SSE Noob trying to figure out skin tone mismatches

[Reefor]

I started trying to make NPCs a couple of months ago. I started with simple CK creations then jumped right into trying to create a high poly head. It didn't turn out well.

So I took a big step back and I played around with creating some NPCs with racemenu heads without nifmerge (tricking CK) and a couple with nifmerge.

I recently moved back up to high poly but before I go through trying to make a high poly head with nifmerge I'm playing around and learning more first. The 2 methods I'm currently playing around with is the non nif merge method (tricking CK) & proteus. Mostly Proteus while I practice making HP heads in racemenu because it's a much faster way to test the head.

To try to save time I downloaded some presets to give me a starting point and I'm ending up with some really bad color mismatches. I'm trying to wrap my head around it because it's one of the things I need to learn about.

On this one head (Claire - Available on Nexus) I made sure all the prerequisites are installed, I'm using the same skin that's recommended, and I went through it and turned off everything with a color dot (on the right in racemenu) but I'm still getting the color mismatch.

With this preset, instead of just a .jslot file here (D:\MO2\Skyrim AE\Overwrite\SKSE\Plugins\CharGen\Presets) it has it's own folder in my mods folder (D:\MO2\Skyrim AE\Mods\CLAIRE - A Racemenu preset by Cha\SKSE\Plugins\CharGen\Presets) and it has a meta.ini file in one of the folders. Is the meta file where info on prerequisites is kept? So I don't have to worry about having prerequires installed if the preset doesn't have a meta file? Or am I way off base?

And if I make one from scratch and don't make a meta file for it, then when I go to use it I can choose any human race, any texture, etc...?

Can someone help me get my head wrapped around this? I searched on line but can't find any info.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

[Algabar]

TBH, I don't know what .meta files are. But in the end it all comes down to meshes, textures and an .esp plugin...

 

Common causes for body-head discoloration (i.e. things for you to check):

 

1. Skin color in your NPC's plugin file doesn't match the skin tone chosen in Racemenu. The skin color numbers in the Creation Kit must match the RGB values of your preset in Racemenu. Check the body color in Racemenu, write it down or take a screenshot. Give your NPC exactly the same skin color in the CK. To change skin color in the CK, click on your NPC/actor. Go through the tabs. Somewhere there's an option for skin color. I think the tab is called "chargen something".

 

2. Forgotten facetint. When you export a head mesh via the "sculpt" tab in Racemenu, there's also a .dds texture. Normally, it should be in data/skse/plugins/chargen and have the same name as your exported head mesh. That's the facetint texture for your character. It contains lip color, cheek color, make up and so on. You need to replace the facetint texture in data/textures/actors/character/facegendata/facetint/[your plugin file] with the one from the "Chargen" folder. Also check your head textures in Nifskope. Often texture paths need to be adjusted.

 

3. Mismatched head textures in general. Again, Nifskope is your friend. Check, if the texture paths of your head mesh (the one in data/meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/[your esp] are correct (and if they match the texture paths you specified in the Creation Kit). A head mesh in Skyrim needs 5 types of textures: diffuse, subsurface texture (_sk), normalmap (_msn), specular (_s) and (this only goes for heads) a detailmap. This could be the clean "blankdetailmap.dds" or something like freckles, complexions etc. If one of these textures is in the wrong "slot" or doesn't match otherwise, you'll get head-body dicolorations...

[Reefor]

T

 

TBH, I don't know what .meta files are. But in the end it all comes down to meshes, textures and an .esp plugin...

 

Common causes for body-head discoloration (i.e. things for you to check):

 

1. Skin color in your NPC's plugin file doesn't match the skin tone chosen in Racemenu. The skin color numbers in the Creation Kit must match the RGB values of your preset in Racemenu. Check the body color in Racemenu, write it down or take a screenshot. Give your NPC exactly the same skin color in the CK. To change skin color in the CK, click on your NPC/actor. Go through the tabs. Somewhere there's an option for skin color. I think the tab is called "chargen something".

 

2. Forgotten facetint. When you export a head mesh via the "sculpt" tab in Racemenu, there's also a .dds texture. Normally, it should be in data/skse/plugins/chargen and have the same name as your exported head mesh. That's the facetint texture for your character. It contains lip color, cheek color, make up and so on. You need to replace the facetint texture in data/textures/actors/character/facegendata/facetint/[your plugin file] with the one from the "Chargen" folder. Also check your head textures in Nifskope. Often texture paths need to be adjusted.

 

3. Mismatched head textures in general. Again, Nifskope is your friend. Check, if the texture paths of your head mesh (the one in data/meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/[your esp] are correct (and if they match the texture paths you specified in the Creation Kit). A head mesh in Skyrim needs 5 types of textures: diffuse, subsurface texture (_sk), normalmap (_msn), specular (_s) and (this only goes for heads) a detailmap. This could be the clean "blankdetailmap.dds" or something like freckles, complexions etc. If one of these textures is in the wrong "slot" or doesn't match otherwise, you'll get head-body dicolorations...

Thanks Algabar, but for the most part I've been using Proteus. With Proteus you go into game, go into showracemenu, copy the preset onto your player, save it into Proteus, then place that preset save onto an NPC. So I don't even go into CK when using it which is why it's faster to test a head. But I've been having other problems with Proteus so I think I'm going to uninstall it and try doing it the right way.

2 new problems popped up.

Now when I go into racemenu either through a new start or showracemenu, when I switch over to female the girls head is purple until I change the complexion. And even then the head is a bit shiney, almost plastic like.

I also just went into CK to see if the new hair with physics work so I can try to make an NPC with it and the character there also had a shiney almost plastic like head.

I'm about to start searching for an answer on this, please let me know if you know what might cause it.

Also, I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but CBBE's [unique] Body Amazing stopped working for some reason and I was getting NPCs with that ugly underwear on. I copied and pasted the body mesh from CBBE's Unique folder into their main folder and into my character assets folder. A new body showed up in the "outfit/body" pulldown in bodyslide named "CBBE 3BBB Body Amazing" without the "[unique]" in front of it and that's the one I've been using to get rid of the ugly underwear. I don't know if that has anything to do with the shiney head or not, but I'm thinking of trying to put the vanilla head in there instead to see if that fixes it. But I'm not sure if mix & matching the vanilla head with the CBBE body will cause other problems.

I'm going to try to google search to see if I can find info before doing anything. Please let me know if you have any ideas on this/these problems.

Thanks again.

[Reefor]

I did some searching and read a post of someone converting a LE follower to an SE follower who was getting the same shiny face. He posted a pic, it's the same face. His problem was a missing specular map.

I'm not sure where CK & Racemeu is getting their textures but I'm pretty sure it's either my character assets folder or the CBBE female character folder. Right now I have the textures from the Leyanda body mod in there, I'm gong to try the Diamond body mod's textures instead. I really don't want to use the vanilla textures, they are really ugly.

Nope, that did no good for either racemenu or CK. I'm going to try to load CK with the high poly head and see if that helps. Yep, when I loaded the high poly head and started a new character and went to the "character gen morphs" tab I was able to change the face to "00KLH_FemaleHeadImperial" which got rid of the shiny face. This is the first time I went into CK since I installed the high poly head. I'll try that in racemenu now. Yep, I got the purple face then went right to "face parts", switched it to highpoly and it fixed without changing anything else.

Does this mean that when I'm making a character with a high poly head, when I'm creating the head to export from CK I have to change the face to the high poly?
That might explain why my early attempts at a high poly head follower failed.

[Reefor]

And I have another question. When I try to put a wig or hair with physics on the NPC in CK it crashes, even when I put on the high poly head. Does CK not work with hair with physics? If I create the hair instead of just trying to use what comes up in the list, will let me use hair with physics? Is there another "work around"?

If not, then is there any other way to make a follower with hair with physics? If I export the head in CK with regular hair and try to merge it with a racemenu export with hair with physics, will that work or will that mess things up?

Any help would be appreciated.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Reefor