Recently I've been really getting into roleplay stuff and appreciating game's culture. This was mostly born due to Dark Souls' beautiful roleplay elements, and was transferred over into Skyrim due to the beauty of the artist's vision in the game. Honestly, when it comes to visual appeal (the exception being the ridiculous desaturation used in Skyrim to make it "feel colder"), I pretty much love what Skyrim has done. I love what the artist came up with, and I mostly like how it transferred into the game. This includes all the things in the game, such as body shape. As a result, I don't really feel any need to "change the body" of Skyrim.

So this comes to my main question: For those out there who do use body mods...why do you use them? For me its a bit weird honestly. When people use a new body mesh, everything has to be made compatible to that "body", and then everything starts to look very...odd (in my opinion at least). Also, I feel a lot can be done with the vanilla bodies and meshes that hasn't been tapped into yet, but yet people are making new bodies and wanting to fit everything to those bodies... Which is a lot of work and feels like oddly placed effort...(making something new compatible with EVERYTHING is not easy to do).

But I'm not going against people who make the body mods or people who like them either, but I just want to know from those same users...why do you use body mods? Why are vanilla bodies insufficient from your perspective? Let me know your thoughts guys!

Purely cosmetic for me. The vanilla body just isn't feminine enough for me (female player). I use max weight UNP and I love the more realistic curves. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words () Most particularly, compare the thighs, hips, belly and shape of the briasts. Also notice the proportion of the leg/waist length. And to top it all off, look at those vanilla feet, they're ugly!

My characters take their armor and weapons off before they cross even the smallest stream. They also bathe regularly and leave their weapons and armor on the bank before they dive in. Now, maybe it's because I grew up in a rural environment - where skinny-dipping was fairly widespread - but going swimming in one's underwear just looks incredibly stupid to me.

So I use nvde mod for male and female characters because I think that is what my characters would do.

I normally use them when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages or to 'fix' poor design choices.

For example, in Oblivion I ended up using a body replacer after one became so dominant that virtually every new armor mod assumed you had it.

In the Fallouts I quickly looked for a body replacer because of the ridiculous full t-shirt underwear the default body had, which conflicted with many of the armors bad guys were wearing. After taking the armor off a shirtless raider type, the raider would suddenly be dressed in clean t-shirt and shorts that clearly wasn't under the armor when you killed him or her.

Oops, apologies!

Because I like the improvements over vanilla. It gives me a lot more options on how to create my character exactly how I want. I don't think vanilla can touch this in my opinion.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/488879030268577996/8F825D5A8E15FA3AD10146DD3CC3243AD96C2734/

Immersion.

Though we have never had dragons flying around our sky's or other fantastical elements, I relate TES worlds to a medieval era and everyone wearing big pants is just wrong IMHO.

Body choice for me is a long story, and very much limited to the talents of our community members, and support for them. With Oblivion HGEC/EVE was the widest supported so for choice was the logical body mesh to go for. I loved Luchaires TGND female body, which just needed a HGEC compatible texture ... take your choice from those - But TGND was very limited in support from the Community because it did not have larger "attributes" variety. Not the authors problem, just a sad fact that the majority of any community are going to be attracted to more voluptuous forms.
Though it did come with all armour and clothing meshes to fit, Luchaire and Kalia put a heck of a lot of work into that. And the authors kind of burned out during the transition of TGND v1 custom armour and clothing to v2 TGND,

For Skyrim currently - My personal preference for female nvde body meshes is Prometheus. Basicly because it is standard mesh sized, does not need vanilla armour and clothing re-done to fit the body mesh and you can use your preference of body texture (so long as it is vanilla compatible, such as Navatseas textures which I use).
And it will be compatible with any armour/clothing created for vanilla female body meshes .. Which usually tend to be Lore friendly which suits me fine.

For the family .. Well they are going to be drawn to less immersive armour and clothing, which will need a more popular and supported body mesh ..
Which I think is going to be Dimon's UNP. Already UNP is having all armour and clothing converted by another modder Exeter who is doing a superb job of that, and also supported by Navatsea's vanilla / UNP body texture.

Though the family may be equally as happy with say Calientes body and choices made for it, its too clean and caters more for the eyecandy crowd.

I have three ladies in the house who like realism, but also want greater choice in the wardrobe department eventually for whatever role they wish to play.

Males - Even more limited, and probably will be for quite a while.

The last deciding factor is performance. All praise to those who import hugely complicated meshes and make them work in skyrim, and add huuuge body textures over them which make screenshots look fantastic .. However I like my NPCs to move fluidly too in a fight, not have to mortgage the house just to get new machines to run them ..
and more importantly leave enough system resources to be able to use other mods in game aswell as body mods.

So, yeah, I'm fussy

Yeah, it's the aesthetic factor. The default underwear looks awful and I like the sculpting the better body mods have. I use Robert's male, which is still a WIP so it's not on Nexus yet and Prometheus female. I'll probably opt for a female body mod with smaller briasts once one is released. And most of the body mods offer choices in musculature and body hair.

Because I like them better than the vanilla body, and I'm a normal(ish) American male male that enjoys the appearance of an attractive female figure, even if it is computer generated.

For Morrowind it was a simple choice in that the vanilla bodies just looked awful compared to Psychodog's better bodies mod.
For Oblivion though the bodies were an improvement again the modding community came up with better firstly with the EC then HGEC bodies which had enough varients to enable a choice in which one to use ( the main shape of which were supported by projects like EVE. (BTW TNGD was never supported by EVE in that it came into being while EVE was in development )

For Skyrim though the bodies are a definite improvement over Oblivions there now is a culture in Bethesda games of body mods so it was bound to happen that improvement wold also be attempted (and achieved)

My only real concern now is support in the form of clothing/armour (and I don't mean the frankly pointless 'three straps of leather' mods either) as one of the reasons HGEC was sucessfull was that people coverted the default armors to fit the body shape. We are howver seeing this in both the CBBE mod (conversions done by Caliente) and UNP (conversion by Exeter)

For me, it's a combination of aesthetics and that in previous games, many, many armour mods required you to use one or things would look broken. I expect this trend to continue.

BTW, TGND still gets some support and conversions, as do its Fallout counterparts. They're not dead yet, you just need to search for them

I don't wont a dirty character that looked like she hasn't taken a bath since the end of the Oblivion crisis.

Eh, Exeter is definitely doing the work. A lot of the vanilla clothing, though, looks like he just took the vanilla mesh and made the boobs bigger... And from what I've noticed, they don't actually wrap the body, as seen by when the NPCs die and their boobs are sticking through their cuirasses.

That noted, this is my choice of body mods.

I am fine with the vanilla body proportions, I was impressed that they turned out so nicely since Oblivion was just horrible. However the fact that they had no toes and always had pasted on underwear bother me, I roleplay my characters and haveing them bath in their underwear is just.... silly. My Argonian thinks clothing is silly anyways, why would he go deep diving with a stupid loin cloth diaper on?

That and the underwear for the men look horrible, not as bad as Oblivion but still icky. Now I use Roberts Beta male body for feet and nudity and currently CBBE Vanilla because I like my girls to look tough and not skinny.

I really like the vanilla body this time around, but alas no one makes anything for vanilla.

Fortunately armors and clothing's aren't centered around anorexic models like in Fallout.

This ^
I actually wish the Vanilla female body had the same curves as the body under the Ancient Nord Armor.
I am using CBBE with a retextured skin for females, and an Alpha of Roberts for male.

The only way that I can play a character who I actually empathize with in Beth's games is with a body mod because Beth's character artists have no aesthetic sense, evidently (or perhaps they are just prevented from offering it due to the director, I don't know for sure). This is how it has been since Morrowind, unfortunately, despite the outcry by the community. It is particularly annoying when Beth managed to be one of the few Western game companies to successfully enter the East Asian market with Oblivion. Thank goodness for the talented East Asian artists such as Ren and many other who have offered their skills with hair and body mods since Morrowind, as well as the many people who have ported work from mods in earlier games to more recent titles.

Also, it should come as no surprise that many people did not use mods like Exnem's/HGEC in Oblivion or afterwards because we happen to prefer petite characters, not "large" female frames. We can't identify or empathize with "large" characters (not to mention that a "large" frame on a fairy-like, angelic sort of character doesn't really match the character archetype/concept for many people).

I also echo the comments about "dirty" characters. Again, such an aesthetic does not fit many character concepts and role-playing.

@AndalayBay (and others who prefer petite characters):
Dimon's UNP has a skinny body just as his mods did for FO3 and FONV. His frame is by far the best I have seen, even better than Eshme's for Oblivion, so I am happy he has come back to publically offer his work for Skyrim. Dimon has said that he happens to prefer slender, petite frames, too, so that's doubtless why he strongly supports this option.

I also want to offer a plug for the excellent Hatsune Miku mod from a Chinese modder (I believe the original is from a Chinese modder, at least). It has both Hatsune Miku and Megurine Luka in it and both have much more slender, petite builds than the "large" frame so often seen in Western attempts.

I don't use any, as I have younger siblings who could barge in anytime.
But I consider getting some, preferably with Vanilla proportions. This is Skyrim, not a Hollywood fashion show.
Some for male could be fine too, for realism.
Can anyone suggest me some?

I'm not sure about female - they are all a little busty for my taste right now, but there might be some newer ones that are better. I recommend Robert's for the male. You'd need to register at TES Adventures or grab it from my site. On my site, I have the link under our Robert's Male Body thread in this http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/forum/99-skyrim-modding/. That link is NOT to the body mod, rather just to the forum that has the thread with the link.

Ah, okay. Thanks, checking it out tomorrow, my net's a bit choppy right now.

Actually the CBBE and Better Males both have underwear included mods so you don't have to go with the totally nvde version. Don't think I can post a link on here though. They are easy to find on Nexus. You can still have the better quality bodies without the nudity.

I tend to get more excited about male body mods than female ones simply because I pay more attention to my own character rather than NPCs, and my character is usually male. The Better Males compilation does an excellent job of allowing users to mix and match with various bodies and faces to achieve the best result without seams and conflicts. I wish the same author could put together something similar for females, but I doubt it'll happen.

As for the women, I haven't decided on anything permanent just yet. I published a blog post and made a video that featured UNP and the optional face textures that were meant to complement it, but while writing the post, I realized I wasn't very happy with the results. The only complaints I have with the females in the original game are a few nitpicky things with the facial features and the lack of detailed hands and feet. Sadly I haven't come up with the perfect combination to achieve the image I have in my mind, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually. Threads like this help me make progress on that.

Lots of reasons:
Variety. I get tired of staring at the same bodies for 5 years straight (I basically play elder scrolls games nearly non stop until the next one comes out). It's nice to see a bigger booty or briasts.

Personal preference towards nvde characters. I sleep naked so why wouldn't my characters?

Role playing. I have my characters bath in the streams, and not taking your clothes off to bath is crazy, so a nvde mod is a must have.

Utilitarian: If you like a big modded wardrobe, or flavor of the day armor/clothing, you pretty much have to use a body mod. Most good armors and clothing are made for non vanilla meshes.

The feet. Good lord have you seen the vanilla feet? Good lord what were they thinking. I think Quake characters had more polygons almost 20 years ago.

Lol that made me chuckle MM.

For the most part its aesthetic. for the moment i'm using stock bodies but with the "clean" meshes that make the characters look cleaner. I wont use a body replacer until they have converted all vanilla armours to fit them. I dont like nvde bodies because i play the game for adventure, not eye candy, and i dont use "skimpy" armors either for the same reason.

I prefer the vanilla armors to stay as close to vanilla as possible when using body replacers. But thats just my view.

The Vanilla bodies aren't bad or even "just ok" in Skyrim. They're actually... good.

I ONLY downloaded CBBE because a few armors I use make it a requirement; and don't look right with a vanilla neck into the armor's body. If people made mostly vanilla armors, I'd never need a body mod for Skyrim. I love Better Bodies in TES3, Roberts Male and UFF/TFF in TES IV... but in TES V; I'm totally cool with the stock bodies.

Now Texture Replacers are a whole different ballgame. I use those often to make my character feel a lil different, or in Skyrim's case; cleaner.