Vanilla Hair Replacer Known Issues? Affecting Some NPC Mods?

[Gorgopis]

We find that the Vanilla Hair Replacer Mod works as expected, but in a few rare cases of a couple of NPC standalone follower mods, the expected NPC-in-game face does not match the Mod images provided on the mod page by the mod authors.

 

If we disable VHR, we find the NPC-followers will look as published in the mod-authors' images.

 

We have tried re-pathing original NPC-Mod facegen NIF files, to no avail, in attempts to reacquire the mod author's original faces, and still run the VHR mod.

 

Does anyone understand what's happening?

 

We're guessing that VHR was compiled with a certain head-size or head nif, and that NPC mods with different head sizes/nifs cannot be displayed as they look in their original esp facegen NIF.

 

Or might it be a load-order issue? Should we place the NPC mod after VHR?

 

Thanks.

 

 

[Algabar]

So, if I understand correctly, we're talking about custom followers added by mods, right?

 

If so, the only possible explanation I can see would be that those follower mods use Vanilla hairstyles and also don't have custom file paths for these hair meshes. I'm not an expert on followers, but AFAIK, the meshes used in game must match the ones in the follower's .esp file. Otherwise you'll get all sort of weirdness. BTW, that's why you can't change a follower's hair style by simply replacing the follower's hair meshes with something else.

 

IMHO, using common game assets for NPCs/player on custom followers is generally bad modding practice. One can do that for body meshes maybe, but "standalone" followers should be exactly that - standalone. This means, the modders should copy the hair meshes they use into a custom folder and set up file paths to that custom folder, not to the general folders that are used for all NPCs and the player character.

 

If I understood the situation correctly, unfortunately there's no easy fix. Since we're talking about mesh replacers, load order shouldn't matter. You could either "rebuild" the affected followers by giving them back their original hair style in a custom file path, disable the hair replacer - or use truly "standalone" followers.

[Gorgopis]

Wow! @Algabar, thanks for reply!

 

Yes, we tried to download and add a (not ours) custom follower NPC (call her June) mod with a custom-face from the Nexus, but after Vortex loads her into the game, and we play, with VHR enabled, June appears with a completely different face than the one shown in the mod-author's images, and June now has a VHR-replacement hairdo.

 

If we disable V(anilla)H(air)R(eplacer), and play, June appears exactly as exhibited and expected in the mod-author's original image files.

 

We experimented, and started the CK and loaded June, and checked her textures and NIF's, and we found that June had no NIF for a named hairstyle, though she did have texture files for that named specific hairstyle not found anywhere on our system. This actual hairstyle and its textures showed in game on June with VHR disabled.

 

Is VHR "compensating" or seeing June somehow as a vanilla race and character? IYO? (We tried replicating the details of the June mod inside the VHR mod, but broke our game. Yo-Ho Yo-Ho, a modder's life for us! So we undid all that and also reinstalled VHR.)

 

But! Please wait! You raise another interesting issue we encountered for the first time, when we made recent custom standalone followers. We have had some Skyrim SE success. And published SE NPC standalone follower mods. (We usually give them all new NIF's and textures. . . .)

 

But we recently tried making a standalone NPC follower, (call her Ina), with all of her own custom meshes. Now Ina shows the bright-face-dark-body appearance. We ordinarily fix this by re-pathing the NIF, and then by "adjusting" RGB's in the CK character gen window, but this time with no success, making us think we were successful accidentally the first TWO times.

 

We also added a second NPC to the same custom Ina-NPC-mod, and this second NPC shows not only severe face-body color mismatches in CK and in-game, but she has "tear-lines" around her mouth in the CK and in-game.

 

We haven't seen this before, although we used (and duplicated the same head-NIF for both NPC's. Sigh! We think we may have integrated common game assets, in the creation of these characters, according to your observations?

 

We could start over, but maybe you have some good ideas about where we might concentrate?

 

Gratitude!

Edited January 11, 2022 by Gorgopis

[Algabar]

Hi, I'll try to anwer... :cool:

Yes, we tried to download and add a (not ours) custom follower NPC (call her June) mod with a custom-face from the Nexus, but after Vortex loads her into the game, and we play, with VHR enabled, June appears with a completely different face than the one shown in the mod-author's images, and June now has a VHR-replacement hairdo.

 

If we disable V(anilla)H(air)R(eplacer), and play, June appears exactly as exhibited and expected in the mod-author's original image files.

 

We experimented, and started the CK and loaded June, and checked her textures and NIF's, and we found that June had no NIF for a named hairstyle, though she did have texture files for that named specific hairstyle not found anywhere on our system. This actual hairstyle and its textures showed in game on June with VHR disabled.

 

Is VHR "compensating" or seeing June somehow as a vanilla race and character? IYO? (We tried replicating the details of the June mod inside the VHR mod, but broke our game. Yo-Ho Yo-Ho, a modder's life for us! So we undid all that and also reinstalled VHR.)

 

As I said above, judging from the "results" in game, there MUST be some interference between June and the VHR mod. Maybe you can load her .esp file once again in the CK. Different mod authors name their assets differently, but there should be some "head parts", that are probably named something with "hair". Have a close look at these "head parts" and check, how the hair meshes are named and where exactly the files are supposed to be. Maybe that can give you a clue.

 

"Race" in general shouldn't matter. Assigning a playable race to a custom follower (e.g. making a Nord or Dark Elf follower) usually isn't problematic. In fact, that's what a lot of (or maybe most) mod authors do. Problems should only occur, if the follower uses a Vanilla hair style - which then is changed into something else by VHR.

 

 

 

But! Please wait! You raise another interesting issue we encountered for the first time, when we made recent custom standalone followers. We have had some Skyrim SE success. And published SE NPC standalone follower mods. (We usually give them all new NIF's and textures. . . .)

 

But we recently tried making a standalone NPC follower, (call her Ina), with all of her own custom meshes. Now Ina shows the bright-face-dark-body appearance. We ordinarily fix this by re-pathing the NIF, and then by "adjusting" RGB's in the CK character gen window, but this time with no success, making us think we were successful accidentally the first TWO times.

 

Head-body discolorations usually occur, when the skin tone used in the character preset (e.g. in Racemenu or ECE) doesn't exactly match the skin color set in the CK. Compared to the usual workflow, you did it "the other way round". Usually you set your skin tone in game first while creating the character preset. Then you note the RGB values and adjust the skin tone in the CK accordingly.

 

There's a caveat though (which once nearly drove me mad): At least in Racemenu (I don't know about ECE TBH), you can also adjust the "saturation" (or whatever it really is) of the skin tone. This is done with the lowest of the color sliders. In the CK's color system, there is no such value. This means: If you change this "saturation" slider, you get "unfixable" head-body discolorations. You can easily check this by looking at the numeric values of the skin tone during character creation. There should be four values: A, R, G, and B. The first one MUST read "A:255". Otherwise your follower's body and head color will never match.

 

Another thing to check are the texture paths of the head mesh under "data/meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/[your follower mod's name]".

For this, you use Nifskope. Check, if the texture paths are correct. Even the smallest typo will cause problems here. File paths in Nifskope should always start with "textures/...".

Often people forget to adjust the path of the tintmask texture. In Nifskope, it should point to the following folder: textures/actors/character/facegendata/facetint/[your follower mod's name]/[your tintmask].dds

 

In short: I wouldn't recommend to start over. Better check 1. your skin tone settings in the CK and 2. the file paths of your head mesh in Nifskope.

 

For all the small details, you might want to check this in-depth tutorial. It's extremely long, but you can easily navigate through it with the timestamps in the description.

 

Good luck with your followers!

[Gorgopis]

OK, thanks!

 

We don't use ECE, and these followers never started with Racemenu, but we built them from "scratch" in the CK. We'll get a magnifying glass going on the RGB values and pathing.