NPC Overhaul with Custom Bodies & BSA unpacking in the CK

[EdjeNoh]

Hi guys,

I'm working on a mod that overhauls npc's hair models, height and body meshes. You might wonder, why, there are many mods already out there that do the same.

Well yes, yes and no. Most of these mods change appearance and height, but do not alter body meshes for individual npcs.

 

I got this to work for 3 npc's, all with unique female body meshes (made different body and outfit meshes with bodyslide) and corresponding outfits. I achieved this by making custom races for them and then giving them custom default outfits (with custom 'armor'/ 'armoraddon' pieces. As I started working on the 4th npc, my CK started crashing more frequently when I go into the NPC details menu for the modded npcs. It was doing this before also at times (not always) when I would try to preview the npc in the npc details window. It keeps popping up errors about failing to access certain texture paths and chargen files (some of the files are present in the folders in my data folder, others are packed in the BSA's). I dont understand the presence of these errors.

 

Am I missing something when making custom races/meshes for npcs. Its really weird because my plugin works flawless in game. Skyrim never crashes and loads the different bodies and outfits perfectly fine, yet the darn CK keeps crashing on me.

 

Also, when modding with the CK, is it in general a good idea to unpack all my vanilla BSA's or doesn't this matter at all?