This is something that is beginning to bother me in more or less every game I play. And I don't see why this has to be. There are great new, modern hair styles, there are highly detailed faces. I'm not saying I'm the one to do something about this, I'm just raising a concern of mine because all the the actual replacers I can find date back a few years.

While there seems to be a somewhat solid amount of pretty new faces and hairs released.

I'm raising a few questions in regard to this potential project:

1*Should NPCs be replaced just as individually as the original game? A simple mesh replacer will have the same issues with many NPCs ending up looking the same with different hairs but much less work.
2*Should we through the CS and a plugin add a higher number of diverity among faces and hairs?

As I see it it's a question of resources. If we have the resources more or less already avaliable to us the I don't see why not. But if we only have limited resources then option one is much more in our favor.

The following question is of course, how much we should try to conform to the original look. My personal opinion is that age and overall feel can match but having the same look(only updated) would only limit some of the beutiful work of the wonderful artists on these forums.

What say you?

I'd say the random npc's do any way you want. But as far as vital/quest ones (crassus, etc.) try to leave them more closer to vanilla. but updated of course. edit, randomize the rest is what i meant. all those resources should be used.

I rest my proposition unless other people would like it to be done in any of MY above mentioned ways and I put my vote for Rattfink333's. With the added intention of not randomizing the "other" non quest related ones but try to care for at least their age, etc.

Something to think about is that any mod that use original style faces will be changed (given this mod takes precedance). I think it's simply a welcome addition to mods such as MCA or my favorite Starfires NPC additions. No issues there.

I thread these 2 questions as pluginless replacer or plugin replacer.
I vote for pluginless replacer as it have no conflict with other mod.
about the style whether original or others, I think I'm not seeking an original look, but the age is a thing that have to be considered.

me too. this is the only npc addon mod i use now. about npc face and hair mod I only use 2, one is the famous pluginless replacer mod years ago, the other is westly's replacer, and if i remember right he didn't make a pluginless replacer for the imperior and tigerman race.

I think it would be great if they were individualized, with those NPCs which are supposed to be older, for instance the Ashlander wise women and men like Curio and Ergalla, the Census and Excise agent in Seyda Neen actually showing their ages. I would love to see more variations in age, infirmity, complexion, scarring, facial hair, hair/eyebrow/eyelash color, etc. Keeping in mind the standard better bodies meshes and textures are the perfect bodies of people in the prime of life and they won't match. However, with clothing and perhaps a couple of new "bent over a cane" animations for the elderly . . .

But I'm getting way off the topic. Yes, NPC variations in head/hair would be quite welcome.

I agree with Elaura and favor an approach to head replacement that attempts to match the face of an NPC to his or her personality. This may be subject to the interpretation of the artist, however two of Emma's three http://lovkullen.net/Emma/Headreplacers.htm were inspired by the personality developed by LGNPC writers. For some of us handsome faces that do not suit either the NPC's character or circumstances are no improvement over the original faces at all.

I think special care would need to be taken to make sure an NPC's face matches somewhat their LGNPC dialog.

The majority of the newest heads and hair are pretty heavily geared towards beauty aren't they? As long as it can be done so that Vvardenfell doesn't become the land of the beautiful people I'd totally use it. I agree LGNPC compatibility would be awesome, especially because if someone doesn't use LGNPC then no harm no foul right? Although that would add quite a bit to the work load, having to become familiar with all the LGNPC personalities...

I was familiar with the Khuul replacer. Which of the other two is LGNPC inspired?

I think it's better to keep this as a plugin-less replacer and let people choose to use Emma's excellent mods to add extra personality/diversity to LGNPC if they so wish ^^
Oh and one of my old projects were more or less adding "grime" to all face textures to make it all look more weathered and worn etc, trust me I don't want simply a super model Vvardenfell!

If however people are willing to help with the extra load then we surely could look into full LGNPC compability. But I personally won't be reading through many 'a dialouge files.

As you might understand, I'm simply bringing the idea to the table. I might do it for my own enjoyment only, but it's better if we could do a joint effort ^^

Going plugin-less will make it so your are limited to the number of heads that was used in the ESM's which is...

3 Argonian Female			4 Khajiit Female3 Argonian Male				4 Khajiit Male7 Breton Female				7 Imperial Female8 breton Male				7 Imperial Male10 Dark Elf Female (TB adds 1 unique)	13 Nord Female (BM adds 5)17 Dark Elf Male (TB adds 1 unique)	13 Nord Male (BM adds 5)6 High Elf Female			3 Orc Female5 High Elf Male				4 Orc Male6 Redguard Female			6 Wood Elf Female6 Redguard Female			8 Wood Elf Male

And a vampire head for each

There are 3043 NPC's in MW (including BM and TB) not all show up in game. 1173 Female and 1870 male

47 Argonian Female			64 Khajiit Female102 Argonian Male			60 Khajiit Male55 Breton Female			75 Imperial Female65 breton Male				181 Imperial Male665 Dark Elf Female (TB adds 1 unique)	74 Nord Female (BM adds 5)929 Dark Elf Male (TB adds 1 unique)	203 Nord Male (BM adds 5)39 High Elf Female			49 Orc Female60 High Elf Male			122 Orc Male51 Redguard Female			54 Wood Elf Female75 Redguard Male			73 Wood Elf Male

So the most unique NPC's by race would be the Nord Female with there being 74 sharing 13 heads the most common would be kinda a toss up with the Dark Elves

And yea i spend way to much time in spreadsheets

I′d like to see a head replacer with http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=7710 or http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=9177 (a hi-res version) included.

Why did the Nord females get all the love? They must have been in the first groups done. After which the modelers got progressively tired of doing faces or became more pressed for time. Either that or some fetish came into play. lol

No. Westlys tried to be as Vanilla as possible. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1340173-westlys-head-packs-and-headhair-replacers/page__p__20190966#entry20190966

Very true. I should have excluded his project in my wording. But I'm assuming this is going to be an alternative to his especially should his be completed, so was also assuming that it wouldn't likely make heavy use of his heads. Why make a plugin-less replacer that draws heavily on another plugin-less replacer?

A pluginless replacer would have not that wide varieté of faces. I would consider a plugin replacer using as much faces from different sources as possibe and as Elaura was saying giving special attention to the "personalities" so that they look really unique. I also would say, that maybe telvanni wizards look more eccentric than hlaalu errants.

and I would try not to make them all beautiful but - as Elaura also stated - making them old and hairy and whatsoever. This is not possible pluginless.

Pluginless thing can't give any variation whatsoever.

I did thought of (and started) a plugin replacer that aimed to add in as much as possible heads to make every NPC unique, or at least enough so that you don't see the same face at least in a town, few years back, but dropped it. Issues I had here were - it was incompatible with every single mod out there that change NPCs- which I could live with, and one that was a bigger issue in my opinion- artistic take on face making. Combining several artist's packs looked horrible in my opinion. Having an older looking face, low res and all that, standing next to a 1024x1024 face full of make up, one with a wig from Emma's pack and other with Ren's hair. It looked bad. Really bad. So I think such project would need a small team of texturers (and maybe modelers too) that would take a whole bunch of faces and adjust them to be close in quality and a bit in style, otherwise they will accent among each other like dobermans between peacocks. :/

i kinda think that New heads would be a nice thing to have the newest heads are circa 05-06 and machines have gotten a bit stronger since then. I'm not saying super high poly heads but they could be done with more polys than they currently have but all that is a bit out of my hands i'm a cobbler not a modeler.....

the Nords got the extra love with BM it did add 60% more heads.

if a group needed the love it would be the Dark Elf, Orc and Argonian in that order

we are looking at 162 heads spread over 3k people but yea getting a plug to work with out causing issues sounds like fun i don't want to try, though i might see if i can get some MWedit spreadsheet short cuts to work...

quickest way to handle the problem of incompatabilities is to make the headpack a master file instead of an esp. It'll get overwrote by some esp's but won't break any other mods for it.

Or just use TESTool's Merged Objects.

I gather the concensus is to make a plugin based replacer with LGNPC in mind. With that being said, I'm not up for reading TONS and TONS of NPC descriptions from LGNPC, if that project happens to have some kind of documentation explaining the general "feeling" of a character things would be much easier, instead of having to go through endless dialouge.

I would like to get Emmas input on this, seeing as she has worked with LGNPC in mind. I wouldn't want to mix too many artists, there are a few I've seen who I'd pass as potentially interesting for the project. I'll name them all when I'm done compiling a list. And will send mail to ask permissions accordingly.

Not saying I'm commiting to anything yet, I'm just laying out the groundwork for a project such as this.

Trying to support the eyes that follow mod would be nice but if people like the pack I expect someone will if possible; Make that edit themselves.

Thank you all for the nice input on where to take this project. It's apparent to me now, this is something people want, in some form.

Interesting.
More or less as an experiment I started doing a plugin npc replacer for Seyda Neen today, with LGNPC taken into account. For example there is this guy outside who was a pitchfighter some time ago. So I gave him an older look with a scar on the face. As we have a lot of nice texture resources it didnt take much time to "giving a character the right feel" by making small changes to the existing texture. For example for our favourite tax collector Processus Vitellius I took an existing male texture and added some bruises and blood on his face texture and edited his eyes in a way that he looks pretty much dead.
Of course the key characters should have an extra unique look to them, but to make the others more interesting you could use the existing texture resources and modify them a bit whenever its needed.
I think the best results are gained by replacing every single npc individually.

Just my thoughts on this potential npc replacing project. Its very needed in my opinion and could add a lot of depth to the game.

My methods for replacing NPC heads...

1)First assign heads to the NPCs marked Essential (by focusing on these first one will be most likely to
alter the main quest NPCs which the character is almost sure to encounter the most). Focus on individuality
and personality for these, of course . A few of these can be neglected, though (like "Clutter Monkey") .

2)Then focus on the Named NPCs (those that are given generic titles should be of tertiary or even
quatrary importance)

3)If one is tackling this as a team (a really good way to approach this), then breaking the races down by
six and assigning them to a different team member (to take off the somewhat intimidating task of assigning
all those heads)

4)One method (though I do not know how tried and true/clean it might be, but it seems to work) is to
make a new room in the CS and place all of the desired NPCs of a race/ six into that room (this will
allow one to see all the NPCs at once, of course, to make sure that one does not duplicate head/hair combos)
Then all one has to do is clean the .esp of the reference to the room (the duplicates will be erased, but the
changes to the NPCs will not be).

5)Don't bother with NPCs that wear full helms (give yourself a break, there )

Quick tips there, but they have served me well (even though I have stop/started my replacer a few times, I still stick to
these as "fundamentals")