NPC faces may look different depending on what face texture is used. The screenshots were captured with different texture mods. Mods used are listed down below.
Examples (which texture mods were used): Screenshots of Aela and Elisif were captured with BnP - Female Skin installed. Vex -> Pride of Valhalla Skin Jenassa and Mjoll -> REALORE SKIN Screenshots of Men either SkySight Skins - Ultra HD 4K or Tempered Skins for Males. I prefer the latter.
I also tested Mature Skin and it looks really good. Gives the female NPCs a very mature look which some people may prefer so highly recommended to test out.
I foockin made it work on AE 1.6.1170 I'm not a modmaker, I don't understand anything and I can't guarantee success with you, I'll just write in detail what I did. Important: through my investigation I found out that BSA and Loose files have some magic s#*! in their relationship priority of overwriting files between them. As far as I understand, this is exactly what creates errors in this chain of mods that depend on each other. When I installing MO2, as it was in some guide in the settings of the MO2 plugins, I disabled the automatic unpacking of the BSA, and now, when installing each mod, if there is a BSA, it asks whether to unpack them or not. In this case, in each of the mods, you need to unpack all the BSA in order to avoid incorrect overwriting between BSA and Loose files. IT IS CRITICAL.
Now it's a pain in the ass 4. High_Poly_Head_v1.4_SE - official link on vectorplexis.com doesn't work for me, gave an error and I couldn't log in to download. I took the version already translated into Russian, from the Russian site of mods and translations. You should find it yourself, the main thing is that the version should be 1.4 In FOMOD you pick: Setup: BSA + Loose Core: Special Edition Face morphs: Expressive Facegen Morphs Facial Animation: check the box both male and female DO NOT CHECK box Hair - high poly vanilla hair Fixes: check both Vampire head fix and Symmetrical eyes (female)
5. Install Creation Kit, run it and do like in this vid yt instruction. I personally recommend go to CreationKit.ini and make like this before you run first time CK
Important: Ifyou have the same potato as me, then CK will work verys lowly.When you start the generation, as shown in the video, Windows may say that CK is not responding and the process is not responding in the task manager, but this is NOT the CASE. In the task Manager, you can see that it loads the processor, RAM and disk. DON'T CLICK ANYTHING AND WAIT FOR IT TO FINISH GENERATING! In my case, it took a little over 2 hours.
6. By default, CK will place meshes and textures in a folder "Overwrite". Right click and choose to create a mod, you can call it Facegen or something like that Now start the game and see if everything should work, the faces should look better.
8. Vanilla hair remake - install 2 files first - Vanilla hair remake (No physics. Does not require HDT-SMP.) v1.0.2 15 may 2024 second -Vanilla hair remake - (NPCs Over 2000 vanilla NPCs, including random no-names. No physics.) v1.0.2 15 may 2024
9. Foockin Beards of Power - because of my carelessness or because of a shitty author for some foocking reason, the newest version of the mod leads to a Riverwood frieze. Need to install Beards of Power - Polymorph Version 03cbeard, from 23 Jun 2021
10. And finally this mod - install main file, open High Poly NPCc VHR BoB.esp in SSEEdit, In the Left side go to High Poly NPCc VHR BoB.esp - Non-Player Character (Actor), Find Colselmo.
on the right go down to Head Parts (sorted) Change it from BoP_34b_elf to BoP_34b.
Save the changes and start the game.By the way, I didn't have any mods for changing NPCs before. I put it all on vanilla.Now you can roll skin textures on top, or even other character alterations, for example, I put Daughters of Malacath and Blood and Ash the main thing, if I understand correctly, is for the bsa files to be unpacked so that they correctly overwrite previous mods and, of course, follow the download order.
Finally it works.I didn't mentioned that beards mod needs polymorph version before I read this.Confusion has solved.Thanks a lot. Your guide is soooo useful that should be sticked on the top of comments!:)
Todd Howard is obligated to provide a lifetime supply of hemorrhoid ointment for everyone who buys this game and does all this s#*! with mods, I spent almost a week to make it all work lol
Is this the guide to make the SMP hair works? if so does this means i must generate new Facegen for the hair to work, i seems unable to make the hair for the NPC's (except the generic npcs like bandits and guards) to work.
No, this is for the non-physics option. I'm sorry, I'venever used physics, I've tried to make it work, but I've never been able to install it correctly.
Given the fact that I managed to mod my Oblivion heavily and make it work without any hiccups, I felt like I should have been able to make it work for Skyrim just as well, but alas - I feel like a complete rookie! I can't seem to wrap my head around this: followed the guide, and despite having skin textures installed, my characters are quite blue - literally too. Tried re-installing/(re-enabling) NPC overhaul related mods - to no avail. I would very grateful for any ideas? How to actually make the game draw on the textures in its files? [Edit: figured it out: I went for the BnP for female and Skysight for male, but I seem to have misunderstood how Racial skin variance (spid) mod works and it was conflicting with the other skin mods]. I also highly recommend easyNPC - saved me a lot of pain due to possible missing facegens!
Jeez, this one threw me for a loop. It was Colselmo, Changing him in xEdit fixed things for me. Found another reddit post that made me realize this mod was the issue. Game froze so no crash log, and I downloaded this mod many mods ago and thought it was working fine. Really thought I might have to delete him in the mod, so thanks a bunch for having the right fix.
every npc I've encountered so far looks fine and great, except for the Jarl's wizard Farengar in Dragonsreach, for some reason he's the only npc I've seen who has a black face bug. Apart from this I have Tragedian's Fabulous Followers and RS Children, both of those npc overhauls don't even touch Farengar
Calcelmo in Understone Keep is causing the game to crash whenever he is loaded. Just this NPC, no others have caused this. I was having a similar issue early on in my game with male NPCs (because I was using the wrong version of Beards of Power) but I resolved that issue. This mod and USSEP are the only plugins I have modifying Calcelmo.
Fixes the crashing when you enter Understone Keep in Markarth by changing Calcelmos beard to another one from Beards of Power and removes the big moustaches from Delvin and Mercer in the Thieves Guild.
I'm very disappointed. I heard about this mod from youtube and it looked like it was going to be exactly what I needed. Then come to find out that I need a metric ton of mods to meet the requirements AND that your screenshots don't represent the true end-result? What are you trying to pull? You don't even tell us what your mod is going to give us that we don't just get out of having all the required mods! Oh! AND those mods aren't all easy installs! Fantastic! This should have been posted as either a NEXUS mod list (with ACCURATE pictures!) or posted as a Wobbajack list! The fact that you expect us to do SO much work just to FIND OUT if this mod even produces good results is frankly insulting! Again, VERY disappointed! And if anyone takes issue with my disapproval, get over it! We've been modding this game for over a decade! EVERYONE knows better by now!
393 comments
Examples (which texture mods were used):
Screenshots of Aela and Elisif were captured with BnP - Female Skin installed.
Vex -> Pride of Valhalla Skin
Jenassa and Mjoll -> REALORE SKIN
Screenshots of Men either SkySight Skins - Ultra HD 4K or Tempered Skins for Males. I prefer the latter.
I also tested Mature Skin and it looks really good. Gives the female NPCs a very mature look which some people may prefer so highly recommended to test out.
I'm not a modmaker, I don't understand anything and I can't guarantee success with you, I'll just write in detail what I did.
Important: through my investigation I found out that BSA and Loose files have some magic s#*! in their relationship priority of overwriting files between them.
As far as I understand, this is exactly what creates errors in this chain of mods that depend on each other.
When I installing MO2, as it was in some guide in the settings of the MO2 plugins, I disabled the automatic unpacking of the BSA, and now, when installing each mod, if there is a BSA, it asks whether to unpack them or not. In this case, in each of the mods, you need to unpack all the BSA in order to avoid incorrect overwriting between BSA and Loose files. IT IS CRITICAL.
Now let's get started
1. Expressive Facegen Morphs SE - install the main file and the plugin for the race menu, both files 19 July 2020
2. Expressive Facial Animation -Male Edition- - main file 08 December 2019
3. Expressive Facial Animation -Female Edition- - main file 07 December 2019
Now it's a pain in the ass
4. High_Poly_Head_v1.4_SE - official link on vectorplexis.com doesn't work for me, gave an error and I couldn't log in to download. I took the version already translated into Russian, from the Russian site of mods and translations. You should find it yourself, the main thing is that the version should be 1.4
In FOMOD you pick:
Setup: BSA + Loose
Core: Special Edition
Face morphs: Expressive Facegen Morphs
Facial Animation: check the box both male and female
DO NOT CHECK box Hair - high poly vanilla hair
Fixes: check both Vampire head fix and Symmetrical eyes (female)
5. Install Creation Kit, run it and do like in this vid yt instruction. I personally recommend go to CreationKit.ini and make like this before you run first time CK
[MESSAGES]
bSkipInitializationFlows=1
bAllowYesToAll=1
bAllowFileWrite=1
iFileLogging=1
bBlockMessageBoxes=1
Important: Ifyou have the same potato as me, then CK will work verys lowly.When you start the generation, as shown in the video, Windows may say that CK is not responding and the process is not responding in the task manager, but this is NOT the CASE. In the task Manager, you can see that it loads the processor, RAM and disk. DON'T CLICK ANYTHING AND WAIT FOR IT TO FINISH GENERATING! In my case, it took a little over 2 hours.
6. By default, CK will place meshes and textures in a folder "Overwrite". Right click and choose to create a mod, you can call it Facegen or something like that
Now start the game and see if everything should work, the faces should look better.
7. High Poly Vanilla Hair - Install this, there's only one version of the file.
8. Vanilla hair remake - install 2 files
first - Vanilla hair remake (No physics. Does not require HDT-SMP.) v1.0.2 15 may 2024
second -Vanilla hair remake - (NPCs Over 2000 vanilla NPCs, including random no-names. No physics.) v1.0.2 15 may 2024
9. Foockin Beards of Power - because of my carelessness or because of a shitty author for some foocking reason, the newest version of the mod leads to a Riverwood frieze. Need to install Beards of Power - Polymorph Version 03cbeard, from 23 Jun 2021
10. And finally this mod - install main file,
open High Poly NPCc VHR BoB.esp in SSEEdit,
In the Left side go to High Poly NPCc VHR BoB.esp - Non-Player Character (Actor), Find Colselmo.
on the right go down to Head Parts (sorted)
Change it from BoP_34b_elf to BoP_34b.
Save the changes and start the game.By the way, I didn't have any mods for changing NPCs before. I put it all on vanilla.Now you can roll skin textures on top, or even other character alterations, for example, I put Daughters of Malacath and Blood and Ash
the main thing, if I understand correctly, is for the bsa files to be unpacked so that they correctly overwrite previous mods and, of course, follow the download order.
Your guide is soooo useful that should be sticked on the top of comments!:)
[Edit: figured it out: I went for the BnP for female and Skysight for male, but I seem to have misunderstood how Racial skin variance (spid) mod works and it was conflicting with the other skin mods]. I also highly recommend easyNPC - saved me a lot of pain due to possible missing facegens!
Jeez, this one threw me for a loop. It was Colselmo, Changing him in xEdit fixed things for me. Found another reddit post that made me realize this mod was the issue. Game froze so no crash log, and I downloaded this mod many mods ago and thought it was working fine. Really thought I might have to delete him in the mod, so thanks a bunch for having the right fix.
Understone Keep CTD Fix - High Poly True to Vanilla NPC Overhaul
High Poly True to Vanilla NPC Overhaul Edit
Every single one of the mods he listed is a core mod that should be required in any modded game.