[Tutorial] Make your own Oblivion Character Overhaul compatibility patch

Step by Step Instructions for using the built-in OCO2 Face Reassignment Script

Description:
OCO2 (Oblivion Character Overhaul 2) is really awesome, but sometimes mods which do not directly support it will have NPCs which are very odd looking. There are OCO2 compatibity mods for popular mods but not all. Now, you can create your own OCO2 compatibility patch for any mods that were not specifically designed to support OCO2 faces. This tutorial will take you through the steps to randomly assign all NPCs within an ESP of your choosing to one of the several hundred custom OCO2 faces created by nuska in the Oblivion_Character_overhual.esp.

Requirements:
Oblivion Character Overhual 2
TES4Edit (I'm using v 3.1.2)

Steps:
1. Open TES4Edit.
2. Right click on the ESM/ESP selection list and select Deselect all.
3. Check your target ESP with vanilla NPC faces plus the Oblivion_Character_Overhual.esp. Click Load.
4. Open your target ESP and find the "Non-Player Character" record type.
5. Right-click "Non-Player Character" and select "Deep copy as override into...".
6. Select <new file> in the pop up dialog window. Click OK.
7. Type in any name you like, example: "OCO patch for target ESP".
8. Click Yes.
9. The new ESP is down at the bottom. Right click it and select "Apply Script".
10. Click on the drop down box next to the Script" label and scroll to "Oblivion - OCO faces assignment".
11. Click "OK".

If everything was successful, you should now have your "OCO patch for target ESP" shown in bold type. If any other files are in bold type, you probably did something wrong. When you quit TES4Edit, only save chanes to the OCO patch you made -- make sure you uncheck your original target mod and any other files listed. Now load this new OCO patch at the end of your load order. In Wrye Bash, you can add the "Graphics" "NpcFaces" bashed tag and merge it into your bashed patch.

Check out the Morroblivion OCO2 Facelift Mod to see before and after pictures of the difference an OCO2 compatibility patch can make.

Last edited by ponyrider0 on 4 Jun 2017 - 23:40.

Very helpful, thanks! Why do

Very helpful, thanks! Why do you have the NoMerge and Deactivate bash tags on the Morroblivion patch?

Puddles wrote:

Puddles
Very helpful, thanks! Why do you have the NoMerge and Deactivate bash tags on the Morroblivion patch?

Because I'm paranoid that I might hit a bug in the Bashed Patch function which inappropriately imports more subrecords than just the FaceGen data.... and actually, I just caught a bug in my tutorial -- the Graphics bash tag does not import OCO2 FaceGen data, NpcFaces is the correct bash tag to use.

Hm...is there a way to tell

Hm...is there a way to tell the script to use X vanilla race's templates for non-vanilla races?

ie. Integrated: The Lost Light has Mazken and Aureal races that are essentially the same as the vanilla, but just made playable and with racial abilities. Also for the Elsewryr mods, where there's varieties of Khajiit.

If you mean you want to make

If you mean you want to make the script select from a vanilla race's OCO FaceGen pool when it's trying to randomly re-assign a face to a NPC of custom race, then you can try this modified script. Uncompress the 7z file and put the .PAS script in the "\Edit Scripts" folder, usually where the TES4Edit.exe is located. This script should pop up a dialog box so you can select an alternative race to use in place of the custom race. I don't use custom races, so I can't test if it works.

In the future, I want to make a similar script to reassign NPC hairs with custom hair sets... but I'd like to randomize by class and faction too instead of just race... so commoner's won't have fancy "high court" hairdos that nobles would have.

Attachment	Size
oblivion_-_oco_faces_assignment_2.7z	2.43 KB