eyebrows from ECE)

I only have two mods installed that effect the way the NPC's are created, you may have more.

Eyes that are just retextures of standard eyes will show as 00, extra eyes added by mods will show the mods load order.

 

Now, if I imported Test.npc into the CK, she would get default Hair, Complexion, Hair Color, & Eyebrows.

Because it would look for HairColor 001DC4 in the esp loaded at 0A, & in all likelihood there would be no esp at 0A, so default hair color.

Even if you loaded all your mods in the CK, it wouldn't load them in your game order, it loads them according to there date modified.

So you tell the CK to replace the default HairColor with brown from the list.

It marks your NPC with 04001DC4 color hair, because that's where it loaded EnhancedCharacterEdit.esp

 

In game, back to default hair color, because it can't find 001DC4 in whatever is loaded in 04. Anything it can't find you get default, a mixture of what it can & can't find, and often a grey face.

 

This is why you have to either 1: Get the author of the mods which contains the resources you want to use, permission to use them in your mod & copy them into your mod to make a stand alone mod where everything is in your esp.

 

Or 2: Make masters of all the mods your NPC relies on. In which case as long as they are loaded in any order above your mod, it will find what it needs.

In the case of esp's, I right click on my mod in Wrye Smash & choose Esmify Masters. To make the game think they are esm's. I'm not sure if you have to because I'm new to this, but it works for me.

 

What I would do if I was you, make your changes to a different NPC

One that isn't effected by any mod you have installed.

And see if you can get her to look the way you want.

 

Getting two mods that change the same NPC to work together is harder.

I did it with my mod (cosmetic changes to Aela) & ESFAela.esp (Makes changes to Aela but retains stock appearance)But only if I added both mods before meeting Aela for the first time, anything else resulted in grey face or ESFAela dialogue not working.

If you want to try that you will need Tes5Edit, load both mods & the differences between your two Lydias will show in red.

Copy any changes the house mod made to Lydia to your Lydia & all the cosmetic changes you made to your Lydia to the house mod Lydia until everything shows up green. She will essentially become the same Lydia.

 

http://i1368.photobucket.com/albums/ag187/johnandmonica/TES5Edit_zps019cef8b.jpg~original

Like I said, this wouldn't work in an existing save game where I had meet Aela for me, but you might have better luck.

 

By the way, did you try removing your mod & those three files & see if you could get default Lydia back?

Edited July 31, 2014 by olnorton