This is a step-by-step guide to patch custom races to use TNG with fixed genitalia.
Fixed genitalia can be a good solution for example if:
- You have a race that is used by a few NPCs and you want full control over their look (e.g. a custom follower race)
- There is a race that the normal genitalia won't play good along with it, since its meshes/textures are significantly different from vanilla
- You want to avoid the race genitalia to be customizable for any reason.
I tried to make the article as clear as possible, so it might be too obvious if you are already familiar with patching. If you get used to SSEEdit, this would take less than 5 minutes, but in the beginning, it might be a bit confusing and time-consuming.
Prerequisites
The first requirement is to have some knowledge of SSEEdit or to have the curiosity of trying and failing. I'm afraid I won't be able to help you much if you cannot follow this guide.
The second, and kinda a hard-to-fix one, is that you need an SOS-compatible texture and mesh for the race, otherwise, things might not look good, although they would still work. This is especially important for races with very special (far from vanilla) skins. If that is not available, you can either:
- Create a texture/mesh for the race that is SOS-compatible (needs the know-how to create textures),
- Accept the look,
- Or exclude the race,
On the other hand, if the race's skin is not far from vanilla, you might be able to use mesh and textures from TNG or any other male body/texture mod that is compatible with SOS full.
The only other requirement is SSEEdit (also known as xEdit).
Let's get to patching:
Step 1: Find the custom Race
Make sure that TheNewGentleman.esp is loaded before the race you want to patch in your plugin order (right panel on MO2, plugins tab on Vortex). Then open SSEEdit, and let it load the plugins in your load order. Then you should find the esp of the race you want to patch, open the race records and find the race. Here I just created a custom Nord race:
*Note: You can do every following step in a patch or in the original mod. I suggest doing it in a patch so that if the original mod gets updated, you won't need to update your patch and you can keep the original mod intact. But if you don't know how to do that, or you have plugin limitations, then you can do it in the original mod as well. But make sure to backup the original .esp file before doing any patching, just in case things don't go well. From now on, I refer to the esp as "active file".
Step 2: Add slot 52 to its biped body template
Double-click on the space in front of First person flags in the active file and then add 52-Unarmed
Step 3: Let's create genitals for the race
You need to have a penis for this race first. The easiest way is to find TheNewGentleman.esp in the list of plugins and copy one of the default genitalia in the Armor Addon record list. You can also use any of the male addons for TNG. There are three default options, one for Argonians, one for Khajiit, and one for man and mer (humans and elves). Choose the one that looks closest to the race you want to patch, right-click on it and select Copy as new record into....
Step 4: Name the editor ID
You get a prompt to select the editor ID for the new record. Just choose a name for the penis of this custom race. You won't see this name ever in the game but try to choose a unique name. Something like, TNG_Genital<Name of the custom race> should be good. Then press Ok.
Step 5: Select the destination for copy
Then you get a prompt for the destination file. Choose the active file as the destination for copying.
*Note: This is why TNG needed to be loaded before the original mod in the plugin order. You cannot copy upwards, because mods are only allowed to depend on other mods that are above them in load order.
Step 6: Make the genital compatible with the custom race
Go and find the new genital in the armor addon list of the active file. Additional races should be grayed out, click on the white space in front of it and press insert, which allows you to insert a new field in the additional races. Now add the custom race there. The easiest way is just to type its editor ID. (not the name, because there can be multiple races with the same name, but editor IDs are usually unique).
Step 7 (Optional): Customize the genital mesh or textures for the custom race
If you have custom mesh or textures for the custom race penis, you should change the armor addon to use those. The fields highlighted below show what you need to adjust:
Step 8: Find the skin of the custom race
This is probably the most tricky step in this guide. A custom race, normally should have a WNAM field with the skin of the custom race. In Skyrim, skin is just a "spacial" armor. So the content of this field, when assigned is an ARMO record. However, since TNG was published, I have seen many races that don't use this field or have it filled incorrectly. There are three scenarios:
- The field is correct and refers to the custom skin of the race. The indicator for this is that the ARMO record in this field does exists in the same esp as the race and does not come from vanilla game.
- The field is correct but it refers to a skin from vanilla. The indicator for this is that the race looks like one of the human or elven races from vanilla and ARMO record in this field comes from vanilla game.
- The filed is incorrect and does not contain anything. In this case if the skin looks like vanilla humans or elves, you can follow the next steps exactly as it is in this guide. Otherwise, you need to find the ARMO record among the Armor in the esp that contains the skin of the custom race. There has to be one.
- The field is incorrect and contains a vanilla skin, but the race does not look like any vanilla race. If this is the case, again there has to be an ARMO record under the Armor fields from the original mod that contains the skin and you have to find it.
I would refer to the correct ARMO record for the skin, simply as skin in the rest of the guide.
Here is the field for the skin:
Step 9-a: Adjust the incorrect skin for races that use vanilla skin
This step is only required if the skin is incorrect according to the previous step, and the race is using a vanilla skin. First, you need to create a custom skin for the race. To do that just copy the skin from Skyrim to the active file, and name it something good similar to what you did in steps 3 to 5. Right-click, copy as new record, select a good name, select destination. The vanilla skin for man and mer (humans and elves) is called SkinNaked in Skyrim.esm under armor records. There is another record called SkinNakedBeast that is used for Argonians and Khajiit. To see them both together, you can sort the records by editor ID (click on the EditorID column header in SSEEdit). The two records highlighted below are the ones that is used in vanilla.
And here you can see the copy process again:
Step 9-b: Find the incorrect skin for races that don't use vanilla skin
Again, this step is only required if skin is incorrect according to step 8, but in this case, the race is using a custom skin. For this step, you just need to find the skin record of the race in the original race esp under armor fields and remember its editor ID.
Step 10: Fix the incorrect skin
If the race skin is set correctly, you can also skip this one. But if is incorrect, then you need to fix it first. If there is no WNAM record, simply click "insert" in the white space in front of WNAM and put the skin there. Otherwise, if there is a record but it's not the correct one, just double click on it and put the skin that you found before there:
Step 11: Allow skin to have a penis
The race has a correct skin now, Yay! (Or they had it all along and you just skipped through 9 and 10). But there is no penis yet. The next step is to let them have the penis. Go to the skin record of the race. The easiest way is to hold "Ctrl" and click on the WNAM of the race. The skin needs to show slot 52 so you need to add slot 52 to the skin (similar to what you did very early with the race):
Step 12: Finally add the penis
Now the last step, add the penis to the skin. Do you remember the custom genital you created for the race in steps 3 to 7? Now you need to add it to the skin of the race. To do that, you need to click insert in the white-space in front Armature and then edit the newly added field to the armor addon record of the new genital.
Congratulations! Your race now should have genitalia! Just to do a quick check, the race has armor slot 52, the race's skin is the custom skin, skin has armor slot 52, and the custom genital in the armature!
Now if you open the TheNewGentelman.log (find location in advanced tab of MCM) you should get a line like:
The race <FormID of the race> is designed to be ready for TNG. It was not modified.
24 comments
If you want the race to be customizable you should write an ini for their skeleton (look under the ini section of the description).
figured I would ask as I keep getting a Race can not be modified message in game. but the race uses the default beast skeleton.
Edit: Got it working!
Might be better just using SOS instead...
Also biiig thanks to ModiLogist for not only making the mod and this guide, but for personally helping me out too