Facegen/Race/NPC/Geck

[rhino666]

Good day all.

 

I have been becoming fairly successful at getting my designed characters from the SI Facegen standalone app into the GECK into my npcs. I also discovered that if I take the hires skin texture and uvmap it to the standard headhuman mesh, it comes out even better. However this requires that I create a new race for the texture to be included which brings me to my point of confusion.

 

The values present in the facegen standalone app give me the exact string of hex I need to paste into the editor. However, there are now two different areas that accept facial deformation. One is in the root of the race definition, and thee other is in the root of the npc definition, and for the life of me I can't tell which looks more correct. As I see it there are several options to make the face look like the facegen model:

 

A)Zero out the three fields for the data in the race, and use the absolute values in the npc definition

B)The opposite, hardcode those values into the race definiton, and zero out the values for the npc definition

C)Put the same values in BOTH the npc and the race definition (I'm confused how this works... do they stack? Or merely override one another)

D)Use some standard values generated by the race's default (e.g. caucasian) in the race's facial deformation, and then use the absolute value on top of this definition

E)Use the standard race's values, and somehow determine the remainder between those default values, and the desired values from facegen (which I would have NO idea how to do).

 

Thanks in advance. I have been devoting almost every waking hour outside of my job to making this mod and I would certainly appreciate a nudge in the right direction

[GrindedStone]

1. Leave the facegen data in the race alone, or hand change it later in the GECK after everything else is done. I never change it.

 

2. Right click a race, copy as new entry into (your mod), Change the form ID zzzYourRace731. Then go to that race an change the in-game name so that you don't have two of the same race in the character creation menu. This race is really only needed if you were wanting to use custom models an textures. You see there are listings for model for male an female but also there are these entries labled ICON which is a glitch they are really the defuse textures for those parts. Hair an eyes are set in this race entry too.

 

3. Find some pretty NPC's I just write down their names as I play. Right click these an copy as new entry into (your mod) Don't forget to change the name form name a bit which it helps to now come up with a standardized naming for these NPC's For example YourModRaceF01 YourModRaceF02 YourModRaceF03 And so on YourModRaceM01 create a male one too as noted by the M, set the in-game names to match to this way it will stay in a set order. First thing you do is set the flag so that it's a Facegen preset, and then change the race.

 

4. Click the box where race is in these NPC's, wait a second an click again to bring up the autobox, if you named the race starting with AAA or ZZZ you can find it in this list by going to the top or bottom which makes it easy. Once that is done, paste in your Face Gen Hexish data into the boxes at the bottom. Zero out the Symetrical Texture data, because it sucks an never matches then just don't change the sliders when you create the character an the skin will match whatever is in the textures.

 

5. Mesh materials, shaders, and even basic structure of the body an body parts all effect how well it matches. Stripified bodyes will often have wierd looking artifacts in them, around the nippples or the small of the back, this can be fixed by triangulating the mesh back into Nitrishapes, an it's best just to make them match vanilla, though across armors this data is often different, yeah you matched the body, but the armor has different setings for those parts an thus un-matches it.

 

6. Eyelashes are more easly created if a Headpart is created that points to a eyelash mesh, then this head part is added to the NPC face gen presets (not the race)

 

same for if it's a male/female or a pistol, folder structure, Meshes or textures, You're mods name, project name, alternate versions, then you can find stuff

Meshes/(YourModName)/(YourRace)/Head should have headfemale.nif headfemale.egm headfemale.egt headfemale.tri headfemalefacegen.nif

Meshes/(YourModName)/(YourRace)/Female upperbody and hands

Meshes/(YourModName)/(YourRace)/Hair you guessed it hair

Meshes/(YourModName)/(YourRace)/eyelash eyelashes

 

Then you can dump all the textures in one folder, so long as you set the texture paths inside the Meshes an also the defuse inside the race entry under the wierd ICON box next to the model.

Edited April 16, 2011 by GrindedStone