Basic Follower Creation

[SilentAegis]

This thread is more to act as another source of information while I continue researching this.

Basically, all I'm looking to learn is how to create a basic follower in the Creation Kit and then apply the Racemenu preset I have directly onto it. I am NOT looking on how to create a STAND-ALONE follower because the cosmetic mods that will be used for it are already installed into my game and will only be for personal use. Many people do this, so it can't be that hard.

I already know how to create a follower, but I haven't figured out how to apply your preset with custom assets (Fair Skin, CBBE, ApachiiSkyHair, The Witcher 3 Eyes) onto it. If someone knows, please share. Of course, I'll likely have this answered myself by tomorrow, but still please share nonetheless. Thanks.

[Falro the Great]

What I used when making a follower was NifMerge. You put two .nif files (one is the facegen generated by the CK, and one is the exported Racemenu Sculpt) into it, match up the headparts, and merge them.

The video I followed was for standalone followers, but you can just ignore the parts about custom assets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I1nvXOb3T4

[Vomit Heart]

Hair and eyes are in Actor>Character Gen Parts,Click hair pick the hair you want to use from the drop down same thing with the eyes drop down.
The easy way to find out the file system for custom textures,meshes,skeletons and anims is to down load a follower mod that does every thing you want and see hows its packed

[SilentAegis]

Alright, thanks, both of you. I'll try this out and get back to you.

[SilentAegis]

Alright, so now, I'm having trouble getting the follower to spawn in-game, but I have an idea. I'm going to do what the above suggested and copy the way other people made their own followers and package it like Mod Organizer does. Create files for the textures, the hair, the eyes, etc.

I'm also going to make the follower be installed into MO. We'll see what happens.

EDIT: Can't wait to learn how to do this. :D

[SilentAegis]

Haha! Progress has been made! The follower spawned into the game and her body is absolutely just the way I want it, but there's two problems with the head. Her head is the wrong skin color and the hair didn't load correctly. It must have something to do with the mesh since her hair is one of the vanilla hairs instead of the modded one I wanted for her.

Any tips for fixing these specific problems would be appreciated, but I'm also going to look into it myself.

[Falro the Great]

Make sure you generate the facegen data by highlighting her NPC entry in the CK and pressing CTRL + F4.

[SilentAegis]

Bah. I think I'm going to take a break in trying to figure this out. No dialogue menus show up to actually recruit her, I did manage to switch the skin color of the head, but now it's too light, her face looks like its missing detail, and when I try to get her to use a modded hair style, she always has a vanilla one.

This is taking up too much time. I'll try again sometime in the future. I could just use Familiar Faces, but since that mod hasn't been updated in about 4 years and people are reporting issues with it, I'm hesitant to try it. :\

[Big Ma Ma]

Popular follower management mods can tweak anyone to be a follower I believe.

Maybe you can just put the character you made into to game and just use AFT or EFF. Just give them correct stats, perks, PC Level Mult and they should be working fine

[SilentAegis]

Originally posted by Big Ma Ma:

Popular follower management mods can tweak anyone to be a follower I believe.

Maybe you can just put the character you made into to game and just use AFT or EFF. Just give them correct stats, perks, PC Level Mult and they should be working fine

It's not turning the NPC into the follower that's the problem, it's getting their appearance to look the way I want is the issue. I know it's possible and many people do it, so it can't be too hard, but I'm just a bit tired of trying to figure it out for now. :P