Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions — Facial Expressions for Kenshi's Vanilla Races

Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions is an addon for Kenshi that extends the functionality of the Character's Emotions mod to the game's original playable races. It allows characters to display facial expressions, making their appearance more expressive and bringing additional visual detail to the game.

The original Character's Emotions modification primarily supports VRoid-based character models. This addon adapts the system for Kenshi's vanilla races, allowing players to use facial animations without replacing their characters with entirely different races.

Supported Races

The modification adds facial expression support for several races from the original game:

• Greenlanders — humans belonging to one of Kenshi's most widespread races.
• Scorchlanders — another human race with its own appearance.
• Shek — powerful horned warriors.
• Hivers — members of the Hive race, including the Hive Queen.

Skeletons are currently excluded. According to Kenshi's lore and in-game dialogue, Skeletons do not display conventional facial expressions, so support for them has not been implemented.

The addon was developed relatively quickly, meaning that transitions between certain facial expressions may appear somewhat unnatural.

How Facial Expressions Work

The modification uses the functionality provided by Character's Emotions to display facial expressions on supported character models.

Facial animations are available exclusively to player-controlled characters. Other NPCs do not receive this functionality.

This limitation is intentional and helps prevent unnecessary performance issues. Applying dynamic facial expressions to every NPC, particularly in heavily populated locations such as the Fog Islands, would significantly increase the game's computational workload.

By limiting the feature to the player's squad, the addon provides additional visual detail without placing excessive demands on the system.

Installation

Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions requires the original modification to function.

Required dependency:

• Character's Emotions

Installation Instructions

1. Install this mod.
2. Install the required Character's Emotions modification.
3. Launch Kenshi and open the mod manager.
4. Enable both VanillaRace4CharactersEmotions and CharactersEmotions.
5. Make sure that other modifications do not override the race data introduced by VanillaRace4CharactersEmotions.

The relative load order of the two required mods does not matter. However, modifications loaded afterward can cause conflicts if they overwrite the same race records.

Compatibility With Other Mods

Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions may conflict with modifications that replace or extensively modify vanilla character models.

This happens because Kenshi's races use specific character meshes and customization parameters. Two mods that replace the same race mesh cannot simply combine their changes automatically.

For example, a character model designed for additional body sliders may be incompatible with the model required for facial expressions.

Compatible Modifications

Mods that do not modify the female mesh or male mesh fields should generally work without issues.

Examples include:

• Beautiful Bodies and Faces — adjusts character customization through XML files.
• Increase Body Slider Limits — changes available body customization ranges.
• More Combat Stance MIA+ — adds combat animations.
• Animation Overhaul Mod - Crafting — introduces additional animations.

Mods that modify animation skeletons can also remain compatible, even when they contain files such as female_skeleton.mesh or male_skeleton.mesh. These files are different from the race meshes used by the addon.

Incompatible Modifications

Mods that replace the original race meshes are likely to conflict with Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions.

Known examples include:

• More Character Making Sliders
• JRPG Vanilla

These modifications change character models or their associated customization systems, preventing the facial expression addon from working correctly with the same race data.

How to Check Mod Compatibility

Players can inspect other Kenshi modifications using the Forgotten Construction Set (FCS) editor.

This is useful when a mod's description does not specify whether it changes character meshes.

Step 1. Locate the Workshop Files

Open the Steam Workshop content directory for Kenshi:

<Steam folder>\steamapps\workshop\content\233860

Each downloaded modification is stored in a folder identified by its Workshop ID.

Find the required mod by checking the .mod file inside the corresponding folder.

Step 2. Prepare the Modification for FCS

Copy the mod folder to Kenshi's local mods directory:

<Steam folder>\steamapps\common\Kenshi\mods

Rename the copied folder to match the filename of its .mod file, without the extension.

For example:

3791607178
↓
VanillaRace4CharactersEmotions

The folder name should correspond to VanillaRace4CharactersEmotions.mod.

Step 3. Check the Modified Records

Launch forgotten construction set.exe, open the modification, and select Changes from the editor's menu.

Examine the list of modified records and look for the following fields:

• female mesh
• male mesh

If neither field has been modified, the addon should generally be compatible.

If either field appears among the changes, there is a potential conflict with Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions.

This method helps identify incompatible character-model modifications before launching the game.

Additional Information

Vanilla Race for Character's Emotions is an extension of the original Character's Emotions system and does not function independently.

For the most reliable experience, use it with the original Kenshi races and avoid installing multiple appearance overhauls that replace the same character meshes.