Creation Kit and dark face bug solutions

[THJT9]

Hi,
I've been reading a lot lately into the dark face bug and its causes and supposed solutions in preparation of the release of a mod update. This appears to be quite a complicated issue so I was hoping someone else might be able to confirm if I am understanding correctly and answer some of my queries. I have largely been looking at the following Ck pages:

 

https://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=Actor#Traits

https://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=Actor/Dark_Face_Bug#Notes

 

Now what I have taken from this is that it is caused by any actor being created in the CK even if they have been duplicated from an already existing one and the traits or Char gen tabs haven't been edited or touched. This causes the Ck to generate textures and meshes for the NPC's face and if they aren't packed with the mod, could cause the dark face bug to occur. This then causes a further issue with any mods that need to be uploaded to PS4 as they can;t have these external files or if they are lots of new actor files (including lvl characters, templates etc) as it will massively bloat the mod size.

Previously I was told that clicking 'Is Chargen Face Preset' would fix this, and it does indeed cause the game to stop creating these texture files allowing for it to be uploaded to PS4. However the first wiki page says 'If checked, the face created for this actor is available for the player to choose in Character Gen. There is a misconception that this flag will also prevent CK from editing the NPC's Face Data, and some mods have used this heavily on their NPC's resulting in a heavily populated Character Gen menu. Do not use unless you wish this face to be an available Preset for the Player.'

So does this mean it doesn't prevent the dark face bug or it does but will then also result in it becoming a select able preset in character creation? I have tried a test mod with a bunch of custom npcs with this ticked and still only got the base 15 presets appear in character creation so is there something I've missed that causes it to add them? (NOTE I don't want it to add them but I want to make my mod as safe as possible without anything that could unintentionally interfere with other things).

In addition to this, according to the wiki page about the bug, the current solution is to make sure all custom NPC's have the 'trait' template turned on and linked to a Bethesda created NPC file. This again does seem to work in preventing the creation of extra assets allowing for PS4 upload however does then mean that you can't have NPC's with specific death items on PS4 as all of those using that template would have to have it.

My apologies for the length of this and possible confusion in how I've typed it-if anything isn't clear I will endeavor to make it so. Any help regarding clarifying this matter would be much appreciated so I can be confident in how I've sent around making my mod PS4 compatible without side affects and the dark face bug.

Thanks

THJT-9

[Thirdstorm]

"Is Chargen Face Preset" does prevent the Engine from trying to modify the face, but it's still running as a Dynamic "Face" and if you've edited the NPC, have a custom face texture assignment to it, or something similar is can cause errors / brownface.

 

You don't have to export FaceGeometry for the NPC's, making a mod compatible with the PS4, but any NPC, that is not using a "Traits" templated actor, will be extra burden on the players Fallout game while they are being rendered by the engine.

 

If you want to duplicate a NPC, to copy the "Face" and use it for a new faction, all you need to do is find an NPC in that faction, duplicate them, and point the "Traits" template to the NPC you want to use the face model from, keeps the total demand on the engine low, as it will reference the vanilla FaceGeometry for that NPC