Description

Great News!
WhiskersIsTheCat made satisfactory piercings for males and beast races based on this mod.
As someone who knows how much work that is I really appreciate his work!
 
An important point is the way these piercings are implemented.
The only way I could make the 3D meshes (NIF-files) respond to morphs (TRI-files) was to introduce them into Skyrim as HeadParts.
To make them avaliable to players I also created a regular Armor for each piercing which is essentially a placeholder that applies the corresponding HeadPart with a Papyrus-Script.

This leads to a number of implications and limitations:

• The placeholder Armor items do not occupy a Biped Object slot, so you can equip as many piercings as you want.
  

Also, the game seems to handle the greater number of HeadParts surprisingly well.

• NPCs previously refused to equip the placeholder Armor (propably because it does not occupy a Biped Object Slot).
  

I fixed this by forcing the NPCs to equip the placeholder Armor when it enters their inventory via Papyrus scripting.
        However, dynamically adding HeadParts to NPCs will inevitably create a discrepancy between the NPCs data in the plugin file and their FaceGen data.
        This causes the infamous black face bug.
        Luckily, a modder named Parapets created a fix for this issue.

• I had to implement my own system to unequip placeholder Armors whose corresponding HeadParts would intersect.
  

This works but there is a small issue where the inventory UI lags behind and shows unequipped piercings as equipped.
However, this is just a UI lag. If you close and open the inventory it is displayed correctly.

• As the piercings are applied as HeadParts they will be saved to RaceMenu / Enhanced Character Edit presets and to exported NIF-Files of your characters.
  

So I recommend you make a backup preset of your character before equipping any piercings.
This also means you can load a preset containing piercings on a character without the corresponding Armor placeholders.
You can use this effect if you feel all those Armor placeholders are bloating your inventory.
If the effect is unwanted however, you can simply pick up the corresponding placeholders, equip them and unequip them to remove the HeadParts.

Compatability and Requirements

Icompatible

• Faster HDT-SMP v1.49 causes all piercings to dissapear on loading games or opening showracemenu
  

v1.44 and v1.50.4-rc1 work fine for me though.
 

• SMP Wind v1.1.0 causes the same issue.
  

v2.0.0 works fine.
 
Required

• Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) is needed for Papyrus functions to change HeadParts.
  

Recommended

• For aligning the piercings and creating their morphs I used High Poly Head 1.4 as a reference.
  

So I recommend using that mod.
Head meshes and morphs from vanilla Skyrim or mods that replace them (like Aesthetic Elves)
will work with this mod but there will propably be some clipping.
If you want to optimize the piercings for any head / morph mod I also offer my support (see development topic below).

Optional

• As vanilla CharGen morphs and are supported RaceMenu is optional.
  

 

• Expressive Facegen Morphs,
• Expressive Facial Animation
• and ECE Sliders Addon for Racemenu are all supported by this mod.
  

 

• Spell Perk Item Distributor (SPID) is used to distribute the piercings / crafting manuals to NPCs. But that feature is optional.
• As described above, the Face Discoloration Fix is needed if you want to apply the piercings to NPCs.
  

 
Unknown

• I have not tried Enhanced Character Edit with this mod but I doubt the morphs it will work out-of-the-box.
  

If any of you guys try it please let me know what works so I can include it here.

Installation
 

• Install this mod via a mod manager or by extracting it's contents to your Skyrim data folder.
• The only file conflicts you may encounter are the female humanoid meshes (femalehead.nif) for regular and High Poly Heads.
  

For all piercings to be displayed correctly the ears and nostrils have to be more concave so this mod contains edited head meshes.
The difference between the meshes and what that means for the piercings is illustrated in the image below.

• Enjoy.
  

 

Getting the Items

In the fomod configuration you can choose between three options for crafting:

• Crafting Manuals: Add crafting manual items that allow you to craft the piercings as long as you have them in your inventory.
  

Also, there is an option to distribute these manuals via SPID.
I would still like to add items to the standard stock of jewelers or as loot / treasure so if anyone of you knows how to do that please help.

• Just Craft: You will be able to craft all piercings without any requirements.
  

 

• No Crafting: Do not add any way of crafing the piercings.
  

Personally, I use and recommend the Simple Mod Item Spawner.
If you insist on using the console though, you can find all piercings with "help piercing" and then add them with the "player.additem" comand.

I also added an option to distribute the piercing items themselves to eligible NPCs via SPID.
Currently, the NPCs will not equip the piercings though (see implications and limitations topic above).

Developement

If you are interested in expanding this mod in any way I offer to show you the ropes.
Just contact me in that case.
The required files are available in the file section.

I will now outline the basic development process and the tools I used.
For creating the 3D meshes I used Blender and exported them to NIF-files with PyNifly.

Then I imported the head mesh and morphs into OutfitStudio to create reference shapes from them.
Afterwards, I imported the piercing meshes into OutfitStudio with the reference shape and confirmed the sliders.
Next I exported the morphs for the piercings as head-TRI-files.

With all those files ready I was able to create the plugin for Skyrim using SSEEdit.
Each piercing got a HeadPart and an Armor in the plugin.
HeadParts can be linked directly to their corresponding expression, race and chargen morphs.
Moreover, I linked the HeadParts to the Armors using my Papyrus script.

For the RaceMenu morphs I had to add some new INI-files for configuration.
Also, for some piercings to be displayed correctly I had to edit the head mesh

That was it basically, although there were many small extra steps I did not mention here.
If there is enough interest I might provide a more in-depth guide on how to modify or add piercings.

Finally, I sincerely applaud your attention span if you read all this.

Credit

KouLeifoh for creating High Poly Heads and giving me permission to modify and use his mesh for this mod
The Blender Foundation for creating Blender
BadDog for creating PyNifly
Ousnius and Caliente for creating OutfitStudio
ElminsterAU, Hlp, Zilav and Sharlikran for creating SSEEdit