Re-installing with Seamless Heads

[pacman555000]

Since the topic is already being discussed, how would I go about disabling the face texturing but only for my character?

[IkeCoast]

The easiest and risk-free is hitting the "Reset" button on Chargen, and then sculpting your face using only the Shape options. You can fine-tune the general skin tone with the Age and Complexion sliders, U know for sure that they do not cause neck seams because Capucine's Aquamer face and body textures on my Abysmers are not seamless and still look ALMOST seamless in my game.

 

The second option is replacing (or putting if not present) Throttlekitty's blank egt file from Head06. It's intended for the head, but since it contains no textures nor tone information at all, works too for the body and ears (what we want is those egt DISABLE the functionality, not improve it). This method will affect all the races that use the same base textures as your character's race. If you are of a custom race (like, let's say, an Abysmer), then this will affect only you.

 

Not putting any egt file at all in the folder for your race will not work: the game engine will pick up them from the BSA file and if no egt files are available for that particular race, it will apply the everpresent Imperial ones.

 

And, the EXACT answer to your question, disabling it for your PC, and only for your PC, is Blockhead BodyAssetOverrides-PerNPC tier.

 

You need to create a specific directory inside your Meshes\Characters\Textures, the Meshes\Characters\Textures\BodyAssetOverrides\PerNPC main folder, and inside this last PerNPC, the Oblivion.esm folder, so the final directory structure looks like:

 

Meshes\Characters\Textures\BodyAssetOverrides\PerNPC\Oblivion.esm

 

Inside this last Oblivon.esm folder (yes, the name of the folder must be exactly like that), you put all the texture files you want your player character, and only your player character, use. If your PC is from a custom race, instead of the name of the Oblivion.esm file you need to put the name of the mod your race comes from. For instance, let's say you downloaded the Abysmer race mod, then the folder would be called Abysmer.esp

 

The filename convention is very strict. I'm writing it from memory and I only started using it shortly ago, but in the Blockhead plugin Comments page there's a pintoresque conversation where, among an extended carnivàle, Striker managed to put inside my shellhead how to do this. Look for that or simply wait unitl Striker picks the scent of J'Adore I purposefully am spraying all around here to lure him to this trap, and then he will tell you with total precision.

 

This also works for body and head meshes, not only textures, the correct folder would be the same directory, but starting at Data\Meshes

 

Cheers!

[pacman555000]

I've checked your discussion with Striker but I'm still befuddled as to what to name the file for my PC.

I see your success at changing an npc but am too ignorant to transfer that success to my character.

[Striker879]

And here I thought the neighbors were burning garbage or something ... where do you find these scents Ike???

 

What you will do for only your character to use the replacement files is name them all 00000007_<BodyPartName>.<FileExtension>. So to replace the body texture for HGEC the appropriate files would be renamed 00000007_Foot.dds, 00000007_Foot_n.dds, 00000007_Hand.dds, 00000007_Hand_n.dds (and the same for the EGT files).

 

Heads I'm not 100% sure of in the case of PerNPC overrides as I've only done PerRace overrides on heads in the past and I'm not certain I'm interpreting shadeMe's Blockhead_readme.rtf correctly. If I've got it right the head overrides would go in Textures\Characters\HeadAssetOverrides\PerNPC\Oblivion.esm using the same file naming (so 00000007_Head.dds, 00000007_Head_n.dds, 00000007_Head.egt, 00000007_Head.egm etc).

 

I deciphered shadeMe's explanation of how to do it mostly by trial and error until I got it figured out. Have a look at the readme and see what you think.

 

- Edit - Looks like the EGT/EGM files go in the same folder as the mesh NIFs.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Striker879

[IkeCoast]

Striker, with your help I managed to have the PerNPC tier working, but never tried the player character himself, since I am the only Abysmer in town and the PerRace tier sufficed. However, with other NPCs it worked flawlessly (Baurus with HGEC Triple Watermelons is hilarious).

 

By the way, now I think, egt and egm files go to Meshes, not textures.

 

Another thing I'm not sure is how many and how named are the egt files required. I have several ones, and I simply renamed them the same as the body parts, so in this theoritecal situation, I imagine these would be:

 

00000007_UpperBody.egt, 00000007_LowerBody.egt, _Hand.egt and _Foot.egt.

 

The _Head.egt and _Ear.egt must go to HeadAssetOverrides, not BodyAssets.

 

I'm not 100% sure how it will work, because I tried it with vanilla files, not the BodyAssets (all I have meddled with on BodyAssets are nifs and dds).

 

I have encountered a strange issue with the female bodies in my game so right now my attention is focused there, so excuse me if you find ninjaing me more easy than usual.

 

Garbage? Do you know how much a flask of J'Adore costs? Neither do I. Sneak, Eel Kiss, loot, ya know.

 

Cheers!

 

Edit: Oh, Eel-kissing the tart that showed that issue and stripping her solved the enigma. Dibella's Watch Installer did not pay attention when I told it not to install the HGEC equipment.

Edited March 10, 2015 by IkeCoast

[pacman555000]

If I'm only trying to mimic the effect of turning "bFaceGenTexturing" off, will I only need the egt file or will I need the dds and egm files as well?

 

Edit: How did you get the heads working with the races? If you haven't tried them with a custom race, could I get the base for a standard race? The readme is very confusing and the combinations I'm trying aren't working.

Edited March 10, 2015 by pacman555000

[IkeCoast]

Only the egt file, and put it not in Textures as I told before, I'm sorry, but in Meshes\Characters\BodyAssetOverrides\PerNPC\Oblivion.esm

 

I'll edit the post now.

 

Cheers!

 

PD: Glossary of file types:

 

.nif is the file with the 3D mesh that gives an object its geometry.

.dds is the diffuse map that gives an object its colors (it's the multicolored file that people refer to with the word "texture").

_n.dds is the normal map that gives an object its refractive properties. It's used also to give it relief, avoiding the need to use also a bumpmap. Specularity also can be determined with this file, although properly done, specularity should use a separate file (_h.dds if I recall correctly).

_g.dds is the glowmap, a mask that tells the game which parts in a mesh glow in the dark (it needs an emissive property assigned to the mesh material).

.egt is the file that contains a set of textures the FaceGen uses to change the color of parts of the object. It's the culprit of most of the texture troubles.

.egm is the file that contains vertex morphing data and is used to, for instance, change facial features, body volume, hair lenght, et al.

[Striker879]

Once you switch to PerRace the head is handled differently. Even bodies follow a different naming convention in PerRace as well as a different folder structure.

 

So if you wanted to change the body texture for all NPCs in JoesCoolRace you first need to find the name that the race shows under the race name in the Construction Set (which is different than the FormID aka BaseID of the race). It should be the same as what you see in the character creation menu (so let's say in my example that JoesCoolRace is shown as Joe's Cool race in the character creation menu).

 

The folder structure will be Textures\Characters\BodyAssetOverrides\PerRace\F for females (and Textures\Characters\BodyAssetOverrides\PerRace\M for males). The file names are renamed to match the display name for the race, so Joe's Cool race_Foot.dds, Joe's Cool race_Foot_n.dds, Joe's Cool race_Hand.dds etc. I believe that capitalization matters ... match the display name exactly including whitespace between words.

 

Heads PerRace are done using the _m and _f to differentiate from the vanilla assets (which was the trick Nuska used to display her error face ... simply replace the vanilla head texture with her error face ... no Blockhead and her proper face replacements wouldn't be used and the error face showed the situation). So for heads you rename your replacement texture to match the original head texture and then append _f (so headJoesCoolRace.dds becomes headJoesCoolRace_f.dds and headJoesCoolRace_f_n.dds etc for females).

[pacman555000]

I've tried many combinations but none appear to be working.

 

In Meshes\Characters\BodyAssetOverrides\PerRace\F\...

Head_F.egt

Synx_Head_F.egt

Head_Synx_F.egt

Synx_F.egt

Just to name a few.

 

Is this egt file supposed to be replacing an egt file that already exists?

Edited March 11, 2015 by pacman555000

[Striker879]

Heads go in the same folder as the original, just with _f appended to the file name. So if the original is Meshes\characters\Synx\headsynx.egt the replacement for females will be Meshes\characters\Synx\headsynx_f.egt (replacing the headsynx part with whatever the file is actually named in the original folder).

 

The vanilla game doesn't understand the _f part so without Blockhead it will just ignore it. If Blockhead spots a file named <Whatever>_f.egt it will use it and override the vanilla assignment (in this example for the <Whatever> race).