CK64 Crash Making Blackface Bug Unfixable

[RaptorOwl]

I originally experienced this bug when I downloaded, installed and enable the Ethereal Elven Overhaul mod for SSE. I looked up how to fix it online and learned how to do the facegen thing and, while it was time consuming, fixed it with the CK.

 

More recently I downloaded the Bijin NPC mods. They causes the blackface bug to reappear so I went into the CK and regenerated the facegen data for the NPCs affected by the mods. That fixed the bug but unfortunately also had some other intended side effects; it causes the character affected to look very ugly, not at all like they are supposed to. Before the facegen, Jenassa looked like in the screenshots except wearing blackface. After the blackface was fixed but she looked like this:

So I uninstalled the Bijin mods. The blackface bug came back so I loaded up the EEO .esp and started regenerating the facegen data again, except now CK64 crashed when I try to save, making the issue unfixable. Does anyone know how to fix this, or even better, how to fix it and get the Bijin mods without the characters looking ugly or wearing blackface?

 

For now I am just going to reinstall the Bijin mods, because if the characters are going to wear blackface with or without it I'd rather they look better while doing it.

 

Edit: Tried reinstalling Bijin and actually the elven chars still don't look like they should, so I don't think it's the facegen exporting that causes the problem. I would just like to know how to fix the blackface bug, either by getting the CK to work or finding some kind of workaround.

Edited October 1, 2019 by RaptorOwl

[Algabar]

I don't know who posted the suggestion to fix the blackface bug with the CK, but in most cases it's simply the wrong approach.

 

Blackface bugs related to NPC replacers are usually simple mod conflicts, i.e. several mods editing one and the same NPC.

 

Usually, the fix is quite easy:

 

- Sort your plugins related to NPCs carefully. For example, if you have multiple mods changing let's say Adrienne und you want to have her the "Bijin" look, load the Bijin esp after anything else that alters her. BTW, black face bugs can not only occur if two mods want to change the appearance of an NPC. A common cause of black faces are also mods like "immersive weapons", that add weapons to NPCs - thereby changing the records for that npc...

 

- Once you've established your load order, create a "bashed patch" with Wrye Bash or a "smashed patch" with "Mator Smash" (not recommended, unfortunately the tool is somewhat outdated). Basically these are automated conflict resolution patches, that are designed to solve mod conflicts.

 

- In most cases, your blackface issue will be solved once you enable the "bashed patch".

 

- If it isn't, my advice would be to search for conflicting records in SSEEdit and manually create a patch. In most cases, this isn't necessary though.

 

The CK exports facegendata based solely on vanilla faces. It doesn't take the actual presets for NPCs, which were usually made outside of the CK and then merged on the already created facegen-nifs into account. To put it simple: Reexporting facegen-data with the CK = ugly faces.

[RaptorOwl]

It's the Ethereal Elven Overhaul that is causing the problem, I believe, as only elves are affected. I don't want to uninstall it as I never play without it, my char is a Dunmer and I don't want to mess her face up and because I was able to get it to work without the blackface bug before using the CK (after I uninstalled Bijin it came back and the CK started crashing on save, making it impossible to patch again).

 

Possibly the cause is that I also have a vanilla hair replacer that conflicts with EEO. However by simply loading EEO after the vanilla hair replacer I was able to get my Elven NPCs to have the look that EEO gives them and have the vanilla hair, and I was able to patch the resulting blackface bug using the creation kit. Do I need to uninstall the vanilla hair replacer to get rid of the blackface bug? Is there anyway to have both without causing blackface?

[RaptorOwl]

I disabled the hair replacer NPC patch (not the hair replacer itself) and that didn't fix the problem, though the hair still works, so I'm not sure why the NPC patch was ever there.

[Algabar]

Possibly the cause is that I also have a vanilla hair replacer that conflicts with EEO. However by simply loading EEO after the vanilla hair replacer I was able to get my Elven NPCs to have the look that EEO gives them and have the vanilla hair, and I was able to patch the resulting blackface bug using the creation kit. Do I need to uninstall the vanilla hair replacer to get rid of the blackface bug? Is there anyway to have both without causing blackface?

 

Maybe I misunderstood something (I'm not an English native speaker...), but this sounds like you managed to get rid of the black faces AND have the desired look on NPCs. So the problem is solved, isn't it? Assuming this is correct, I don't see any reason to uninstall the hair replacer.

 

Mod conflicts are very common, especially when it comes to NPCs. As long as your game works the way you want it to, everything is fine. Personally I got 4 different NPC replacers installed. Do they conflict? Of course they do. But since I created a conflict resolution patch (in my case a "bashed patch"), no need to worry...

[Grospolina]

Vanilla hair replacers are a bad idea, especially if you use a lot of mods. This is because the hair mesh is stored in the FaceGen mesh (think of it as a pre-generated head), which means that every NPC that uses vanilla hair needs to be regenerated or merged. That's why the NPC patch exists for Vanilla Hair Replacer. It contains all of the FaceGen data for the vanilla NPCs.

 

Like you said, you can use the CK to get EEO and VHR to work together. The other way I can think of is to use NifMerge. It's a lot of work though, since you'd have to go through every NPC individually and then merge them together, being careful to only merge the new hair into the EEO FaceGen data. EEO covers a lot of characters.

 

As Algabar mentioned, sometimes faces are created outside of the CK, so in that case, you'd have to use NifMerge.

 

As far as I know, most if not all of the Bijin NPCs have custom hair, so they shouldn't need to be touched as long as they're loaded last (ESP at the bottom, FaceGen meshes/textures overwriting the other mods).

[RaptorOwl]

 

Possibly the cause is that I also have a vanilla hair replacer that conflicts with EEO. However by simply loading EEO after the vanilla hair replacer I was able to get my Elven NPCs to have the look that EEO gives them and have the vanilla hair, and I was able to patch the resulting blackface bug using the creation kit. Do I need to uninstall the vanilla hair replacer to get rid of the blackface bug? Is there anyway to have both without causing blackface?

 

Maybe I misunderstood something (I'm not an English native speaker...), but this sounds like you managed to get rid of the black faces AND have the desired look on NPCs. So the problem is solved, isn't it? Assuming this is correct, I don't see any reason to uninstall the hair replacer.

 

Mod conflicts are very common, especially when it comes to NPCs. As long as your game works the way you want it to, everything is fine. Personally I got 4 different NPC replacers installed. Do they conflict? Of course they do. But since I created a conflict resolution patch (in my case a "bashed patch"), no need to worry...

 

I had managed this before, but then I installed Bijin, it caused blackface to come back, so I uninstalled it, and then when I went back into the CK to export the facegen data for my NPCs again it crashed upon saving, and continues to do this, making it unfixable. Does anyone know how to get the CK working again?

 

Edit: I disabled the VHR and it fixed the problem. My char & NPCs don't look nearly as good as they did when I had it working without the blackface, but I guess this will have to do unless I can get the CK working again.

Edited October 2, 2019 by RaptorOwl