doge
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Kinggath team made a nice face for Helvana, but in a modded game she may stick out for her vanilla style.
If you don't want this and are on PC, you can use any face replacer you can find on places like the Nexus as Helvana's.
1. First you must have SSEEdit installed and integrated into your mod manager. Here is an intro to it for MO2 (don't know for Vortex or others).
2. Choose an NPC appearance replacer or follower you think matches Helvana. Some are too sad or stern. Hair colour can be changed later.
3. Install and enable that mod.
4. Use SSEEdit to open that mod's plugin and kinggathcreations_bard.esm at the same time.
5. Right click on categories e.g. Cell in the new plugin that you don't need for a simple face replacer. Especially if you downloaded a follower, they might have Armor, Worldspace, and other records you can delete. Keep at least Color, Head Part, Non-Player Character, and Texture Set.
6. Inside the Non-Player Character category in kinggathcreations_bard.esm find Helvana and copy her form ID.
7. Inside the Non-Player Character category in the new plugin, right click on the NPC record and select Change Form ID. Change it to/paste in Helvana's form ID.
8. With Helvana selected in the new plugin, right click anywhere on the right panel that has the colour coded records and check Hide no conflicts and empty rows.
9. Drag and drop with your cursor the records from kinggathcreations_bard.esm into the new plugin. Drag across the header, for example Items instead of dragging each item individually. Do not replace the new plugins appearance records: keep its Head Parts, Hair Color, Weight, Texture lighting, Face morph, Face parts, and Tint Layers.
10. Close the application and save the plugin (uncheck kinggathcreations_bard.esm if it shows in the save list).
11. Open the mod's folder and rename the plugin as a Helvana replacer.
12. Inside the mod's folder you can see textures and meshes folders. Go to meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom and rename the plugin folder (it might be Skyrim.esm or something else) to kinggathcreations_bard.esm Now rename the .nif in there to be the form ID of Helvana without the leading number (mine is 0001F165).
13. Do the same but with the dds file in textures\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceTint\kinggathcreations_bard.esm
14. If the follower came without armor or other stuff, it is probably safe to delete all those textures and meshes since you would have removed it from the plugin already. Just don't delete face appearance stuff.
15. If you want to edit the hair colour, you must have NifSkope installed. Open the nif you just renamed in meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\kinggathcreations_bard.esm with NifSkope.
16. Left click on the hair in the 3D preview. Expand the highlighted node on the top left pane using the little arrow. Left click on BSLightingShaderProperty. Scroll to the bottom of the block details pane in the bottom left of the window. There is Hair Tint Color.
17. Hex and RGB percentage can be converted at https://get-color.com/converter/ but you can try my suggestion first of R 0.44 G 0.27 B 0.25 You have to double click the Hair Tint Color field to edit it.
18. The same process must occur for the brow and the scalp. You don't have to click the scalp if it is labelled in the node's pane, click the node itself.
19. Save and close. See how it looks in-game.
For my Helvana, I chose ColdSun's Visions Vilja Replacer with ponytails and edited the hair colour.
If you don't want this and are on PC, you can use any face replacer you can find on places like the Nexus as Helvana's.
1. First you must have SSEEdit installed and integrated into your mod manager. Here is an intro to it for MO2 (don't know for Vortex or others).
2. Choose an NPC appearance replacer or follower you think matches Helvana. Some are too sad or stern. Hair colour can be changed later.
3. Install and enable that mod.
4. Use SSEEdit to open that mod's plugin and kinggathcreations_bard.esm at the same time.
5. Right click on categories e.g. Cell in the new plugin that you don't need for a simple face replacer. Especially if you downloaded a follower, they might have Armor, Worldspace, and other records you can delete. Keep at least Color, Head Part, Non-Player Character, and Texture Set.
6. Inside the Non-Player Character category in kinggathcreations_bard.esm find Helvana and copy her form ID.
7. Inside the Non-Player Character category in the new plugin, right click on the NPC record and select Change Form ID. Change it to/paste in Helvana's form ID.
8. With Helvana selected in the new plugin, right click anywhere on the right panel that has the colour coded records and check Hide no conflicts and empty rows.
9. Drag and drop with your cursor the records from kinggathcreations_bard.esm into the new plugin. Drag across the header, for example Items instead of dragging each item individually. Do not replace the new plugins appearance records: keep its Head Parts, Hair Color, Weight, Texture lighting, Face morph, Face parts, and Tint Layers.
10. Close the application and save the plugin (uncheck kinggathcreations_bard.esm if it shows in the save list).
11. Open the mod's folder and rename the plugin as a Helvana replacer.
12. Inside the mod's folder you can see textures and meshes folders. Go to meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom and rename the plugin folder (it might be Skyrim.esm or something else) to kinggathcreations_bard.esm Now rename the .nif in there to be the form ID of Helvana without the leading number (mine is 0001F165).
13. Do the same but with the dds file in textures\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceTint\kinggathcreations_bard.esm
14. If the follower came without armor or other stuff, it is probably safe to delete all those textures and meshes since you would have removed it from the plugin already. Just don't delete face appearance stuff.
15. If you want to edit the hair colour, you must have NifSkope installed. Open the nif you just renamed in meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\kinggathcreations_bard.esm with NifSkope.
16. Left click on the hair in the 3D preview. Expand the highlighted node on the top left pane using the little arrow. Left click on BSLightingShaderProperty. Scroll to the bottom of the block details pane in the bottom left of the window. There is Hair Tint Color.
17. Hex and RGB percentage can be converted at https://get-color.com/converter/ but you can try my suggestion first of R 0.44 G 0.27 B 0.25 You have to double click the Hair Tint Color field to edit it.
18. The same process must occur for the brow and the scalp. You don't have to click the scalp if it is labelled in the node's pane, click the node itself.
19. Save and close. See how it looks in-game.
For my Helvana, I chose ColdSun's Visions Vilja Replacer with ponytails and edited the hair colour.
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