Custom companion shows up as the wrong race

[FlyingHigh10000000]

I'm currently using RR Companions Vault, NV edition, to make a custom companion based on the title character from "The Book of Eli". I spent quite a bit of time working on his face, and was surprised to notice that he looked like this in the preview window in the GECK.

 

http://i.imgur.com/YUcWb.png

 

I figured it might just be a texture issue in the GECK, and started the game anyway. Eli spawned with the gear, but his face looked like some sort of default joke. Oh, and he was completely caucasian. Head, arms, everything else. I'm using Breeze's body replacer, and it works fine for every other NPC.

 

So, I found a fix using Google, that involved editing Fallout.ini. When I loaded up the game again, he looked like this:

 

http://i.imgur.com/LmAFi.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FrUg1.jpg

 

So one part of the problem is done, but I can't find any viable reason for the body from the collarbone down to be caucasian. Eli's race is set to "African American" and his head is obviously as such. Something else I noticed, that no other NPC has, is that Eli's wrists have black lines on them, as if the hands are clipping with the wrist.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Make your plugin an esm.

[FlyingHigh10000000]

Make your plugin an esm.

 

 

Thanks! That was a very simple, and totally effective, solution.

 

I must ask, though. Why is it that a plugin needs to be an ESM in this case? Adding to that, is there any particular reason why the ESP format is used at all, if ESMs seem to be nearly the same?

 

Also, as a second question, say I want to add a modded weapon or armor to my companion. Would I need to convert the plugins containing the modded items to ESMs, that way the plugin could use them?(After converting back to an ESP momentarily, of course.) I noticed that a file needs to be a master to have its resources be used by anything but itself, and that makes sense, but, yeah, I'm just curious, and none of the tutorials I've seen seem to state which is the best way to go about that.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

That is essentially what Fo3edit master update does, it just doesn't change the extension.