LE Diversity in Body Types of NPCs in Skyrim

[thunderknight99]

I am more of an 'immersion - oriented' TES player and I love immersive/realistic game-play and often, when something that breaks the realism too much, it bugs me!

 

So, with that said, I have been noticing that NPCs (of same race & gender) have the same body-type all over the game irrespective of the age. They have the same height, same weight and same body structure which completely breaks the immersion. How can even the beggar guy in the game have six-packs and ripped body like the Dragon-born?? How is it tolerable to see even the old ladies having the same body as a young woman!?

 

So, I began my quest of finding a mod, and the closest I got to was some link to a French or Spanish mod called "Realistic Bodies - Skinny, Fat ...." or something like that which no longer exists. After that I again continued searching and found a mod called 'Fat Bastards in Skyrim' which partially fulfils what I and from the ancient forum talks (dating back to Oblivion) many others have wished for. It puts some fat NPCs at logically correct places but still that leaves most of the NPCs with the default body.

 

Since I don't think I am capable of pulling off a mod, I request my fellow immersion-obsessed TESV brethren to suggest (or) help bring attention to the mod developers of TES to create a mod that serves the purpose of putting logical body types on NPCs (such as making beggars skinny, some guards fat, some guards skinny, some huge, some 6'11, some 5'2, old people with slouched body...... you know whatever resembles the ideal real world).

 

When you think about it, I think its one of the most important immersion breaking factors of TES where every single NPC's body look like an athlete and of the same size and height. I don't know the complexity of this mod but I assume for people that could pull off something like Warzones, Sands of Time or even something as refined as the OSA, this wouldn't be so hard to implement!

 

I really hope someone either suggests me a mod that does at least a lil bit of justice to realism or get attention of modders so that we could get rid of this annoying 'moulded NPCs' in the TESV universe once and forever!

[AnkhAscendant]

Have you seen Every Body's Different?

 

Plusses:

• Can give significant height variation, by race and gender
• Can use multiple body meshes / types as well as textures - which means you could use the BBW meshes and have them interspersed randomly
• Can give NPCs new faces and hairs for more variation
• Isn't immediately incompatible with everything because it doesn't directly edit the NPCs

Minuses:

• I don't know if there's a way for the game to automatically select the armor adjusted to the body type, but the description page suggests not, which means that you'll see everyone look the same when they're wearing clothes anyway - and having multiple body types of armors to try to adapt to the player and multiple potential NPC body types sounds like a major headache
• The headparts option was too intensive for my own game
• The author specifically notes that he had to remove the weight randomizer option and it likely won't be coming back, because it breaks (greyfaces, iirc) NPCs and he can't find a way to fix it.

That's still a way you could get some variation.

 

The manual way you suggest sounds like it would create a lot of conflicts, because it's directly editing NPCs. Assuming you actually want fat people and not just move the size slider up and down, there also the problem of having to assign specific people a new, BBW-type body mesh, and then the issue of what they would wear and how it could use a different model for them and for the player. I assume it's not impossible, but I also assume it's a lot of work for something that wouldn't be especially stable and wouldn't play nice with other mods.

[thunderknight99]

Have you seen Every Body's Different?

 

Plusses:

• Can give significant height variation, by race and gender
• Can use multiple body meshes / types as well as textures - which means you could use the BBW meshes and have them interspersed randomly
• Can give NPCs new faces and hairs for more variation
• Isn't immediately incompatible with everything because it doesn't directly edit the NPCs

Minuses:

• I don't know if there's a way for the game to automatically select the armor adjusted to the body type, but the description page suggests not, which means that you'll see everyone look the same when they're wearing clothes anyway - and having multiple body types of armors to try to adapt to the player and multiple potential NPC body types sounds like a major headache
• The headparts option was too intensive for my own game
• The author specifically notes that he had to remove the weight randomizer option and it likely won't be coming back, because it breaks (greyfaces, iirc) NPCs and he can't find a way to fix it.

That's still a way you could get some variation.

 

The manual way you suggest sounds like it would create a lot of conflicts, because it's directly editing NPCs. Assuming you actually want fat people and not just move the size slider up and down, there also the problem of having to assign specific people a new, BBW-type body mesh, and then the issue of what they would wear and how it could use a different model for them and for the player. I assume it's not impossible, but I also assume it's a lot of work for something that wouldn't be especially stable and wouldn't play nice with other mods.

 

Well, it adds some variation but those variations are not appropriate or logical in most cases and it also comes with the headache of using skyproc and stuffs. Already had to reinstall the game 6-7 times due to patching gone wrong and the mod conflicts which does weird things to the game and NPCs.

Wish the game could treat everything as a separate entity.

[twowolves80]

Goes hand in hand with more immersive comments and whatnot. Would love to see an SE version if someone ever comes up with it. Only problem is, you'd have to create all the body types ahead of time using Outfit Studio (yes, you can modify non-CBBE bodies with Outfit Studio if you use the increase/decrease mesh brushes carefully, Export With Reference, and then put them in the actor folders. Here's the catch, you'd need a script to parse the new body types, and you'd have to build a reference table for that script to know which body types go where, and which never go together.

I think it would be do-able, but I am just beginning my adventure with the CK (dragged kicking and screaming into modding after 3 years of trying to avoid it at all costs--so much wasted energy...sigh).

I think you could pattern it after the way the loadscreens are handled. They have a set list of load screens in the CK (in the left panel when you load ONLY skyrim.esm) under Miscellaneous, I belive. The subcategory says LoadScreenArt. There's also an .swf file (I think) that is the reference table that tells the script running the load screen loading which to use, and how often.

Same thing could be applied (in theory) to body types since both are nothing but mesh data covered with a skin (texture), so long as you had the script and the reference table, and the additional body meshes you created in the appropriate folder. Now, as for what that will do to the game...?



Because Caturday. That's why.

Edited October 21, 2017 by twowolves80