Making a replacer from another Follower mod

[VigiigiV]

Yo yo. Ive been having problems on how to replace an existent Custom full voiced follower with another random follower. In this case I wish to change mirais appearance with another one to make her look a bit older. How do I do that? Ive extracted the bsa texture files, but I have no idea on how to go from there. What programs do I need and how do I go ahead? I dont wish to use the "visual transfer tool"

 

 

[shumkar]

A simple replacing-and-renaming might not work, because the textures are associated with meshes. Moreover, NPCs facegendata is being stored in the saves. In general, the main program for editing the game is Creation Kit.

 

Edit: Maybe, this will be helpful: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5266980-nightmare-of-facegen-data/

Edited February 10, 2020 by shumkar

[Algabar]

Depends on what you want to change. If you want to give her a totally different face or a different haircut, you practically have to "rebuild" her as a follower. This involves work in the CK, but also in Nifskope. You should know how to make a follower before you try something like this.

 

If you want to keep her overall looks and her hair and just make her look a bit older, you can try a different skin texture. "Mature skin" is superb IMHO. You could download this texture mod, then search for the textures folder of your follower (usually found in .../Skyrim SE/data/textures/actors/character/your_follower's_name). Simply copy over the new textures (replace the original ones). This alone will already make a noticeable difference.

[VigiigiV]

Depends on what you want to change. If you want to give her a totally different face or a different haircut, you practically have to "rebuild" her as a follower. This involves work in the CK, but also in Nifskope. You should know how to make a follower before you try something like this.

 

If you want to keep her overall looks and her hair and just make her look a bit older, you can try a different skin texture. "Mature skin" is superb IMHO. You could download this texture mod, then search for the textures folder of your follower (usually found in .../Skyrim SE/data/textures/actors/character/your_follower's_name). Simply copy over the new textures (replace the original ones). This alone will already make a noticeable difference.

 

I have tried making a follower in SSE but when placing the character into the world of Skyrim it crashes totally. Im used to porting some followers by converting meshes to sse and realigning out of places hair/mouth/eyes etc in nif-skope. But when it comes to replacing a follower with another Im clueless. Do I need to use the same name on their facegen on textures and meshes, realign the new face in nif-skope and use ck so that the facegen on the new follower takes the old ones place or? ;p Im pretty green when it comes to this. When it comes to porting followers Ive had more success using outfit-studio to realign stuff, rather than using nif-skope.

[Algabar]

If I understood correctly, you want to change Mirai's appearance, but keep her as "Mirai" follower, right?

 

Basic workflow would be as follows:

Step 1 (Racemenu): Change her appearance in Racemenu, export the head from the "sculpt" tab.

Step 2 (CK): Change the data of the original mod according to the exported face in the CK (e.g. give her the same hair as your saved new head mesh)

Step 3 (CK): Export the facegendata from the CK.

Step 4 (Nifskope mainly): Replace the (practically unusable) exported facegen with the "true" head you exported from racemenu. This is work in Nifskope mainly.

 

Especially for the last step, this tutorial can be very helpful.

 

Regarding your question: Yes, you work with the original mod in the CK and adjust "Mirai" in the CK (by giving her e.g. new hair, a different skin color or different eyes). Creating a new follower doesn't really make sense - you want to edit the existing one. OFC you should always keep a backup file of the original mod somewhere just in case.

 

"But, but - how can I change her face in Racemenu?" To get her face into Racemenu, you need to use a little workaround. Find the ORIGINAL head mesh. It should be in ...data/meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/mirai.esp (or whatever the plugin is called). Copy the ".nif" file to .../data/SKSE/plugin/Chargen (NOT .../Chargen/Presets!).

Start the game, open racemenu. Choose female character of teh same race as Mirai. Now go to the "sculpt" tab. "Import" the original head nif you just copied over. Adjust it to your liking. When done, export it from the "sculpt" tab. Now continue with step 2 in the CK.

 

EDIT: Personally, I don't work on an SE basis. I prefer to do all the editing and stuff in "Oldrim" and "port" the finished product to SE (main step is to update all the head parts with Nif Optimizer). The main advantage of working on an "Oldrim" basis is that you can use "Nif merge", which isn't available for SE. This makes the final adjusting of the head mesh exported from CK a lot easier. But OFC not everybody still has "Oldrim" and the "Oldrim" CK on their computer...