Modding Process: Making a Head

Making a character head

Importing the head

• Import nif
• Import tris
• Convert triangles to quads
• If doing the mouth, repeat the above for the mouth
• Join mouth to head
• Merge all verts by distance (.001)
• Remove vertex colors
• Delete left half
• Delete left-side vertex groups and shape keys
• Make groups: Upper & lower jaw, upper & lower palette (including teeth), tongue, center seam
• Zero center seam (pivot around 3d cursor; put cursor at 0 on x-axis; select center seam; scale to 0 on x-axis)

Half-head work

• Whatever redesign you're doing
• Create shape morph for opposite sex if you can get away with that
• All symmetric right-side morphs Create shape keys for asymmetric morphs but don't do anything with them.
• Check UV is ready to reflect across X. Zero center seam.
• Do bone weights and partitions. Make sure whisker weights are uniform base to tip.
• Match neck seam and weights to body
• Trial export to find partition problems. Fix them.

Half-head to full-head checklist

• Make left side: Dup and scale -1 on x (object mode)
• Apply transform
• Flip face normals
• Rename morphs and weights from right to left side
• Mirror UV
• Join with right half

On joined model

• Join center seam
• Join UV (should happen automatically)
• Do asymmetric morphs (FO4: LJaw, RJaw; Skyrim: Disgusted, Puzzled). Check the rest.
• FO4: Transfer neck seam normal from body (Link/Transfer Mesh Data -> Transfer Mesh Data)
• Correct neck seams and weights (in case the body isn't symmetric)

Final for export

• Separate mouth, if necessary
• Remove unneeded materials from head and mouth
• Export