Custom Follower from Player Character

[AurianaValoria1]

Long story short, I'm making a custom follower from my player character, and I cannot get the eyeliner and lip colors to work in the CK. Everything else about the face exported OK, just not those two things. Is there a way to make it work?

[IsharaMeradin]

the CK doesn't show colors properly. Just make sure that the colors are listed properly when you import the .NPC file you made from your player character. Also make sure after you've done all your work and saved the plugin that you highlight your actor in the object window and do Ctrl+F4 to export the face data for the follower actor file to use.

 

If after that in game it doesn't look like how you wanted then you probably need to manually re-build the face gen texture file. Can go over that if necessary...

[AurianaValoria1]

Still doesn't look right. :( Edited December 9, 2012 by AurianaValoria1

[IsharaMeradin]

This is from a tutorial I made in regards to setting up a mannequin that looked like your player character. mannequins are simply actors just like followers so it still applies. Doing this should make the followers face look correct (or nearly correct).

Note: this was modified and improved upon since my initial release. The follow method is much cleaner in appearance and with less chance for error.

Before going on, I need to explain something. Player characters when created are layered with tint layers to create the face that is seen in game. NPC charaters however have all the face tint data merged into a single file. This is why you can create a preset actor and it looks fine in game, however the same actor as a placed NPC will not look correct. The ctrl+f4 used previously is intended to solve this problem. However, it is broken and does not export and merge the tint layers appropriately. It is for this reason that programs like Skyrim NPC Editor were created to begin with.

Open the Creation Kit and load up your mannequin/preset plugin

Find your actor base and go to the Character Gen Parts

Locate the FaceGenData you created earlier, should be skyrim/data/textures/actors/character/facegendata/facetint/yourmodname.esp

Open the dds file with GIMP and uncheck the option to load mipmaps -- here on out it will be referred to as the skin tone dds file.

Use BSAopt to extract the textures from the skyrim - textures.bsa file -- unless you have mod provided versions of the same face tint layers used by the actor

Look thru the output for the texture files that match the ones you have colors for that aren't showing up in the game should be BSAOutput/data/textures/actors/character/character assests/tintmasks

Open each dds file that you need colors for with GIMP, they should be black and white.

Copy all the black and white images and paste as new layers into the skin tone dds file.

Pick one tintmask to work with, and add a new layer. -- layer menu, new layer option, pick transparency --- in fact all new layers will be transparent.

Move the new transparent layer below the tintmask you are working with and flood fill it with the matching color listed in the Creation Kit. -- note to set the color value, double click on the foreground color displayed in the tools toolbox window. Enter the RGB values in the window that pops up and press ok.

with the tintmask layer selected, go to layer menu, transparency, color to alpha, change the color to white. Only the black parts should remain.

You should see the color showing thru where the white was previously.

Merge the black & transparent layer down into the proper color layer.

Repeat steps 9 thru 13 for each tint mask being used

****

when all done, make sure the skintone layer is at the bottom of the stack of layers.

select the layer above it, go to layer menu and choose merge down option

repeat the merge down process till all the tintmasks are ontop of the skintone

export the file as a dds and overwrite the original Creation Kit face gen data file, do not apply any compression when you export.

Check it out in game.

There could be some edging issues along some face tint layers, this is typically cause you used the stock tint layer but have a mod version in your data directory. To correct re-do this set of steps and use the mod version instead.

 

*** I need to update this point to include sending black to alpha so that the skintone color is visible beneath all the face tint layers.

[AurianaValoria1]

Hmm. It was all good until I started copying and pasting tintmasks...and the tintmasks are many many times larger than the skintone.dds.

 

Should I just use the Skyrim NPC editor?

[IsharaMeradin]

You could try the Skyrim NPC editor. I personally couldn't get it to work.

 

The skintone.dds file can be the same size as the tintmasks (which are most likely from a mod, else they would be the same size) or vice versa. In all practicallity all you need do for the skintone is after layering and tweaking the tintmasks is to make a transparent layer underneath and give it the skintone color then flatten down.

 

Just make sure the file is not compressed else it won't work.

[AurianaValoria1]

I used the NPC editor and it worked! A shame it didn't work for you...it's actually pretty simple and easy to use.

 

In any case, thank you for your help. Kudos! :)