Help with Lydia’s Head Texture Disappearing After Fast Travel (CBBE, BnP, and Lydia Mod)

[Hakuiki]

Hello,

I’m hoping someone can help me figure out what’s going on with my Skyrim setup. I’ve been dealing with this issue for a while now, and I’ve hit a wall trying to troubleshoot it myself. I've been modding for a while but I'm not super knowledgeable when it comes to the deeper modding details so i've been  avoiding any drastic fixes and have been searching for fixes/guides online with no luck so far so I thought I would ask here. 

I recently installed CBBE and CBBE 3A, along with the BnP - Female Skin mod, to improve the textures. I’ve also got all the required mods installed to make sure everything works properly, and I’m using USSEP for general compatibility. I’m also running the “My Lovely Lydia” mod (Universal Edition), which uses the textures I’ve installed, including the BnP skin textures for Lydia’s appearance. The load order is set up just like the mod authors recommended. BnP - Female Skin at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community My Lovely Lydia at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community anf they should all be compatible based off the descriptions
Here’s the problem:
When I first load into the game, everything works fine. The BnP body textures and face textures are perfect, including the custom Lydia face from the mod. But as soon as I fast travel or load into a new cell, the body textures stay the same, but Lydia’s head changes. the bnp textures disappear and I think it uses default cbbe textures.

At first, I thought maybe the Lydia mod itself was causing the issue, so I uninstalled it, verified my game files, and made a brand new save, hoping it would fix things. But it’s even worse without it: the texture works with the default Lydia head, but after fast traveling, Lydia’s head completely disappears, and only her mouth remains visible. Additionally the version installed included no face textures/meshes so it was definitely not that mod, its strange though that even the default Lydia face is broken after fast travel.

I did check Vortex, and it seems like BnP is correctly overwriting all conflicting files, so I don’t think that’s the problem. What’s confusing is that the textures work perfectly at first, but as soon as I fast travel, it all breaks. It feels like something’s not getting applied or is being overwritten in the middle of the fast travel process, but I can’t figure out what.

I've also uninstalled - reinstalled - and have changed the load order multiple times but no matter what it is still broken. Also I'm not sure if this might be why but I launch my Skyrim through Skyrim together as I couldn't figure out how to launch it without Skyrim together and keep my mods but they have all worked perfectly up until this point.

I’ve spent a couple of days troubleshooting this, but I've given up. I’m not sure if I’m missing something super obvious or if there’s a deeper conflict going on that I haven’t spotted. I’m sorry if the solution is simpler than I’m making it out to be, but I thought I’d reach out in case anyone else has run into this issue or has any suggestions.

Any help or insight would be appreciated
Images : https://imgur.com/a/00a2-AuHk3ur
Load order:https://imgur.com/a/9jejHnY

Edited yesterday at 03:04 AM by Hakuiki

[7531Leonidas]

This is a pretty specific problem, you 'might' get more experienced help faster on the dedicated Skyrim SE forum ( https://forums.nexusmods.com/forum/8877-skyrim-se/ ), rather than this general forum.  Join that community to post there.

[Hakuiki]

On 3/11/2025 at 4:52 AM, 7531Leonidas said:

This is a pretty specific problem, you 'might' get more experienced help faster on the dedicated Skyrim SE forum ( https://forums.nexusmods.com/forum/8877-skyrim-se/ ), rather than this general forum.  Join that community to post there.

Hello, I accidentally made the problem seem more specific than it actually was. The problem wasn't just with Lydia it was with every female npc. Face Discoloration Fix at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community  This mod describes exactly what was going on, in my case the game was regeneration the face data and removing all the tints and effects added to it. As soon as I installed it my issue was fixed.