[LE] Fixing changed NPC head - nothing seems to work (not for just one head, either)

[Darklocq]

I changed some details in the custom race records and head parts of a downloaded follower mod, to "re-mod" it.

 

I have followed the Ctrl-F4 and NIFmerge instructions in various tutorial for patching up heads.

 

And it's not working.

 

No matter what I do I get:

 

* Wrong head color

* Wrong head geometry.

 

I get the default head with the default texture.

 

I've even tried exporting the head in my original copy of Skyrim under Steam and using it in the playing copy on my desktop, and I still get the goofy-looking, big-jawed default Nord woman head, with the default texture.

 

Other glitches are that it's outputting incorrect (that is, default, and correct for vanilla) paths for some of the textures in one head part or another, and clearly sometimes using incorrect (vanilla) head parts, despite all this:

1. The head part record is saying to use the parts in meshes/actor/character/Whatever/

2. The texture record for that part says to use the textures in textures/actor/character/Whatever/

3. The NPC and race records are saying to use those custom parts and textures

3. The NIFs mentioned in part 1 are, inside them, pointing to the textures in part 2. Where is it even getting the idea from to use some of the default parts and textures? Weirdly, it's even using some default textures for some of the non-default parts. I just don't get it.

 

When I use NIFmerge (to apply the originally downloaded follower's pretty face to the just-generated export), I get a resulting NIF that looks correct in NIFskope (other than that weird thing with the parts often having mismatched Z heights, which seems to have no effect when rendered in-game). I put it in place with the ugly head's default filename, and get back into the game, and the NPC still has uglyface. I can remove the entire ESP and do a savecleaning routine and put it back in, so the NPC is freshly re-generated, and ... uglyface again. It's like the FaceGeom/MyModHere.esp/ material for this ESP is simply being ignored. It doesn't matter if I have NIFmerge overwrite the original directly, or save to a temp filename and move the original and put the new one in it's place. Always, always uglyface.

 

The stuff about creating a face (or importing and re-exporting) in RaceMenu doesn't apply here. It's not a face I created, but one I just modified (though it probably was originally created in RaceMenu). It did not come with a .jslot file. I've looked at a bunch of .jslot files from downloaded RaceMenu presets, and they've all been radically different, so faking it by making a new one seems out of the question, even if re-exporting the head via RaceMenu and re-NIFmerging it would somehow help.

 

My next guess is that when you "change something" and change it back before doing the Ctrl-F4 that you have to change something specific, not just anything, to get it to regenerate the head properly. ?? I'm at wit's end here. Been trying to resolve this for over a week, and it'a affecting every NPC I try to modify, e.g. put a new hair on.