Face Bloat - Dear God please help me

[LeastDegenAzuraEnjoyer]

So I have an issue where Standalone Follower Mods have their face bloated.

I cannot figure out why.

The mods themselves are not broken from source: I have had them working just fine before. The mod authors cannot help me as there is nothing wrong with those mods.

But sometimes, some modded Followers, and only modded, standalone followers, will have their face not BLACK, but BLOATED. 

It has so far affected Nords, Bretons and Chimer Elf Race (modded, Miri follower). It seems to only affect women. Their faces get rounded and some of the textures start to break. In Charlotte's case she also gained blue warpaint for some reason.

I have not made any patches for these characters since they are standalone, and dont require any. They have no overwritten loose files in MO2 that I can see, though, I am not good at reading the Data tab in the right side panel, and am not sure how to look for clues there other than reading the text on screen like its a book.

The characters speak, animate, sandbox, combat, and have dialogue just fine.

I can paste new faces on them using the mod Proteus for a quick fix, but am looking for a long term solution which retains the original likenesses.

What on Earth could be causing this?

 

I beg you. Ive been trying to fix this for months. I have 3000+ mods installed so "uncheck mods until it goes away" is going to take me 10000 years of game restarts to test and just isnt feasible. I tried using EasyNPC and it has so many errors I cant figure it out. I tried forwarding their faces with the FaceFixer Synthesis patcher, and it had no effect (they are not using face replacers, again, they are standalone). Load order doesnt seem to matter. I tried the versions of each follower which required the author's asset pack if available (rather than fully standalone) with the requirement and it has the same result.

 

I really dont know what else to try other than "throw it all in the bin and start over", forfeiting uncountable hours.

 

If anyone has any specific high level info on what asset or property of the game is breaking here, I would love any indication as to what to try next.

 

Otherwise Ill just uncheck the offending followers and move on.

 

 

[anjenthedog]

Usually caused by an overwrite conflict between two or more "replacers". Also could be the result of not having a particular head model needed (for instance if you don't run HPH in your game but install an HPH NPC, or if it has its own custom head models, like some Follower mods have (the ones with "2D cartoon" bodies and faces for instance) 

that's about all I can think of.

[scorrp10]

I know that look very well.   when you have a High Poly Head NPC that is at a wrong weight, and need to use setnpcweight command on them, the game will replace their head with a facegenned one, using vanilla .tri files, and their head will look exactly like that, until you disable/enable, at which point their proper head will get loaded.   

Now, in my case, I also get a CTD when game tries to use vanilla .tri on an HP head - but I suspect that might be the result of Expressive Facegen Morphs.    

So, the takeaway - I suspect your NPCs in question are somehow using the wrong .tri files.   Or they somehow got their head files replaced with facegenned ones.

Step one - you need More Informative Console.     Once you have that, click on an affected NPC from console, and there will be info on right side abut the NPC base FormID, and the plugin in which that NPC has been originally defined.
Step two - you need to locate their head file.    For example, if base FormID is FE340D64, and plugin is 'AffectedNPC.esp', you go to Data\meshes\actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\AffectedNPC.esp\ and in there, open 00000D64.nif using NifScope.   If it is the bloated head, somehow you managed to overwrite that mod's original head with a facegenned one (usually by opening nd then saving that mod in CK).   You should delete that file, and for good measure, also delete Data\textures\actors\character\facegendata\facetint\AffectedNPC.esp\00000D64.dds.   Then, reinstall that NPC mod.   See if that helps.
Also, load up the mod in CK, open that NPC Actor record, see what head parts the actor uses.   Specifically the head one.   Open that headpart form, and check what .tri files it uses.    See if those .tri files are vanilla, or being supplied by some other mod.   See if there is any conflict for the .tri files between the NPC-adding mod and some other.

[DirebearCoat]

Looks like an allergic reaction to something...