[LE] Skyrim - changing NPC head parts issue

[Skybroom]

I've been messing around with editing NPC, both vanilla and custom for quite a long now, but I still keep getting into trouble with that process at some points. Like I can't comprehend the reason of what the hell is going on with the facegen data, why is it so fragile and easy to smash away!

 

For example, I need to just change the particular NPC eye color, and I need to do that without opening CK. With all my naivety I thought it could be achieved by simple editing PNAM - Head Part record via Tes5Edit (the first step), and editing facegeom nif via NifSkope - just change the texture path (second step). But that is the way to loosing facegen data and getting your NPC looking realy bad as it turned to be.

 

The problem is I can't just swap the texture, cuz it's used by the dozen NPC along with that one I wish to edit. So, I need to change only this NPC's Head Part data, no matter what. The eye color I want to swap to is accessable for the Race I am dealing with, but the race is a custom one, and I wish I could avoid CK facegen generating like I said, cuz you know it's a pain in the ass to restore the original look of the character, I always get nervous while doing this.

 

So, please, tell me what is CK hiding from Tes5Edit and NifSkope users? What's the cause of facegen data getting lost sometimes?

[triptherift]

It's not that complicated. Just edit the texture path in Nifskope. You should NEVER try to edit a custom NPC in the CK, as you will lose the custom slider settings and morphs and make something really ugly.

[Skybroom]

It's not that complicated. Just edit the texture path in Nifskope. You should NEVER try to edit a custom NPC in the CK, as you will lose the custom slider settings and morphs and make something really ugly.

Yep, I've already figured that out. Just texture path in NifSkope. Thanks for warning, I still know not that much of morphs and that stuff, shoulda learn more.