What does "de-standalone" mean?

Many mod authors have created tremendous mods to change the appearences of npcs. However, some of the mods are designed to use their own customized body and texture, and they create individual standalone bodies and texture sets for the characters they have covered. The drawback is, this might lead to neck seam issues caused by conflicting textures, if the default skin texture is a different one.

"De-standalone" means to remove the customized standalone bodies and textures and revert them back to default vanilla. That means they will utilize whatever body and skin texture that are installed by the user.


You will need the following tools:


1) Body, hands, and feet

Most mod authors create sets of customized standalone bodies for their NPC mods. If you open the esp with xEdit and look at the individual npc records, you will see that WNAM - Worn Armor contains a new body entry (vanilla default is blank), delete that will revert the body to vanilla.

Under Armor Addon, Armor, and Texture Set you wil see records about the customized body, hands, and feet, simply delete them as well.

An alternative way is to redirect the customized body, hands, and feet to the respective vanilla meshes and textures. I find the first method less complicated and easier.

2) Facegen textures
 
Each npc has its own facegen mesh file, so you have to do it one by one.
 
Open the indvidual facegen mesh with NifSkope, browse under femaleheadxxx (could be named differently)→BSLightingShaderProperty→BSShaderTextureset, you will see the different shader textures applied by the mesh. Then you have to redirect them to the vanilla ones.

Most of the vanilla textures for the female head mesh are located under: \textures\actors\character\female\
femalehead_msn.dds has its specific path in accordance to the race of the npc:
\textures\actors\character\female\ for Nord
\textures\actors\character\redguardfemale\ for Redguard
\textures\actors\character\imperialfemale\ for Imperial
\textures\actors\character\bretonfemale\ for Breton
\textures\actors\character\darkelffemale\ for Dark Elf
\textures\actors\character\highelffemale\ for High Elf
\textures\actors\character\woodelffemale\ for Wood Elf
\textures\actors\character\femaleorc\ for Orc

Depending on the texture mod you are using, the texture path might vary. If you encounter any problems regarding femalehead_msn.dds, you can always set the path to : \textures\actors\character\female\

You could also use Sniff as an automated batch tool to replace the texture references.

3) Removing the old body and textures
As the last step, you can remove all the customized body mesh files: femalebodyxxx.nif, femalehandsxxx.nif, femalefeetxxx.nif and texture files: femaleheaddxxx.dds, femalehandsxxx.dds, and femalefeetxxx.dds.

Article information

Added on

Edited on

Written by

yukimura3utm

4 comments

  1. SusFusRoDah
    SusFusRoDah
    • premium
    • 40 kudos
    Thanks!
  2. LOWDUDE345
    LOWDUDE345
    • member
    • 2 kudos
    do we remove femalebodyxxx.dds?
  3. DrSeptimus
    DrSeptimus
    • premium
    • 123 kudos
    I wish there is a video for the nifskope part...

    I direct it to CBBE and it doesn't work.
  4. ihq
    ihq
    • supporter
    • 2 kudos
    cool guide, used to make 3BA and SAM work on some NPCs in living skyrim 4