Skyrim Special Edition

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Graybark

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Graybark

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About this mod

Replaces the vanilla hairstyles with ones from KS Hairdos and Cazy Hair that match the original ones as closely as possible.

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A comprehensive vanilla-hair replacer.

Description

Hairstyles included are
  • all Humans, Elves and female Orcs
  • half of the male Orc hairstyles

This mod does not touch individual NPCs. It only edits the hair parts and does not use scripts or quest aliases or anything of the sort. The way Skyrim is set up, you cannot just replace hair meshes without having to re-generate FaceGen data. Hence this elaborate way just for replacing the hair.

The following applies to males and females unless otherwise stated. Elves are Dark Elves, High Elves, Snow Elves and Wood Elves; and humans are Bretons, Imperials, Nords and Redguards. There are 18 hairstyles for elves and 20 for humans. Orcs have their own styles and so do Redguards (though the latter also use the other human styles).

Many of the meshes for humans and elves are simple copies adjusted for different head shapes and there are very few models that are exclusive to any race. While working on this mod I endeavored to give each race a unique look and thus almost no female styles are shared between elves and humans. Orcs do share some of the human or elf styles because of lack of options for partially-shaved styles. This was more difficult for males since there aren't as many styles available for them.

I generally avoided using long hair because I think it does not look good in a game without any hair physics. I made this mod primarily for myself but I am open to suggestions because there are still many things I am not happy with. Lack of high quality styles for the male Orcs and Redguards. While I did adapt most of the meshes to the Orcish and Elven head shapes, I am not a modeler and would welcome assistance in improving the quality of the modifications. Comments and endorsements are always appreciated.


Installation
This mod comes with two plugin files and two archives, and both plugins need to be installed and enabled for all assets to load. Let LOOT handle the sorting of the load order. In general, both mods should be placed fairly high and Hair Replacer Assets.esp should come after Hair Replacer.esp. The optional FaceGen patches contain loose files and will overwrite any other mods that have archived FaceGen files.

Install the patch for Consistent Older People after the patch for the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch. They have one file conflict.

Compatibility
Skyrim Hair Replacer is not compatible with mods that add NPCs with vanilla hair or alter vanilla NPCs' faces. Added NPCs will have blackface and the ones that are modified by other mods will not have the new hair but retain the hair model from whatever file it is based on. Mods like Total Character Makeover are inherently compatible. Other mods that do not rely on vanilla hairstyles like Bijin or ones that only add or alter Khajiit, Argonians and children are fine. There is an exception for NPCs that have FaceGen exported via ECE/RaceMenu since they usually do not modify the plugin data for such NPCs and the game erroneously thinks that they still use vanilla hair. See the optional files for patches for some popular mods.


How to Make Your Mod Compatible [Advanced Users]
  • Download the HREF mod file under Miscellaneous Files. This is necessary for the Creation Kit to read the files that it needs to create new FaceGen.
  • Load xEdit to check under Non-Player Character (Actor) what NPCs are modified or created by the mod. You do not need to create FaceGen for every NPC listed. Only for the ones that are added by the mod or for the vanilla ones that have new FaceGen and make use of the new hair.
  • Temporarily move the folder FaceGeom under Data\meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData and the folder FaceTint under Data\meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData to your desktop.
  • Open up the Creation Kit and load your mod as active file along with the Hair Replacer.esp. Select the NPCs and hit Control+F4. Ignore any warnings and always click 'Yes to All'. Do not generate FaceGen data for the Argonian, Khajiit or Child races. Do generate it for the Vampire, Elder and Snow Elf races.
  • You should now have the FaceGen meshes and textures in their respective folders. If your mod adds NPCs, the files should be in Your Mod.esp. Otherwise they will be in Skyrim.esm or the other DLCs' folders. If they are vanilla NPCs, they have to be in those folders and not in the Your Mod.esp folder.
  • Delete the entire FaceTint folder in Textures (you will not need the textures for the patch), and move your FaceGen meshes to a new folder that has the Data\xxx\actors\character\FaceGenData structure and create an archive of your mod. Add your mod's archive to your mod manager to better keep track of what mods replace what.
  • Move the original FaceGen data from step 3 back into your Skyrim directory.

Note that the Creation Kit automatically generates FaceGen data when you save a mod. I do not like to use this feature because it 
crashes unpredictably and generates FaceGen that is not needed. I also try not to generate FaceGen data for too many NPCs at once because this causes crashes frequently as well.