ShimoOkami

Put simply, the Imperials added by Custom Races, "CustomImperials", will be able to use different animations than Imperials of the race that came with the game. This is because animation paths are determined by the race and gender of the actor rather than the actor itself and Custom Races lets the player character use different animations by creating new races that use copies of the data used by the vanilla races. To use your custom animations with an Imperial, you would need to use the race "CustomImperial" added by Custom Races. All of the NPCs will use the normal "Imperial" race and will not use your custom animations because PECA makes them use animations in a separate folder containing copies of the vanilla animations. The only case where you're going to have problems is if you have, say two male Imperial characters, and you want them both to have animations that are different from those that NPCs use but you only want one of them to use your bastard sword animations. The thing with PCEA is that any character you make that is not one of the original vanilla races will use your custom animations, so a "CustomImperial" would use the same animations as a "CustomArgonian" or a "Lunari". If you want your animations to apply only to a single character, you will need to create a race specifically for that character and change its animation paths. Unfortunately, I don't actually know how to edit the animation paths, so I wouldn't be able to help you with that. Does that answer your question?

Try using PCEA. This allows your character to have separate animations from NPCs. You'll need a custom race or Custom Races by d_rail if you want to play as one of the vanilla races. If you want to use Custom Races with modded textures or meshes, you'll need to copy those files into the appropriate folders under Data\meshes\CustomRaces or Data\textures\CustomRaces. PCEA does require FNIS, but there's no need to mess with it. All you need to do is run FNIS and tick the box for the PCEA patch. You don't even need to move your animations since PCEA changes the path for the original vanilla races, allowing custom races to use the default animation file locations.

I'm not sure how much you know about texture editing, so feel free to skip stuff if you already know about it. Also, I'm kind of unorganized when it comes to writing, but hopefully it'll still make sense. First of all, you're going to need a program that can edit .dds files. If you have Photoshop, there's a plugin that lets you edit them which you can find here. There's other programs out there that you can get for free, but I don't use them so I won't be able to help you there. The files you're going to want to look at are in the Data\textures\actors\character folder. There's male and female folders in there with self explanatory files such as femalebody_1.dds and malehead.dds. The files that have _msn or _s at the end of their names are the normal and specular maps. The normal map creates the illusion of fine 3D detail without the need to make a ridiculously high-poly model. The specular map controls how highlights are applied to the model. You don't have to worry about the normal maps unless you're doing something like adding fur or abs. You can also ignore the specular maps unless you feel that the skin looks too shiny, in which case you can just replace them with pure black textures. If you don't know how to extract files, just let me know. Once you have extracted the textures you want to edit, make a backup copy of them so you don't have to re-extract them in case you decide to start over. You should also make sure you have a separate "working file" saved in your preferred format (for me it's .psd) in addition to your edited .dds and backup file that has all your layer data as layers are not saved in .dds format. It's a huge pain to go back and edit things when all your layers have been merged. Also, if you're using Photoshop (I'm not sure about other programs) you have to merge all your layers before saving as a .dds and make sure you have it set to generate mip maps otherwise your texture may not work properly. You can start editing the texture right away, but I usually start my texture work by using a UV test pattern like this as my texture. This lets me get a good idea of how the texture gets stretched and compressed when applied to the 3D model as well as where the seams are. I take a bunch of screenshots from various angles to use as references so I don't have to boot up Skyrim too much. Getting the texture to show up in the game is really simple; just place your texture in Skyrim's Data folder with the same file structure and file name that you see with the extracted files. Have fun, and let me know if I was unclear or you need help with anything.

Thanks~ I checked those mods out, and tried PCEVP. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this myself, but at least now I know someone who does.

I looked around the forums and did a Google search, but I only found information relating to unique NPC voices. I have a basic understanding of how that works, but I can't figure out how to give the player character a custom voice. I already know how to create a new voice type and change the voice type for the PC by editing the race. I'm just not sure how I would go about linking the voice files to the new voice type. I'm still pretty new to CK, so if I'm trying to do this the completely wrong way or something please let me know. D:

You might want to try using this instead of a completely new race. These are equippable animal ears and tails, so you can use them with pretty much humanoid race you want.

I literally just found this mod. It adds follower with a tweaked mesh that looks more like a German Shepherd. There's only one texture right now, but it seems that the author is planning on making more. I'm also making some textures of my own which I'll upload if I get permission. EDIT: I didn't realize how old this thread was. I was only looking at the last post date. D: