Help, I feel like I am going in circles here...

[MetalFingers87]

Hi all, I just recently had some great help from these forums for modding Oblivion, but now I'm trying to mod Skyrim and find myself hitting a few bumps.

 

I've got a pretty good idea of where I want to start. I've played Vanilla Skyrim many, many, many times and thought I would try some gameplay overhauls instead. I was told to check out Requiem but it seems to be incompatible with A LOT of other mods, and have therefore gone to look at an assortment of others. The first one I am keen to try is Ordinator, and any other gameplay/balance mods that are suggested to go with it.

 

I've also included some survival mods for a more hardcore experience; adding Campfires, RND, Frostfall, and Hunterborn. These have been installed just fine and are working as intended.

 

Now my main issue is when it comes down to another hobby: Making machinima.

 

My friend and I have been working on a Conan the Barbarian type series on various platforms and trying to find one suitable to continue the series. We've gone through various games and considered Skyrim might be the right one... I am looking for character overhauls like RaceMenu and Body Slider etc. Nudity is fine, for both immersion and the themes of our series. Where I am getting confused however is finding animations. I managed to get CBBE, thought still looking for a male body replacer... But I am unsure of what skeleton to acquire and what mods will add idle breathing animations and I guess real physics with clothing. It doesn't even need to be overtly realistic; just enough so that dialogue based scenes wouldn't look like a still image lol. We also think being compatible with any sexual mod is also handy... Anyone remember the orgy scene in the original Conan the Barbarian?

 

Finding the above type of mods wasn't so hard for other games, but for Skyrim... There are just too many! I can't make sense of all this CBBE, UNP, TBBP, FNIS etc. I'm going in loops trying to find what exactly does what.

 

So I suppose what I am really asking is for is some nice gameplay changing mods that are compatible with Ordinator and the recommended body replacers, animations, and jiggly mods. Also, I am using TESMM... Is this ok? I already have 4 other mod managers between Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout and another for a handful of other games... Trying to keep the amount of these down would be lovely!

[Shadeybladey]

Requiem is such a total overhaul is like a completely new game experience. Probably why it's incompatible with so many other mods. It's been an on-going WIP for several years and I am not sure if it is fully completed yet, but it is a TOTAL Overhaul, so probably deserves it's own, bug-free install to really try it out. I had a look a few years ago, and decided to give it a proper try out when it's more completed. At the time, they had not done all the schools of magick yet. I don't know anything about Ordinator.

 

But I also use a lot of the same mods you like - survivalist, climate, camping, cookiing, realistic needs/diseases, etc Pocket Empire Builder etc.

 

I don't know about TESMM and never use mod managers.

 

I am also not sure about the Barbarian thing, but there are multiple body replacer mods, so I'd have though that the mods page would have screen shots of a hulking great Barbarian, if they existed.

 

So, sorry, I just realised I have very little of any help to say! Damn those pain-killers for my dental surgery! Must be making me a bit foggy!

 

Except that Requiem is probably worth trying out as intended, even without certain other mods.

 

:)

[Shadeybladey]

WTF? It tells me I cannot post for 1 minute, and then it has TWO copies of the same post, when I only posted it ONCE?

 

Dark0ne, come on!

[Shadeybladey]

Oh, and for some reason, most body mods for Skyrim are female with unfeasibly large jiggles and ludicrous, reality-denying physics. I have no idea why anyone would even use these, never mind spend so much time making them. I just tried searching for BODY and got >1200 results. So I searched for MALE BODY and, of course, that included FEMALE body.

 

Maybe nexus needs a better search engine with boolean operators?

 

But I found none with images of a male character. All are those stupid Page Three girl nonsense.

 

 

[Shadeybladey]

I think this is what you need for a male barbarian body shape:

 

S.A.M. - Shape Atlas for Men.

 

Unfortunately, only the Italian translation is available on the Nexus and the link to the external site is broken because they've moved it.

 

I did find this forum, though.

 

 

So if you can find the mod, that should be better than using Google Translate!

 

:D

[Waterlily78]

I'm currently using only the Vitruvia skin textures but it does look good... may not be muscled enough for you. The most popular male body replacer on the Nexus is this one, you can choose from fairly average up to bodybuilder types:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2488

 

Also what I'm using, but it's not an overly beefy look.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/82948

 

This is the skeleton that most animations will work with:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68000

 

Install it after you have installed all the required files. (FNIS, Realistic Ragdolls, etc, there are links on the XP3 page). You'll have to run a generator for the animations, instructions on how to do that are on the FNIS page. It looks like a lot of work, but it's not too hard.

 

There are also a list of various animation mods on the FNIS page.

 

One of my favorite mods to make the characters look like people instead of moving dummies is this, PC head tracking, so your character will actually look at other NPCs and react. It will also let you add a voice type to your character, which at the very least changes their vanilla battle cry.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72039

 

There are too many to list here, but do a search on the Skyrim mods page for Barbarian Armors as well, there are quite a few to choose from if you want something like that.

 

Oh, and the difference between CBBE, UNP, etc - just mostly a matter of taste. CBBE by default has a bigger breast/rounder hip/bigger bottom silhouette for females, while UNP is usually considered to be a more slender "realistic" build.

 

Okay this is long so I'll stop here...

[Jeir]

Better Males for guys. I prefer the SunDracon meshes as they're much less beefy/bodybuilder-like than the FavouredSoul ones. But, if you're going for over-the-top muscle-man, then FavouredSoul may be more to your taste.

CBBE for ladies. Unlike what the above poster said, CBBE's proportions are smaller than UNP's by default, and even it's largest option ('Curvy) is roughly the same size, but still smaller than the default vanilla body. It also has a much more natural breast shape compared to UNP's unique gravity-defying ones. But, there's always BodySlide to make things bigger/smaller and/or more or less realistic. CBBE is also the only BodySlide-able body in Skyrim, Fallout 4 and SSE.

 

If you get confused by all the acronyms, you can check the wiki page on them for a brief explanation.

 

For breathing animations, I did find this old mod. It might look very odd with the BBP animations, though.

 

There are also quite a number of 'Conan the Barbarian'-based mods already, if you're interested. Here's one, and you can find more by just using 'conan' in the search.

[MetalFingers87]

Thanks a lot! I have looked over some of the Conan mods and what not, but we are also looking over different styles too.

 

So far I've been following this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59416?tab=description and I seem to have been going well, but something is amiss with the textures...

 

I installed everything in order. I DIDN'T use an addition skin texture, so I simply installed the CBBE texture patch. I selected all the 'curvy' bits as that is what I chose, but now my females have a black 'ninja suit' like look. I can see the jiggling works, and men are just fine... But something has gone wrong with the female textures for CBBE and I cannot figure it out. Almost every question is replied with "Lrn 2 Rd" but I have read through over and over and I don't seem to have missed anything mentioned. I am certain of it!

 

I am just wondering how I can recover these textures... I can't really install the Bounce stuff bit by bit.

[MetalFingers87]

I seem to have solved it by removing the 'CBBE Texture Patch'. Read over the page again and there is no mention what the hell that is for...

 

My friend has managed to convert some animations from a few packs, so hopefully we can get started on filming this series (Or I can just play the damn game already! xD)

 

I am still very much curious to know if there are any other gameplay mods that may suit what I've already installed? Although I am yet to try it, Ordinator worried me a little with how easy it might make things... Or should I just jack up the difficulty and not worry?