Body mesh/Skin question

[Apis4]

Is there a way to designate specific body types, like UNP or CBBE, to individual specific followers?

 

Ergo, edit a followers specific shape, to a custom mesh, and apply a soecifuc custom skin, WITHOUT installing a REPLACER for ALL bodies and skin's?

 

 

I want some female followers to use UNP, and some CBBE, and one or two like a big muscular borderline Lenda Murray looking body if I can find one, but not change every woman in the game.

 

Wouldn't mind being able to apply a big buff barbarian body to a few guys too.

 

 

Also, is there any way to make armour and clothing replacers for a given shape, NOT replace, just ADD that version?

 

You know, like being able to have all the vanilla armours, but have UNP and CBBE versions too, designated by a suffix?

 

This seems like the answers to all my questions SHOULD be YES,but I'm struggling to find a solid one either way.

[anjenthedog]

Yes(ish) (for the body)

 

Please forgive the slightly rambling nature of this post and warning you may get TMI, if so , sorry... it's maybe wordier than needed and looks intimidating, but the process is very straight forward once you get the swing of things) The following will focus on the "worst case", ie, an old converted mod follower which has no bodyslide and which is often from UNP origins., but the principles apply in general to all such mesh conversions and potential texture enhancements, with more or less work involved.

 

I've found the best way to update a UNP follower is to use the BHUNP body (you *can have BHUNP installed along with CBBE-3BBB)

 

And for a CBBE follower, of course build using a CBBE-3BBE

 

Now for the "ish" part

 

IF your intention is to retain the visual body characteristics of the follower, and they don't have a bodyslide to use as some sort of template (which is usually limited to CBBE followers anyway), And the body was at any time tweaked by the author to deviate from the zeroed preset withwhich they created it, you will need not only to "rebuild", but to retro-design the replacement

 

That is, you need to identify the model they were based on (for instance, my original copy of Yuih-Sha uses a Seven base UNP body), then select the corresponding BHUNP or CBBE-3BBB preset that emulates the original UNP or CBBE body, and then using a series of snapshots of the follower body, tweak it using the sliders until it matches the original (within your abilities and acceptance level)

 

That's relatively easy when converting a CBBE body to CBBE-3BBB, not so easy when converting a UNP, since BHUNP bodies in Bodyslide Studio use the wrong texture (ie for CBBE, even though the target is not CBBE) to display them, so there's quite a bit of finessing involved in hitting the mark on a "clone" of the original, especially when it comes to breasts, since the texture seen in Bodyslide studio doesn't place breast shadowing or nipples where they should be (although don't worry, they will be, in-game, once this process is done). Their hips, legs, arms are basically the same, but the torso just looks plain wrong and it's difficult to correctly adjust the profile of the breasts and nipples. Much guesswork involved. (again, IN bodyslide studio)

----------------------------

 

1) Ok, so you got this far. Let's say you're working on a UNP conversion... You've installed BHUNP, and all it's bodies and body presets are in bodyslide. Yay. 1st step done.

 

2) You then identified the body preset type used for the original follower mod's body and selected the corresponding BHUNP preset for that original body type within Bodyslide Studio (BHUNP - 7B Bcup, BHUNP Dream Girl, etc etc) , and picked the appropriate body/outfit for the character (ex: BHUNP advanced ygnord) Yay step 2 is done

 

3) You've also adjusted the sliders for that preset and are satisifed that it looks pretty darned close to the original, and you have sensibly saved the result of your work under a new Bodyslide preset like "Sha_nude_preset_try_1" so it can be modified later or used for fitting clothing and armor later (and to use as a template for creating a clothed variant later on for fitting armor/clothing) . Yay step 3 completed

 

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE press the Build button yet

 

4) go to settings in Bodyslide studio

 

5) under Advanced, browse to a staging folder of your choice (I usually create a folder for each follower I'll be working on and then use that, with a sub folder like "bhunp mesh version" (we'll be using that global folder to drop old files into later, in a sub folder named "old files" or something like that as backup) ... also, make a textures subfolder so you can do similar things as needed...

 

Mine looks like this (generically)

 

character work

- follower name (ex: Yuih Sha)

- meshes

- new

- backup

- textures

- new

- backup

- follower name 2 (Ex: Yuih Elwyn)

- meshes

- new

- backup

- textures

- new

- backup

...repeat as necessary for more followers ...

Note: Step 5 establishes the final destination of the meshes you will be replacing for the follower later on when building the body in Bodyslide studio. If you fail to add that staging location, you will overwrite your player (not sure when male player, but definitely a problem if you use a female player for any play vector)

 

6) Now that you've designed your replacement and established a staging location for your work output, you can build your new body Meshes. For CBBE-3BBB, I choose the 3BBB amazing body, (ygnord specifically for those I've done so far.. that may be right or wrong idk but it's worked for me, as the followers have all originally been of nord origins) , for BHUNP, I use the BHUNP advanced (again ygnord so far)

 

So now, with your newly created preset selected, and the proper BHUNP (for UNP origins follower) /CBBE-3BBB (for CBBE origins follower) body/outfit selected, check the "build morphs" checkbox, then build the body. I also recommend building the corresponding hands and feet ***after building the body. In fact I more than suggest it. Always build the hands and feet after building the body (IMO)

 

Your new meshes have now been saved to your staging folder.

 

7) onwards and upwards

 

Now we have our meshes, but we don't necessarily have our original textures fixed up correctly. (Depending on your ultimate intent)

 

If your intention is to provide certain adult enhancement in addition to updating the body to deal with 3BBB-level bounce and wiggle, you're probably going to need to copy the torso textures from the followers folder, then edit the copies in a suitable editor (I use Paint.Net) to add the missing features, then replace the original torso textures (and all the other torso files) with these updated files, after dropping copies of the originals in the backup textures folder for the follower textures previously created....

 

this one is hit or miss. When I rebuilt Elwyn, I didn't need to, but when I rebuilt Sha and a couple others I did, dunno why. Each ow has the "right stuff" but Sha did not add it automatically like Elywn did... Maybe I picked the wrong preset when building them, or my conversion was before I had to rebuild the game up to 1.5.97 standards and my other mod updates resolved things on that front... not sure and haven't gone back.

 

Maybe, for the purposes of just adding jiggle, we can skip this for now., suffice it to say there are files located under the BHUNP folder that you can poach for those missing adult body parts if they don't show up on their own after we're done here.

 

(Textures can be swapped at any time)

 

But the idea is simple

 

you open the femalebody_1.dds in Paint.Net, then copy-paste the corresponding dds file obtained from BHUNPs folders into the image as a new layer, then merge the new layer into the old texture, save using the proper format (comes up on its own when trying to save a dds in Paint.Net, fwiw, so a no brainer, just say yes and save). Do the same for femalebody_1_msn.dds, femalebody_1_s.dds, and femalebody_1_sk.dds, adding the corresponding content from the BHUNP adult part texture files to each

 

You *may need to scale bits to match the follower texture source, so I usually drop the bits into a new image, check the image size against that of the texture I'm working on, and resize the image with the bits I'll be pasting in to the same size prior, or things go to heck quickly.

 

you of course save these modified texture files to the -new textures folder for the follower staging folder we created (in green above)

 

:cool: assembly

 

A) replace the meshes in the followers mesh folder with the ones you just built (after making sure you back up the old one into the appropriate backup folder). Make sure to include the .tri file generated as well. as the 6 mesh files.

 

NOTE: IFF the follower mesh folder contains a skeleton, you will want to ensure you've replaced it with the proper XMPSE skeleton that BHUNP or CBBE-3BB uses. sometimes they come with an old skeleton, which will not produce the bounce and jiggle one might expect. Make sure to drop the old skeleton in your mesh backup folder too, before replacing it of course, just because I said so.

 

B) replace the body textures in the followers texture folder with the new one deposited into the "character work/followername/textures/new folder, after making sure to copy the original into the corresponding backup folder.

 

At that point you should be able to open the game and review your updated follower

 

Hope this helps. Sorry for its length.

 

PS. this or a subset of this work can be used as a basic process for doing the other body swaps you noted.

 

edited for typos and content.

[anjenthedog]

PS> after you're done and satisfied with the results, make sure to clear the Bodyslide Studio "settings> advanced" field so that future use of bodyslide sends its output to the normal locations.

 

Also, ideally, you'd copy these changes to a decompressed version of your follower mod, then compress that using the .7z extension to create a new BHUNP version or CBBE-3BBB verions, and reinstall, but personally, I fear that in doing so I would screw up my current follower in some way, (relationship, items I've given them etc), so I simply do the in-situ mesh and texture replacements, and if Vortex asks me if I want to keep my changes (at some point while deploying) I have it save the currently deployed configuration instead of reverting to the original source.

 

----

 

2) multiple fitted versions of armor? No. not as far as I know, at least without work I'm not qualified to do, although a basic idea would be to generate a clone of the original armor mod, then dig inside and rename all the appropriate names and references so it appears to the game as a unique armor. I hain't the first clue how in a practical sense.

 

it's possible one could, but it all gets too messy in my head to consider chasing it myself. If you ever generate a practical paint-by-numbers worklfow I'd like to read it.

 

I've posted before that it would be nice if armor creators that produce multiple variants (BHUNP< CBBE< etc) would actually name the internals uniquely, so that we could install more than one version for different body types, but I suspect it'd be a huge amount of work, although I really don't know either way... Maybe it's just not feasible..

 

(Ex: you'd see "BHUNP-Trivene outfit" in the in game items list, or "CBBE-3BBBB Trivene outfit" , etc)

[Apis4]

Wow Anjen, THANKS.

 

I asked this in the comments section of the body slide tools Nexus listing, and the creators said NO.

 

 

One thing though, I'm assuming this is impossible on Vanilla followers, unless I previously use a custom replacer on those followers, right?

 

Ergo, I couldn't do it to vanilla Mjoll, but a custom Mjoll replacer that replaces her with a CBBE custom bodied Mjoll, I could, right?

 

Also, if one doesn't need physics, like me (I don't really care about THAT much detail), I don't need a physics protocol or skeleton, right?

[anjenthedog]

Hmm... my experience in this only really goes as far as mod-based followers. Specifically for those who have namd folders in subfolders of /Data/meshes and /Data/textures or their "actors/character/" subfolders

 

It's possible that you can do it for them, but without a dedicated folder of NPC assets, the only changes I'd think you could make is via racemenu (for instance, you can use racemenu on a targeted NPC from the utility mod "Manipulator")

 

TBH, I've never modded the vanilla characters (in this way). Nor have I even looked in the /data/textures or /data/meshes for mjol or any other. Being a curious sort, I just looked and sure enough, I do not have any hard assets for Mjol. So, at least for me, no, although I'm not saying you *cannot*, just that I've never pursued it

 

 

 

Ergo, I couldn't do it to vanilla Mjoll, but a custom Mjoll replacer that replaces her with a CBBE custom bodied Mjoll, I could, right?

 

that woud be my assumption, aside from tweaking an NPC as I noted above.

 

 

 

Also, if one doesn't need physics, like me (I don't really care about THAT much detail), I don't need a physics protocol or skeleton, right?

 

Skeletons are always needed. And in your game, you *should have the most recent XPMSSE installed anyway

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1988

 

My comment about replacing a skeleton in a follower's original mesh folder is based on it being there. No follower folder no old skeleton file.

[Apis4]

Wait, so there's a mod called Manipulator that lets you change NPCs in Race Menu?

 

Imma look for it now!!!!

Edited July 24, 2020 by Apis4

[anjenthedog]

Check at LL. Nexus doesn't offer it.

[Apis4]

Ahhh, Manipulator, on LL, got it. Sounds perfect