Non CM companion - Changning Race

[whatever33]

I have a non-CM companion that I want to convert to a custom race. There have been 1000 posts on race change, but all the guides that are exactly for my situation are all dead links. Please do not offer me help in the form of converting this companion to the CM system. It will not work. This companion has unique dialogue scripts & animations. I have to use the original mod & cannot convert it.

 

What I really thought would work by using the CS: taking the racemod.esp (active) & duplicating the race I wanted (there is a light & dark version of the race) inside the racemod. Adding the hairs or eyes I wanted to the duplicate race & saving it. Then I loaded racemod.esp + companionmod.esp (active) & changing the compainionmod.esp race to the duplicate race I made before. I choose the hair & eyes. Saved it. Exited the CS. Loaded the game. And either nothing happens, or the savegame will crash.

 

I am using the construction set, wyre bash, & two mods (the companionmod.esp & the racemod.esp). I have tried several different approaches & they either do not work, or crash my game. Is there a step by step guide somewhere for this? It needs to be very detailed. Because I am very confused at this point having tried many different approaches.

Edited September 25, 2016 by whatever33

[whatever33]

This is so furiously frustrating.

 

I loaded the custom race esp (not active) - I went to character/race - duplicated the race - saved the race as a new esp. I loaded the new esp (made it active) with the old race esp - added hair (character/hair) & eyes (character/eyes) by duplicating them and dragging the duplicates into the body data of the new race esp. Saved. Then I opened my companion mod (making it active). I changed the race and hair to the new duplicated race. When I save and reload the data - the companion eyes & hair are missing. Not only that in the object window she appears under the race name with more letters after her name. Every time I go back and add hair & eyes to the duplicate race & save, it creates ANOTHER COPY000. It then chooses that new duplicate race as the race for my companion. And the cycle continues over and over. It is almost exactly the same problem by trying to add the original (non duplicate) race to the companion - nothing shows up on the companion (eyes, hairs, etc).

I really am at the end here I have been trying to fix this for a week now and just go in circles no matter what advice I read and try.

Edited September 25, 2016 by whatever33

[whatever33]

***SOLVED***

 

After a week of chasing bad information and dead link posts. I followed part II of this post: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/28920/?

 

Basically I think I created a resource file (.esm) containing the race information I wanted. Since it was not part of the original race .esp, it avoids the conflicts that the CS created. Something about mod isolation.

 

The only question I have now is, is there a way to combine the new .esm with my companion .esp? I am not a modder at all so, this is all a learning experience for me.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Not sure I can be of much help here, but I've turned the famous stand-alone companion Viconia De'Vir from the Underdark series of mods into my main protagonist Drake's fiancee Kaira, both changing the race she's of to one of my Anthro-Dragons and editing the actor's appearance to better resemble her, so maybe I do know one thing or two useful about it.

 

But I think you're having several different and isolated issues here, so I don't know how much my work-steps will apply.

If I got you right, you first modified the race itself, like to add more cosmetic features to it or whatever, and then you switched the companion's race to this one.

 

The simplest part of what I did was just switching the race of the companion to mine.

I created like a patch you could call it to be loaded after both, the companion plugin and my plugin, an empty plugin having both as its masters so I can both modify the companion and reference to my race, while at the same time never even remotely touching the original mods.

 

This can be done either by converting both ESPs into ESMs (via Wrye Bash's ESMify feature), so even the old and outdated CS will be able to make them parents, then convert them back after saving the plugin (ESPify), quite an unnecessary but unavoidable hassle, if you ask me, OR just use the Construction Set Extender instead and no longer need to turn ESP into ESM before using them as masters for a plugin ever again.

 

So I did use the CSE, of course, but for multiple different reasons not related also. I created a new blank plugin with my race mod and the companion mod as its masters, switched the companion's race over to mine, and applied some changes to its appearance and looks, and also changed the name, but that's negligible. Now while I use this plugin, Viconia will be Kaira, in all looks and feels, and when I untick it again, she'll be back to normal on a whim. That was easy.

 

However, custom fitted dialog and voice files of course had to be taken care of as well. Voice files are stored inside race-name-based sub-folders, so changing the race also requires you to change the folders. In my case I simply copied them over into the correct new one for my race, for I didn't even remotely intend to touch the originals in any way still. And additionally I can now also modify and customize the voices in whatever way I feel like doing, without having an effect on the original Viconia or her custom race at all.

 

In your special case now, you could just as simply use the same plugin used to switch race and appearance of the actor to also introduce your changes or additions to the custom race at the same time. But I for one didn't do that in my case, because the race is mine already to begin with, and if features are missing, I'll add them in. There's no need to preserve the original mod, when said mod is mine and mine to customize however I see fit.

 

 

So, back to your initial issues, you likely tried using the Vanilla CS to parent your plugin to those master files without turning them into ESM first and back again after you're done, oblivious to the fact the old hag cannot even do that by design.

 

Then you created a duplicate of the original custom race, as is actually done by quite some many companion mods to introduce unique racial traits to the companion actor only without affecting the entire race as well. Which is a little more difficult to do correctly, but can of course also be done inside the one patch plugin I did with ease.

 

I'm not really sure what happened to you when you tried copying the race into an own ESP and changing its features, transferring assets from the original over into your's and the like, but if you did all this with the Vanilla CS still and were not using the ESMify-ESPify dirty trick of old, then yes, all you did using assets from the masters was lost at the point when you saved and the CS removed the plugin's masters again (without telling).

[whatever33]

Funny that you say you were converting Viconia. That's who I was working on - lol. I was converting her to a real dark elf race (Elves of Lineage 2).

 

What finally worked for me was using Wyre Bash to copy the customrace.esp to customrace.esm & set it as the master to Vinconia.esp. The new .esm kept the hair & original eyes, etc. It seem to keep everything (but the meshes and texture files). When I would duplicate the .esp, I would lose hair & eyes. Making the customrace.esm allowed me to use the CS to change stats, skills, add 10 new eyes, & change the paths of several body parts. I saved all these changes - and they stayed changed. I then opened my companion mod, changed the race, the hair, the eyes, & I even imported a new face profile from a savegame. Long story short. Viconia now looks 100% better.

 

The CS is very frustrating to me. There seems to be many limitations that should not exist. Changing an npc race should be a 15 second no hassles activity. Instead there are 100's of posts asking how to do it.

 

Is there a way to merge the customrace.esm with Viconia.esp? I see there is a copy to .esp function in Wyre Bash as well. Could I take the customrace.esm convert it to customrace.esp & then use TES6gecko to merge them? That way, all I would have to do is drop all the race files into the Viconia archive.