SSE Chainging hair, eyes and eyebrows to a Follower [Dark Face bug]

[xMik3x]

Greetings, so i made a custom follower from the base game recently and I've been trying to change the default look with some mods but after doing so on CK and saving the FaceGeom with CTRL+F4 i just get a dark face in game, if i go back to vanilla look, it goes back to normal.

 

Anyone knows what do i have to do here? I tried Nifmerge but it seems it doesn't work for SE and the CK isn't helping either.

 

Any help would be appreciated, cheers!

[Algabar]

AFAIK, creating a standalone follower with custom hair and so on currently isn't possible using only SE as a basis. At least I don't know of any working method.

I recently tried to simply change the haircut of a follower using SE only - and I failed miserably. IMHO, the main problem is the fact, that "Nifmerge" can't handle SE meshes. And somewhere in the process you need Nifmerge...

 

 

What I do: Create followers for "Oldrim" first, then convert them. For the head meshes I use "Nif optimizer", body meshes and textures are replaced by SE compatible files. Regarding textures, you don't have to worry: Basically everything from "Oldrim" will work - as long as it fits the body type. Textures for "Oldrim" CBBE will work with CBBE SE, so will "Oldrim" UNP textures with UNP renewal.

 

Working on an "Oldrim" basis and converting later works fine. There's just one thing you have to remember (and hardly anybody tells you...): Nif optimizer often messes up the eyes of female followers. Here's how to fix it (post by R246):

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5058135-sse-nif-optimizer/?p=54592653

 

TLDR: Create your follower for "Oldrim", then convert. If somebody has a better idea, I'd be glad to learn ^^

[BaronofHe11]

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure generating the facegen files will fix the problem if the actor isn't part of the save file.

 

I am using Interesting NPCs SE which was converted from the oldrim version by the author. This still gave me the black face for one of the vampires the mod added. Generating the facegen fixed it but I also had to set the weight.

 

For the OP did you try the character on a new game? If not did you try using npcsetweight 35 on the npc after generating the facegen?

[lastgatsby12]

There seems some miss usage about Ctrl + F4/ it can geneate Actor facegen mesh which loaded as each headparts by CK and current tri morphs value.

so the way is correct, if the mod facegen not use mesh which exported by ECE or Racemenu.

 

But I believe, many NPC mods use ECE or Racemenu exported head.nif. Then CK generate (exported) facegen.nif,

need to be overwritten by head.nif (exproted by Racemenu,ECE) mesh . But keep nodes count and name with nif merge tool, or manually adjust by nifscope

as Algabar mentioned.

 

 

So "use Ctrl + F4 to remove problem" means, it generate facegen mesh and texture as same as we see in CK, and may remove many problems, but at same time,

, the facemesh have changed drastically from the original mod facegen data. (You can test it with some mods which ported for SE)

then compare facegen mesh of oldrim, and CK (SE) overwritten one (by ctrl+F4 or just save the esp in CK (SE) again..

It return pretty face to default vanilla mesh. :ohmy:

[xMik3x]

AFAIK, creating a standalone follower with custom hair and so on currently isn't possible using only SE as a basis. At least I don't know of any working method.

I recently tried to simply change the haircut of a follower using SE only - and I failed miserably. IMHO, the main problem is the fact, that "Nifmerge" can't handle SE meshes. And somewhere in the process you need Nifmerge...

 

 

What I do: Create followers for "Oldrim" first, then convert them. For the head meshes I use "Nif optimizer", body meshes and textures are replaced by SE compatible files. Regarding textures, you don't have to worry: Basically everything from "Oldrim" will work - as long as it fits the body type. Textures for "Oldrim" CBBE will work with CBBE SE, so will "Oldrim" UNP textures with UNP renewal.

 

Working on an "Oldrim" basis and converting later works fine. There's just one thing you have to remember (and hardly anybody tells you...): Nif optimizer often messes up the eyes of female followers. Here's how to fix it (post by R246):

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5058135-sse-nif-optimizer/?p=54592653

 

TLDR: Create your follower for "Oldrim", then convert. If somebody has a better idea, I'd be glad to learn ^^

 

I also gave up on the subject ever since making this thread, and now your solution gave me some hope to try again, i'm not exactly expert on this whole texture and modeling scene but i'm willing to try, i'll try your solution and hopefully post any progress, i really hope they can bring Nif Merge to SE, i did read it was problematic due to some .dll extensive change, anyways i'll give it a shot thanks!

 

 

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure generating the facegen files will fix the problem if the actor isn't part of the save file.

 

I am using Interesting NPCs SE which was converted from the oldrim version by the author. This still gave me the black face for one of the vampires the mod added. Generating the facegen fixed it but I also had to set the weight.

 

For the OP did you try the character on a new game? If not did you try using npcsetweight 35 on the npc after generating the facegen?

 

I didn't try the character in a new game yet, and i also didn't change their weight, i do however noticed that the CK kept changing their weight to 50 when i had them on 100 in game, i don't know if that was a problem on itself tho

 

Another issue i've noticed is that when saving the changes on the mod, i see an error pop out about the hair i'm trying to add: "No morphs found in TRI filePlease do not use empty TRI files." then again anything i try to change to custom on them seems to lead to dark face everytime.

 

i remember that about a year ago i made this character with custom hair through CK and it worked out, plain and simple, now that i recently tried to change a few things, wham, dark face.

 

But i will give it a shot again, just needed a break from this mess lol

 

 

There seems some miss usage about Ctrl + F4/ it can geneate Actor facegen mesh which loaded as each headparts by CK and current tri morphs value.

so the way is correct, if the mod facegen not use mesh which exported by ECE or Racemenu.

 

But I believe, many NPC mods use ECE or Racemenu exported head.nif. Then CK generate (exported) facegen.nif,

need to be overwritten by head.nif (exproted by Racemenu,ECE) mesh . But keep nodes count and name with nif merge tool, or manually adjust by nifscope

as Algabar mentioned.

 

 

So "use Ctrl + F4 to remove problem" means, it generate facegen mesh and texture as same as we see in CK, and may remove many problems, but at same time,

, the facemesh have changed drastically from the original mod facegen data. (You can test it with some mods which ported for SE)

then compare facegen mesh of oldrim, and CK (SE) overwritten one (by ctrl+F4 or just save the esp in CK (SE) again..

It return pretty face to default vanilla mesh. :ohmy:

 

This might explain why the first time i blindly added a custom follower with custom hair worked, never used racemenu nor knew about saving Facegen, interesting.

[Aureus]

A bit late but it might be useful to someone else looking for a solution.

Check the tattoos and dirt colors of your npc in the CK. Especially if you imported a face saved ingame with "savepcface". This command seems utterly bugged in SE as you end up with black tattoos and dirt colors most of the time.
Just change these to "color average", Ctrl+F4 and it should be fine.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Aureus

[justinglen75]

I just wanted to chime in on here :smile:

 

AFAIK, creating a standalone follower with custom hair and so on currently isn't possible using only SE as a basis. At least I don't know of any working method.

I recently tried to simply change the haircut of a follower using SE only - and I failed miserably. IMHO, the main problem is the fact, that "Nifmerge" can't handle SE meshes. And somewhere in the process you need Nifmerge...

 

 

What I do: Create followers for "Oldrim" first, then convert them. For the head meshes I use "Nif optimizer", body meshes and textures are replaced by SE compatible files. Regarding textures, you don't have to worry: Basically everything from "Oldrim" will work - as long as it fits the body type. Textures for "Oldrim" CBBE will work with CBBE SE, so will "Oldrim" UNP textures with UNP renewal.

 

Working on an "Oldrim" basis and converting later works fine. There's just one thing you have to remember (and hardly anybody tells you...): Nif optimizer often messes up the eyes of female followers. Here's how to fix it (post by R246):

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5058135-sse-nif-optimizer/?p=54592653

 

TLDR: Create your follower for "Oldrim", then convert. If somebody has a better idea, I'd be glad to learn ^^

 

That's funny that you mention this because I ran into this EXACT problem today while creating a standalone from Oldrim to SSE. Regarding the eyes of female followers, the photos below I believe is what you're referring to. The facegen/geom NIF file is fine before I use NIF Optimizer. After NIF optimizer (with Head Parts Only selected), you can noticeably see that the top half of the eye texture is translucent, exposing the hollow socket of the head mesh.

 

Before FaceGeom NIF is optimized with SSE NIF Optimizer

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1e_cb3sO9g4nW9IsdLyzGnDhnt8BMTQxp

 

After FaceGeom NIF is optimized with SSE NIF Optimizer (Head Parts Only selected)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GOMiFAdB1u1g5MsKLurGpCH0z_6c7qIg

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WSrnbon1XAISfH39Cejj92Og7DFHlNuF

Edited August 5, 2018 by justinglen75

[Algabar]

@justinglen75: Thanks for the screenshots! Yep, that's exactly what I was referring to. BTW, this can occur with male NPCs / followers too, but somehow it isn't as noticeable and distracting on males. Solution is basically the same as for females - just use a male eye mesh you know to be working as a base instead of a female one.

 

All credit goes to R246 (and maybe others) for finding a solution.

[justinglen75]

Yeppers, and I'm glad you mentioned that too because I was about to post up a question for the solution minutes before I read this post, hehe. I did what R246 did and it worked flawlessly so all is normal. :thumbsup:

 

@justinglen75: Thanks for the screenshots! Yep, that's exactly what I was referring to. BTW, this can occur with male NPCs / followers too, but somehow it isn't as noticeable and distracting on males. Solution is basically the same as for females - just use a male eye mesh you know to be working as a base instead of a female one.

 

All credit goes to R246 (and maybe others) for finding a solution.