Packaging textures/meshes for standalone follower mod

[PenitentExile]

Hello!

I started making my standalone follower. And not long before got completely confused. When I'm browsing my .nif in NifSkope and I see some texture paths how do I actually find them? For example from inspecting the .nif I need normal map for eyes called Actors/Characters/Eyes/EyeBrown_n.dds. But where do I look for this? I searched my eye mods through MO2 and didn't find it. My Skyrim folder doesn't even have Actors folder in Data, everything is packed in .bsa.

Overall the process is pretty confusing - how do I know which parts need meshes and which don't? NifSkope only shows textures used in .nif as far as I can see.

Any help would be appreciated!

[scorrp10]

When it comes to game resources, including textures, they fall in several categories.

1. Game's own vanilla resources which are in .bsa files.  
2. Mod improved resources that overload vanilla and are in .bsa files
3. Mod improved resources that overload vanilla as loose files
4. Mod add-on resources that are in .bsa 
5. Mod add-on resources that are loose files.

Also, specific resources go into their specific subfolders under Data, and paths are relative to those subfolders.    I.e. if the nif file specifies  Actors\Character\Eyes\EyeBrown_n.dds, you should be looking for 'Actors' not under Data, but under Data\textures.

How do I organize things for myself:

I have a directory:   D:\Skyrim\Vanilla\Data  where I have unpacked various Skyrim's own vanilla .bsa archives.
I also have a directory:  D:\Skyrim\Mods\Data where I unpack .bsa files that came with mods.    

Then, in NifScope Resources tab in the Settings,  I set the Data folder under SSE directory as primary - which will pick up any loose file textures - followed by Mods\Data, followed by Vanilla\Data.   This assures that I get no missing textures in NifScope.

When a .nif references a certain texture, I look for that texture in the same sequence.

In my case, I actually do have  eyebrown_n.dds  in Data\textures\actors\character\eyes, courtesy of "Improved Eyes Skyrim" mod.    However, it is one of the vanilla files being (in my case) overloaded by a mod.   If you look at included picture, only the main (diffuse) texture of the eyes is an add-on from a mod.    The rest reference game native files.

So, how to you handle packaging it?     Let's say this head .nif will be a follower named Daniella.    In my SSE\Data, I go to textures\actors\character, and there I create a 'Daniella' folder, and under it I create 'eyes' folder.
First, the diffuse texture.   It comes from a mod called 'Tullius Eyes pack'  which is  non-Nexus mod, and does not have any restriction on resource inclusion.
I copy the N510.dds  from textures\actors\character\V5  to textures\actors\character\Daniella\eyes, and I change its path in the .nif accordingly (actors\character\Daniella\eyes\N50.dds)
Next up, the normal map (eyebrown_n.dds)   It is one of the vanilla textures.   If you don't actually have textures\actors\character\eyes\eyebrown_n.dds  file under your game Data folder, then you leave the .nif texture path as is, and you do NOT package this texture with your mod.   It will just use vanilla.   
However, lets say you do have a mod overloading this texture in your install.    Then, you have two options, usually dependent on what sort of permissions are there on the source mod.
Option 1:  you leave the texture path in the .nif as is - referencing the vanilla file, but somewhere in your mod description,  you indicate that you use an improved eye textures mod such as "Improved Eyes"
Option 2:  you copy the texture over to your mod's area (textures\actors\character\Daniella\eyes) and change the texture path in the .nif to reflect that.