Face Mod Mashup

[ZodiacBlack]

So lately I've installed: Pandorable's NPCs, Dragonborn, Dawnguard, Jampion NPC's, then; Metalsaber's Beautiful Ladies, Orcs, Mages, Vampires, Lovely Ladies, Elegant Elves, with; Bijin All in One. Sure, that looks like a huge mess, and that is why I wanted to come here and talk about on how to remove some faces so they don't just overlap one another... but instead mix and match them all into one big diverse collection. Of course the most favorable ones here are the Bijin Series, and this will override every other mod. As for the rest, however, I did some extensive comparison of each one and quite frankly, I have a serious need to fix the issues that came when I thought it was so easy to just use Vortex to override the faces... or worse yet, delete every single face mesh and texture I happened to not like one bit. I do admit, most of them were Beautiful Ladies (I'm sorry but Boti legit looks like the Shackled Banshee from Wizard101), but some were really, really nice while all the other face mods didn't live up. Not to mention... One face apparently seemed quite, how should I say it, racist. It pertained to a young redguard by the name of Zaria, and ONE of these mods (I won't say which for reasons, you can investigate yourself) decided that hey, why don't we just change her entirely into a sassy b-faced NORD with an obviously ghetto name, straight outta Bronx? That to me, breaks every immersion experience I ever had with the already bug-infested Skyrim that it is. I mind as well shoot these bugs in Fallout instead hahaha I'm kidding. On the topic of immersion though, in the depictions of the lore, I also picked a few faces specifically to match better with their personalities and background story, which should make the most sense, considering that this is a Role Playing Game. I made it such that a couple soon-to-be Thanes of certain holds would use the much younger face assets from Lovely Ladies rather than Pandorable's NPCs, because lore wise, they're taking that seat for granted and sure as Hell didn't deserve it as much as the Dragonborn myself, prissy little punk gets away with it, and her face should match that smirk.

So yea the main point of this topic is to ask for some assistance in effectively removing individual faces from each NPC of each mod without it breaking midway and giving me a blackface of them in game instead of just not seeing their non-existent assets attempting to be used, thanks.

Edited September 10, 2020 by ZodiacBlack

[VulcanTourist]

You should try Botox For Skyrim and just skip the rest of the replacers. I did (with a few specific exceptions). Botox For Men is also coming (it's just a shell right now, IIRC it just replaces hair).

Edited September 12, 2020 by VulcanTourist

[saurusmaximus]

Go into TESVEdit, load up the mod that has the NPCs you don't want. Delete their records from the mod, save and close. I would also recommend disabling/deleting their respective meshes and textures, depending on which mod manager you are using, just to be safe.

[ZodiacBlack]

I did that. now I want to merge all the esp's into one, along with combining the folders.

[Algabar]

I did that. now I want to merge all the esp's into one, along with combining the folders.

Short advice: Don't.

 

Explanation: What you want IS OFC doable, but it might be more work than you expected.

 

You could use either "Merge Plugins" (meanwhile quite outdated) or "z-edit" (more modern tool by the same author, but still in alpha...).

 

TBH, I don't have much experience with "z-edit". So I can't say how well it works. "Merge Plugins" is difficult to use especially with mods concerning NPCs. When I used it for something similar as you're planning, I had a lot of issues with FaceGen data named incorrectly (or not changed at all). Took me a lot of time to sort this out... I doubt if it's worth the hassle.

 

If your setup is running and working as intended, don't change it. If you want or need to save plugin space, there are probably easier methods like converting some of your .esp plugins to ESPFE format.

[saurusmaximus]

 

I did that. now I want to merge all the esp's into one, along with combining the folders.

Short advice: Don't.

 

Explanation: What you want IS OFC doable, but it might be more work than you expected.

 

You could use either "Merge Plugins" (meanwhile quite outdated) or "z-edit" (more modern tool by the same author, but still in alpha...).

 

TBH, I don't have much experience with "z-edit". So I can't say how well it works. "Merge Plugins" is difficult to use especially with mods concerning NPCs. When I used it for something similar as you're planning, I had a lot of issues with FaceGen data named incorrectly (or not changed at all). Took me a lot of time to sort this out... I doubt if it's worth the hassle.

 

If your setup is running and working as intended, don't change it. If you want or need to save plugin space, there are probably easier methods like converting some of your .esp plugins to ESPFE format.

 

I've used zEdit to successfully merge follower mods without any issue. The nice thing about either of those tools is, they create a new mod when they do a merge, so even if it doesn't work, you're only out the time it takes to do the merge in the first place; your original mods stay untouched.

 

HOWEVER, in the OPs case, before doing that I would ensure that you have gotten rid of all unnecessary records from your various mods before attempting to merge, and then I would make a new 'Test Save' to try everything out before committing to a new playthrough, just in case something went wrong.

[ZodiacBlack]

I did it, and it worked without a single issue.

I am pleased.

If you guys are interested... I have the entire thing packed into a single archive, it is now a single mod containing a mix and match of everything I said above.

 

I call it: NPC Ultimate - Metalpampion's

I also tweaked the glow eyes and eye textures on some of them, because frankly the blue glow from beautiful vampires just didn't seem to match well with the vampire eyes I had, nor did it fit with their character. I put some glow on the snow elves as well, because they are OG.

I might include those additional eye textures in the NPC package if anybody wants to check this out.

Edited September 15, 2020 by ZodiacBlack

[saurusmaximus]

I'm glad it worked out for you!

[Algabar]

Glad you got it working, too!