About this mod
A lore-friendly hair replacer that tries to stay true to the vanilla hairstyles with high-poly replacements. Made for men and mer.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
Ever since I first got into modding skyrim, one of my first personal goals was to make a mod to replace some of the most heinous-looking models in the game: the hairstyles.
I've tried every hair replacer out there and always ran into the same problem: there would just always be one or two hairstyles in every mod that would end up breaking immersion for me. Whether they were too glamorous, too modern or just impractical, I quickly realized that I wanted to make a hair replacer that could fit the aesthetic I was looking for. I decided to make a hair replacer that would try to stick to the original vanilla hairstyles, or at least feel as lore-friendly as possible with newer, high-poly model and texture replacements.
There are four versions to choose from in the main files:
- Replaces ALL Nord/Imperial/Breton male hairstyles (Mimp01, Mnord01 to 20)
- Replaces ALL Female Nord/Imperial/Breton Female hairstyles (FImp01, FNord01 to 21)
- Replaces ALL Male/Female Elves (sans Orcs) hairstyles
- Replaces ALL Elder Male/Female hairs. Bald hairstyles now have more hair by default.
- Replaces ALL Dremora Hairstyles, of which there are only two
- Replaces ALL Snow Elf Hairstyles
'BALD IS BEAUTIFUL' VERSION FEATURES
- Replaces ALL Nord/Imperial/Breton male hairstyles (Mimp01, Mnord01 to 20)
- Replaces ALL Female Nord/Imperial/Breton Female hairstyles (FImp01, FNord01 to 21)
- Replaces ALL Male/Female Elves (sans Orcs) hairstyles
- Replaces ONLY FEMALE ELDER HAIRS. Bald hairstyles have been left intact.
- Replaces ALL Dremora Hairstyles, of which there are only two
- Replaces ALL Snow Elf Hairstyles
FEMALES ONLY VERSION FEATURES
- Replaces ALL Female Nord/Imperial/Breton Female hairstyles (FImp01, FNord01 to 21)
- Replaces ALL Female Elves (sans Orcs) hairstyles
- Replaces ALL Elder Female hairs.
MALES ONLY VERSION FEATURES
- Replaces ALL Nord/Imperial/Breton male hairstyles (Mimp01, Mnord01 to 20)
- Replaces ALL Male Elves (sans Orcs) hairstyles
- Replaces ALL Elder Male hairs only.
- Replaces ALL Dremora Hairstyles, of which there are only two
- Replaces ALL Snow Elf Hairstyles
I was planning to replace all hairs, including orcs, but there is just not any hair replacers that currently matched the vanilla aesthetic of the orcs, and I didn't want to settle for something that felt out of place. Regarding replacing the male elder hairstyles: I have no personal issues with baldness, but I noticed that a lot of marriagable bachelors in Skyrim were missing hair, and to me this seemed like an easy solution due to a sufficient lack of male overhaul mods. If that is an issue, the Bald is Beautiful version is for you.
You may notice right off the bat that not all of these are not just KS hairstyles duplicates. In order to stick closer to vanilla styles, I've added braids (Thank you zn00p!), shortened hair lengths to avoid clipping, and edited hairlines to get a look that felt vanilla to me. I also took some liberties with some styles, especially with the female elf hairstyles. Unfortunately there weren't many hair options where I could match the styles perfectly, but I noticed that the female elf styles were generally always high ponytails or updos with similar hairlines (high widows peaks). To me this insinuated that was the current fashion of the Fourth Era, and so while the styles may not be perfect replacements, they still feel like they fit in the game.
Another thing you may notice: I have avoided heavy bangs at all costs. I quickly realized why even short blunt bangs was an issue when testing, because some NPCs facial morphs would make the eyes disappear right into the hair. Bangs are great, but in order to prevent awkward NPC blindness everyone's faces will be relatively free of fringe for max immersion, and, y'know, seeing faces!
- Install Face Discoloration Fix by Parapets
- Optionally install EasyNPC to choose any NPC overhauls you like
- Install this mod and it will apply to all remaining NPCs with vanilla hair
Or potentially remove/replace hairs with the amazing Vanilla Hair Remake or High Poly Vanilla Hair by removing records in SSEedit as shown here
Jg1 has finished Vanilla Hair Remake and I honestly recommend you download that instead!
COMPATIBILITY
Thanks to Parapets Face Discoloration Fix mod, which automatically updates NPCs hair into the game dynamically, we no longer have to use the older methods of trying to patch all npcs we add into our games (deprecated tutorials are still in the articles section, however I strongly recommend using Parapets mod to avoid massive headaches and frustration).
CREDITS
I've used assets with the permission from these gracious authors and creators: Kalilies, Stealthic, Newsea (and all contributing authors for KS hairdos), zn00p (Lovely Hairstyles), OrinLinwe (Bed Head and Salt and Wind textures) and apachii (Apachii Hairstyles). Shiva182 for giving me this idea in the first place! Also I want to thank Ruhadre for the amazing mesh improvements (Eye Meshes Ruhmastered, double sided human mouth fix), Artsick for Eyes AO clipping fix Ruhmastered patch, JRICH604's Vampire Facial Reclamation fixes, Aipex8's Fangs and Eyes mod for the fangs, Niroku's revolutionary Expressive Facial Animation for male and female, and triptherift's ENB Brow fix to make the facegen I create look amazing. I also want to thank the amazing community here on nexus as well as the subreddit and elsewhere. You guys are amazing!!