[LE] NifMerge Won't Work

[blazin419]

Found the source of the problem, fixed.

Edited September 10, 2017 by blazin419

[Levionte]

So, chracters in Skyrim (aside from beast races) use one of two meshes: the male or the female head. All the elves, orcs, and humans of each gender use the exact same head mesh for all of them. The reason they don't all look identical is because the CK applies morphs found inside the male and female .Tri files, which is essentially instructions on how the face should be reshaped. You can see these instructions yourself when you select facial parts in the character creation screen. When you select "Nose 3," the game applies the instructions and moves the vertices around the nose area to resemble the intended shape. When you select "Eyes 4," it'll move the vertices around the eyes. Etc., etc..

 

NPCs are created in a similar fashion. The actor entry in the plugin has a set of assigned face parts. And when the face geometry is exported (ctrl + f4), it will create the head mesh with all the applied all the transformation instructions. This file can be found in your (Data\Meshes\Actors\Character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\PluginName.esp\000NpcID.NIF).

 

Nifmerge is intended to be used on this face geometry mesh, bypassing the creation kit entirely. If I were you, I would replace the starting head mesh with the vanilla head again, re-export the face geometry through the creation kit, and Nifmerge your custom face onto that face geometry mesh as a target. When taking this approach, the previews in the creation kit will be inaccurate because it doesn't know about your custom modifications. Running your sculpted mesh through the creation kit again will cause it to apply the morphs it's assigned in the actor entry, changing the appearance.

 

The reason the head is at her feet is unrelated and more technically complicated to explain. If you've ever noticed how modded hair meshes are sometimes placed way above or below the head mesh in the Head Preview, it's the same thing. It's not really something that can be "fixed," but it can easily be avoided. If you follow the instructions above, it shouldn't be an issue. If you wanted to recover your current face mesh, I would open it in a 3d editor like 3DS Max and move the head by (-.003, -1.575, 120.3436).