[LE] Creating a Standalone Character Problems

[Neotox428]

Hello Everyone. So I am about to pull my hair out! I have created several standalone characters in the past and they are all still working and I had no problems creating them. I haven't played skyrim in a while and thought..hey I will create a standalone for a quest idea that has been in my head. First of all in all of my other standalones I used the same tutorial and it worked fine. They all worked fine. The only thing I have done different since the last character i created is added the Proteus mod to my game. I like it because you can create various types of followers including importing your own character from a previous playthrough. Now when I create the standalone it will not work. The textures are all mucked up for the head. It is a female character with no warpaint yet when I import the head into CK it has warpaint on the face. CK kinda goes wonky because when I update the full body the head "face" looks fine and correct. Then I can update just the head and it goes back to warpaint. The only thing the character has that I put on was a mole in Racemenu. The mole shows up in CK on the full body update and the warpaint shows on the head update. Whats crazy is that it will reverse at times. Warpaint on full and mole on head updates. I can fix the hair in ck from the default nord hair to KS hairdo's that I use and all looks fine. I continue the process of creating the character and go test it in game...that's where the whole thing gets even crazier.

 

So I load up the game and go to the follower and crap....warpaint on the face and some crazy hair I didn't use or choose. It is KS hair but just not the one i used. I have went through the entire process of creating this character 3 times now and it is the same in the test...freaking warpaint and wrong hair on correct face and body meshes. The skin textures work fine...no head, feet or hand lines....skin tones are all good. just the face texture is screwed up with warpaint and no mole and hair is wrong. Check the NIF for the test game and it looks correct. Problem is, in game it is not the correct face and head. I have completely deleted ALL files associated with this character on all three occasions of trying to get it to work and it always is the same then. When I say 3 times I mean clean from the very beginning scratch building. After the third time that crap was getting old and I just said screw it...but it keeps nagging at me. Why, what, where are things going wrong. In my thinking of what has changed since my last creation in CK and it has been two things. I updated skyrim se to get the fishing and stuff that was in the last update. Then went back and reverted to Skyrim SE keeping the updated material...I am sure a lot of people have done that and it worked fine. Then I installed Proteus to create the followers in game and it works great. In my thinking I thought maybe Proteus may be involved in this debacle. My reasoning is that proteus installs Enhanced Character Edit (ECE) which is incompatible with Racemenu as far as I know. Loot even shows warning about it. It is in my loadorder and loads ingame...even an option in Proteus to open ECE. That being said, I created the head mesh export in Racemenu as always. But now it just won't work. So i am thinking maybe the ECE instance within proteus is fowling up something. because ECE is in Proteus.

 

Does anyone know if this issue has been observed by updating Skyrim se then reverting back to skyrim se or do you think it has something to do with Proteus as I suspect? Any thoughts and discussions would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

[Sphered]

Disclaimer I skimmed and just giving the no bs solution to what appears to be your issue

 

Your woes are in the .nif and dds gen files. You don't need the ck. Just Racemenu or ECE. Sculpt whatever paints and blemishes you want, then export that face. In your case you only need the dds file. Rename that dds file to be their facegen aka 00000D62.dds or whatever. Adjust skin tone here too to blend. This is what the game cares about for paints and such, and you can get something way more custom sculpting in game with mods vs using the CK here

[Neotox428]

Disclaimer I skimmed and just giving the no bs solution to what appears to be your issue

 

Your woes are in the .nif and dds gen files. You don't need the ck. Just Racemenu or ECE. Sculpt whatever paints and blemishes you want, then export that face. In your case you only need the dds file. Rename that dds file to be their facegen aka 00000D62.dds or whatever. Adjust skin tone here too to blend. This is what the game cares about for paints and such, and you can get something way more custom sculpting in game with mods vs using the CK here

Ok so when I install the mod after all is done and ready....I open the game to see if the mod is working go to the character and it is the same problem. Not the correct head. I close out go to the mod and check the nif and it is perfect yet screwed up in the game...what gives. the nif and dds in the "installed mod" are correct. So why ingame they are screwed...there has to be a nif and dds that is overwritting them...problem is...where is it?

[Neotox428]

 

Disclaimer I skimmed and just giving the no bs solution to what appears to be your issue

 

Your woes are in the .nif and dds gen files. You don't need the ck. Just Racemenu or ECE. Sculpt whatever paints and blemishes you want, then export that face. In your case you only need the dds file. Rename that dds file to be their facegen aka 00000D62.dds or whatever. Adjust skin tone here too to blend. This is what the game cares about for paints and such, and you can get something way more custom sculpting in game with mods vs using the CK here

Ok so when I install the mod after all is done and ready....I open the game to see if the mod is working go to the character and it is the same problem. Not the correct head. I close out go to the mod and check the nif and it is perfect yet screwed up in the game...what gives. the nif and dds in the "installed mod" are correct. So why ingame they are screwed...there has to be a nif and dds that is overwritting them...problem is...where is it?

 

Ok after dicking around with this I checked the nif and dds files in the installed mod. Found an error pointing to the dds file in textures corrected that and the face appears normal without the mole which is still strange...but never the less it doesn't have the warpaint it had. Also it was pointing to the Warpaint file in the esp. I removed the warpaint reference "44" and it went away but still no mole. My best guess as to what is going on is the esp is corrupting somehow when I save the esp from CK. When I open the esp file with SSEdit there is some funky stuff going on looks like...the hair is pointing to "Nord" hair and not the KS hairdo hair so that would explain the wrong hairdo....just can't figure out why that would be. I am going to go into CK again and save the ESP and see what happens...This is so frustrating...I have created several followers in the past and never this much hassle...LOL

[Neotox428]

OMFG i am going to freaking explode! LOL so I start all over....gonna go through the whole process starting with RaceMenu exporting the head....I have no options for face paint...war paint...nothing...can not choose any overlays whatsoever. So can't even recreate the freaking head. Tried importing the saved head and worked fine...everything looked fine in RaceMenu had the mole...makeup...everything...but there was no choices to change any of it in facepaint, makeup...come to think of it don't even think there was an option for makeup any more...that is why the freaking thing will not work I am sure...something is totally gobbed up LOL....I am about to call it quits...

 

I can 100% guarantee I replaced all the Nif's and dds's in the game with correct ones and it totally won't freaking work...still getting the warpaint in game on face and wrong hair.

[Neotox428]

Re installed CK, Racemenu, changed character voice to eventoned female and now it all works in game correctly...now I sleep.

[Neotox428]