Conflicting hair mods

[Vaalyah]

Hello!

Since default hair are simply dreadful, I've spent some times to download some good looking hair mods. They are simply great but... it seems they all override the same default hair. I think that, on about 20 default hair styles, 11 are different kind of bald heads, so I'd like to override those, not the only one with a ponytail.

Is there any way to "move" the custom hair override action, in order to keep 2 custom ponytails and some less bald scalps?

[unniebee]

Currently, with the tools we have and the limitations of Frostbite, no, this is not possible. You can only edit existing hair meshes and re-import on top; you cannot add new meshes to the game.

 

This might change once people get better with using the second mod maker (Frosty) but currently it isn't possible. Sorry.

[nightscrawl]

Currently, with the tools we have and the limitations of Frostbite, no, this is not possible. You can only edit existing hair meshes and re-import on top; you cannot add new meshes to the game.

 

This might change once people get better with using the second mod maker (Frosty) but currently it isn't possible. Sorry.

 

Just to clarify. This isn't about people knowing (or not) how to do something. You cannot add assets with Frosty or the older DAI Mod Maker. It's a limitation of the tools themselves.

[unniebee]

Thanks. I knew that was the case with DAI Mod Maker, but I wasn't sure with Frosty since I've never used it.

[Vaalyah]

Sorry, I'd like to know: is in game ponytail the only mesh that can be edited? Because if not, why not editing the (many) bald hair?

[unniebee]

The only meshes that can be edited are the ones that have hair. None of the bald or close-cropped ones can be edited because there's nothing to edit.

 

Because of the limitations of modding, we can only mod hair with the following process:

• Export an existing hair mesh.
• Open the mesh in a 3D modelling tool and move the vertices around to create a new shape.
• Import the edited mesh into the exact same slot, replacing the original hair with the new one.

That's it, that's the only way it works. We can't import whole new meshes - the number of vertices has to match exactly or the mod will crash. We can't import ANYTHING new into the game, we can only replace existing assets.

 

So we can't replace the bald-style slots, because there's no hair mesh to change around. Only the styles that have an actual mesh can be modded. Does that make sense?

[Vaalyah]

Hmmm, so, from what I've understood, you cannot either export and modify the ponytail but then import it in the bald place, because the vertex number would not match, is it correct?

[unniebee]

Correct. You could not even export one hair into the place of a different hair. So if you tried to replace the ponytail with the long hair, it would not work.

 

However, you CAN install different mods for the same hairstyle, IF they are for different race/gender combinations. So if you have two different hair mods that both change the ponytail, you can install one for Human Females, and a different one for Elven Males. As an example.

 

Almost all of the hairstyles have mods that override them on the Nexus, not just the ponytail. The longer ones have more, because there are more vertices for the modders to work with, so they can get better styles out of them. In addition, the two longest styles (the long hair without fringe and the long hair with fringe) have some weight/motion programmed into them, so a lot of modders trying to create long styles will use those.

 

There is a reasonably complete list of hair mods here: https://daimodderblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/30/

[Vaalyah]

My problem is that I'd like to try different hairstyles while creating the pg. ie: I use a human female, and I have 3 different ponytails. How can I know which one better suits the face I've just created, if I can't compare them ON the actual head? And of course, if I exit the game, load a different ponytail and re-enter it, I would never be able to recreate the same face :-/

 

Any idea why EA seems to have modders, in this game? I mean, previous DA had plenty of mod-support... Why removing the toolset first and the override folder then?

[Thandal]

<snip>

Any idea why EA seems to have modders, in this game? I mean, previous DA had plenty of mod-support... Why removing the toolset first and the override folder then?

 

@Vaalyah; It's not "hating modders", it's "requiring the Frostbite game engine", that makes modding the latest BioWare (and other EA studios') games so hard.

 

The Frostbite engine has two huge advantages for EA over any other:

1. It allows direct porting of the game code with minimal effort to all three major platforms; PC, XB1, PS4.
2. They already own it, (through their acquisition of DICE years ago) so no licensing fee.

And with the emergence of the "DAI Mod Manager" (and now "Frosty") there's a lot of modding for these games going on. Just not as much or as varied as there used to be for the Eclipse/Aurora-based games.

 

While BethSoft released the CK for use with the (licensed) Gamebryo and later Creation Engine games, Frostbite is a completely different beast. Even the devs have had problems trying to establish demo Frostbite environments at events (e.g E3, PAX, and even EA's own EA-Play) to "show-off how game development works".