Using Two Face Mods At Once

[kalculated]

Hi there,

 

I recently downloaded two character appearance enhancers. I downloaded Bella's Better Females one and the No Blocky Faces one. I am having an issue as to how to install them both. I followed the instructions (extracting them into the Data folder, etc) but because both downloads have the exact same folder names (ie: textures > actors > characters > breton, imperial, etc) my computer prompts me to replace the folder. I realize this may be confusing to follow, but what I am more-so referring to is that the files are identical in name. The only way to work around this is by renaming the data folder or texture folder (etc) to something else like data2 or texture2. I tried this but when I go to launch my game, the mod is not visible. Only the mod with the correct original file names are visible.

 

I hope you can understand what I am trying to say. If it is unclear, please let me know and I will try to rephrase it. If you can help, thank you very much in advance.

[WatchTheShow]

From what I understand, it looks like you're going to have to choose one of those mods and leave the other one out. If two mods share the same name, one will replace the other. They're both trying to change how characters' faces look, so only one of them can be active.

[STSG]

If I recall correctly some files are overlapping but not all. Both bella's and no more blocky faces contain maps to smoothen female faces but all the rest is different. If you want to apply no more blocky to males only you should extract it first and then bella's overwriting when prompted. If instead you find bella's female faces too smooth you should try extracting no more blocky after and overwriting bella's correspondent files with it. You aren't prompted to overwrite full foulders, just merge them and replace the files which are in with the same names. Edited December 26, 2011 by STSG

[kalculated]

Alright. I didn't realize you could extract them both into the one folder and let them 'overlap'. So when my computer prompts me to overwrite them, I should click yes? I only have the Bella's mod on currently and I do like it. It seems to get rid of most of the blockiness but it is almost too smooth like you said and would like to see if the other mod will change anything.

 

Does this also apply to armor/weapon skin mods?

 

 

 

Cheers and Merry Christmas!

[MShoap13]

Any single model is made up of one or more texture files. When you get into mods that make changes to multiple textures, or mod packs that include textures for multiple models you can literally pick and choose exactly which set you want to use. Texture replacers work by simply placing the properly named texture in the folder Skyrim expects it to be in (as you've already witnessed).

 

Let's say Mod A has textures for trees and grass where Mod B has textures for grass and the ground. If you like Mod A's grass better than Mod B's grass you'd install Mod B first, then install Mod A and choose to overwrite it's assets. This would keep the ground texture from Mod B while using the trees and grass from Mod A as it was installed last, and it's resources overwrote Mod B's.

 

Now let's say you like the icy grass from Mod B better than the icy grass from Mod A, but you want to keep all the other grass from Mod A. First, you'd want to extract Mod B to a temporary location (it's always a good idea to extract mods to a temporarily location before pasting them into your \Data\ file anyways, assuming you're manually installing them). Next, you'd navigate the file structure of the extracted Mod B and find the exact texture you want, we'll call it icygrass.dds. Keep in mind the exact file structure you found icygrass.dds in the extracted Mod B, and place icygrass.dds at the same location inside your \Data\ folder overwriting the icy grass texture from Mod A. This would give you the ground and icy grass from Mod B with the trees and the rest of the grass from Mod A. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but I hope this helps.

 

Keep in mind that some models have multi-layered texturing where there's say Skin1 and Skin2 both being applied to the same body mesh. With some mods, you could use Skin1 from one mod and Skin2 from another, and they'd work perfectly fine and may even look good together. However, with other mod combinations you could have problems including odd discoloration, pathcy/blotchy appearing skin, or even holes in the model that you can see straight through. More often than not you'll find mods of this kind that work well together will say so on one of their description pages and a mod may even say that it requires another texture mod as a dependency as it was specifically designed to work with it.

Edited December 26, 2011 by MShoap13

[kalculated]

Well explained! Thank you. I've been downloading a few additional mods and had no troubles or errors yet. I'll have to give the other No Block Face mod a try now as well! Thanks again!