Edit: NPC in a mod?

[olnorton]

Can someone help me out with a Noob friendly step by step tutorial on how to edit the face of an NPC in a mod & have the mod still work.

I made this version of Aela The Huntress

http://i1368.photobucket.com/albums/ag187/johnandmonica/ScreenShot1_zps0ce85aa9.png~original

And have spent 8 hours trying to get her into the "Enhanced Skyrim Followers - Aela the Huntress"

Others have run that mod with an altered Aela.

But whenever I edit the Aela in the mod, the dialogue in the mod no longer works.

[Mattiewagg]

Are you sure that's the reason?

 

A guide on how to do it safely (As far as I can tell, as I use it a lot and my dialogue never bugs out):

 

Note: This is a guide on the creation of a follower NPC, but the importing option works for all NPCs.

1. Launch the game and load a savegame of the character whose face you want to use.
2. Open the console and type spf + the name of the file where you want the face to be stored (for example, spf MyPC).
3. This will save a file in the Skyrim main folder with the name you've typed + the extension .npc (in the example, it will create a file called MyPC.npc).

Back to the Creation Kit:

1. Open the NPC details window again and go to the Character Gen Parts tab as shown in picture Importing an existing face.
2. Press the Import button and select the face of your PC you've saved before. You'll see that the face of your follower NPC will be now the one of your player character.
3. In this tab you can adjust some of the features of the NPC like hair style and colour, eye colour, etc. You can see the changes in the preview window (check the Head flag to see them). In the Character Gen Morphs tab you can change also other characteristics of your NPC's face. Note: The preview window doesn't work if your mouse is set for the left hand. You won't be able to rotate the face. To be able to do that change temporarily your mouse settings to work for the right hand and once you are done you can revert the mouse settings to the left hand.

Note: If you want to use a face created using Expired's CharGen Extension mod, check this guide Using a face made with Chargen Extension on an NPC.

[olnorton]

Yes I have done all that & made a MyAela.esp which works at changing the games default Aela when installed.

I used Enhanced Character Editor & not Chargen Extension, and used default hair, eyes, & colours to try and keep it simple.

The screenshot is with the "Enhanced Skyrim Followers - Aela the Huntress" mod installed & she looks just the same whether I have my MyAela.esp activated or not. ( installed after with MYAela.esp having ESFAela.esp as a master ) I made them compatible as I could with TES5Edit.

The only thing in red is the faction part at the top & the ESFAela.esp name itself. See Pic.

http://i1368.photobucket.com/albums/ag187/johnandmonica/TES5Edit_zps019cef8b.jpg~original

I didn't know how to remove those 3 faction entries from MyAela.esp, but I don't think that is the problem, because it makes no difference if I activate MyAela.esp or not.

 

If I install ESFAela.esp as it comes & except the default Aela then the mod works as intended.

 

But when I load ESFAela.esp into the Creation Kit I get a lot of warnings about missing files

"SCRIPTS: Cannot open store for class "ESFAelaCoreDiaogueScript",missing file?"

I was thinking that these scripts might be in the ESFAela,bsa & I tried including that in the SkyrimEditor.ini under [ARCHIVE], but it made no difference.

Do I have to extract everything from the .BSA before I can edit the .ESP in the Creation Kit?

Because it is the Dialogue that is missing from the mod after I edit the way she looks in the .esp.

 

It has got to the point that I don't really care if I play the ESFAela mod or not, I'd just like to know why it didn't work.

[Mattiewagg]

You have to extract the bsa to edit it in the CK.

[olnorton]

You have to extract the bsa to edit it in the CK.

Do you mean I have to extract the files from the bsa in order to edit the esp?

Or are you talking about editing the bsa?

[Mattiewagg]

To use textures/meshes/files from the BSA in the CK, you have to extract them.

 

If I want to use an eye texture from The Eyes Of Beauty (pretend it has a BSA) then I need to extract the BSA into my data folder in the appropriate folders (i.e. Skyrim/Data/Textures or Skyrim/Data/Meshes)

[olnorton]

But do I need to extract the missing dialogue scripts from the bsa (assuming that is where they are) before I can edit the way Aela looks in the esp?

Is this the reason the dialogue stops when I edit the esp?

Edited June 19, 2014 by olnorton

[olnorton]

Well I've spent the last 2 days making many different Aela.esp's , just seeing what worked & what didn't.

Anyway... when I finished I loaded an unedited ESFAela.esp & then MyAela.esp & now they are working together.

I'm not sure what I did different from the first time I tried this, unless it was switching to Loot, which changed my load order.

So I'm back to killing Dragons.

Funny, this Aela seems to be the mercenary killer, werewolf, paladin type. You lose influence with her if you use magic, steal or trespass, or do anything less honourable. So that sort of rules out The Mage quests, the Dark Brotherhood & the Thieves Guild quests.

Given that you can only enlist her after the companion quests, that only leaves finishing the main quest.

So that's what I'll do.

Edited June 20, 2014 by olnorton

[DrNewcenstein]

When editing NPCs, if all you're doing is changing their appearance, gear, or stats, there is no need to load anything other than whichever ESM they appear in i.e. Aela = Skyrim.esm.

 

If you're editing something specific to an ESP that uses that actor, then you'd load that ESP. Otherwise, you don't, unless you want to save your mods as part of that ESP (rather than generating an ESP that's dependent on another ESP).

 

If you're using the CK at all, I recommend extracting all the BSAs into a completely separate folder outside of your Skyrim installation. This way, if you want to revert anything to vanilla quickly (due to a corrupt or crappy mod) you can just drag and drop. You can also customize what a mod will and will not change this way, by replacing/renaming the vanilla objects (meshes/textures) to whatever the mod included.