How to port custom Racemenu/ECE facegen followers to SSE - a guide

[triptherift]

OK, so I'm sure all of you that have tried to port your favorite follower over to SSE have noticed that they have missing face parts, including mouths, eyes, brows and hair. Running the esp through the CK and generating a new facegen will fix the issues, but will turn your follower into a standard Skyrim horse face - not acceptable. The reason it does that is because the altered geometry in the mesh isn't being transferred, it just uses a default preset geometry for the face.

 

The reason the problem exists in the first place is because of a nasty little habit built into early versions of Nifmerge. It is stripping out an essential flag in the merge process - one that gets ignored in the old Skyrim, but is essential in SSE. I'm going to show you how to reset the flag and fix the issue.

 

First, you will need the latest SSE version of NifSkope from here

 

I'm assuming you are already familiar with the program and facegen meshes in general - no, I'm not going to teach that here.

 

In this first shot I zero in on the problem, a missing vector flag:

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/ySENKw7.jpg

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

http://i.imgur.com/uo7yKMh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/DW26LcT.jpg

 

 

 

That's it. Has it been tested? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Any downsides? Yes.

 

If you open up the esp in the CK and you just have the loose files in the directories, when you exit the CK it will overwrite the fixed facegen with its own and you will break the mod. If you need to open the esp, just use the latest SSEEdit instead from here. It's a better solution than the CK anyway, but you WILL need to let the CK do it's thing to update the esp file with new settings at least initially BEFORE you play with it in SSSEdit. Just make sure to pull your facegens out somewhere safe FIRST before you do that part.

 

FWIW, SSE has a new simplified format for the facegen mesh. They combined some Nodes - where there were 12, there are now 10. Until some type of morph tool comes along, this is the only solution I know of. It may be a long wait for that.

 

EDIT: There is now a tool here that automates the conversion process

 

All credits for the flag setting catch goes to idioticidiot, just passing along the knowledge for others.

 

Note to moderators, you may want to sticky this to save a lot of people the current grief cycle.

Edited March 1, 2017 by triptherift

[idioticidiot]

P.S. It applies to anything OTHER THAN HEAD. The head does not require such treatment.

 

 

P.S.2. it seems the creation kit 64 will export 2 facegen files to 2 different folders EVEN THOUGH your mod is just a replacer: for example, if you make a mod that alters the look of Babette, it will create 2 folders in the facegeom folder: 1 as yourmodname.esp (in my case, cute Babette.esp), and 1 in Skyrim.esm.

[triptherift]

Thanks for the catch, I updated my post :happy:

[saurusmaximus]

Thank you for this, I was wondering how to fix this problem, and now I know :cool:

[javierhimura]

The image links does not work, can you upload them to another server? I cant see what flag is the one it should be changed

Thank you

[triptherift]

They are just doing maintenance last I checked....

[BlueGunk]

Thank you SO much for the above. I am trying to convert a follower (Velina Velaire) and was getting the horse face! My work is now successfully completed.

 

If I could make one point clear for those visiting this page: trying to do this work on the CK-generated FaceGeom NIF is pointless.

Keep a copy of the original NIF and do the above on the original NIF, returning it to the game folders when done and overwriting the horse face the new CK churned out.

 

Then copy that NIF over the duplicated Facegeom NIF the CK created in Skyrim ESM (I just used Explorer Search to find it quickly).

[illicitSoul]

I wonder how I could port some more complex follower mods what have required custom race esp or custom body? I'd be very grateful if somebody could lend me hand and help with few or at least one specific mod

[saurusmaximus]

If you're trying to do a custom race, first install Race Compatiblity, then port the followers like always.

[dragonvale]

I apologize for the necromantic post, but I had been trying to convert a follower for two days and this method is the only one that worked.

For some inexplicable reason (my knowledge is very bad in these things :sweat:, but I'd ported other followers before without troubles), If I touch the original meshes with NIF Optimizer, this follower becomes invisible.

 

Thank you very much to @triptherift and @idioticidiot :thumbsup:

Kudos to both!