Unalterable NPCs

[BorysofEbe]

I've run across a problem which I'm sure is born of my own ignorance. I've altered the appearance of many of the unique NPCs (companions etc.) but I run across a problem with a particular class of NPC, the most obvious example of which is the two minutemen who assist in taking The Castle but also with some unique Far Harbour settlers (but not unique vanilla settlers). I alter their appearance in the creation kit (they have an entry and a unique appearrace as far as I can tell) as I have with other NPCs but it won't take effect in game. They are also immune to looksmenu. What is happening here? If another mod was also working to retain their appearance wouldn't NMM tell me? Are they untalerable because they use a template and if so how does this work?

[Qrsr]

If specific objects, actors, are tied to scripts, scripts can override any changes ...

[Karna5]

16 hours ago, BorysofEbe said:

I alter their appearance in the creation kit (they have an entry and a unique appearrace as far as I can tell) as I have with other NPCs but it won't take effect in game.

Try using the Face Ripper mod to override the NPC appearance in your plugin. That works 100% for me.

As for being immune to LooksMenu, I've been told often that it's the FaceMorph intensity flag at the bottom of the NPC's record, and I've tried setting that to 1 and even outright deleted the field in my NPC override plugins, and that doesn't seem to help.

The only thing I've found which always works changing an NPC appearance when it's blocked from LooksMenu is to use Face Ripper.

[BorysofEbe]

Thank you Karna5 - I'll give that a shot

 

[Karna5]

1 hour ago, BorysofEbe said:

Thank you Karna5 - I'll give that a shot

 

Face Ripper can be a bit confusing at first, though once you get the hang of it the process is a breeze. But don't be afraid to ask if you get stuck trying to use it

[Squirrel97]

There is also a Spawnable Unique Settlers mod you can download. The settlers from this mod can be customized but you will need to use console commands to spawn them first.

[rsm000rsm]

12 hours ago, mkh97 said:

There is also a Spawnable Unique Settlers mod you can download. The settlers from this mod can be customized but you will need to use console commands to spawn them first.

Wim95's spawn button for that mod is still available here: wim95 Fallout 4 mods - Google Drive

[BorysofEbe]

Thank you all for all of the help - interestingly I used SLM again and assinged a preset which didn't work in term of the fact that they didn't resemble the preset exactly but seemed to combine the preset with their default appearance but things like hair still remain unchangeable. All very esoteric...

[LarannKiar]

These could also affect the editability of an NPC's appearance:

  - Face Template data: FO4Edit >> Non-Player Character (Actor) >> Template Actors >> Traits. Best not to edit templated NPCs; it's recommended to remove templating by copying over facial data from the template to the target NPC in the Creation Kit.

  - Exported FaceGeom data: stored in .nif (NetImmerse) mesh files (..\Fallout 4\Data\Meshes\Actors\Character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\{SourceModName}\{FileName.nif}. They're usually in BA2 archives. BA2 ("Bethesda Archive", .ba2) files can be opened with Bethesda Archive Extractor and Archive2 (included with the game: ..\Fallout 4\Tools\Archive2), Nif files with NifSkope. A FaceGeom file's name matches the FormID of the NPC's BaseForm, e.g. 00002F1E.nif for Piper whose BaseID is 00002F1E.

Edited March 30 by LarannKiar