UNFAMILIAR FACES II

Howdy folks, it's your friendly neighborhood DV here with another hot mess of people-shaped protagonists.  I had so much fun making my first round of public presets that I just couldn't stop.  Also my perennial indecisiveness about flora mods has my LOD situation well and truly borked, so, while I'm procrastinating figuring out DynDOLOD for the umpteenth time, it's all close-up portraiture all the time!

If you like the looks of these folks and also enjoy shooting robots and hoarding wonderglue, check out this collection of faces for Fallout 4.

And always remember: If you like it Endorse it!



WHAT?

Presets!  Racemenu presets.  Check 'em out- 15 different faces and bodies from which to build your own unique and special Dragonborn.  No pinprick noses, alarmingly large eyes, giant hooters, or silicone lips here- that particular "aesthetic" is already plenty well served elsewhere, to nauseating extent.  For this collection expect faces that look reasonably proportioned from a variety of angles.  Some are conventionally attractive, some endearingly homely, all are distinct from each other, and hopefully from other presets available elsewhere.

Most of these are scratch-built from Bethesda's stock set of starter gumbies.  Some may have begun with someone else's preset, but have mutated quite a bit beyond their origins.  If you recognize your handiwork, please let me know so that I can give you proper credit.  Certain characteristics have been patterned on my friends and myself.  Other elements are pure filigree of the imagination.  The names are scientific Latin for various flora and fauna, archaic versions of modern names, and other monikers that seemed of a piece with Skyrim's eclectic fantasy vibe.



WHO?

Inspired by Vermillion's recent and delightful preset compilation, I actually came up with some backstory this time.  Not too much in the way of specific biographical information, just some hooks to help jumpstart the story of your own unique Dragonborn.



*Note that all Human races and all Mer races, respectively, share pretty similar underlying facial structure, so with a little elbow grease you could get most of the faces to show up with minimal distortion on different related folk.  And, obviously, your own personal character based on any of the above carries with them your/their own personal sense of gender polarity.

HOW DO I MAKE IT WORK?

Plug the files into your mod organizer of choice (I recommend Mod Organizer 2) open up the presets that start with "DV" in Racemenu (start a new game, or type "showracemenu" into the console) and modify these guys, gals, and all around excellent people however you please.

You'll probably want to use the mods listed below to get similar skin textures, haircuts, eye colors, etc.  That being said, these presets are provided as a starting point, not an end point to your own original explorations.There are 17 wildly different face-and-body assemblages here.  Change their hair, change their height, slap a giant phallus on 'em, cover them in grime and freckles and garish makeup, add tattoos, take away tattoos- do your own thing.  Please, however, don't just change a couple of superficial characteristics and then re-release the same-person-with-a-different-haircut and call it your own original work.  That's lame.

Face Requirements
You're gonna need the following mods to make the face sculpting look right:

Racemenu
High Poly Head
Facewand (load this one early and let other stuff overwrite it)
Expressive Facial Animation Female and Male Editions
Expressive Facegen Morphs

Body Requirements
If you want to use the custom body proportions included in the presets, you'll need these.  (Don't forget to download, install, and build DV Bod in Bodyslide):

Bodyslide
CBBE 3BA
(You could probably get away with the basic CBBE, but some of these presets and the base DV Bod make use of the wider range of anatomical details that can be tweaked on the 3BA body.  I recommend making or finding a less gelatinous physics preset than comes standard.)
SAM Light
XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended
DV Bod (homebrew 3BA baseline preset)

Integument Requirements
If you want the hairstyles, skin textures, eye color, etc. to match, you'll need these:

Bijin Skin
Aesthetic Skin
(Many of the female skin textures in the screenshots are at least partially one of these.  I do a lot of custom texture tinkering, but either of these should give you a good baseline.)
Skysight Skins for SAM Light

Smile in HD
Dentist for Orsimers

The Eyes of Beauty
Improved Eyes
Kala's Eyes

High Poly Pretty Face Brows
Maevan2 Eyebrows for High Poly Head
Hvergelmir Brows for High Poly Head

Beards of Power Polymorph
SV Beards High Poly

HG Hairstyles (appears to be down from the Nexus, I'm sure it's still available for download elsewhere)
SG Hair Pack (also to be sought elsewhere)
KS Hairdos - HDT SMP
ApachiiSky Hair

Paint Requirements
You'll need these if you want to see the makeup/warpaint featured in the images- and most importantly to avoid the purple body situation (see FAQ for details).

Makeup Overhaul textures from Fair Skin
Xara's Makeup and Warpaint
Female Makeup Suite
Freckle Mania 2 (it's an oldschool mod, but works fine in SE)
Painterly Warpaints (also works fine in SE)
Weathered Nordic Bodypaints
Community Overlays 1 / 2 / 3
Battle Hardened Warpaint
Barbarian Bodypaints
Overlay Compilation
Hellblade Warpaint
Vallaslin Tattoos

Recommended Mods
These aren't necessary, but might make your character-building more interesting.

Dint 999's Hair Packs (search the wider internet)
HDT SMP Wigs
High Poly Vanilla Hair
CBBE Muscle Solution
Unique Bodies by Race
(This mod is wonderful for supporting different skin types for different humanoids.  I didn't want to mess about with a million Bodyslides or overwrite all other modded NPCs, so I got rid of all the references to meshes and NPCs in the Unique Bodies ESP, leaving just the different texture paths for each race.  You'll still need to add your own skin textures manually, but I think it's worth the effort.)


It's entirely possible that I've forgotten to list some component that went into the construction of one or more of these faces.  Try to work around it if you can.




FAQ

My characters look like polygonal monster people, help!
Read the installation instructions for each of the required mods listed above.  Make sure all required mods have their own requirements met.  Make sure that no loose files or other mods are overwriting the required mods.  If your faces still look 'off', you'll need to import the face sculpt data in directly via the Sculpt section in Racemenu.  Check out the Racemenu page and forums for instructions if you don't know how to do this.

I've got a purple body/face/hands, help!
Purple parts indicate that a Racemenu overlay is missing.  You can fix it any of three ways: 
1. Download and install the missing overlay mod (hint: it's probably listed in the 'Requirements' section above.)
2. Swap the missing overlay for another overlay you do have installed.
3. Reduce the opacity of the missing overlay to 0/total transparency in the color slider.

Could you help me troubleshoot my load order?
Nope.  Please attempt to puzzle out a solution on your own, ask relevant questions on troubleshooting forums, and read the installation instructions again before requesting assistance.

That seems like a lot of required mods, do I really need them all?
Probably not.*  Read the 'How Do I Make it Work?' section for details.
*Please however do not complain or request assistance if you haven't installed everything on the list.

I like it, but could you change this one thing?
No.

Are these gonna be available as followers?
No, but if you want to make a follower mod go ahead.  Only caveat- and it's a big one- is that it'd need to be custom voiced and include my input in the vocal script.  More interesting NPCs in the style of the aptly named Interesting NPCs are always great, but I'm not interested in merely providing fodder for endless lurid experiments in the Laboratory of Lovers...

Available for consoles?
I don't know how that works.  If you port it yourself, sure.

What clothing/hair/makeup/accoutrements are these characters wearing?
Fashion mods far too diverse and numerous to list.

Not every image looks exactly like their preset!  What's up with that?
I mix up hair color, makeup/warpaint, accoutrements, etc. throughout the sculpting process to make sure that the basic facial anatomy looks OK in its own right.  So long as the facial architecture and distinguishing flourishes are there, I leave it to you to sort out haircuts, eyeshadow, etc.  Most of them are pretty close to how they look in the promo image reel.  Like I said, these are designed to inspire further growth and development, not provide a one-size-fits-all 'bestest preset evar'.

What ENB are you using in these shots?
So many!  Some of the ENBs showcased here include PRTX, Berserkr, Elemental, and TKV.  I'll often Frankenstein parts of one ENB into another, just to see what will happen (usually it's awful, sometimes it's great).  All of them have additional effects layered on top through ReShade.  Special props to TreyM's Film Workshop for ReShade.

Golly gee DV you're just the bestest screen-shootin' modderf&cker there is!  Where can I find more of your work?
Why, thank you imaginary friend!  You can find most of my modding work here on the Nexus.  Images are here and on my Flickr.  I stop in at a couple of screen-shooting and modding Discords every now and again.  If you like a thing, don't forget to click the Endorse button!


I got to thinking, maybe I'm the Dragonborn and I just don't know it yet...