LE Exporting facegen files for color fix.

[Zenmuron]

Fix the NPC face colour

 

If the CK didn't have a bug related to new NPC faces (their face colour doesn't match their body colour) your work will be ended here. But until the CK is fixed there is still another step to do.

 

The only way of making your NPCs face look right is to follow this steps:

 

Convert your plugin to an esm file. You can do that using TESVSnip

Open your esp file in TESVSnip (Select the menu option File -> Open and then select your esp file)

Expand your file

Double click on the TES4 record and a window like the one shown in picture Convert an esp to an esm will pop up.

Check the 0x00000001 (Esm file) flag and press the button Save.

Save your plugin as an esm by selecting File -> Save, enter a name for your modified plugin and select type Master file (.esm)

Load your new esm plugin into the CK (now you won't be able to modify it, but that is fine) and wait until the CK has finished loading everything.

Locate your merchant and open his details window.

Go to the Character Gen Parts tab and change something there, for example the lips colour setting the interpolation to 1.

Press the OK button to close the NPC details window.

Locate your NPC again in the Objects window, select him and press Ctrl + F4. The CK will ask you if you want to export the face gen data for your NPC, answer Yes and wait until it is done.

This will have generated two texture and one mesh file:

The textures will be located in the folder: \textures\actors\character\facegendata\facetint\MyPlugin.esm\ (with the name of your esm file instead of MyPlugin.esm). One of them is a .tga file and the other a .dds file. You can delete the .tga

The mesh will be located in the folder: \meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceGeom\MyPlugin.esm\

Close the CK without saving the changes as you only wanted the texture and mesh files that have already been generated.

 

Now your merchant's face will have the same colour than his body.

 

^ The above is from the TES wiki. ^

 

OK so does all of that really need to be done or can we just export the facegen files from esp in the CK without having to make a ESM file. I did not really want to have to have my mod reliant on ESM. Just bloats the file size bad enough I have to now include a pile of meshes and textures because BETHESDA IS TOO LAZY to fix the CK.

 

Now I did all of the steps listed above and it does work but now I am looking 12 DDS files 12 meshes a ESM and ESP when all I should really need is a ESP. Sounds like a pain in the ass for future updates to me. Hopefully I can just work on the ESP and only upload that for updates. ... Unless I add more NPC which then means I have to make a new ESM and do all of this exporting over, am I correct on this? This went from a 2.6 meg file to a 11.9 meg file .....

 

Thoughts, opinions, links to tutorials regarding to fixing F'd up face colors. All helpful at this point.

I keep hitting snags and road blocks every time I think I am close to open beta, *slap* new problem or the CK has an error then crashes, and saves over the backup because it crashed..which sets you back HOURS of work. So I have been saving backup to my desktop after each session of working on this.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Zenmuron

[Mujuro]

It sometimes works without having to do the ESM "temporary conversion". You can try closing out of the ESP when you're done making your changes, reloading it and then doing the CTRL+F4. I believe there's only been a small handful of incidents where I had to do the ESM conversion for this to work. There's another bug in the CK that you may not be aware of, and it may or may not impact you, but the CK is notorious for removing certain elements, like lip color, tattoo color, etc., so you may want to open up your facegen DDS (or the TGA) and make sure that what you want is there.

[Zenmuron]

Yeah I actually noticed that about 10 minutes ago. One of the exported NPC facegen files was showing up with dark forehead. I redid it twice before deleting it and doing it a third time. Really starting to feel like I should be giving Bethesda the finger.

 

I will try to load up a back up and do exports ONLY with a ESP set and see if that works. It does not take to long to export files but it is a serious waste of time for something that should have been fix 5 months ago. Also why does the ESM file become twice the size of the ESP when they both use all of the same resources. Also if you only load up the ESM without the ESP in game all of the landscape edits revert to vanilla standard. I never had to do all of these bug fixes and extra step on other toolsets for other games. You would think a triple A studio making millions and millions could devote some of those resources to the one thing that gives their game any sort of replayability and staying power.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Zenmuron

[Mujuro]

That my friend would make too much sense. :P You may be able to fix the forehead tint issue (also been around for ages) by selecting "UpperEyeSocket" and changing whatever your preset is to "ColorAverage".

[Zenmuron]

Seems like that saying "The more money they have the less common sense they have." is ringing true.

As for the forehead it wasn't doing that until I did the exports. But yes setting the color to average does fix it.

Think I am going to run to the liquor store. This aggravation calls for rum.

[Zenmuron]

Why double posts!!

OK....damn it... RUM.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Zenmuron

[NoAardvarksAllowed]

As stated above, there is no need to do the whole esm-ifying bit. Just edit the actor, save the .esp, mark its entry and press ctrl + F4 to export the facegen data. Then delete the .tga file. I've never had to do anything beyond that.

 

The strange coloration of the actors' foreheads is caused by using a face mod. In my case it's Bella's.

[Zenmuron]

Got it sorted out, just exported from the .ESP without having to make an ESM cuts down on some file size.

Thanks for the input folks.

Now if only setting up behavior packages was not so complicated.

Anyways, I should be uploading a public beta in a few days. Work load has gotten a bit heavy, not much time to work on mods.

[Grimoa]

Wow, thanks for quoting the wiki article, apparently I was too confused to find that myself.

I managed to fix my personal Marcurio replacer! :)

 

I am by no means a professional when it comes to follower mods but here's what I did anyway in case it helps someone else:

Use NPC editor to change his appearance, save.

[Results in a grey face ingame.]

Load the generated esp as active file together with skyrim.esm in CK.

Edit Marcurio to make sure everything is alright (and apply some last minute changes).

Ctrl+F4

Save plugin file.

 

Works! :)