Help with creating a standalone character.

[OnyxDragon22]

Hello all. So I've been planning for quite a while on starting to work on a character(s) mod for SSE, so I decided to turn to you, the more experienced members, in order to get any advise/warning before I start working on said "experiment". See, I technically have all the characters created in Skyrim (or rather, their Racemenu presets, all of them are Khajiit) and all the resources I plan on using noted. For all the characters, I plan on using several resources from other mods (skins, hairstyles mostly) that alter their body.

For the female ones, I plan on using the next mods/resources:

-Better Khajiit female body Texture for UNP and CBBE body.

-Khajiit Hair by Saerileth.

-A CBBE bodyslide preset based on a mod called Unique Female Orcs (one of the females is a warrior, so muscles).

-The Amazing World of Bikini Armor.

For the male ones, I plan on using:

-Better Khajiit male Texture for SOS body (with an SOS addon, of course)

-Khajiit Hair by Saerileth.

Mods used for both:

-Tail Armors.

-Khajiit Eyes Extended - Khajiit Heterochromia and More.

-Accurate khajiit chin and lips paint.

-Apachii Sky Hair.

-Salt and Wind - Apachii Sky hair.

-Lupus - Sword of Hircine.

-Immersive Armors/Weapons.

(there might be some other mods I forgot to mention, eh). So, here are my questions:

1)Do I have to message each and every one of the mod creators and ask them for ther permission to use their resources on my mods, or does giving them the credit for all the mods (with the links to their mods) in my mod description prove to be enough to avoid any trouble?

2)Do you have any general tips for a newb, prospective mod creator? (tutorials you used would be great too!)

3)How do I make sure my mod will work? Do I need to test it by sending it to other people or is it enough to test it on my game?

4)Is it recommended to use these many resources for a follower mod?

 

Any input about creating a follower mod will be appreciated. If all goes well, you might see my mod in the next few weeks posted on the Nexus.

 

[OnyxDragon22]

P.S. I also want those characters aggressive towards one faction in specific (while engaging other factions like normaly other characters do, there will be one faction they will engage upon sighting even when not following you and will ignore any orders received before the engagement, like "wait here" commands)

[Niborino9409]

(there might be some other mods I forgot to mention, eh). So, here are my questions:

1)Do I have to message each and every one of the mod creators and ask them for their permission to use their resources on my mods, or does giving them the credit for all the mods (with the links to their mods) in my mod description prove to be enough to avoid any trouble?

Permission is needed. Every author treats permissions differently, permissions for one mod doesn't apply to another. Crediting is not enough, could be for some but as I said; different permissions for different mods.

 

2)Do you have any general tips for a newb, prospective mod creator? (tutorials you used would be great too!)

Start out small, no need to make a grand super mod as your first mod, learning modding is a process. Better to know what you are doing rather than go for the big fish at once. Familiarize yourself with the CK. I started with simple esp mods and gradually worked my way up depending on where my interests took me.

 

3)How do I make sure my mod will work? Do I need to test it by sending it to other people or is it enough to test it on my game?

Everyone has different setups so could affect your mod. I suppose you could test it extensively on your own but it's also good to have others test it, they might spot something you missed or have additional input.

 

4)Is it recommended to use these many resources for a follower mod?

You certainly can, but you need to hunt down permissions for them, not all authors might want you to use their mod either. Not all might be completely necessary either.

 

Any input about creating a follower mod will be appreciated. If all goes well, you might see my mod in the next few weeks posted on the Nexus.

Depends on your modding experience, do you know how to make a basic CK follower? Since this idea is a step above. Or several! :happy:

 

Regarding the faction question

You can certainly make that, give your follower their own faction and set it as an enemy to another. But it could also lead to troubles if the enemy faction is included in quests, your follower would go on a rampage. If they saw f ex a thalmor in Whiterun the whole town could start fighting.

 

 

And a few follower examples, this one: Rimron Adael Altmer Follower Is done with a skin texture and hairmod mainly. This one from the same author: Mese Standalone Female Follower is made through the same process but might be more in line with what you want. But I'd suggest going one step at a time. That author used this tutorial:

 

 

I haven't watched it myself, but looking at what they achieved with it, it must be useful!

Edited February 26, 2019 by Niborino9409

[OnyxDragon22]

(there might be some other mods I forgot to mention, eh). So, here are my questions:

1)Do I have to message each and every one of the mod creators and ask them for their permission to use their resources on my mods, or does giving them the credit for all the mods (with the links to their mods) in my mod description prove to be enough to avoid any trouble?

Permission is needed. Every author treats permissions differently, permissions for one mod doesn't apply to another. Crediting is not enough, could be for some but as I said; different permissions for different mods.

 

2)Do you have any general tips for a newb, prospective mod creator? (tutorials you used would be great too!)

Start out small, no need to make a grand super mod as your first mod, learning modding is a process. Better to know what you are doing rather than go for the big fish at once. Familiarize yourself with the CK. I started with simple esp mods and gradually worked my way up depending on where my interests took me.

 

3)How do I make sure my mod will work? Do I need to test it by sending it to other people or is it enough to test it on my game?

Everyone has different setups so could affect your mod. I suppose you could test it extensively on your own but it's also good to have others test it, they might spot something you missed or have additional input.

 

4)Is it recommended to use these many resources for a follower mod?

You certainly can, but you need to hunt down permissions for them, not all authors might want you to use their mod either. Not all might be completely necessary either.

 

Any input about creating a follower mod will be appreciated. If all goes well, you might see my mod in the next few weeks posted on the Nexus.

Depends on your modding experience, do you know how to make a basic CK follower? Since this idea is a step above. Or several! :happy:

 

Regarding the faction question

You can certainly make that, give your follower their own faction and set it as an enemy to another. But it could also lead to troubles if the enemy faction is included in quests, your follower would go on a rampage. If they saw f ex a thalmor in Whiterun the whole town could start fighting.

 

 

And a few follower examples, this one: Rimron Adael Altmer Follower Is done with a skin texture and hairmod mainly. This one from the same author: Mese Standalone Female Follower is made through the same process but might be more in line with what you want. But I'd suggest going one step at a time. That author used this tutorial:

 

 

I haven't watched it myself, but looking at what they achieved with it, it must be useful!

 

Thank you for responding. So I've been experimenting with the CK (ugh, it's kind of... unstable) and managed to create followers in 2 different ways. The first one, the basic way you create a follower in the CK (wasn't really hard). The second one involved a proccess that I saw on youtube the other day, currently downloading said video, in which you had to create a character first in game, then create character files of something (you used a console command for that) that you will export to CK as a preset for character creation. I managed to set up the character nicely, using the other mods I mentioned, and I succesfuly created an ESP. that automatically got moved to MO2. Tested it, and it worked just fine except for a small detail that was entirely my fault (dark/gray face bug). The character had all the armor I placed on it, the weapons, reacted well as a follower. So I guess that possibly means I just overcame the biggest obstacle? (aside from hunting down permissions, of course). What would be next?

Ps. I'll watch the video later, thanks for the valuable asset.

[Niborino9409]

Next would be to get all the other stuff into the CK. The video I linked goes over the process for the character only. The biggest obstacle wasn't making a basic follower, learning the rest is harder. :wink: Like if you want additional spells for the follower or something like that.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Niborino9409

[OnyxDragon22]

Next would be to get all the other stuff into the CK. The video I linked goes over the process for the character only. The biggest obstacle wasn't making a basic follower, learning the rest is harder. :wink: Like if you want additional spells for the follower or something like that.

I don't think I might be capable of using that tutorial. It uses sculpting, which apparently isn't available for SSE.

Also, created a follower (again) but still the dark face bug persists, and I have no idea why. I look for the face gen thing that was supposed to be generated after pressing Ctrl + F4 and couldn't find anything. Guess its back to square one now.

Oh, and i woudln't worry about spells just yet. The characters I'm planning are all going to be melee for now, with maybe one bow user among them.

[Niborino9409]

Sculpting is useable for SE. I have done it myself, but I have only used it with racemenu. But it's not strictly needed. You can use vanilla sliders and export using that too, bypassing the nifmerge step. There is also a command called spf.

 

SPF = Save Player Face. Open your console, click your character and type " spf MyCharFace " Press enter. This will save your character's face into a file you can import into the Creation Kit. File is in the Skyrim folder where the .exe is. MyCharFace is just the file name that you enter yourself. So you can have anything really instead of what I wrote. This method is limited to vanilla sliders. If done with a racemenu head it looks thicker than it should and you won't get all edits you made.

 

Skyla's video is still useful for the bodystuff. She goes over how to get a custom body for your follower into the CK. the dark face bug should be fixed by CTRL F4 like you described, so not sure about that. :huh: :)

Edited March 1, 2019 by Niborino9409

[OnyxDragon22]

Here's the ones I've used so far.

 

 

 

The first one actually did teach me how to use the SPF command, and I currently still have the file created. So far when I import it to the CK, the whole head looks exactly how it's supposed to be, except for some details like the hair color and the eye color (which I proceed to corret via CK).

[OnyxDragon22]

I think I'll have to settle with my character using CBBE, Apachii, and the Khajiit textures for now, to try and make things easier (no custom eyes, no custom armor)

[Niborino9409]

Awesome! Darkfox127 is a godsend for CK work! :D