Blackface only in mod-added NPCs

[Baconator96]

I'm still learning a lot of aspects of getting the hang of a complex load order. One of those things apparently, is getting mod-added NPCs to generate correctly. I have no issues so far with any VANILLA NPCs, my skin replacer and CBBE are working fine there. RS children is fine, and any mod-added children with an RS patch are also fine.

However, I do not see any conflicting or missing facegen data for say, Capital Windhelm or any of the Great Cities that I opted for, yet the blackface bug persists. Where should I be looking next if very quick show conflicts doesn't show anything and even loading my full LO in regular xEdit and checking for any possible conflicts shows nothing? Is this just a matter of placement of my appearance mods, which I have at the bottom of my LO just above flat world map framework?

[scorrp10]

It is much easier to get black face on vanilla NPCs cause you can have multiple mods competing for them.   Mod-added NPCs should have a single head file and single esp record.

Unless you did some shenanigans such as converting their mods to ESL or squashed mods together into a single plugin and such...

[Baconator96]

No, the most out-of-pocket thing I've done so far is just tweak a bit of landscape near Windhelm that I couldn't fix by reordering my LO. That's why I mentioned my appearance mods, like racial skin variance and CBBE, which I have at the bottom just above FWMF. I cant figure out whats conflicting because again, xEdit reports nothing of the sort. It's happening from the TGC cities all the way down to a tiny, barely downloaded mod called Scaleside. Every vanilla NPC looks fine and I have yet to encounter one with blackface, it is JUST mod-added NPCs and so far any mod I can get an RS Children patch for works fine as well. So it definitely seems like a conflict, but if it isnt my appearance mods then I have no idea what to even check. I have already gone through every ESP conflict in xedit manually and the only NPC records reporting conflicts so far have not been on NPCs with the issue.

[scorrp10]

Any mods that potentially mess with any of the head part  editor IDs?    Or with races?

Lets do a deep dive.   Say I got this Ivy mod by LamaKreis which adds this cutie:

Examined via More Informative Console, one can see that her base is defined and last changed in Ivy.esp and  so is her ref.    No overloads.    Ivy .esp is a light mod, and in my load order,   it index is FE(05B)

So, I go into SSEEdit,  find Ivy.esp, expand her NPC (Actor) record, form Id  FE05BD64.   I see that her Race (RNAM) is Wood Elf,  and scrolling further, I see that her head parts are:
FemaleBrowsHuman11   (000E4DA8)
AAA_Ivy_Face (FE05B801)   
AAA_Ivy_Hair (FE05BD6B)    
If I look into head part section and examine AAA_Ivy_Hair, I can see that two Extra parts:
AAA_Ivy_Hairline (FE05BD6C)
AAA_Ivy_Hairline02 (FE05B800)

Any part that is not listed specifically in the actor record, will be provided by the Race record.
So I go to Skyrim.esm, Race section, WoodElfRace (00013749) and look for Head Data - Female Head Data, I can see that default head parts are (excludng those already defined in the actor record)   This is where it is a really good idea which mods are potentially overwriting the WoodElfRace record,  and what default head parts they might be listing.
FemaleMouthHumanoidDefault (0005150F)
FemaleEyesWoodElfBrown (00051510)

Those editor IDs (in bold) are important.    Lets now go to SSE/Data/Meshes/actors/character/FacegenData/FaceGeom/Ivy.esp   and open 00000D64.nif in NifScope.   (Since FE05B is the plugin index, the NPC FormID within the mod is just 00000D64)
I expand the FaceGen NiNode and look at the component mesh names:

Now, as you can see, the names of those meshes are EXACTLY  (capitalization is important) the same as the Editor IDs of the head parts listed above in bold.  Even a single letter mismatch in one of those names and you get a black face bug.

[Baconator96]

I've got some deep digging to do then it seems. Am I wrong in thinking that it makes less sense to be a race record since vanilla NPCs are seemingly fine?

[scorrp10]

It is indeed quite weird.   Just pick some mod-added NPC, and establish what causes their black face - that is, which head part EditorID  does not match a shape in their head  .nif.    Once you can establish it for  one , it might be possible to determine while vanilla NPCs are not affected.

[Baconator96]

Weirdly the conflict I just checked from Capital Windhelm says its reference was established by the KS+HPH patch for Capital Windhelm, but was most recently changed by the CEO Windhelm - CWE patch, which has both its plugins and assets far above said patch. the KS+HPH plugin is also at the bottom of the order

 

 

 

[scorrp10]

Not sure why that NPC is so white, but the HPH/KS Hair Patch' could definitely be the culprit.      

[sattyre]

Sounds like it may be asset based.  If you have assets for NPCs that change appearance in any way those assets can overwrite the assets of npcs, especially if the NPCs are in an archive, because everyone should know, Loose files always overwrite archived files, regardless of where they are in your mod list.

So if it isn't a problem of race records, which will or can affect only a single sex or race or vampire, then it is one of several issues. 1: out of order assets and esps.  2: Assets from a mod overwriting assets needed for the NPC faces.  3: Loose assets vs archived NPCs, (which is actually the same as 2) or 4: sometimes it is that a mod created in Skyrim LE hasn't had the head assets imported from the creation kit for SE.

If I was going to make a guess, it would be an asset overwrite somewhere, unless of course you got your town overhauls from LE

If the problem isn't asset order, but Loose vs archive, the answer then is to archive the offending assets.  It will also work the other way around, but SE works best with everything in archives.  It seems contradictive, but the game actually retrieves and uses archived assets faster then it does for Loose.

[Baconator96]

The NPC is white because I had her selected with the console lol. It was 100% that patch, which I had totally forgotten about until I saw that in the console. Digging through the comments I found a message mentioning that the NPCs were generated with facegen textures but no meshes(??). I attempted to regenerate a single NPC in the CK to test, exported the meshes and textures, packed into a BSA, and put the associated plugin dead last in my load order as well as the assets in the left panel, and I still had blackface on that NPC. So either that isnt the actual issue or, more likely, I did the process wrong. For now the blackface bug appears to be gone though at the expense of having to look at ugly vanilla faces.

The other handful of mods I was able to download NPC overhauls for and simply disregard the task of troubleshooting the base blackface. This leaves me with a handful of child NPCs that I can easily identify as being from mods with no RS Children patch, which is next on my list of to-learns.