[LE] Replace faces for race?

[hoax2]

I'm looking for tips or ideas about how i might go about replacing some of the faces of the vanilla races completely?
(For the entire race, not just the player)

 

Concept:
For personal taste I'd like to replace the elves with a more human looking race (Think: Lord of Rings, The Witcher, D&D Aasimar).

(If i can work that out than I might attempt Orcs, Khajiit & Argonian)

 

Any ideas how I would go about it?

1. For example, I was hoping to swap out all the High-elf assets for Nord assets, but I can't seem to workout how races get their facial features?
2. I've noticed there some mods like Unique Everything or Unique Bodies by Race work pretty well for custom bodies but doesn't seem to effect faces?
3. And mods like Ethereal Elven Overhaul seem to have a truck-load of FaceGenData & Facegeom nifs, but i don't know what these are, or the process for making my own?

Edited January 24, 2022 by hoax2

[nerdofprey]

Short answer is, don't.

 

Replacing vanilla head parts is a generally bad idea and can easily cause tons of bugs including crashes.

Facegen files (meshes and textures) are the actual files read by the game for individual NPC faces. If you change any racial head parts, these need to be regenerated for every NPC of that race. This includes NPC's added by other mods; that's the main reason it's a bad idea. Patches would be necessary to use your mod with just about any other mod. If there is any mismatch between the race's head parts and the head parts present in the facegen files, you get the gray face / black face bug or possibly a crash.

 

The flipside of this is, you don't need to change the race's head parts to change them for individual NPC's. Since you need to regenerate every NPC's facegen to make this work anyway, you can swap head parts from within each individual NPC record and then export new facegen with that change included. Different races' head shapes are determined by the associated tri files; they all use the same head mesh and just distort it in different ways. So you could do something like, duplicate the Nord head with the Nord tri files, set your duplicate to be usable by elf races, then in the NPC record you assign the new head type and design a new face based on that and export the facegen. Of course if you do that, you lose all the elfish features, no pointy ears or anything.

 

There's really no shortcut for changing the facial features of an entire race. No matter what you do, it will always come down to editing each individual NPC in the end. The question is just how much work you want to put into that. The end result will be proportional to the labor you put in.

 

There are easier approaches you can use to make elves/orcs look a little less weird; the #1 easiest is you could simply use head textures designed for humans on all your elves and orcs, which gets rid of the weird wrinkles and stuff and instantly makes a big difference.

One step more difficult than that would be to individually edit NPC face sliders to make their facial features less weird through the CK, save those changes and export new facegen.

 

If you want really beautiful results, the thing to do is design each person's face individually in RaceMenu, export the head mesh, and merge that with facegen data from the CK. This is how most sexy custom followers and are made, and some top-quality NPC overhaul mods, and you can find a bunch of online tutorials that outline the process.

[hoax2]

Gosh.
This is quite literally the best answer I could have asked for, thank you.

• I'm thinking I might start with the tri files swap and re-gen that you outlined. To see if I can understand the file structure and pipeline before I commit to anything to large.
• You also put me on to Tri files which i wasn't familiar with Skyrim head TRIs. So that's a whole new layer of understanding I can thank you for!!
• Also nice pro tip for the textures.

 

Thanks again for such an honest and detailed answer.

[Sphered]

Facegen files are all about the String names for the parts. A facepart doesnt necessarily need to be "supported" in a racial formlist for NPCs to use them. Simply assign part/s via XEdit to the ActorBase and then make sure your facegen nif (exported via Racemenu or whatnot) matches those EditorIDs

 

Ofc not all parts can you do this procedure but the majority you can just fine. All about the game seeing the names in the nif match the actorbase parts