Facial Presets don't work through Vortex

[punsaurus]

Got a new pc last month so I was finally able to run more games like Fallout 4.

 

Having fun testing out which mods I would like to use and using Vortex since I missed the previous program. However I did notice that none of the Facial Presets don't work, this includes the Protagonist Facial Presets and certain Companion presets. With the Protagonist Facial Presets they don't show up to replace certain presets when creating a new character. With Companion Facial Presets they don't seem to work, like with the Loving Piper mod she either is missing her eyebrows in one mod or has an infamous burnt face with another. Other Facial Preset mods don't change the companion faces at all and Piper, Curie and Cait just have their default faces.

 

On the other hand the Diverse Children mod by Aniceoaktree works fine.

 

I'm not sure what's going on with the Facial Preset mods through Vortex, but Vortex is the first mod manager program I've tried so I'm still trying to figure things out. I'm kinda presuming that I'm doing something wrong on my side with the presets but starting to run out of testing options on trying to get the Facial Presets to work.

 

[StormWolf01]

Heyas Punsaurus! I'm sorry to hear that you're having some trouble. I may have an idea of what's going on at least with the player character face presets.

There's two types of face presets. There are the old school .esp presets which are available when you are in the character creation, by switching through face 1 through 16+

There are also .json presets, which are available through looksmenu, and have to be installed into the f4se/presets folder in order for them to show up as an option in LooksMenu.

json presets have to be installed into this folder Fallout 4\Data\F4SE\Plugins\Presets in order for them to be available. AND you have to have f4se installed, and active in order to access them through the Presets menu in looksmenu.

if you are using looksmenu presets, make sure that you have f4se set to run as administrator, and that you have vortex set to run the game through f4se.

Also double check to make sure that vortex is installing these files to the correct folder and is not just dumping them into the fallout 4 folder, or into the Data folder. (Most of the time these files are just packed into a zip folder and need to be installed manually as the folder inside the archive isn't set up correctly to be used by an installer.)

 

esp type face presets for the player.... if you have more than one of them.... meaning two or more mods that do this.... they are NOT compatible with each other. You can only run ONE of them at once. So you have to deactivate any of them that you don't want to use, when you are using one that you do want to use. Now the nice thing is tho, that once you have your character set, you don't have to keep that .esp file that you used as active. The game will remember your face without it.

 

The other downside about these is that they are not compatible with some other types of mods that mod the PC body. They can conflict with those, or they can outright just not work. If you have any mods like that, run your preset .esp files LOWER in your load order than the body mod .esp files and see if that helps resolve the issue.

 

Same with .esp files that modify the NPC's. Generally the one that is the lowest in the Load Order (LO) is going to win out. Tho, there are so many different kinds of mods that affect these, it can be a real mess trying to get them all to to work together.

 

I will also mention this too. It's bad to try to mix esp presets with looksmenu presets on NPCs. Eventually the game may not know which preset to use, since the esp loads up during the game boot, then the looksmenu preset is added during the load of your savegame.... and it may make the poor NPC look like they got into fight with a schoolbus bumper or radiator grill. And lost. Badly.

 

If Nexus Mod Manager is what you are talking about. It's still around. It's just not hosted here on the nexus anymore, as the site Dev team has moved onto working on Vortex exclusively. However, it is still around, and being supported by a team of modders. You can find it via an internet search.

It's a much better mod manager, just in my opinion.

 

The brownface bug is most often caused by using two different resolution textures. Like trying to use a 4k face resolution mixed with a 5k resolution body. The head and body are both two seperate 3d models, and the game gets confused if the texture sizes don't match sometimes.

 

I hope that this is some help for you. If not, please give a little bit more detail about the mods that you're using that aren't working. And a little more detail about what "not working" entails.

Cheers!

-Storm

[kingp1ng]

Hey Stormwolf,

 

I have an issue loading and applying .esp facial mods through ShowLooksMenu.

 

• As a test, I've successfully installed and applied a .json facial mod through the ShowLooksMenu, so I know SLM is working. The .json file appears in the correct folder ../ steamapps / common / Fallout 4 / Data / F4SE / Plugins / F4EE / Presets. After the test, I deactivated the .json facial mod.

 

• Then I tried to apply my intended .esp facial mod (Gorgeous Vault-Girl mod), but the SLM preset list shows up as a blank list. I know that SLM does not directly read the .esp file. According to the author's instructions (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/193) it sounds like the .esp file modifies an existing Preset 1 or Preset 2, and then you select that Preset to apply it to your character. But since my game files have no presets or .json files, there's nothing for the .esp file to modify. I checked my game files and the presets folder is indeed empty. I also placed the .esp facial mod below the SLM and SLM Compendium mods on the load order.

 

• Years ago, I remember applying this mod to a fresh game save, so my character essentially "spawned" with this facial mod in the bathroom mirror scene. I didn't have to SLM and select any preset.

 

 

Can you think of any solution to apply this .esp facial mod to my existing game save? Am I straight up missing a preset list files which should be in SLM? There's nothing that generates these necessary preset files, so the .esp facial mod is applying to "nothing".

Edited May 5, 2020 by kingp1ng

[robotized]

Hey Stormwolf,

 

I have an issue loading and applying .esp facial mods through ShowLooksMenu.

 

• As a test, I've successfully installed and applied a .json facial mod through the ShowLooksMenu, so I know SLM is working. The .json file appears in the correct folder ../ steamapps / common / Fallout 4 / Data / F4SE / Plugins / F4EE / Presets. After the test, I deactivated the .json facial mod.

 

• Then I tried to apply my intended .esp facial mod (Gorgeous Vault-Girl mod), but the SLM preset list shows up as a blank list. I know that SLM does not directly read the .esp file. According to the author's instructions (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/193) it sounds like the .esp file modifies an existing Preset 1 or Preset 2, and then you select that Preset to apply it to your character. But since my game files have no presets or .json files, there's nothing for the .esp file to modify. I checked my game files and the presets folder is indeed empty. I also placed the .esp facial mod below the SLM and SLM Compendium mods on the load order.

 

• Years ago, I remember applying this mod to a fresh game save, so my character essentially "spawned" with this facial mod in the bathroom mirror scene. I didn't have to SLM and select any preset.

 

 

Can you think of any solution to apply this .esp facial mod to my existing game save? Am I straight up missing a preset list files which should be in SLM? There's nothing that generates these necessary preset files, so the .esp facial mod is applying to "nothing".

I think the mod author means vanilla presets - FACE 01 or FACE 02. As soon as you open LooksMenu, you just press left/right to change the vanilla presets.

[kingp1ng]

 

Hey Stormwolf,

 

I have an issue loading and applying .esp facial mods through ShowLooksMenu.

 

• As a test, I've successfully installed and applied a .json facial mod through the ShowLooksMenu, so I know SLM is working. The .json file appears in the correct folder ../ steamapps / common / Fallout 4 / Data / F4SE / Plugins / F4EE / Presets. After the test, I deactivated the .json facial mod.

 

• Then I tried to apply my intended .esp facial mod (Gorgeous Vault-Girl mod), but the SLM preset list shows up as a blank list. I know that SLM does not directly read the .esp file. According to the author's instructions (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/193) it sounds like the .esp file modifies an existing Preset 1 or Preset 2, and then you select that Preset to apply it to your character. But since my game files have no presets or .json files, there's nothing for the .esp file to modify. I checked my game files and the presets folder is indeed empty. I also placed the .esp facial mod below the SLM and SLM Compendium mods on the load order.

 

• Years ago, I remember applying this mod to a fresh game save, so my character essentially "spawned" with this facial mod in the bathroom mirror scene. I didn't have to SLM and select any preset.

 

 

Can you think of any solution to apply this .esp facial mod to my existing game save? Am I straight up missing a preset list files which should be in SLM? There's nothing that generates these necessary preset files, so the .esp facial mod is applying to "nothing".

I think the mod author means vanilla presets - FACE 01 or FACE 02. As soon as you open LooksMenu, you just press left/right to change the vanilla presets.

 

 

Thank you! This worked for me.

 

For anyone who stumbles upon this:

• An .esp facial mod changes vanilla preset FACE 01, FACE 02, etc.
• A .json facial mod adds presets into the SLM preset folder.