SSE Custom NPC Follower Creation Problem

[blazon]

So I am following this guide: https://www.nexusmod...tion/mods/30041

And I am getting wrong face sculpt and wrong head texture (blackface) (I've created npcs before, what's changed?) I know people have had problems with black face before and it was a simple fix of Ctrl + F4 exporting the face in CK. Well that's not doing anything.

To start: I have a legit copy of Skyrim SE , with all DLC's, I'm using latest SKSE, with most current ENB, using MO 2

I Created my custom face sculpt with RACEMENU, got my nif, got my facetint dds

Created follower folders in Skyrim SE data folder (zipping mod, and then going through MO makes no difference)

Created all the custom parts in Creation Kit, body, head, face, hair, etc. Set models from custom caliente's body generation, then just used the rest of nif meshes that are available in CBBE

I used the fair skin complexion (https://www.nexusmod...dition/mods/798) as my skin textures

After I've completed everything in Creation Kit I hit Ctrl+F4 exported my face to skyrim folder

I then copied the file names of the CK exports to the RaceMenu creation. Took the racemenu creation files and pasted over where the CK files were.

After I got black face initially, I went to sculpted nif file (one from racemenu) and manually put in texture paths in the shadertextureset block of the nif file in nifskope

still getting offcolored face. Not even that, I'm pretty sure it's not even registering the model sculpt either.

so what gives, what am I missing, feel free to ask more steps that I may have omitted typing here.

also I tried the thing where you convert your files to Oldrim, nifmerge, then convert back, still didn't work

I opened the file with nifskope and there's nothing that looks weird to me, or stuff overwriting it.

Also there's the odd thing that I am unable to view the dds textures files on almost all of caliente's dds files. When I open in irfanview, just says invalid dds file

and in nifskope manually mapping to the texture doesn't change the face color

the file is correctly downloaded

because nexus has a shyte max upload limit here's a link of screenshots of my nifskope and xedit if that'll help https://imgur.com/a/KK3KU3V

Help is much appreciated, I have spent over a week on this now, and just about to give up on modding all together.