Unofficial patch breaks skin mods

[Taithan]

I'm at a complete loss at this point. the problem is what it says. I tried a complete reinstall after not playing after a while and the Unofficial Patch now breaks any skin mod I try to use. Here's what I've learned so far through testing and suffering:

It's not the skin mod I use (Leyenda Skin UUNP 4K), I've tried it with others and the same issue occurs.
It's not the body replacer I use (Legacy UUNP [Due to a custom slider set which doesn't work with BHUNP]) it's still broken without one or with CBBE.
Installing Racemenu or even the super duper new one from Patreon doesn't solve the issue.
My load order isn't the issue.
Loose files in texture folders isn't the issue.

I've made sure Racemenu's tintmasks aren't screwed

The NPCs affected seem to be completely random, some named npcs are changed some aren't, some randomly generated npcs are changed some aren't. (It does seem to be consistent between tests)

 

Something I've tried to do in a sort of makeshift attempt to try and force it to work is manually replacing files with the ones from my skin mod, but that didn't work and created its own problem (It causes the mod face texture to show up by default, even if no skin mod is installed, deleting files and verifying nor reinstalls fix it, I really don't care as long as I fix the issue I made this post for)

The last thing I was told to try before my request on another site died was "Based on the 2nd picture, it looks to me that the texture mod does not include detail maps for the age difference - femaleheaddetail_age40.dds and femaleheaddetail_age50.dds, therefore it defaults to the vanilla textures" This hasn't been an issue before but it's still something that might lead to a solution but I have no idea at this point.

Here are some screenshots.

The default player

Randomly generated NPC

Gerdur and what the mod should roughly make faces look like.

I'm at a loss at this point. I enjoy Skyrim and I love playing with mods and this seemingly unfixable issue has been super aggravating. I'm desperate at this point.

[anjenthedog]

Something appears to be telling it that you're an old person. Maybe a dumb question, but how old are "you" (your player)?

 

 

edit (day later): Wait... do you want the last snapshot, but aged? I thought you were expecting the third one (youthful) but were getting one of the other two (aged).

 

AND, have you checked your head model for compatibility? I downloaded a slew of racemenu presets that have gorgeous faces (in the author-made snapshots they come with), but when I apply them to my player, she looks grotesque, due to the old high polygon count head model (ie the one before there was anything people called "high poly head", back ~2018 or so)

[Algabar]

TBH, I'm not a native speaker, so maybe that's why I missed something... But what exactly is the issue? NPCs looking "old" although they shouldn't? Player character looking "old"? You write about "broken" skin mods. So, how exactly are they "broken"?

 

And why do you think, USSEP is the culprit? Any evidence for that? TBH, I really doubt USSEP changes skin textures or the like.

 

I'd like to help, but we need more and clearer information.

[Taithan]

"Something appears to be telling it that you're an old person. Maybe a dumb question, but how old are "you" (your player)?" I never actually touched the age slider, but doing so results in no change.

"Wait... do you want the last snapshot, but aged? I thought you were expecting the third one (youthful) but were getting one of the other two (aged)." No, I wanted the third one, looking aged isn't what I want.

"AND, have you checked your head model for compatibility? I downloaded a slew of racemenu presets that have gorgeous faces (in the author-made snapshots they come with), but when I apply them to my player, she looks grotesque, due to the old high polygon count head model (ie the one before there was anything people called "high poly head", back ~2018 or so)" I don't know, I've never checked. How would I go about doing that?

"TBH, I'm not a native speaker, so maybe that's why I missed something... But what exactly is the issue? NPCs looking "old" although they shouldn't? Player character looking "old"? You write about "broken" skin mods. So, how exactly are they "broken"?" Because they are appearing to have facial textures from vanilla, rather than using the face textures from the mod.

"And why do you think, USSEP is the culprit? Any evidence for that? TBH, I really doubt USSEP changes skin textures or the like." I haven't tested any of the other mods I want to install to see if they cause the same issue, but mods like my body replacer, Bodyslide, racemenu, skyUI, those mods leave the skin mod working as intended, but as soon as I enable USSEP it stops working.

[Algabar]

Elder people are part of the game. This is by design. Some people are meant to look old - both males and females. Technically, old people in the game belong to a special "elder" race, that also (partly) has its own texture set.

 

This mod makes elder women in the game look a bit "younger". Maybe that's something for you. Basically, it just replaces the face detailmaps for elder women. Detailmaps might indeed be a thing. Wrinkles and also complexions are applied to NPCs via detailmaps. So, if your skin mod doesn't contain its own detailmaps, in fact the Vanilla ones might be used. That's where the mod I linked above comes into play.

BTW, detail maps aren't the same as "face textures". Think of them as an additional, semi-transparent layer on top of the actual face textures.

 

If you want to have only young women in your game, you could change textures yourself: Replace the textures in Skyrim SE/data/textures/actors/character/femaleold with the ones from your skin mod. To remove "old" detailmaps completely, you could copy the "blankdetailmap.dds" from your skin mod into Skyrim SE/data/textures/actors/character/female. Replace anything named "femaleheaddetail_age[xx]" with the "blankdetailmap.dds" (meaning: copy and rename it).

 

Regarding USSEP, I don't have a clue TBH. USSEP is basically a bug fix patch. As such, it obviously also makes changes to NPCs. It doesn't change their age or appearance though. In addition, USSEP is usually loaded at the very top of your load order, meaning it should be overwritten by almost any other mod. So, this one still remains a mistery for me.

 

Regarding presets: Triple-check the requirements. Many presets depend on a lot of mods. You need to install all these mods, if you want the presets to look exactly like advertised. IMHO, using presets often means a lot of hassle. That's why I prefer to create my own characters...

[Taithan]

Sorry for not responding in a bit, I tried out that mod, and it seems to work! Issue is it doesn't resolve the issue completely, but I'm pretty sure it does tell me that the issue is the mod still displaying the vanilla detailmaps.

 

However when I tried to follow through with replacing/removing the "old" detailmaps I discovered the mod I'm currently using doesn't have a blankdetailmap.dds in it, I've found the femaleheaddetail_age[xx].dds files but I don't have anything to replace them with. Should I look for another mod to grab its file? Or is there one you can send me?

[Algabar]

I should have been a bit more precise about the blankdetailmap.dds. Sorry. It is a common resource used by male and female characters alike. Therefore, it's not in the same folder as other female (only) textures.

You can find the blankdetailmap.dds in Skyrim Se/data/textures/actors/characters/male

 

Usually, skin mods come with their own blankdetailmap.dds. I'm not sure, if Leyenda Skin has one or not.

 

A mod, that definitely has a very good blankdetailmap.dds, is Fair Skin Complexion. Alternatively, you can also use the blankdetailmap.dds from the male skin mod Vitruvia. Remember - this texture is "unisex"...

To access blankdetailmap.dds, you can download one of the mods manually and unzip it with 7zip or any other program, that can unpack zip archives. You can then copy that single texture over.

 

Why do I recommend those two mods? Because their blankdetailmap.dds files are 99% seamless. The Vanilla one for example causes slight neckseams... These two don't. TBH, I'm using them all the time e.g. for my personal followers (male and female), no matter what other body textures I use for the rest.

[Taithan]

I think I've done it! So the femaleheaddetail_age[xx].dds files I found before were added by This mod and since it didn't work I uninstalled it. So I took two copies of blankdetailmap.dds from Fair Skin Complexion and renamed one femaleheaddetail_age40.dds and the other femaleheaddetail_age50.dds, as those were the two numbers I remembered, and put another copy of blankdetailmap.dds in the folder for good measure and it works!

I'll get to work on adding my other mods in, but I think the issue is solved.