SSE Help with custom head

[12AiN]

Ok, folks. I've been beating my head against the wall, first with nifskope, now with the ck.

 

I am creating a new Witcher mod, which for the moment is for personal use, once I get permission from mod authors I may post on Nexus.

 

I downloaded imAarwyn's Geralt Of Rivia Voiced Follower and ran him through SSE Nif Optimizer, got him working in SSE.

 

Then I downloaded TFBO's https://bethesda.net/en/mods/skyrim/mod-detail/3066042. I reworked the mesh so it could be used as a head, at least I think I did. I added skyrim eyes and human mouth. Matched the node structure of imAarwyn's head mesh.

 

Here's where I get lost.

 

When I save my new head nif and replace hers, game crashes on startup.

 

When I open the creation kit, it loads some factory default head, (also it does this without even changing her head. The head I am changing is 00000D62.nif, under meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\geralt.esp. I also at one point tried to replace the malehead.nif (data\meshes\actors\character\geralt). Didn't work.

 

In creationkit, I edited MaleHeadGeralt and directed it to my new nif. It shows up purple, and is half submerged in the ground.

 

https://image.ibb.co/kRWsAb/GERALT.jpg

 

So, as of now, I am perplexed at why these followers seem to have two seperate heads in two seperate directories, and why if I replace one it shows up weird in the CK, or it crashes my game.

 

I looked for tutorials on this, I assume theres more to it than replacing the model and textures, but couldn't find anything coherent. Anyone that can point me in the right direction?

[Levionte]

First of all, I should point out that I used the Citrus head and sculpted it to resemble Geralt. If you replace it with a mesh with a different vertex count, the facial animations aren't going to work. You may as well have him equip the helmet.

 

As for your actual question, the way the follower was created doesn't actively use the head mesh in the actor folder, just the associated tri files. It was used, once, to create the original face geometry mesh, which is the only one that really matters at this point. As a result, the preview you get in the CK doesn't represent the actual results. There are a number of "how to make a follower that uses an exported head from RaceMenu" tutorials which use the same principal that may be more salient than general mesh swapping. You should also be aware that the SE CK exports a new face geometry mesh automatically every time you save, effectively erasing the custom one.

 

You can swap the mesh successfully so long as you keep the names the same, don't add bones, don't add or remove faceparts, etc.. Crashing means you probably did something wrong and I can't tell you what without seeing it. The textures won't line up because I used the vanilla UV which is what fits the citrus head and the helmet probably uses TW3 textures. However, as I said, it won't work with the face morphs anyway. His face will just explode every time it's supposed to animate. If I were to do it over again, I'd probably just port and animate the actual head mesh, but I wasn't very good at that yet when I worked on the project.

[12AiN]

Ah. So are there any guides I can reference for animating the head mesh?

[elleesi]

BUMP