-Introduction-

Want to make your character creation process even longer by adding more options? Want to use the ears from various Ear Mods without them
taking up *any* armor slot? Want to use modded Ears on a Beast Race character that weren't previously Beast-Race-Enabled, or similarly for Male characters when the Ears were originally Female-Only? Use this mod!

This mod supports any combination of Calyps Animal Ears, YS Abyssal Ear, and GrimSovereign's Elf Ear (Not available on Nexus)




While creating my other recent mods, Heterochromia Reborn and Horns Aplenty, I learned how to create custom RaceMenu sliders for basically anything
that you could stick in/on a character’s head. I did a little digging to figure out how to make the necessary .tri files (spoiler alert: I just
used Bodyslide’s Outfit Studio), and put together a new slider for Ear Addons. I've called the Slider Ear Addons because they don't actually replace your character's original ears. Incidentally, the way I made the new .tri files and slider records, the ears now work on Beast Races and Male characters where originally the Ear mods may not have supported them (Note that some of the models may not appear entirely correctly on Beast Races).

-MOD NEWS-

1.0 Release!

What's New:

• Everything! Optional Support for Calyps Animal Ears, YS Abyssal Ear, and GrimSovereign Elf Ears
  

- PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE DESCRIPTION BEFORE DOWNLOADING -

You should always know exactly what you're downloading and putting into your savegames.

-What gives? How does this work?-

The short answer is that RaceMenu allows you to make sliders for headparts independent of normal vanilla headpart slots. They will appear on your
character like any other head part, but won’t overwrite any of the vanilla ones like Hair or similar so you can use them in tandem.

A side effect of this implementation is that my mod’s ears will *always* appear on your character, no matter whether or not you’re wearing a hood/helmet. For some that may be an upside, for others a downside. If it bothers you, there should be a way to get them to toggle off like Hair does; feel free to make a patch that does that and upload it, and I’ll link it here.

Note that this functionality in RaceMenu didn’t actually work properly until version 0.4.15 which was released early October– when discussing my mod Heterochromia Reborn with expired6978, we discovered a bug in RaceMenu that would crash the game when trying to use the out-of-range TYPE values to make a slider, so expired6978 patched it for me. It is thanks to expired6978’s help that this mod can exist.

-How do I use it?-

The mod comes with a FOMOD install script that will guide you through the install process - just run it and make sure you have the required mods installed and play the game. The new Ear Addons slider will appear under the “Head” section in RaceMenu.

- Do I still need to use the original ear mods' .esp files?-

Not technically, no. All my mod needs are the mesh and texture files from the original mods. That said, you’ll probably still want to have their .esp files active if you want to give your followers some modded Ears to wear (except for the .esp for YS Abyssal Ear, since it's an Oldrim/LE mod - you'll need to convert it to SSE yourself if you want to have it active). You should also be able to double-up on ear models if you use my slider and also equip an ear from the original mods, if that interests you.

-What’s so special about Beast Race/Male support?-

Some of original mods for whatever reason didn’t allow the ears to be equipped by Beast Races and/or Males. Presumably the mod authors didn’t personally like Beast Race/Male characters enough to feel the need to create the extra records. Note that some of the supported Ear Addons may not appear properly on Beast Races at the moment - I do plan on making a morph slider that will let you reposition the Ear Addons to correct this issue in a future update.

-Does this modify any NPCs?-

No. All of the ear options are completely new records not referenced by anything in the game and will not appear on NPCs. You'll only see them if you put them on your own character or manually edit an NPC.
However, if you are interested in seeing these ears on your followers, I recommend the mod Familiar Faces. It lets you turn your own characters into followers for your other characters. If it hasn’t been posted to Nexus yet, expired6978 has an SSE-converted file up on his Patreon as of writing.

-Will this work on LE?-

Not really. Technically I could make an LE version of the .esp, but as far as I understand it, it wouldn’t work. The LE version of RaceMenu is out of date and wouldn’t properly handle the new slider.

- Why isn’t this marked as an ESL? Can I convert it to one?-

The short and frank answer is that I don’t know how to safely convert it without breaking anything. You are welcome to convert it to one yourself if you need to cut down on plugin space and know what you're doing.

-Requirements-

• RaceMenu by expired6978 0.4.15+
  

RaceMenu’s ‘new slider’ functionality only works on Version 0.4.15 or above, which was released early October. If you use an older version of RaceMenu in conjunction with this mod, your game *will* crash, so please make sure you update RaceMenu.

• Calyps Animal Ears - Optional
• YS Abyssal Ear- Optional
• GrimSovereign's Elf Ear - Optional (Not available on Nexus)
  

Note that this mod has all of the Ear mods listed as Optional for flexibility - you do need at least one of them for the mod to do anything meaningful. I don't have any Ear models pre-packaged with the mod.

-Compatibility-

This mod is compatible with basically everything. The only thing that I can think of that would cause problems is if some other mod also thought to use the out-of-range TYPE value of 34 (See the "More Details" section near the end of the Description for what this means). That shouldn’t be a problem, though, as my mods are the first to use this functionality from RaceMenu. If you decide to make a slider mod like this, just make sure to use some other value. expired6978 told me anything between 10 and 127 should work. I’ve already used 30 and 31 for my Heterochromia Reborn mod, 32 for Horns Aplenty (with plans for using 33 as well), and 34 for this mod.

-Installation-

I strongly recommend that you use Vortex, MO2, or a similar mod installer. Manual installation is a sure-fire way to mess up your data folder. This mod should be safe to install in the middle of a run, although you won’t actually have Ear Addons unless you use ShowRaceMenu or a mod like ShowRaceMenu Alternative to change your character after installing.

-Uninstallation-

Simply deactivate using your mod install software.
This mod does NOT add save-changing scripts or mess with any NPCs, so it's “safe” to uninstall during a playthrough, however, it WILL remove your Ear Addons.

-Version History-

Initial Release – Adds support for Calyps Animal Ears, YS Abyssal Ear, and GrimSovereign's Elf Ears

-Recommended Mods to pair with this mod-

• ShowRaceMenu Alternative
  

~~Lets you change your character via a Power so you don’t have to use a Console Command and risk messing up your stats. Useful for giving Ear Addons to an existing character or just changing your Ear Addons mid-run.

• Familiar Faces
  

~~ Lets you make customized followers using the Character Creation menu so you can have followers that use Ear Addons. Ported to SSE by expired6978 (at least on his Patreon if it’s not been posted to the Nexus https://www.patreon.com/posts/familiar-faces-35202526).

-Mods used in Screenshots-

• XP32/XPMSSE 
  

~~ Using the "Alternative Magic Style" + floating animations for some characters

• Vitruvia 
• SG Female Textures Renewal 
• MONSTERRaider's Beast Race skins 
• Argonian Weight Slider Affected Tails 
• ENB Light 
• rudy102's Rudy HQ - More Lights series mods 
• Rudy ENB SE for Cathedral Weathers 
  ~~ Also the mods listed in the "Preparations and requirements" section
• Skyrim 3D Landscapes 
• Lind's Black Robes Revamp
• Beast Hair Horn and Beard 
• Argonian Hair Plus 
• Vanilla Makeup HD 
• Vanilla Warpaints Absolution 
• Wolfpaint Facepaint Collection 
• Beast Race Bodypaints 
• Ziovdendian Bodypaint 
• Community Overlays 1
• Community Overlays 2
  

-Misc Recommended Mods-

These are really just a selection of mods that I personally like/use

• Clean Menu 
• Smaller Cursor (Pearlish Cursor alternative) 
  

~~Oldrim mod, but it works just fine in SSE

• Multiple Floors Sandboxing 
• No More Standing Too Close SSE 
  ~~ Especially good for VR users
• NPC Dialogue Audio Enhancer 
• JS Purses and Septims SE 
• Skyrim SE Skill Interface Retexture 
• Apophysis Dragon Priest Masks SE 
• Alduin's Imprefvicticious and Chapper's Demonic Mashup 
• Mystical Illumination - Glowing Signs 
• Swearing Mudcrabs 
• Fullscreen Book and Item Zoom 
  

-My Mods-

• All Ears
• Heterochromia Reborn
• Horns Aplenty
• Morrowind-Style Soulgems
• Less Annoying Lydia
  

-Interested in knowing more about the details?-

Feel free to skip this section if you don't care about the nitty-gritty details.

Headparts in Skyrim use a TYPE value such as “Hair”, “Eyes”, “Extra”, etc. Creating a reference that uses a TYPE value outside that normal range still actually loads into the game properly even though nothing would normally reference it. However, such records can then be interpreted by RaceMenu through configuring some .ini and .txt files in the interface and meshes folders (examine my 00 Required Data folder in the download to see which .ini/.txt files are included). I used Bodyslide’s Outfit Studio to make the necessary .tri file for an Ear model so that Skyrim would let it work as a Headpart, and then created a bunch of new headpart records using the original mods' .nif meshes and my new .tri file. I set these new headpart records to have a TYPE value of “34”, tweaked the necessary .ini files for RaceMenu, and voilà, the Ear Addons are now a slider.

-Permissions-

Do not upload this mod to any other site. If I want it hosted elsewhere, I will be the one to host it there.

Please ask before using my work in another mod. I generally prefer my work to remain in my own hands, but I might make an exception if I like what you propose. In most cases a better solution is to just make your mod depend on mine if you want to use the Ear Addons for something like a Follower/NPC mod.

I would prefer if compatibility patches were made by me so that the records follow the same formatting, but I acknowledge that I don’t have the time/interest to make a patch for everything users might be interested in. You DO have my permission to make compatibility patches for other mods without asking. However, PLEASE give credit where credit is due if you plan on hosting it, and send me a PM about it beforehand so I know that it’s being made.

If I am offline and don't reply to PM's for more than 3 months, I give my full consent to do anything with this mod that you wish.

-Credits-

expired6978 – For helping me write the RaceMenu integration and for generally being a swell and encouraging person.
mator – For making zEdit, which is the tool I used to generate all the headpart records.
Ousnius – For making Bodyslide/Outfit Studio, which is the tool I used to make the .tri file.
Calyps - For making the original Calyps Animal Ear mod and giving permission to integrate with it.
YoerkSun - For making the original YS Abyssal Ear mod and giving permission to redistribute the SSE-converted meshes in this mod.
Fallen01135 - For helping me troubleshoot a mesh issue I was having with a multi-model .nif file.
Bethesda - For making Skyrim.
Nexus Mods - For hosting such a great community of modders, and generally being awesome.
The Nexus Mods Community - You folks are the reason I'm doing this, and the reason Skyrim modding is so spectacularly robust.
My mom - You know why.