Noob with questions

[TQWorld]

Hi all,

I'm a very late bloomer to Skyrim and equally late on the modding scene. I thought I had a good grip on understanding things and then I get thrown for a loop and see that what I thought I knew was wrong. Soooooo, here goes.

There are a lot of different body designs/animations: CBBE, UNP, TBBP, UNPB, HGEC, ADEC, CHSBHC, BBP....I'm sure I'm leaving out some. Is there something of an Idiot's Guide somewhere that describes and defines what each of these are and how they differ? As I mentioned, I thought I had read enough to understand but after trying out a few of them, I'm finding that I'm probably more confused now than before I started. Nothing worse than finding out that the things you knew to be true are false.

What I think I know....

CBBE – Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Edition: This is a mod that changes the shapes of female bodies in the game; typically geared towards larger breasts and butts.

UNP – Unpretend: This is a mod that changes the shapes of female bodies in the game and is considered to be more realistic with regards to breast and butt size.

UNPB – UNP Blessed: UNP with larger breasts; larger than realistic but not as large as CBBE.

CHSBHC – Cherry Hotalings Super Busty H Cup: This is a mod that changes the shapes of female bodies in the game with considerably larger breasts.

TBBP – Tender Body and Busts Physics: This is a mod that changes the animations of female bodies in the game (walking, breast and butt bounce/jiggle)

BBP – Body and Busts Physics: This is a mod that changes the animations of female bodies in the game (walking, breast and butt bounce/jiggle)

ADEC – Acdale's EyeCandy: This is a mod that changes the shapes of female bodies in the game focusing on large breasts and butts but possibly not as large as those using CHSBHC.

HGEC – HG Eye Candy: This is a mod that changes the shapes of female bodies in the game focusing on large breasts and butts, comparable to CHSBHC.

Body mod + BBP: This is a mod that changes the shapes of female bodies in the game and applies the BBP animation.

I'm pretty lost on SeveNBase and Bombshell.

I also wonder if you can have multiple body mods installed simultaneously because it seems that installing one will prompt you to overwrite files that were created by a different body mod.

Armors/clothing must be made to fit the body designs, otherwise, they “overwrite” the character’s current body while the armor/clothing is worn (example: if the body mod applied is CHSBHC but the armor is CBBE, the breast size will drop to the size dictated by the CBBE armor.

Body Sliders – These are tools that allow the player to modify the shapes of bodies. Typically run outside of the game, there are some mods that apply an in-game slider (beyond initial character creation). As a side note, aside from an easy mod like RaceMenu, I've no idea how to actually use them to modify the player character or NPCs/Followers.

One of my points of confusion was that I have CBBE installed and applied a CBBE armor and the breasts in the CBBE armor are smaller than the character's naked breasts.

Followers vs Pets vs Companions - what are the differences?

From my understanding, pets can only perform basic actions whereas a follower can do more advanced actions. Would companions then be an upgrade to a follower? I have installed a few followers and one of them shows as a companion (Selene Kate) and can perform numerous actions that basic followers do not have available to them. I'll assume this is all tied in to how she was created and has no relevance to other followers or companions on the game.

So, before I ask any further questions, let’s make sure I’m on track. So, should I uninstall Skyrim now and go back to playing Pac-Man?

[Ceruulean]

Some custom followers have extra features, but all vanilla followers are also companions.

 

It's pretty much impossible to have multiple body mods, because every human uses the same body. You already have a list of body mods and their features; you'll just have to choose one you like. I personally recommend CNHF because I don't care for boob physics, it's more warrior-oriented and I personally feel it fits with Skyrim's environment better.

 

As for BodySlide, it's a tool made by the same person who made the CBBE mod; it's designed to help convert outfits to another body shape or to create custom bodies to your preferences. Basically, you fire up the program, adjust some sliders and save the new body files into your directory. There may be some tweaking with armors and stuff, but I personally don't bother since there are many premade body mods already.

 

The reason there are armor conversions is due to Skyrim's armor system. A piece of clothing assigned to the "hands" slot, for example, will turn the whole hand and wrist invisible. With gloves that cover the skin, it doesn't matter because you can't see the hand anyway, but if the glove is fingerless (nightingale gloves), then you actually have to include the hand model in the same file as the glove model. Basically you'll be wearing a glove partially made out of skin, haha.

 

This applies for the whole body, so if you have a new body mod, but you wear an unconverted skimpy armor, the new body will be replaced with the armor and the vanilla body instead. So sometimes if you have different armor conversions of the same body, there can be discrepancies between the clothing and the nude form, especially CBBE which can be altered with the Bodyslide tool.