Are the glasses part of this plugin as seen in some of the screenshots? Apart from its dependency on RBP (I don't use RBP), I think it's a great concept. Now, I don't know of the mechanism on how races work in Oblivion, but is it possible to actually add beards (as addition instead of altering) to the original races in Oblivion instead of creating new one? I know there are some advantages and the only drawback I can think of is that some other plugins which totally "overwrite" the original races appearance, but isn't there some kind of work-around to this?

It seems silly that many of the NPCs in Morrowind are bearded (especially Nords) and have facial tatoo but none (not even visible moustache) are included in Oblivion.

Of course possible, however, it will cause every actors in the race having beards, even women. And you can assign only 1 style per 1 race if you added a beard at any available head part slot.

I won't be able to contribute much 'useful' dialog to this conversation, so I'm sorry about that, but I do have a brief question: My PC is supposed to have a very short, stubbly full beard, and all the beards that I'm finding in screen shots in this thread are too long or too disjointed for him. Is it possible to create these 'short n' stubbly' beards? I hate Oblivion's "beard" toning, and it makes his face look purple.

Although I wouldn't be able to make such a beard myself, I know there's a semi-transparent, close cropped hairstyle around that emulates the look of a not-too-recently shaven head. I would believe that a beard using similar textures, conformulated around the jaws could accomplish something similar, but it wouldn't be great.

Better results might be accomplished with a custom, stubbly texture for your character though.

*glances at your avatar* What I'm looking for is something just like that. So I guess basically I need to edit his texture then?

As previously mentioned, there are, but another point: this would never have any noticeable affect on FPS or performance. Period. It just wouldn't. I don't care if there are a hundred different beards for a hundred different races (thus 10,000 calls of SetRaceAlias), you wouldn't notice it even if it was every second (with numbers that high you might notice it every frame, but at realistic numbers - a tenth of that, even - even every frame would be fine). Seriously, massive overestimation of the effect that a script will have on performance.

Not that I'm suggesting it. Best practices should be practiced simply because it's wasteful not to, and there's a perfectly good way to avoid it (GetGameRestarted). But that kind of thing annoys me when people say it, because you get people suspecting scripts for causing performance issues when 99.9% of the time scripts have nothing to do with it. It's a red herring, and it annoys me.

Does that mean that you need to create one new race for each one new type of beard? Assuming that one wants to create 15 different bearded NPCs, then one has to create 15 new and different races?

Yes, per vanilla race. Like Imperial_beard01_black, imperial_beard01_grey, ..., imperial_beard02_black, imperial_beard02_grey, ..., breton_beard01_black, breton_beard01_grey, ..., breton_beard02_black, breton_beard02_grey, ..., etc.
Annoying, but what else can be done?

No, you'd have to change the model so that it doesn't cover the upper part of the head, but instead the part where a beard usually is.
The avatar is from Fallout 3, by the way, and yes we definitely need some of those beards in Oblivion. Fallout 3 basically has every beard I want for the elven races in it, I think. Of course, many of those beards are supposed to look like something rockers (or harley drivers) from the fifties or sixties would wear, which doesn't fit Oblivion very well.

...there is another way to get a stubbly beard. If you're okay with it being nothing but a texture without a model to go with it. Since your beard is supposed to be short, this will probably look well enough (if you don't look too closely). For example, you could simply use a slightly edited version of Sheogorath's beard texture as the texture for your character's race.
Or you could check how old your character is, and make an according "age map" for it (don't know how they're called). With Sheogorath's beard, that could look like http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9465/beardn.jpg - or maybe even better, if you put more effort into it. The advantage of this is that it doesn't need a new race. This is how Django's Unique Features gets its unique features on the NPCs (that mod has a stubbly beard as well, but it doesn't look very good).

Secton31 - I decided to use RBP as a basis because all this discussion is about diversity in the looks of NPCs. Each NPC should have something that makes him unique. That's why I use http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6137 (a mod that distributes the specs from Kafeid's Dwemer Spectacles to NPCs), and NPCDiversity from RBP (which adds many new hairstyles to NPCs) and from now on Bearded NPCs as well.
I don't think any of these mods should be traded in for another. But the only way to get all those hairstyles from RBP to my new races was to make my mod dependent on RBP.

I didn't like the any of the default beards for one of my characters so I edited the alpha channel to give it a shorter look and http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7018/screenshot5rs8.jpg, and what it http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7761/oblivion200708260346310wq1.jpg. The downside is you notice it goes invisibile from the side behind but I still like it.

Small update for my small still-only-a-proof-of-concept mod: I added an ESP file that does not depend on Race Balancing Project. The link to the mod is in one of the posts above or on the first page of this thread.

Using the non-RBP version might have some side-effects. I made this mod with NPCDiversity loaded, so the looks of the NPCs changed; many of them got new hairstyles with NPCDiversity. These hairstyles are not available in the non-RBP version, so these NPCs will get one of the vanilla haircuts... I don't know which. Maybe the one they used to have, maybe a default one. I'm also not sure about the color. I guess some NPCs will look really weird, with their hair color not matching their beards at all. But even if that's not the case, they'll still look different than in the vanilla game.
Yeah you can see I'm a real expert on this subject. Anyway, nothing serious can happen, some mismatched NPCs are the worst case scenario.


Nice! Reminds me of Boromir
I'm still hoping for modelers to get interested and start creating new beards, but if nobody shows up, I guess I'll have to resort to tricks like that as well. It does look surprisingly nice.

Any updates?

No updates?

Counter question: No feedback?

If there is nothing wrong with the plugin I've uploaded, then the only updates necessary now are new beard models, and sadly it seems that even the release of a working proof of concept did not spark the interest in those modelers with the necessary skills.

However, anyone satisfied with having only Hel Borne's and madmole's beards in his game should try out the beta.

Sorry for no feedback. I like the beta just fine so far. Not very far into the game yet on the new install, so can't say for sure there's no problems gonna crop up.

Sure, I'd love new beards, but this really is great!

By the way, with all the beardless gents in the game, where are all the razors?

gothemasticator