[LE] Need help using Racemenu face for follower

[Kadraeus]

Hey, so I've been getting really frustrated trying to turn one of my player characters into a follower, even with a little bit of help from Reddit. Decided to try posting here. I followed two tutorials to do it and have so far gotten her hair, antlers, and armor all to work.

 

The only thing that I can't figure out is how to get her face to match the original Racemenu character. I converted the nif with NifOptimizer (I'm on SE, so I converted to LE and then back to SE), ran it through NifMerge, and converted it back. However, Skyrim insists on using the ugly vanilla wood elf head instead (no offense, Bethesda), despite the fact that I placed the head nif in the right folders (In Data, MO2 Overwrite, and in a plugin folder run through MO2, all of which using the same file paths). She looks more like the damn Preston Garvey impersonator from Fallout 4 if he actually got the outfit right.

 

Can anyone please lend me some aid? Thanks.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Kadraeus

[justinglen75]

Hello, Some of the best follower tutorials to follow are from Skylah and Asherz - all on YouTube. There are probably many others that are good as well but these are the ones that have helped me.

 

From Skylah

 

From Asherz (this is just part 1 of a series of tutorials on follower creation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8jiYnieAkQ&t=1817s

 

Just to make sure -- you've exported the head mesh and the facetint mask whilst in Racemenu, right?

Then you moved the RM exported head mesh and face tint mask to their appropriate folders for LE/SE?

And you're using this follower in LE or SSE?

Are you working from CK 2.0 (64-bit)? I ask because the CK 2.0 will overwrite your RM facegen mesh and facetint mask every time you save the plugin. You have to keep a backup in the facegeom/YOURMOD.esp folder (for the mesh) and the facetint/YOURMOD.esp folder (for the facetint mask) location so you can overwrite the CK-generated files. If you open the plugin in CK 2.0, save it and then play SSE, the follower will NOT look like your follower (because it has overwriten your RM files). If you imported an NPC file it will translate the data from that file and your follower will look odd in-game. I'm guessing that's what's going on.

Edited June 16, 2020 by justinglen75