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NPV - V as custom NPC

How to create your V as an NPC

Created by @manavortex Published May 13 2023

This guide will show you how to do the following things:

  • Setting up a Wolvenkit project with the prepared example files

  • Creating your V's head in Blender (has its own sub-page)

  • Adding them as an NPC to spawn them with AppearanceMenuMod (has its own sub-page)

Difficulty:

Easy, but not trivial: you don't need any prior knowledge, but the process is complex, and if you miss steps or deviate from the instructions, things will end up not working for you.

If you run into issues with this guide, the right place to ask for help is #mod-dev-chat on the redmodding Discord server.

This guide uses the following versions:

This tutorial should cover your basic needs, but there are many more guides and resources about NPV creation outside of this wiki. You can find them here.

If you want to edit original V's files, you're (generally) in the right place. You can find extra information on A new head for V.

None of this would have been possible without NoraLee, who pioneered the process and taught me everything that I needed to know to set up these tools. This guide doesn't use any of their resources, but a lot of their knowledge. For the full guide with all edge-cases, bells, whistles and context, see their Google Drive.

This is the speedrun version. If you want extra details and context, please check Nora's Google Doc.

Preparation: The character preset

Due to the complexity of V's head mesh, you have to do a little bit of prep work here.

Don't worry, I'll walk you through it step by step.

To create a face, we need to know your character's values. For that, you need to have AppearanceChangeUnlocker installed, or you won't see them:

  • Eyes

  • Eyebrows

  • Nose

  • Mouth

  • Jaw

  • Ears

Find the mirror in V's apartment and note down the numerical values.

Setting up the files

Body gender:

As a rule of thumb, I'll document the process for an NPV with a female body gender, because as we all know, the other doesn't exist I have one of those. If yours has a male body gender, your file paths will be slightly different, but the process is exactly the same.

  1. Create a Wolvenkit project

  2. Download the example files from Nexus

  3. Merge the source folder in the download with the source folder in your Wolvenkit project directory

  4. In Wolvenkit's archive tab, find the prepared folders per body gender:

body gender
file path

female

tutorial\npv\your_female_character

male

tutorial\npv\your_male_character

  1. Delete the one you're not using (do one Wolvenkit project per NPC. No, really, I mean it.)

  2. In Wolvenkit's resource tab, delete the .lua file for the body gender that you don't want to use.

This tutorial assumes that you will rename and re-path your files at the very end, because the prepared files rely on a certain file structure. We'll get to it!

Check if it works

This is a working Wolvenkit project — let's make sure that it works.

You can do this at any time during the tutorial to check your progress!

  1. On the Wolvenkit toolbar, you'll find a button to install the project

  2. Switch it to "Install and launch"

  3. Click it

  4. When the game starts, load a savegame

  5. Open the CET overlay

  6. Switch AMM to the "Spawn" tab

  7. Search for Tutorial

  8. Spawn Tutorial Woman or Tutorial Man

You should now see a person in front of you.

Get cracking

Now it's time to do the actual work.

Please remember that before sharing your NPV, you have to change the paths! At the very least, rename the tutorial folders inside of archive and resources to your user name and then do a fulltext search and replace in json.

However, you might want to do that after preparing the head in Blender, as you would otherwise have to move the utility script around.

You'll be editing these two
PreviousAMM: Custom NPC appearancesNextNPV: Preparing the head in Blender

Last updated

#1285: overhauled multilayerd doc

Change request updated