Applying vanilla "helmet hairs" to custom hairs

[Vaki]

I'll start and say I'm an amateur when it comes to making modifications. Most anything I do I do through xedit rather than GECK or any other more sophisticated program. I tried to find info on the specific thing I want to change but could not find any particularly similar case of what I want to accomplish.

 

I'm using a custom hair mesh used in zzjay's Mannequin Races. The hair is a port job that lacks any proper meshes when using the hairstyle with any helmets that cover the head and as a result it gets the bald mesh. I prefer to avoid clipping and do not desire to modify the helmet to just show the standard hair mesh through whatever head piece I happen to be wearing but the preexisting Wendy the Welder hair style has the "flattened" hair mesh that could be used to a satisfactory degree with the custom hair. My experience with xedit and my small poking around in GECK did not yield me the solution I wanted. Is it possible to apply the "flattened" vanilla hair mesh that gets applied when using helmets to a custom hair?

 

tl;dr: I want to apply the Wendy the Welder "flattened hair" mesh to a specific custom hair. If this is possible, how could I do it?

[madmongo]

You should learn how to use the GECK. You are really limiting yourself by restricting yourself to xedit.

 

Hat hairs are defined in the nif, so they aren't in the GECK or in xedit anywhere. Each hair nif has a Hat mesh and a NoHat mesh. You can delete the NoHat mesh and copy over the NoHat mesh from the Wendy the Welder hair using NifSkope. I think the assets for the hair need to be in a BSA for the Hat and NoHat to work properly but I'm not 100 percent sure on that one.

[Vaki]

You should learn how to use the GECK. You are really limiting yourself by restricting yourself to xedit.

 

Hat hairs are defined in the nif, so they aren't in the GECK or in xedit anywhere. Each hair nif has a Hat mesh and a NoHat mesh. You can delete the NoHat mesh and copy over the NoHat mesh from the Wendy the Welder hair using NifSkope. I think the assets for the hair need to be in a BSA for the Hat and NoHat to work properly but I'm not 100 percent sure on that one.

Thank you. I didn't think it would be set up within the nif files like that. I'll get NifSkope and see if I can get it working.

 

As far as my utility choice, It's more along the lines that so far all the small modifications I've wanted to make have been just as easily doable with xedit as they would be with GECK and xedit tends to be easier to work with (less crash prone and I'm often in xedit anyway). This is the first time I've needed something more involved.