Please help: Custom race with custom face texture problem!

[Guest Messenjah]

Ok,

 

 

I'm betting someone has probably encountered this issue before. For my Boomtown mod, I wanted to add different shades of eyeshadow/makeup to the various dancers and characters walking around the club. How I intended to do this, was to create a custom race, with the Type 3 cali body and they eyelash head meshes. I then created three different face textures and placed them into seperate directories accordingly. Then I created a leveled list of generic residents for the club using the different races for each face texture. What is weird, is that some will work while others won't so it is a 50/50. I've tried switching the textures around and it isn't a problem with the textures as if I use any of them for default characters, they all work just fine.

 

 

So, I tried creating three test characters for each face texture, which were duplicates of the leveled characters that showed up fine in-game. I double checked everything to make sure all the textures/models were assigned correctly and it was fine. I started FO3 and the leveled characters were a 50/50 chance, same as before but the test characters didn't work at all... none of them.

 

 

So, I tried re-nameing each texture with a new name, opened the head mesh with nif-skope and created 3 different versions with all of the new textures assigned to the mesh itself and then opened the geck and assigned each individual race to each head and then assigned each race also to the new textures. Everything being re-named so that it should show up as a completely unique mesh with it's own completely new textures and checked everything twice. I then re-started my machine and started FO3 with the exact same results. What the heck? Has anyone else had this problem?

 

 

I mean, if I remember correctly, this worked fine with Oblivion when creating new races such as the cat, lizard, and elf based races so why doesn't it work now with FO3? I'm assuming this is probably a bug and probably related to the reason that sometimes the african american races show up with the default white texture for their body. I wondered why no one tried creating individual body textures for each race in FO3 to fix this...

 

 

Is there any way I can resolve this issue? This is really weird? It is like the normal map shows up but it won't see the regular texture? What is up with this?

 

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/2733/faceproblem.th.jpg

[myrmaad]

I have not seen that before but I wonder if it has something to do with the age shaders?

[Quetzlsacatanango]

What files are in the directory where your face textures are?

There should be at least 6 for the head-

headhuman.dds

headhuman_n.dds

headhuman_sk.dds

headhumanf10.dds

headhumanf10_n.dds

headhumanf10_sk.dds

 

Sorry I can't see your screenshot from here (assuming that's what is at the bottom), so I'm not exactly sure what the problem is that you're seeing.

[Guest Messenjah]

I'm missing the textures labeled sk.... what are these exactly?

[Guest Messenjah]

Ok, so I ran an experiment. I placed the missing dds files in the same directory and replaced the head with the original and set it up in the GECK. Still nothing. :(

[rickerhk]

I've never had any luck with using a headmesh in any other directory path than the default Data\meshes\characters\head in a custom race. The texture is never the right shade and the head/body shade never matches. I too would like to know what is missing or if it's just a bug.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I'm missing the textures labeled sk.... what are these exactly?

 

The sk stands for skin, I assume. I don't know what they do exactly, but I know if I don't have them my character looks sorta like an old lady.

[Guest Messenjah]

I tried placing it in the default directory the other day and had the same effect if I named it anything else. Maybe later today, I'll attempt to re-name the files and re-direct the head mesh to the newly named files and then direct the GECK to the new files as well and see if that helps but I severely doubt it will. :( For some reason, when SOME of my random NPC's spawn, it works fine but other times it does not. :(

 

 

 

 

Hmmmm actually, it would be interesting to see if it would work if I created an ESM containing the custom races so the game would see it as a master file and a new source? Or possibly even enter the data inside a bsa as well....

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Seeing your screenshot now (finally)... are the characters supposed to be dark skinned, or light? If dark, you need to either a) make your esp a master or b) in the nif for the outfits, set the shader type on the body to shader_skin in nifskope.

[Guest Messenjah]

The skin is supposed to be light. Actually, if you could see it in the screenshot better, you could see that the texture is also stretched and there are no details. What you CAN see just fine is the face model and the normal map show up just fine but for some strange reason the face texture doesn't. It shouldn't have anything to do with the clothing mesh. The only thing I'm concerned about is my custom face texture that doesn't show up. :( I haven't had time to experiment with it tonight and I'm honestly too tired to try but I will attempt it again in the morning.