Hello @ all,

i try to implement a new race "sixyHousecarls" for my new coming up mod with same name. Goal is to be able to use different body meshes and textures for each Housecarl NPCs.

Editing the race "Nord" is not a problem. I ve made changes to body meshes and textures and they function well. So e.g. my housecarls have black underwear, and fashion nails, more red lips... All changes and modifications are functioning well.

The problem is as long as i dont change BASE-ID of the "Nord" everything function well. If i try to just change BASE-ID for the new race so i can change the race only for my custom Housecarls NPCs the bodies of the race get invisible. I ve tried that out that this is the point of view, by just make a copy of the "Nord" race witout making any other modifications a to change BASE-ID from 00013746 to 00313746 that is a free and unused ID. But when i do that and change the Reference e.g. for Lydia NPC from 00013746 - Nord to 00313746 - BlacksixyHousecarl, body, feets and hands of house carls get invisible and only head is visible. If i equip a housecarl with a helmet, also the head disappears.

OK this is difficult to understand so i make an example step by step what i ve made:

• Make a copy of Lydia NPC record 000A2C8E to my new ESP,
  
• Make a copy of Nord RACE 00013746 to my new ESP,
  
• Chanche EDID of the new RACE record from "Nord" to "BlacksixyHousecarl"
  
• Change Form-ID for this record from 00013746 to 00313746,
  
• Change RACE subrecord of Lydia record copy to 00313746,
  
• All other thinks are untouched.

This does not function. Body, hands and feets are now invisible. I can not understand why.

Well this is my first mod in that category so i simply dont know what i've made wrong. Do i have to edit a list or something like that so the new race is included, or what can i do to make it function?
So please, i need somebodies experienced help.

Sorry for my bad english, hope you can understand where the problem is. All solutions, ideas and suggestions are welcome, expect telling me to wait for CK.

My first guess is that if this is a new esp file is you should add skyrim.esm as a master if not already present and use 01XXXXXX as your ID offsets. In this case, 01013746. I ran into many issues with strange behavior when adding 00XXXXXX items that were not overrides to my mods and have had none when when using that scheme. I've not ventured into new races yet so this may not actually be useful information to you and I would not be surprised if you tried this.

The next case is that most clothing have racial exceptions. You have to explicitly specify that the armor is equipable by that race else you get this kind of behavior.

Edit: You might try doing a "recycleactor" on her from the console to remove all inventory items and see if she reappears using naked models for the race.

The changes to the race i've are not the problem. I've with editing "Nord" race and all the changes i ve been made work fined. So now e.g. Lydia has red underwear and red nails is blonde , Vex have black underwear with golden nails and is nacked. This at the same time - that works fine.

The problem i descripted is only if i try to make a new race instead of modyfing an existing one.

But i will try out your tip with 01xxxxxx ID-Range. I didnt know which ID-Range is safe when i start moding. In an other mod i ve made before i used 0030xxxx and 0040xxxx ranged IDs. i find out the weapons i made with 0040xxxx range just disappear after saving and reloading, while those in 0030xxxx where stable. So i use this area always for my mods, till now without any problems.

Skyrim will not save anything plugin specific if the ID does not match its expectations. For races this might be ok but equipment this is always a problem. I would just advise to avoid using the 00 range even if it does not appear to initially be a problem for this reason.

By the way, 01 is not always the ID as the plugin ID is equal to the number of masters referenced. Usually only skyrim.esm is referenced so your id is 1 but you can reference other esp or esm files and that changes how it behaves. The first byte is used to resolve IDs at runtime to allow better conflict resolution.

I went ahead and figured out what needs to be changed to have a custom race and its quite a list but pretty manageable. This will create a complete new race which means that most exclusions miss it altogether. The advantage of not overriding existing records is that it will not conflict with other mods. The disadvantage is most armor and items cannot be equiped by your NPC without body parts going missing or not appearing when equiped.

Steps I followed below.

Having done this I'm not sure its what you really want to do because RACE checks are used in so many places that it causes problems unless you really do want those restrictions.

To resolve problems with RACE inclusions/exclusions, I suspect that you need to use NAM8 on the RACE to reference the base RACE for these kinds of checks (Used frequently by Vampire subraces). Tthough I have not actually gotten that to work as most ARMA records still reference both base race and vampire race so it might not be possible to do that after all.

Edit: Here is my http://www.mediafire.com/?se2zyybx3uyu91l (assuming mediafire.com does drop links like the other services).
Here is the version with RNAM set http://www.mediafire.com/?nuylaz4mspa29y7 as per sushisquid suggestion.

I was going to say, if she's wearing clothing, and you haven't added the new race into the armor and weapon entries, then you will have invisibility problems because the game doesn't have any models to attach for the armor etc. You shouldn't have to physically create any new meshes unless you want to, but the armor does need to be redirected to a mesh when equipped on your new race.

On your new race, in the Model tab, edit the RName field to match an existing race.


I hate to make that so large, but I don't want it to get lost in this topic. I'm currently able to play as a Nede because I figured this out. This will make the body no longer invisible. As state above, the problem is that clothes don't have a record for your race. This makes your new race simply use the records for another race. In order to stop hair clipping issues if you change the height, switch the Name8 value to match a race with the correct height.

By the way, would anyone want to be a Nede? I gave them 15% frost and magic resistance passive and the Dragoncry power, which throws and calms nearby enemies. I could release this if there's interest in it. They use mostly Breton appearance, but with Nord skull structure and Imperial skin.

@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/454424-the-hologram/:

You show exact the way i was trying to make. This all changes i've already made before you posted them and they work fine, so it is possible to make e.g. another underwear for Nord race. The problem is coming up only by changing Form-ID of my new race.

Thanks @ all for the detailed answers. Well i think making a custom race for each color of underwear or boobs size is the wrong way to handle my problem.

But never mind, i find a great work-around that is much easier, needs only two records to handle and makes no problems. The trick is to make a craftable skin that a NPC can wear over his own skin. That makes very funny things possible:

• Change boobs size for every NPC equiped with ingame,
  
• Changes nudity for a selected NPC, --> makes underwear visible even if nvdemode install or invisible even if no nvde mod installed.
  
• Add boobs and female underwear to males (funny but not wanted at all, have to fix this) when they are equiped with,
  
• different craftable underwear (or naked boobs) that you can craft, equip, even with armor DR, improve at armor table when is armored...
  
• But the most important: Makes a stripshow possible!

Now only the mod have to be written.

Edit: OK i have not the abilities for it yet, but i want to make also spells for that. In memorial to Al Bundy the "show me your boobs" spell should add and equip temporarly a new skin to a female NPC at the cost of gold.