NPC Face Replacers not Working... am I missing something?

[DinozoarHunter]

For some strange reason, mods meant to replace NPC faces aren't working in my game... and I don't know why; they use to work just fine. I've tried deactivating all mods until only the essential ones remain... nothing. I've tried reinstalling the game and using only the face mods... still nothing. My only guess at this point is I'm missing an essential mod, but I have everything listed under requirements on Nexus... or that I'm suppose to do something to activate them? This is just weird and I don't know what to do about it.

[scorrp10]

Which mods specifically?   which mod organizer are you using?  

[anjenthedog]

They don't work at all, or the results are not what you expected/were "advertised"?

If they don't work at all, then I'd expect there was some sort of load order issue, the associated mod has not been enabled, or some required step was omitted during deployment of the game (including, ironically enough, the deployment action itself, which other vortex users might occasionally recall having done at some point...like me). - idk if MO2 has a "deployment" action, so if you use MO2 I'll defer to the those who do.

If they're not producing what you expected but are still visibly altering the affected NPCs, I'd guess a load order problem, missed requirements, or a body type you haven't installed (so is unsupported) 

 

 

[Karna5]

5 hours ago, anjenthedog said:

If they're not producing what you expected but are still visibly altering the affected NPCs, I'd guess a load order problem

Dang anjenthedog, you're always full of great ideas! My game has had a strange puzzle for several weeks in which several NPCs have dark black heads, and the other day I narrowed it down to only NPCs created by some of the mods I use (not vanilla heads). But I couldn't see anything in the plugins which would explain why they have this issue.

I did not think of playing with the load order. Thanks! I'll be sure to try that next time I play.

[scorrp10]

Black heads are nearly always due to .esp load order not matching the file precedence (most often when a mod with a .bsa loads after a mod with loose files)

[Karna5]

1 hour ago, scorrp10 said:

Black heads are nearly always due to .esp load order not matching the file precedence (most often when a mod with a .bsa loads after a mod with loose files)

So I've been experimenting with load order on one of the mods I know to have the black head issue, and that isn't solving it. Whether I put the plugin at the top or the bottom of the order, the head is still black.

Next I carefully read the NPC's record in the plugin, and I noticed there's no skin texture set for the head. So I tried setting the skin texture to female head breton as she's breton, but that didn't help.

In Fallout 4 if there's a mod which has this problem, I can fix it by using the FaceRipper mod to inject a full NPC preset onto the NPC's record.

I'm  newer to Skyrim AE, however, and have never come across something life FaceRipper for Skyrim.

How do people in Skyrim set NPC appearances in plugins? I'd like to try simply forcing a compatible appearance on the plugin.

Thanks.

p.s. I did try the "skee preset-load smp21" command where smp21 is an exported RaceMenu preset, but that's not working. I think I need to actually fix the full NPC record.

[DinozoarHunter]

I'm using Mod Manager 2...

And by not working, I mean the face geometry of the mod isn't being applied... hair, skin and make-up all appear fine, but the faces are still the base game faces... my only guess at this time is I'm either missing an essential mod that isn't listed under any of the requirements... or I have a wrong version of an essential mod like the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch, but I've checked them all and they appear to be up to date.

And when it comes to which mods, I've tried several, like High Poly NPC Overhaul, Pandorable's Males 3, plus a couple other that alter Ralof's appearance (since he's the first major NPC you see clearly), but every time it's the same thing... his hair, skin and makeup can change, but the base game geometry remains unchanged.

EDIT: Okay, so I've tried adding a skin mod and took a few pictures, and... I think I might be mistaken? There does appear to be some kind of difference between each version... but man is it subtle... like, seriously, even with the pictures, the difference isn't that significant... 

Edited September 10, 2024 by DinozoarHunter

[scorrp10]

So...  the head part editor IDs used by actor record must exactly match mesh names in the head file...  else you get black face.

Next...   a head part assigned texture set is only relevant when trying to use that part in Racemenu.  Otherwise game just uses textures specified in the head .nif itself.

One really should use SSEEdit to check their load order.  I.e for Ralof, expand Skyrim.esm - NPC - look for 0002BF9D - and see which plugin is listed rightmost.  That is the one actually being used. Then, check file conflict resolution on the owning mod.  Namely, who got priorty on meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/Skyrim.esm/0002BF9D.nif

 

[Morgoth3791]

Same problem here. Uninstalled Skyrim SE several times, deleted all relevant files in the Steam folder, in the Documents folder, and in the Vortex %AppData% folder.

My load order: SKSE64 followed by Botox for Skyrim ... black face and no visual improvement. Did it all over again (uninstall, delete, etc.). New load order: SKSE64 and Pandorable's NPCs. No black face yet no improvent. Tried again with Bijin, CBBE, UNP, etc.

Absolutely nothing changes in the NPCs. I have literally been at this for two weeks (bye bye Christmas vacation).

I tried installing various collections for both Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE and they ALL crash. Nothing seems to be working anymore. I was wondering whether this could be a problem somewhere with the Nexus website. Tried Mod Organizer 2 instead of Vortex and the bugger crashed when trying to install a mod from Nexus ... a SINGLE mod.

[Karna5]

Just an FYI, I use Hipoly head, BNP skin, 3BA and the basics. And I had a few play throughs where some of he NPCs had black faces and were immune to the "skee preset-load [filename]" command.

This play through I decided to uninstall the Babodialogue mod, and now all the NPCs no longer have black faces and look like they should. And racemenu works on them as well.

It seems babodialogue was in conflict with at least some of my mods. For instance, I had the Circle of Lust installed at the same time as Babodialogue, and Circle of Lust never worked. This play through where I no longer have babodialogue, the circle of lust is working perfectly (and it's a pretty neat mod).

If anyone here is using Babodialogue, you should probably be aware it may be what's causing your incompatibilities.

If you don't have babodialogue, you probably have something else incompatible.