UNP, CBBE, and... XCE?!

[Rennn]

No wonder your post count is such high, kiddo tries to prove himself here, and start (well at least try) fighting with other posters lol - 900 kudos - have fun mate cheerz

 

If I was trying to pick fights I would have attacked someone before you. I waited until you started calling things weird and saying that you were sickened by non-feminine females.

 

Go work to Bethesda?

Edited March 29, 2012 by Rennn

[SmilingAhab]

I can understand not wanting glamazons in a grimdark game. But I had to go with CBBE and Caliente's vanilla armor conversions, and Bella's no-makeup retex. I mean, Nords just don't strike me as the b-cup type. That's southern Europe. This is obviously Tamriel's northern Europe. And while I don't want supermodel, the default textures look like no characters or NPCs have bathed, ever. I know my character has jumped in at least 12 bodies of water. She shouldn't look like she just up and left a mud spa.

 

Besides, I'm basically going to be staring at her ass for 200+ hours. Might as well make it look good. Or at least not malnourished.

[RedRavyn]

I'm still looking for the perfect body mod for Skyrim. I used Robert's male and female bodies in Oblivon, almost from the starting gate, and never looked back. They were realistically proportioned, which is important to me. I don't want to see women who will surely fall over on their noses if they don't have training wheels and roll bars installed. I don't want men looking like Charles Atlas during his better years. I'd like to see ordinary people walking around the world, and I'd like to see it all done in one mod. It seems like everyone is trying to beautify the women, and the men get left out entirely.

 

I admit that the bodies in Skyrim are a lot better than they were in Skyrim. Bethesda even took the care to properly proportion the children, rather than just scaling down the adult body. Unfortunately, most of the people need some serious plastic surgery. Bethesda made elves really, REALLY ugly in this game. I used to like playing Bosmer (and Khajiits, which are my favorite race), but I really can't bear to play a wood elf in Skyrim.

[Rennn]

It turns out that I did not, in fact, manage to uninstall UNP correctly. Darn.

Now I get to find and reinstall my 97 mods, plus retextures. Oh goody. :wallbash:

 

Well, at least I'll be able to do it clean this time. I know what mods I want, and which ones break my install. That's a bonus I guess. And I made a list before I uninstalled. :thumbsup:

[ElricOfGrans]

I also use only XCE with no body mods. Of the three (UNP, CBBE and Vanilla), I find that vanilla bodies are the better looking option. Far more realistic. That is not the say they are perfect --- far from it --- but I just do not like the looks UNP or CBBE create. Who wants old women looking like catwalk models? Erk! Old Orc Women looking like catwalk models >_<

[CasperTheLich]

i started out with XCE, i do like it; however, it wasn't very compatible with some of the face mods i starting using, and cbbe (i'm using the vanilla-ish body type) seems to have some nice armor & clothing mods for it, mods that don't really like XCE's cbbe compatible meshes. so i'm a turncoat i guess. lol

[SmilingAhab]

I also use only XCE with no body mods. Of the three (UNP, CBBE and Vanilla), I find that vanilla bodies are the better looking option. Far more realistic. That is not the say they are perfect --- far from it --- but I just do not like the looks UNP or CBBE create. Who wants old women looking like catwalk models? Erk! Old Orc Women looking like catwalk models >_<

 

Well, the new version does exclude NPCs beyond a certain age. But of course, not every NPC is listed by the game as the correct age...

[chaotech]

I've used UNP for a long while, along with the mod to convert all vanilla armors and clothes to the UNP body. I was fairly happy with it, but just a few hours ago I saw a body mod so awesome and realistic, it could only be a divine gift from a prodigal new modder. I asked and found out... that it was vanilla, with no mods. This threw my game into a tailspin of course, and I was naturally thinking "Wth did Bethesda's vanilla body look hotter and more grounded than UNP in my opinion?" (Notice the "opinion" part. I'm not looking for a flame war)

 

This was aggravated when I noticed that all my modded UNP armors seemed to clip heavily when characters sprinted or went through poses, a problem which youtube videos of the vanilla body do not share. Long story short, I endured the 60 minute trip through hell of backing up 16GB of data while twiddling my thumbs, uninstalling UNP, hunting for all the leftover meshes and textures, and testing my game to make sure it was really gone. After that I installed XCE, since it's just like vanilla but better.

 

Why am I telling you all this?

Why am I risking a flame war over which body mod is best for no apparent reason?

Because I hope that someone, somewhere reads this and decides to take another look at vanilla characters, rather than simply getting a mod just for the sake of getting a mod. Hey, it has 4000 endorsements, it must be better, right? Maybe, maybe not. As it happens, UNP and CBBE both are very, very high quality, and they have more polygons and higher-rez textures, but the shape of the body itself seems less organic and began to grate after a while for me.

 

I know I went ahead and installed UNP (even tried CBBE for a brief time before deciding that it wasn't for me), just because I assumed it had to look better, and I didn't give vanilla a fair chance. Now I have to hope that I didn't botch my install while trimming the fat, so to speak, and I hope that some noob who's just starting to look for mods reads this and takes the message to heart.

 

You sir, have just made up my mind. I was debating with myself on whether or not I would drop XCE in order to switch better to UNP, and you have convinced me otherwise! Thank you. Already happy with vanilla.

[Blu02]

For me it depends on how I want my own character. I installed UNP Slim when I started playing a necromancer chick, who I just wanted to look out of shape and slightly underfed to fit her background and lifestyle. After that I changed to regular UNP but with muscular textures, when I started a more physically active hunter chick. Now I'm using more regular textures for UNP (Coverwomen without makeup) when playing a male character. The rest of the females around Skyrim just has to go with it, since I dont know any way to give my own character a unique body. Havent tried CBBE yet though as I already have so much great UNP stuff installed, but I remember how vanilla females are a bit too big and busty for my taste, so I'm at least not going back to that.

 

When it comes to male bodies I use "Better Males" since a while back, because I hate how lowpoly the arms are when swinging swords and such in first person view :P Also got rid of the gorilla hairy vanilla textures.

 

 

But on topic I dont feel that urge to install every popular mod at all. Whenever I start over with a clean install, I always go through the latest STEP-guide and download all the mods I feel matters to me (Probably around 90% of the list). That's a great base for graphics and realistic gameplay. Then I add body mods that fit the character I have been planning on. Done!

[NoAardvarksAllowed]

It's funny, I just got back to the game after not having touched it for months, and was wondering at what nice-looking body mod was used for some armor mod I was looking at, only to realize it was plain ol' vanilla. The body strikes me as a fitting representation of a Scandinavian/North European female physique, shaped by an active life in a fairly harsh environment. I think I'm gonna revert to it for my Dawnguard playthrough, unless un-UNP-ifying my game proves too big a hassle. Beth's "people in the Middle Ages lived all their lives constantly covered in mud" approach is just silly, though.