Giving NPCs different normals

[Deleted3576383User]

I am wondering if it is possible to apply normals per NPC. As an example, I want to Ria from the Companions to have more muscles than a citizen like Ysolda. Similarly so for males. I have noticed that some NPC overhauls include their own body textures, and I have tried overwriting the normal provided in the mod with a different one but it had no effect. There are NPCs that do not have their own texture folders.

[scorrp10]

To go down this rabbit hole... You open any Actor record in CK, Traits tab, if the 'Skin' field under the 'Race' field says 'NONE', that NPC is using their Race default skin. We will return to that 'Skin' field a bit later.

 

If you open any humanoid Race record (NordRace, RedguardRace, WoodElfRaceVampire etc) Body Data tab, both Male and Female, the 'Skin' field says 'SkinNaked' which is Armor form ID 00000D64

 

Opening that up, and playing with the 'Race' dropdown you can see in the 'Model' box that for all humans + Orcs, the models (ArmorAddon) are : NakedFeet, NakedHands, NakedTorso. Elves, Argonians and Children use others.

 

Lets look at 'NakedTorso' ArmorAddon (Form ID 00000D67), Female section. (Male is similar) Specifically:

Skin Texture: SkinBodyFemale_1

Skin Texture Swap List: SkinFemaleHumanBody

 

Of note: whenever worn clothing/armor shows some skin, it includes the 'body' mesh that uses 'Skin' type shader, and for that type shader, game will use textures from the TextureSet specified in the 'Skin Texture' on their 'SkinNaked' "armor".

SkinBodyFemale_1 is a TextureSet that typically includes textures from actors\character\female. Feet use the same set, hands have their own(SkinHandFemale_1)

 

Now about that Skin Texture Swap List: That is a FormList, and if you open SkinFemaleHumanBody (0007BBB2), you will see that it contains only one TextureSet: SkinBodyFemale_1.

In other words, body texture swapping is NOT a used feature - by vanilla. But how does it work? If that swap list contains more than one texture set, it splits the Weight range (0 to 1) into same number of chunks, and applies texture sets according to weight.

I.e. if that FormList had 5 sets, it would use 1st one for weights 0-0.2, second one for 0.2-0.4 etc. There are mods like ShieldMaiden Muscle Slider CBBE which actually make use of it to make higher 'Weight' (a.k.a. Body size) actors have more muscle defining skin normals. Btw, do you currently have something like that installed?

 

Problem is, NPC weights are all over the place. Sure, Ria is 0.9 and Ysolda is 0.2, but Njada is 0.0, Aela is 0.2, Ingun Black-Briar is 0.5, Riften's Haelga is a 1.0 and so on. And these weights are not changed easily - you need to regenerate the head mesh or you will have a gap....

 

Now about this one:

I have noticed that some NPC overhauls include their own body textures, and I have tried overwriting the normal provided in the mod with a different one but it had no effect.

 

 

Not sure which overhauls you mean, but just 'including their own body textures' may not be sufficient.

 

Lets go back to line 1 of my post. An overhauled NPC 'Actor' record can specify their own custom skin 'Armor', different from their race.

Say, I open CK, and load up 'Bijin Warmaidens' . I can see that 'HousecarlSolitude' (Jordis) now has 'JordisBodyArmor' skin, which uses 'JordisTorsoAP' Addon, which lists 'JordisTorsoTex' as its Skin Texture, and that uses textures from actors\character\Jordis.

So if I go into textures\actors\character\Jordis, and replace the femalebody_1_msn.dds there, it SHOULD change her normal.

 

However, JordisTorsoAP still lists SkinFemaleHumanBody as its skin swap set. Most mod authors know that vanilla makes no use of it, and do not bother changing it. But if you got a mod that adds more sets to SkinFemaleHumanBody, the game will pick a set based on the NPC weight.

[Deleted3576383User]

I looked in the Creation Kit and saw what you meant so I have better understanding of the structure of the files now. I might have to do more research to fully understand how I am going to do this, if I do decide to put so much effort into it. Some followers have their own body meshes that point to custom texture folders, but that doesn't seem practical for vanilla NPCs.

Bethesda has conflated two types of weight in their scaling: muscle and fat.

For now, I have simply applied the chosen normals universally. Most civilians wear long sleeves and clothing. Mostly the warriors reveal more skin (studded armour, for example), so it turns out to be not so bad. I'm using this mod (nsfw preview images): https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/89337

I appreciate your detailed response.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Guest