[LE] Porting Custom Follower to SE

[aonach]

Hello all,

Trying to port a custom follower from LE to SE. I already changed out the generic nif's for the SE equivalents (body, hair, etc) and updated the texture filepaths. Now I am trying to copy the headparts from the LE Racemenu export to the nif exported from the ck, so that the face will be right. Can anyone give me a quick list of how this is done? I've tried optimizing the LE nif with nif optimizer, but when I open it in nifskope, it appears that the mesh is stretched into a weird tube on the top of the head, but I also noticed that it rewrites the the nodes so that they match the ck exported nif. The copy/paste over process is giving me headaches.

Any help would be appreciated.

[justinglen75]

Hello!

 

NifMerge is a very useful program to use. It simplifies the process of merging the CK facegeom NIF file (the target) with the one you created in RaceMenu (the source). However, the merge needs to be done before you optimize it for SSE. Once the merge is complete, I open the merged facegeom nif in NifSkope and hardcode the texture paths, save it, then I make the optimization with SSE Nif Optimizer.

 

That's how I do it anyways.

 

I hope this link helps too, there are some videos on this search could be useful.

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=nifmerge&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

Skyka's awesome standalone tutorial, that also mentions/shows how to use NifMerge

 

In case you don't know, be careful with CK 2.0. If you open your mod and save it in CK 2.0, it will (annoyingly) auto-generate/overwrite your facegen data files. It's a good idea to archive your original, SSE optimized facegeom files (facegeom NIF and facetint DDS) with 7ZIP or the like before CK 2.0 overwrites them. If you save the mod, and the files become overwritten you can then delete the unwanted files and then extract your archives to restore them. I hope that helps! GL!

[justinglen75]

BTW I should also mention that NifMerge is NOT compatible with SSE Optimized NIFs, it only works with SLE NIFs so that's why you need to use NifMerge before you optimize the merged facegeom NIF file for SSE. If you already knew of this, I apologize :)

[aonach]

Thanks for the ideas. The posted video is actually how I successfully made the follower for LE. So I followed the steps, hardcoding the texture filepaths and using nif optimize before installing to SE. After optimizing, I checked it and found that the "head tube" thing was still an issue, but I installed it anyway, knowing that Nifskope can display a little weirdly sometimes anyway. After installing, I opened the esp in ck and resaved so that it would work in SE. Then I replaced the new nif it generated in the FaceGeom file with the one I had optimized (changing the name to match).

Still went in game to see a bald, grey-faced red exclamation box person with the face that had been originally exported from the ck before using nif merge. I can't imagine where this is going wrong.

[justinglen75]

Hello, sorry wasn't get back to you sooner on this. I believe the triangle with the question marker happens when there's a missing NIF file(s) or there's a mess up in the link to the NIFs -- ie. a misspelling/missing pathway to the body mesh/NIFs. Make sure your file pathways are correct in the CK and the standalone folder you created to store your meshes.

 

Looking at the picture bellow, I see some issues. The dark grey in the face I think means something's missing. The white mesh parts are white because they are not hardcoded to any textures. Not sure if that's helpful information.

 

The head tube only appears that way in NikSkope after it's been converted/optimized for SSE but it doesn't effect the game -- it's normal.

Just to make sure, when you optimize your NIFs for SSE did you optimize the headparts separately? There's an option in SSENO to where you choose head parts only (ie. face, hair, mouth, eye, facegeom meshes) -- they are usually needed to be kept seperate in the optimization process. Standard optimization is, by default, meant for body parts (ie. body, hands and feet) and other non-head part related.

 

Did she work perfectly in SLE? Is it just the conversion to SSE that's causing issues? Just a thought here, you can send me your stuff and I can take a look at it if you're interested. Could maybe share it on Google Drive, just send me the link to the bundled files. I might need just the original SLE files, including all the standalone folders for the meshes and textures, including the ESP so I can see what your textureset and headparts are set as.

Edited December 1, 2018 by justinglen75

[justinglen75]

To give you and idea of how I do my stuff, you could also download one of my female followers and see how mine is structured. You will need to use BSA Browser to extract the files from the BSAs. If that's a little beyond on how to do that, I could also send you a link to the files in Google Drive and send you a link. Let's get it figured out!

[aonach]

Ah, must be what I"m doing wrong. I have not been optimizing the head parts independently. I was optimizing the entire nif from FaceGeom after merging (not selecting head parts only). I think the exclamation point is due to the missing hair (which was not properly optimized) because on an earlier attempt to fix the issues I was having, I replaced the mesh files with the SE equivalents, and didn't see that problem (only the face was wrong). So the idea is to optimize each nif separately.

 

She does look perfect in SLE. I even loaded up a preset to compare them in-game.

I'm actually not sure why the textures didn't show up in that nifskope screenshot. I had hardcoded them prior to optimization, but I was shuffling files around to keep track of everything at the time, so I may have moved something.

 

Let's see if I can get it right this time.

[justinglen75]

Doesn't hurt to try, as tedious as it can get :)

 

But yeah, to maybe help simplify it you could maybe create a folder for headpart meshes (ie. eyes, brows, head/face, facegeom, hair) only and then a seperate folder for the misc meshes you are using from your mod. You could either drop the facegeom mesh/nif in the headpart mesh folder, convert/optimize it and then put it back where it goes OR just leave it where it is and convert it by it self. Just make sure that when you select the directory with the headparts that you have "head parts only" checked in SSENO. And when youâre about to optimize the misc meshes, uncheck âhead parts onlyâ.

 

I personally hardcode every mesh I use for my follower mods. It's tedious work, but I like being very thorough, hehe. Try downloading one of my follower mods on Nexus and open the meshes in NifSkope to see how I hardcoded each of them, not sure if that will help you. GL!ÃÂ

Edited December 2, 2018 by justinglen75

[aonach]

First of all, thanks for all of your help!

 

It seems I'm going to find every weird little issue that exists between me and the goal.

 

Through several trials with error, I discovered that after optimizing the post-merged nif, I needed to hardcode the texture paths again.

 

- A quick question here: When you optimize the nif in FaceGeom after running optimizer, what are the settings? Anything in particular I should do other than not select "face parts only"?

 

I've managed to find partial success in two ways: 1. I can get the character in the game, but without the RM exported settings (mesh and or/texture- this is after resaving the esp in CK64 and overwriting the newly generated files with the right ones. 2. I got the character in the game looking correct from a distance, but caused the game to crash whenever I got within about 10 (in game) feet from her. This second may have been from using an unoptimized FaceGeom nif....I've tried this a wonderful myriad of ways.

 

- About hardcoding the mesh files: How do you treat the RM exported dds file in nifskope? I see that its linked under head textures, and pasting it into my head textures file for the character and hardcoding it in nifskope for LE wasn't an issue. What would you normally do with that? I figure when you convert it to SE, it still needs to be found. Is that right?

 

Again, thanks for all the assistance.

[aonach]

Update: I optimized the FaceGeom nif as "head parts only", installed the mod in SE, deleted the nif's and dds the CK64 created when I resaved it, and put in the old ones without renaming them with the new CK generated filenames. And behold, it worked.