PATCH 5 SITUATION: The beautiful and extremely smart people of this modding community figured out how to make old textures compatible. Unique Tav is operational again, and Trips has uploaded a mod that allows people to keep using custom textures, which will be a requirement from here on out.

What does this mod do?
It adds a variety of character customization options or tweaks to the game. Started out small but has grown fairly sizeable, as I've gone beyond personal edits I happen to share, to helping out people who are a little underserved with cosmetics, and adding stuff on request that's in line with my preferences. What you can expect here:

• Additions primarily to body type 1 and 3 as these are what I play with, unless masc options are lacking (such as halflings)
• Adding at least a couple of options for the more overlooked races (particularly short ones)
• If there's a strong body for a race, I will always support the strong body even if I'll age a 100 years
  

Please note that I'm still learning how to make heads at all, so if there's a face you like on one race and want it on another, feel free to express that but manage your expectations. I'm primarily making these to my own taste and for my own use, I'm just also excited to share it with others who have wanted options like these!

New Faces:

• Gnosephine: Lovingly named after Josephine from Dragon Age as during tests she reminded me of her.
• Elfling series: A variety of elf heads, both vanilla and custom made, converted to tiefling bodies.
• Halfling series: A variety of halfling heads, converted from humans or custom made. For default head fixes, check Bobblehead Begone.
• More to come soon, hopefully
  

Standalone Textures:

• Gnosephine: The texture used for Gnosephine's face is pretty much just head 2 with a bit of a tweak. On darker skin tones it no longer highlights the forehead, cheeks, nose, and chin, and applies the color in a more natural way in my opinion. You can instead achieve more natural highlight/coloration via makeup and tattoo mods, such as Coven's.
• Dwarf 4: I only smoothed out the pores ever so slightly (love me some pores but on 4k it felt very prominent), and made the brows apply the colors stronger/darker. Really subtle tweaks, but they might make a difference for you as it did for me.
• Tiefling 2: Reduced visibility of veins.
• Tiefling 3: Reduced visibility of veins. I also attempted to clean up this face while staying true to its original look. She had very realistic blemishes and that's neat, compared to the others though she really stuck out with them in my opinion. She also just had a really messy texture with lots of leftover pixels in odd places.
• Tiefling 4: Reduced visibility of veins.
• Human 2: The blemish on the chin looks more like a mole or freckle and less an inflammation.
• Human 6: Slightly more symmetric and tiny bit trimmed but also thickened brows with a stronger color. Still doesn't take on darker hair colors well for some reason. Reduced veins and evened out yellowing.
• Halfling 6: Same texture that my custom masc halfling head 3 uses but as a standalone replacer. By default it's set to replace head 6, but you can rename it if you want it to override another head. Additionally, if you plan on playing masc halflings you may be interested in my Fresh Buns mod! It's similarly hydrated to the textures below, and is also made to look younger which will suit the halfling heads released here better.
• Fem Vein Reduction: Reduces overtly visible veins on regular feminine bodies not covered by Collections below. Currently covers humans, elves, half-elves, and dwarves. Also Shadowheart, so if you install loose texture replacements for her, there's gonna be an overlap.
  

Gentle Giant Collection:
I love the strong bodies we got with the final release! However, I don't really play muscular characters, I prefer playing soft, comfy ones, and that includes playing gentle giants. And even if I do play strong characters, I prefer they have a bit of pudge, I'll leave the washboard abs to other beautiful people. So:

• I converted all the base body textures to the strong body for a softer, padded look, without having to edit the body mesh itself.
• It also helps a little bit with the glitchy nails fem strong tieflings have been suffering from since release. UPDATE: If you use Unique Tav, the nails will be fixed regardless of texture, so you won't need this texture if you only want the nails!
• It now also reduces vein visibility to make that padded look even more believable.
• In the future I may create an alternative version that softens the default textures, instead of outright replacing them.
  

Hydrohomies Collection:
Men in media often face the unrealistic expectation of looking dehydrated, veins popping, muscles looking shredded when in reality they're about to seize up, and it's just not healthy nor does it represent actual strength. BG3 isn't as bad about it as many other media by any means, but it's still playing a bit too much into that expectation for my taste.

• I edited the masc textures to remove overt muscle definitions and visible veins, looking more filled out with healthier fat % and hydration levels.
• These textures kept all original body hair textures, with the exception of Wyll, as I couldn't reasonably keep his small scratches on his chest making his hair look plain patchy. Also for some reason he had hairy palms??
• The skin overall is less rough and more youthful, which may look ill fitting on middle aged NPCs if that's a factor for you.
• Currently this covers masc humans, elves, half-elves, and tieflings of all body types.
  

Babygirl Collection:
This was originally made when working on Hydrohomies, until I found a better way to edit masc textures instead of outright replacing them with feminine ones. Though it still laid down some important foundations for both collections, and on first glance may look very similar, there are a couple of key differences.

• I replaced the masc textures with feminine ones while blending them at certain seam points, making them look a tiny bit softer in the abs and even softer, pudgier in the back side compared to Hydrohomies.
• There's no body hair on any of these textures, it's all soft and smooth and freshly waxed baby~
• Also very important: butt moles.
• Currently this covers masc humans, elves, and half-elves of all body types. Unfortunately it wasn't viable for tieflings because of how differently distributed the spikes are between fem and masc bodies.
  

Feel free to mix and match textures where there's overlap - I know I plan on using Babygirl for Astarion, and Hydrohomies for Wyll, Gale, and everyone else.

Requirements and Recommendations:

• A mod fixer of your choice: Customizer's Compendium comes with built-in mod fixer and additional features; Mod Fixer is a standalone mod with no additional features. There are other mods with built-in fixers too, mod manager now shows these mods with a unique icon.
• ImprovedUI is likely required for the custom heads, but at the very least it's recommended to disable the story error message.
• Trips' Old Shader Pack and Companions - Old Shaders: Essential if you want to continue using loose body textures as general replacers.
• Unique Tav: Enables you to have custom textures, which are useful if you only want to apply my body textures only to yourself. Beware that regular and strong bodies have slightly different textures (except for masc tieflings), so plan and overwrite accordingly.
• Less Wrinkled Expression and Forehead for Face: Creating custom faces can mess with how wrinkle maps apply and some wrinkles may appear
  more excessive, this helps with that.

Compatibility

• There are three versions of the new heads, one of them was made compatible with Unique Tav, and another one is additionally also compatible with Eyes of the Beholder.
• Loose texture replacements will conflict with any other mods that edit the same textures.
  

Known issues
"We've detected a data mismatch, which may be caused by unsupported mods, corrupt files, or unknown data. This could cause crashes or issues running the game. Please see our support page for more information."
If you see the message above in your launcher, don't worry! It's a default warning with mods. Assuming the mod is not out of date, it should be as safe to use as any other mod.

Some tattoos are squiggly or the piercings don't align well enough.
These are common issues with custom heads. Even vanilla faces sometimes get funky with them, and in fact some misalignment is because that's how it looks in vanilla too. I tried my best to at least achieve vanilla quality for how they're applied on more customized heads.

Installation
Install the custom heads mod via the mod manager of your choice. BG3 Mod Manager is preferred as that's what I'm using, but Vortex should work too.
Install the loose textures by extracting the Generated folder to your installation location's Data folder. Default installation locations as an example:
Steam: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Baldurs Gate 3
GOG: C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Baldurs Gate 3

Mods seen in the screenshots
Customizer's Compendium
Honey's Hair Kitchen
Long Straight Hair
Padme's Custom Hair Colours Highlights and Greying
Astralities' Hair Color Supplement
Alternate Horn Shapes for Tieflings
Horns of Faerun
Saer's Horns
Custom Tattoos
Simply Tats (check comments for update)
Makeup and Tattoo Edits
Shego lipstick
Coven's Tattoo and Makeup Collection (I made some personal tweaks on a couple just fyi)
Coven's New Colours for Tattoo and Makeup
Custom Tattoo and Makeup Colours
Trips' Piercing Collection
Piercing Edits

Additional comments
For anyone looking to make their own mods, I used lslib to unpack the game files, and the multitool to pack it for universal mod manager use. You'll find thorough guides on how to create your own mods on the BG3 Wiki's Modding Resources page, highly recommend it!
Special thanks to the number of super helpful people on Down By The River Discord! Additionally, huge shoutout to Padme4000, a pillar of the modding community with so many tutorials and templates to help beginners get started!

Addons and tutorials I recommend if you're interested in looking to make your own custom heads:
Padme's BG3 Tutorials and Modding Resources
Padme's Blender Addons
BG3 Armature Tools for Blender
Norbyte's GR2 Import/Export Plugin
LaughingLeader's Blender Helpers
YouTube: Setting Up a BG3 Head in Blender
YouTube: BG3 Editing Heads (also generally recommend Padme's channel)
Discord (Down By The River): Labotor's guide on how to use Armature Tools