Have you ever started to read a modding tool guide, or a Reddit post, or a mod description, and saw a word or an acronym that was essentially gibberish to you? Then you’ve come to the right place! A lot of these will be obvious to many, but hopefully someone will find this useful. (Please let me know if you think something should be added or, Talos forbid, if I am mistaken on any of these!)
Credits: a variety of Reddit and Nexus Forum posts, most especially this forum post and the specific articles referenced below
Warning: I haven’t really gotten into this type of modding, so this is just based off my very amateur research. Please correct me if you see anything that is incorrect!
BBP – Breast and Body Physics
BHUNP – UNP body updated by Bakafactory and Haeun (usernames)
CBBE – Caliente’s Beautiful Body Enhancement
CBBE 3BA (3BBB) – CBBE with 3 Breast Bone Body Physics
CBPC – CB Physics with Collision
COCO (3BBB) – alternative CBBE and UNP bodies with physics
HDT-PE – HydrogensaysHDT (username) Physics Extension
HDT-SMP – HDT Skinned Mesh Physics
HIMBO – Highly Improved Male Body Overhaul
SAM – Shape Atlas for Men
TBD – Touched by Dibella
UNP – Unpretend(ed)
UNPB – UNP Blessed
TBBP – Tender Breast and Body Physics
XP32 or XPMSE – Maximum Skeleton Extended (for Legendary Edition)
XPMSSE – Maximum Skeleton SpecialExtended (for Special Edition)
3BBB – 3 Breast and Butt Bones
7B – Sevenbase
Check out the Body Type Mod Category page for more information (not much more, but I will hopefully add more at some point – needs to be updated as of June 2022)
Helpful links:
Bakafactory’s Skyrim – WHAT IS HDT-PE / HDT-SMP / BBP / TBBP / 3BBB?
HIMBO Articles – while these are specific to HIMBO, they can definitely be helpful if trying to figure out how to use Bodyslide/Outfit Studio
I don’t know much about all of this, as I am still learning myself, but this video playlist helped me a lot in trying to determine exactly what various settings in ENBs and other INI files where actually doing: Skyrim ENB Effect Demonstrations – tapioks. It shows comparison clips of various effects turned on and off. Also, the music is super relaxing.
Ambient Occlusion – an effect that calculates how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient light, i.e. not from a direct source; essentially adds shadows where they might not otherwise have been (helpful video by Greg Salazar)
Anistropic Filtering – an effect that improves how small details appear; this eliminates Anti-Aliasing effects, but reduces blur and preserves detail even at extreme angles
Anti-Aliasing – an effect that smoothes jagged edges, essentially by strategic blurring (helpful video by Greg Salazar)
Depth of Field – an effect that simulates the ability to focus on one thing at a time
Updated June 2022
And finally, all of the SOS mods I could find (the majority of these are by wSkeever, who seems to be on a personal mission to make as many SOS mods as possible lol):
Please remember to endorse any mods you download and like, and if you appreciate all the hard work that goes into creating a mod, consider giving kudos to the author on Nexus as well (the Give Kudos button can be found on the user’s page).