Here's a The Witcher 3 mod that we haven't covered before. Modder rmemr managed to improve lip movement during dialogues while also enabling high-resolution shadows and NPC head models in gameplay.
The lip movement of NPCs seems to be very inconsistent while they talk their oneliners in normal gameplay - sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. This mod triggers a special mini scene for every new spawned npc which seems to make it more consistent. There are probably some limitations so don't expect it to work all the time.
This The Witcher 3 mod also causes that NPCs always use their LOD0 heads (highest quality heads). This means there is no reason to use "High Quality Faces" or any other head lod mod.
Because those require this mod for working mimics and with this mod installed they literally do nothing. This means you can change the value of your "MeshLODDistanceScale" back to 1. Setting "MeshLODDistanceScale" to anything other than "1" generally breaks more than it improves.
The mod also enables a flag for higher resolution shadows like used in dialogue scenes for every new npc. This is mostly a subtle self shadowing improvement, see screenshots (all vanilla with freecam).
Howto install/use
modEnableMimics_blinking (use ONLY with v1.30+)
0a. The scripts "game/actor.ws", "game/npc/npc.ws" and "game/player/player.ws" were modified
1. Unzip package into your witcher game directory (so dlc folder content from package goes into witcher 3/dlc folder and mod folder content from package goes into witcher3/mod folder)
2. If necessary merge with your favorite tool (e.g. Script Merger) . I don't use any mergers - can't help with script conflicts, sorry.
3. If you edited your "MeshLODDistanceScale" in the past, change it back to "1".
("C:\Users\[your PC]\documents\The Witcher 3" inside of user.settings you can find "MeshLODDistanceScale")
The creator of this The Witcher 3 mod shared a video demonstration of the NPC's high quality head models. He also published a few screenshots comparison showcasing the improved high resolution shadows; check those out below. For more The Witcher 3 mods, check out our previous coverage of the modding scene.