Issues with NPC face textures

[tab1224]

This my first attempt modding anything and while following this tutorial

I have only come across one problem. The companion I made is suppose to have eyeshadow, eyeliner, and black lipstick so I edited the textures on her face with the GECK but when I entered the game the adjustments I made don't appear. I can't find anyone else with problem so I thought I would ask about it here.

[Deleted53139156User]

You can either set the NPC to have a custom race with a custom head texture or a use custom head mesh (which texture path in nifskope points to your new head .dds texture, more useful if you want to change more that just the diffuse map). Both of these are easier to setup in FNVedit and then test in GECK.

 

Icon - Large icon File path Under Female head Data for the texture and MODL - Model Filename for a custom head mesh.

[tab1224]

Thanks, but I am new at modding so I have absolutely no idea how to do that.

[EPDGaffney]

Are you saying you altered the colours on her face to the point where you're satisfied but they don't turn up in-game? Not familiar with that one.

 

But if you're asking how to get these textures onto a character in general, I would agree with the previous comment. Just look up tutorials on custom races. You basically want a duplicate of whatever vanilla race, and then you want to edit the textures in PhotoShop or Paint.NET or GIMP (or whatever else you like). This is if you can't get to your desired goal within the GECK already.

 

If this is about your character looking different in the GECK to how they look in the game, the two things that come to mind are a mod conflict and maybe trying your mod as an ESM rather than an ESP.

[tab1224]

I managed to create a custom race in the GECK, create a NPC, and add it to the game but when I click "continue" on the main menu the game crashes. I made the custom race under ESP. file and don't know how to make it a ESM.

[EPDGaffney]

It's crashing? Making it an ESM probably won't fix that. Does the game crash without your ESP on? Does the game crash if you load a different save? Does Continue load a save that has the custom-race NPC on-screen immediately? Is your player character using that race?

 

My guess is if it is in fact to do with your mod, you didn't make the race correctly, although it should be as simple as duplicating a vanilla race and some of its textures and meshes, then pointing your new race to the new meshes (which will be made to have the new textures). After that it should just be texture work, which is done outside the GECK. The meshes should be set to use the new textures by opening them in NifSkope and changing it there, and the textures should be modified in any image editor. Note that you would need to have access to the meshes and textures to duplicate them, and that they are by default located in BSA archives which require extraction via third-party software.

 

Changing from ESP to ESM is done in FNVEdit but should probably be the last thing you do. ESMs can't be edited in the GECK and there are other problems with them that I always forget. ESMs are necessary for new characters, though, as the bodies and heads will not match their colours correctly otherwise. Unrelated, ESMs are generally required for navmeshes to behave correctly as well.

 

Look on this page for information on how to do some of that if you don't know how:

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Getting_started_creating_mods_using_GECK

 

Edit: And make sure you didn't accidentally modify any other races. I suppose that could cause a crash in the right situation. FNVEdit will show you all modifications made by your file.

Edited September 8, 2018 by EPDGaffney

[tab1224]

I believe I got the race to work, but I know nothing about meshes or NifSkope. Is there no way to just to edit the textures of the custom race within the GECK?

[EPDGaffney]

Actually there is and I misspoke. You should have seen it when you were making the race. It's in that form.

[madmongo]

If you change the race of an NPC you will need to go back to a save from before you added that NPC or the NPC might retain the original race.

 

Fiddling with races and then loading a save that contains the NPC with a different race could potentially cause a crash.

 

As EPDGaffney said, there's a bug in the game where NPCs defined in an esp will not display properly. Their head texture will not match their body/hand textures. There are some tweaks you can do to your ini files which fix the issue for some folks, but they don't work for everyone. As I understand it, there are actually two bugs, and the ini tweak only addresses one of them (at least that's what I have read somewhere).

 

You can change your mod to an esm using FNVEdit.

 

Note that if you duplicate a race in the GECK, it marks the original race that you did not change as modified (stupid GECK). This will make your mod incompatible with any other mods that modify the vanilla races. You can remove the modified vanilla race in FNVEdit or you can go into the GECK, click Details on your mod. select the vanilla race that you did not want to modify, and press Delete. The GECK will not load that change. Now just load up your mod and save it. Either method works. I personally tend to use the GECK method because I will usually be loading up the GECK to make other changes to the mod after creating the race anyway.

 

Textures for most things (statics, clutter items, clothing, etc) are defined in the nif, so you can generally only edit those with NifSkope, although you can override clothing textures with other textures in the GECK. That's how they make some of the different textures for some outfits. For races though, the textures used are defined in the GECK. If you change the face/head texture, the GECK will usually only show your first change. After that, it keeps displaying the same texture even after you change it (stupid GECK). The GECK will reload body and hand textures though. It's only head textures that have this bug. Textures for other objects (statics, clutter, etc) are similarly cached and the GECK won't reload them if you change them. You have to restart the GECK and reload your mod to see the changes.

 

Textures for custom races need to be somewhere under the data\textures folder (yeah, I know, kinda obvious). It doesn't matter where. You don't need to put them under characters like the vanilla races are. You only define the texture name in the GECK. The normal map and skin textures are assumed to be the same name, and must be in the same folder.

 

In other words, if you create a custom head texture called headhuman.dds, the game is expecting the normal map to be headhuman_n.dds and the skin to be headhuman_sk.dds. Same for the body and hand textures. The vanilla races tend to use the same textures for both the left and right hands. You can make custom separate textures if you want. Just make sure each texture has its own _n and _sk file or they won't work properly in-game. Hand textures also need a 1st person texture if the race is playable, so if your left hand texture is lefthand.dds, your normal map will be lefthand_n.dds, your skin will be lefthand_sk.dds, and you also need lefthand_1st.dds, lefthand_1st_n.dds, and lefthand_1st_sk.dds. If the race isn't playable (the player can't be that race) then you don't need the 1st person textures.