SSE Unusual Neck Seam & Dull Eyes -- Custom Follower

[ak0d]

I'm working on a standalone follower mod for SSE using the High Poly Head. Two issues here that have eluded me for several hours.

 

1. Neck seam, most likely a mismatch between the FaceTint and the body skin tone.

2. "Dull eyes", clearly missing some kind of reflection mapping that is however present when the same eyes are used on a player character.

Edit: I found the cause of the dull eyes; NifSkope orders textures differently than the creation kit. How stupid is that...

 

 

Neck seam below.

 

 

Things I have investigated about the neck seam:

• CK skin tone is set to the same values that were used in RaceMenu when exporting the head.
• Skin tone interpolation value is set to .78 (from alpha: 199 divided by 255 to get a value from 0 to 1)
• Normal maps are compatible (i.e no seam)
• Loading up all my character mods that were used to export the head and checking the player character: no seam.

Edited September 28, 2020 by ak0d

[Algabar]

Normal maps are compatible (i.e no seam)

 

 

Yep. These are definitely not normal map seams. I think you can rule that out.

 

 

Skin tone interpolation value is set to .78 (from alpha: 199 divided by 255 to get a value from 0 to 1)

 

TBH, I'm not quite sure if I understand the reasoning behind this... :ermm:

 

From my experience: When picking skin colours in Racemenu, the lowest slider (4th from above) should always be all the way to the right. Not exactly sure what this slider controls - looks like "saturation" or something. Presets made with this slider in a middle position will show discoloration when used for a follower. From my understanding, this is because the CK only "knows" 3 values: Red, green and blue. So the skin color used in the CK can differ from the one you exported with your tintmask from Racemenu.

 

Another possible reason for discoloration are the freckles. Maybe your freckled texture doesn't match the rest of the body.

[ak0d]

 

Normal maps are compatible (i.e no seam)

 

 

Yep. These are definitely not normal map seams. I think you can rule that out.

 

 

Skin tone interpolation value is set to .78 (from alpha: 199 divided by 255 to get a value from 0 to 1)

 

TBH, I'm not quite sure if I understand the reasoning behind this... :ermm:

 

From my experience: When picking skin colours in Racemenu, the lowest slider (4th from above) should always be all the way to the right. Not exactly sure what this slider controls - looks like "saturation" or something. Presets made with this slider in a middle position will show discoloration when used for a follower. From my understanding, this is because the CK only "knows" 3 values: Red, green and blue. So the skin color used in the CK can differ from the one you exported with your tintmask from Racemenu.

 

Another possible reason for discoloration are the freckles. Maybe your freckled texture doesn't match the rest of the body.

 

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Re: the interpolation slider, I read this on another forum post. It does in fact control skin Alpha (it's not saturation as you say, rather controls the opacity of the tint relative to the bare diffuse).

Either way I re-exported the character with a different skin tone with full opacity. Built the whole thing from scratch, neck seam remains no matter what. The freckles are baked in to the FaceTint so I don't think that'd be the cause (and they're fine on player characters, no seam).

 

It seems like an inconsistency between the face and body diffuse, or FaceTint and body diffuse. The mismatch shows up in the CK too--I tested this out by making a new custom head with all the textures I'm using and checking it in the render preview alongside the body. Very similar seam. Makes zero sense because the textures are from the same pack and are otherwise seamless.

 

I also tried manipulating the FaceTint texture in photoshop: dodging, burning, sponging the lower border, in turn. They do affect the area but not in a way that minimises the seam.

 

Edit: When I was re-building the follower I think I forgot to give her the new FaceTint generated from RM with full skin tone opacity. BUT even now that I've updated that, the seam is still there! Even if I use the FaceTint generated by the CK instead of the high-res one from RaceMenu the seam remains.

It seems like the CK is insisting on an incorrect hue for the body texture... but it's set to the exact same values as in RaceMenu, so wtf?

Edited September 29, 2020 by ak0d

[ak0d]

In the end I just brute-forced my way with trial and error, testing different photoshop adjustments of the FaceTint until I found a color that matched the body well enough.

There is still a seam if you look really closely, but ultimately I don't think there's anything else that can be done about this.

Edited September 29, 2020 by ak0d

[Algabar]

Thanks for your reply and glad you got it solved - at least almost.

 

Also thanks for the update on the "alpha" slider. :cool:

 

It seems like an inconsistency between the face and body diffuse, or FaceTint and body diffuse. The mismatch shows up in the CK too--I tested this out by making a new custom head with all the textures I'm using and checking it in the render preview alongside the body. Very similar seam. Makes zero sense because the textures are from the same pack and are otherwise seamless.

 

TBH, no idea either. One of the mysteries of modding Skyrim I guess...

 

 

Maybe there's on last point to check: The blank detail maps used on heads. You probably already know about these. In fact, they can also lead to head-body discolorations.

 

Problems occur if one forgets to add this texture to the head in the CK and/or in Nifskope. This can happen quite easily - I already made that mistake myself...

 

Issues can also arise, if a "bad" (i.e. not really "neutral") blank detail map is used.

 

By default, they are a shared ressource, found in textures/actors/character/male. So the blankdetailmap.dds installed there basically affects all characters..
To rule out any issues with "bad" blank detail maps, I always gave my followers a blankdetailmap.dds of their own. This way, they don't depend on whatever might be installed as "default" blank detail map. It's easy - simply adjust the paths in the CK and Nifskope accordingly.

 

From my experience, especially good blank detail maps are provided by "Fair Skin Complexion" and "Vitruvia". There are probably other good ones, but these are the two I always used without any issues.