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About this mod
A personal overhaul of several Skyrim and Solstheim NPCs.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
A revamp of some NPCs in my highly questionable and admittedly niche style*)
They're not pretty.
I'm not going for pretty. I'm not going for the standard 'Nexus airbrushed supermodels' pretty. Young NPCs look young, mature and old NPCs look old. They have pores and wrinkles, moles and birthmarks and other skin details; many have facial features like big noses and cleft chins and other things that an average Nexus supermodel enjoyers might not find attractive. Some NPCs look decent. Some NPCs look average. Some NPCs look gods-feckin' ugly.
If you want to laugh and ridicule my choices, heck, feel free. If you want to nitpick and complain feel free too.
And, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think this overhaul is any good either! I'm not a professional artist or character designer by any means; every single NPC is basically just me trying my best to make a character that hopefully fits the rustic nature of Skyrim, doesn't look too bad without ENB (because I'm not using one), with an exaggerated feature or two (because strict realism is boring). Some NPCs could've been better, I'll tweak them further later.
You've probably noticed I'm mostly doing female NPCs and elves. I'm using RedguardDiaspora's amazing True Sons of Skyrim and Men of Skyrim for most of the dudes, overwritten by my other overhauls.
Most of the screenshots are quickly taken in a test cell with crappy lantern lighting and absolutely NO enb lol (only Reshade). The in-game screenshots (the ones taken during my playthrough and not in a test cell) are from the newer and updated version, while the ones in a test cell are older.
Feel free to make a bug report or PM me if there's any issues. I'd gladly help.
List of all affected NPCs are here.
Technical details/known bugs:
- Please exclude these NPCs from Racial Skin Variance (RSV) if you use that, or you're gonna see weird graphical issues.
Even in the off chance RSV is updated to work with CotR-based overhauls in the future, making all of the NPCs use the exact same, albeit racial-based diffuse and/or normal textures will most probably ruin the intended look of their faces (a button nose doesn't look like a button nose anymore, cleft chins no longer look like cleft chins, etc) and render my Nifskope tinkering useless. So yeah. Exclude 'em.
- No unique body meshes included. They use your default body. The different versions (UNP, CBBE) are so that their standalone textures match your default body meshes. Vanilla users should be fine with UNP.
- Optimized for performance (I'm playing on a cheap laptop and it runs, trust me). 2K body and face textures, 1K for hair and 512px for eyes, BC7 compression. Tintmasks are mostly 1K (2K for NPCs with tattoos), some particularly plain NPCs get 512px tintmask. Hairs on the higher-poly end (40k+) only for one or two NPCs per hold.
- No NPC weight are changed. Safe to install mid-game (you might want to resetinventory some NPCs if they end up naked).
- Elder bodies (Grelod, Silvia) are not CBBE-compatible because ICBA (it's based on upscaled vanilla granny body textures). I'm not about to put skimpy clothes on my pixel grannies anyway.
Other things:
- Some NPCs have been given the potential marriage faction, for funsies.
- Some NPCs have been given a light amount of perks, removed the level cap, etc. Forwarded BUVARP's changes to Sven to make him a Speechcraft trainer.
- Some NPCs have been given new AI packages. Aerin won't follow Mjoll around like a puppy anymore. Jenassa patrols around Whiterun during daytime and pleasant weather.
- Bosmer antlers pictured (except Wylandriah's) are not included. They're from this mod.
Other recommended mods, or at least what I use in my personal load order anyway:
- Barely Used Vanilla Actors Recycle Project (BUVARP), so you can get more use out of the quest-specific NPCs like Salma or Arvel the Swift. What's the point of updating their looks if you only see them once then never again, amirite.
- SassiestAssassin's Children of the Hist, Children of the Pariah, and Project ja'Kha-jay. Because I don't think Orsimer, Argonian and Khajiit NPCs can get any better than theirs,and until CotR Overhaul updates with more orc forehead horn options I'm useless at recreating decent-looking orcs with CotR. yeah.
- HD Cubemap Collection by gUISTASSI for the eye cubemaps, and Khisartin's Eyes mod 3 for the eye normal map.
Credits:
m4mk203 for Charmers of the Reach
DamiLovesSunflowers for High Poly CotR and CotR Overhaul
Bioware for some of the face, warpaint, and eye textures
Enaya13 for some of the face textures and hairs
BloodStoneGames (and Konami, obviously) for Heather's face textures
Mandragorasprouts for Vitruvia skin
HHaley for Fair Skin Complexion
DomainWolf for many of the overlays I'm using, notably Skin Feature Overlays and Wolfpaint
CoralineKoralina for Koralina's CotR Face Details and Koralina's Makeup for CotR
Lamenthia for Lamenthia's Marks of Beauty
ak0d and Plangkye for Dunmer Scarifications
Nouk and zzjay for Nouks hairstyles - Dreadlocks
apachii for ApachiiSkyHairMale
HelloSanta for SGHairs
captain-heiko and SkySims for Isabela's hair
tktk1 for saLa Hair
Kalilies and Stealthic for KS Hairdos
lemonbalmtea/summerdew for Holiday Gift Hairdos & HG Hairdos 2 (LL site)
guidethisonekalaheria for Kala's Eyes
Lograam for the Eyes of Beauty
jg1 for Vanilla Hair Remake
ShinglesCat for SC - Vanilla Hair Retex and SC - TW3 Hairdos
TheDNightshade for Equippable Horns
Khisartin for Facial Hair, Scar retexture and DEM Presets (used bits of their face textures)
Hvergeimer for Beards
shadowtigers for SV Beards
OnHolyServiceBound for Racial Body Morphs (*not included anymore; but I still recommend this as the NPCs are adjusted with these skeleton changes in mind. The standard version is what's depicted in the screenshots.
Armor and clothing mods seen in screenshots (if there's no link provided just search the name on Nexus):
Apachii Divine Elegance
Lots of stuff by zzjay--Maid outfits, Skyrim attire, TW3 armors, Triss' Dresses
Noblesse Oblige
NordWarUA's armors. So many of them.
The "vanilla matches" series by Tathrin
Adrianne is wearing a recolor of the blacksmith dress.
Some Beyond Skyrim: Bruma outfits
Some Creation Club armors
Traveling Mage by Fuse00 and Xtudo
Nord Steelheart by PrincessAries
Practical Female Armors by JZBai (random unhinged side tangent: while I'm a believer in "boob armors can work in a tasteful and lore-friendly way", vanilla steel plate boob sockets in Skyrim look SO FUNNY I can't not replace it with a more sensible boobless variant. this mod is a godsend for my sanity)
Muiri is wearing a clothing conversion by captain-heiko on Tumblr. too lazy to find the link rn. I know it's for LE originally tho
Aranea is wearing Bonepriest armor
Gormlaith is wearing 4thUnknown's Ysmir Armor
Rhiada is wearing Calia's Armors
*) Hey, I know that my character style is.... very hecking niche. No, this won't fit the vanilla purist folks who only use high poly vanilla heads and high poly vanilla hairs, and no, this also won't fit the extremely super-modded bombshell waifu enjoyers. I'm genuinely surprised, and eternally grateful, that some people actually like this mod at all!
When my LE died and I switched over to SE for good, I've found several (amazing!) lore-friendly high poly vanilla head NPC overhauls right here on Nexus, but I'm also a nitpicker at heart and, over the years, found many faults within Skyrim's character creation system that not even high poly vanilla heads could fix. Like the shape of the eyelashes, and the inability to make detailed philtrum or nostrils without straight up destroying your preset on the Sculpt tab. Charmers of the Reach filled in that gap, but a lot of CotR-based overhauls I've seen on Nexus don't really gel with me (so much SMOOTH). So I, being the masochist that I am, took it upon myself to overhaul Skyrim NPCs myself using CotR, within the style I want.
No concrete goal in mind. I'll probably try to overhaul every (female, and some male that haven't been covered by RedguardDiaspora) NPCs within major and minor cities or locations that I've frequented in the game, or involved in a quest. If I don't know a certain NPC exists, or if they're tucked away in some remote location where I only meet them once then never again, I probably won't overhaul them. College of Winterhold NPCs would ideally be its own mod probably.
They're not pretty.
I'm not going for pretty. I'm not going for the standard 'Nexus airbrushed supermodels' pretty. Young NPCs look young, mature and old NPCs look old. They have pores and wrinkles, moles and birthmarks and other skin details; many have facial features like big noses and cleft chins and other things that an average Nexus supermodel enjoyers might not find attractive. Some NPCs look decent. Some NPCs look average. Some NPCs look gods-feckin' ugly.
If you want to laugh and ridicule my choices, heck, feel free. If you want to nitpick and complain feel free too.
And, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think this overhaul is any good either! I'm not a professional artist or character designer by any means; every single NPC is basically just me trying my best to make a character that hopefully fits the rustic nature of Skyrim, doesn't look too bad without ENB (because I'm not using one), with an exaggerated feature or two (because strict realism is boring). Some NPCs could've been better, I'll tweak them further later.
You've probably noticed I'm mostly doing female NPCs and elves. I'm using RedguardDiaspora's amazing True Sons of Skyrim and Men of Skyrim for most of the dudes, overwritten by my other overhauls.
Most of the screenshots are quickly taken in a test cell with crappy lantern lighting and absolutely NO enb lol (only Reshade). The in-game screenshots (the ones taken during my playthrough and not in a test cell) are from the newer and updated version, while the ones in a test cell are older.
Feel free to make a bug report or PM me if there's any issues. I'd gladly help.
List of all affected NPCs are here.
Technical details/known bugs:
- Please exclude these NPCs from Racial Skin Variance (RSV) if you use that, or you're gonna see weird graphical issues.
Even in the off chance RSV is updated to work with CotR-based overhauls in the future, making all of the NPCs use the exact same, albeit racial-based diffuse and/or normal textures will most probably ruin the intended look of their faces (a button nose doesn't look like a button nose anymore, cleft chins no longer look like cleft chins, etc) and render my Nifskope tinkering useless. So yeah. Exclude 'em.
- No unique body meshes included. They use your default body. The different versions (UNP, CBBE) are so that their standalone textures match your default body meshes. Vanilla users should be fine with UNP.
- Optimized for performance (I'm playing on a cheap laptop and it runs, trust me). 2K body and face textures, 1K for hair and 512px for eyes, BC7 compression. Tintmasks are mostly 1K (2K for NPCs with tattoos), some particularly plain NPCs get 512px tintmask. Hairs on the higher-poly end (40k+) only for one or two NPCs per hold.
- No NPC weight are changed. Safe to install mid-game (you might want to resetinventory some NPCs if they end up naked).
- Elder bodies (Grelod, Silvia) are not CBBE-compatible because ICBA (it's based on upscaled vanilla granny body textures). I'm not about to put skimpy clothes on my pixel grannies anyway.
Other things:
- Some NPCs have been given the potential marriage faction, for funsies.
- Some NPCs have been given a light amount of perks, removed the level cap, etc. Forwarded BUVARP's changes to Sven to make him a Speechcraft trainer.
- Some NPCs have been given new AI packages. Aerin won't follow Mjoll around like a puppy anymore. Jenassa patrols around Whiterun during daytime and pleasant weather.
- Bosmer antlers pictured (except Wylandriah's) are not included. They're from this mod.
Other recommended mods, or at least what I use in my personal load order anyway:
- Barely Used Vanilla Actors Recycle Project (BUVARP), so you can get more use out of the quest-specific NPCs like Salma or Arvel the Swift. What's the point of updating their looks if you only see them once then never again, amirite.
- SassiestAssassin's Children of the Hist, Children of the Pariah, and Project ja'Kha-jay. Because I don't think Orsimer, Argonian and Khajiit NPCs can get any better than theirs,
- HD Cubemap Collection by gUISTASSI for the eye cubemaps, and Khisartin's Eyes mod 3 for the eye normal map.
Credits:
m4mk203 for Charmers of the Reach
DamiLovesSunflowers for High Poly CotR and CotR Overhaul
Bioware for some of the face, warpaint, and eye textures
Enaya13 for some of the face textures and hairs
BloodStoneGames (and Konami, obviously) for Heather's face textures
Mandragorasprouts for Vitruvia skin
HHaley for Fair Skin Complexion
DomainWolf for many of the overlays I'm using, notably Skin Feature Overlays and Wolfpaint
CoralineKoralina for Koralina's CotR Face Details and Koralina's Makeup for CotR
Lamenthia for Lamenthia's Marks of Beauty
ak0d and Plangkye for Dunmer Scarifications
Nouk and zzjay for Nouks hairstyles - Dreadlocks
apachii for ApachiiSkyHairMale
HelloSanta for SGHairs
captain-heiko and SkySims for Isabela's hair
tktk1 for saLa Hair
Kalilies and Stealthic for KS Hairdos
lemonbalmtea/summerdew for Holiday Gift Hairdos & HG Hairdos 2 (LL site)
guidethisonekalaheria for Kala's Eyes
Lograam for the Eyes of Beauty
jg1 for Vanilla Hair Remake
ShinglesCat for SC - Vanilla Hair Retex and SC - TW3 Hairdos
TheDNightshade for Equippable Horns
Khisartin for Facial Hair, Scar retexture and DEM Presets (used bits of their face textures)
Hvergeimer for Beards
shadowtigers for SV Beards
OnHolyServiceBound for Racial Body Morphs (*not included anymore; but I still recommend this as the NPCs are adjusted with these skeleton changes in mind. The standard version is what's depicted in the screenshots.
Armor and clothing mods seen in screenshots (if there's no link provided just search the name on Nexus):
Apachii Divine Elegance
Lots of stuff by zzjay--Maid outfits, Skyrim attire, TW3 armors, Triss' Dresses
Noblesse Oblige
NordWarUA's armors. So many of them.
The "vanilla matches" series by Tathrin
Adrianne is wearing a recolor of the blacksmith dress.
Some Beyond Skyrim: Bruma outfits
Some Creation Club armors
Traveling Mage by Fuse00 and Xtudo
Nord Steelheart by PrincessAries
Practical Female Armors by JZBai (random unhinged side tangent: while I'm a believer in "boob armors can work in a tasteful and lore-friendly way", vanilla steel plate boob sockets in Skyrim look SO FUNNY I can't not replace it with a more sensible boobless variant. this mod is a godsend for my sanity)
Muiri is wearing a clothing conversion by captain-heiko on Tumblr. too lazy to find the link rn. I know it's for LE originally tho
Aranea is wearing Bonepriest armor
Gormlaith is wearing 4thUnknown's Ysmir Armor
Rhiada is wearing Calia's Armors
*) Hey, I know that my character style is.... very hecking niche. No, this won't fit the vanilla purist folks who only use high poly vanilla heads and high poly vanilla hairs, and no, this also won't fit the extremely super-modded bombshell waifu enjoyers. I'm genuinely surprised, and eternally grateful, that some people actually like this mod at all!
When my LE died and I switched over to SE for good, I've found several (amazing!) lore-friendly high poly vanilla head NPC overhauls right here on Nexus, but I'm also a nitpicker at heart and, over the years, found many faults within Skyrim's character creation system that not even high poly vanilla heads could fix. Like the shape of the eyelashes, and the inability to make detailed philtrum or nostrils without straight up destroying your preset on the Sculpt tab. Charmers of the Reach filled in that gap, but a lot of CotR-based overhauls I've seen on Nexus don't really gel with me (so much SMOOTH). So I, being the masochist that I am, took it upon myself to overhaul Skyrim NPCs myself using CotR, within the style I want.
No concrete goal in mind. I'll probably try to overhaul every (female, and some male that haven't been covered by RedguardDiaspora) NPCs within major and minor cities or locations that I've frequented in the game, or involved in a quest. If I don't know a certain NPC exists, or if they're tucked away in some remote location where I only meet them once then never again, I probably won't overhaul them. College of Winterhold NPCs would ideally be its own mod probably.