RealConanette

Success! You deserve all the cookies! This will save me headaches going forward. TY ^_^

I'll give it a go! I was able to test-replace Cass' tex with no issues, and the wep texs I was working on. I wasn't even planning on modding Cullen but now it's a matter of the "why." I'll try a different version of the modmaker as suggested and see if it fixes the issue-- it would be good to use anyway if I could run into the problem again. Thanks so much!

I can hex edit to my heart's content and they work just fine (I've made like 80 in the past 2 weeks). I even tried another hex edit after this issue, wondering if my cache was corrupt- but loading that mod does not cause any issues. I'm using modmaker 1.1 and editing in GIMP. I just can't fathom how a character-specific head tex would make horses and other people disappear lol. I've tried re-making the mod it several times, so it wasn't a one-off. I defer to real computer people on this one. :)

I changed one DDS file as a test texture (on Cullen) and he's there but I cannot communicate with him. I ran around further and the Skyhold merchants, Dennet, and the mounts in stable were gone (so was Blackwall, but Solas is around). I was following a tutorial and haven't found any troubleshooting on how or why changing one DDS (it was the diffuse map of head, imported with the same compression as the original) would cause all this trouble. If I load the same save file without this test mod, everything is fine (so it's not a corrupt save). Clearly I should have taken a left at Albuquerque... but if anyone knows what I did wrong or how to amend this, I'd love the help!