Damn those neck gaps!

[Tiress]

I would really appreciate some help here as I'm slowly going insane.

 

The problem looks like this:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

It's only visible from certain angles, but so apparent that I can't just overlook it.

 

Other skin texture mods have a slight effect on it, some are able to cover it better, but never fully.

Other body types or even body mods have no effect on it.

Weight has no effect.

ENB has very slight effect, almost none.

I've tried all versions of Bodyslide down to 4.5.4, all the same.

Returning to v4.51 of XMPSE had also no effect.

Blankdetailmap.dds had no effect.

Even the most basic setup with only XPMSE, racemenu and ASLAL had no effect.

 

The gap is less apparent in vanilla, but it makes the neck seem really obvious and I don't really wanna end up playing vanilla.

 

Any ideas are most welcome!

[t.ara]

And if character is naked?

 

(not the texture-problem, is a gap between the head and body-mesh...happens if clothing hasn´t been made for your body. And if that´s all not helping out, you can only edit the head ´s skin (if every other things fail) or maybe something with scaling is not suiting...)

 

-coming for all clothing sets???

-naked???

....

[sativa]

Do you use a Headmesh replacer?

Test my normal map if you use a unp based body,

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/10211-zoes-body-normalmap/

 

with this head normal map,

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/20483

[Tiress]

46 minutes ago, t.ara said:

And if character is naked?

 

(not the texture-problem, is a gap between the head and body-mesh...happens if clothing hasn´t been made for your body. And if that´s all not helping out, you can only edit the head ´s skin (if every other things fail) or maybe something with scaling is not suiting...)

 

-coming for all clothing sets???

-naked???

....

Sadly, yes, even when character is naked.

 

I'm not sure how to go about editing the head's skin. Could you point me in the right direction, please?

[Tiress]

1 hour ago, sativa said:

Do you use a Headmesh replacer?

Test my normal map if you use a unp based body,

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/10211-zoes-body-normalmap/

 

with this head normal map,

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/20483

It only made the neck seem more visible.

 

But a combination of head and body normalmap from the same nexus page did a decent job in hiding it. It's still visible though.

 

edit:// Sorry, forgot you asked about head replacer. No, I'm not using one atm, that was the first thing I removed when I noticed this.

[sativa]

9 minutes ago, Tiress said:

It only made the neck seem more visible.

 

But a combination of head and body normalmap from the same nexus page did a decent job in hiding it. It's still visible though.

 

edit:// Sorry, forgot you asked about head replacer. No, I'm not using one atm, that was the first thing I removed when I noticed this.

hm,your images are too small to say it's the mesh. To be sure try the orginal unp body and check your naked char.Change only the meshes.

Some enb's are shown a neckseam more than others.

[Tiress]

3 minutes ago, sativa said:

hm,your images are too small to say it's the mesh. To be sure try the orginal unp body and check your naked char.Change only the meshes.

Some enb's are shown a neckseam more than others.

The neck seem is not really a problem as it's pretty invisible, it's just these.. gaps that kind of destroy it.

 

I'll check the original UNP body, thank you.

[Tiress]

20 minutes ago, sativa said:

hm,your images are too small to say it's the mesh. To be sure try the orginal unp body and check your naked char.Change only the meshes.

Some enb's are shown a neckseam more than others.

No real difference.

 

This is the closest I could get to the neck without moving inside:

[sativa]

I think this is a normal seam especially on the backside of the neck.Maybe you can hide it more with a another enb.Try Rudy enb,iit makes a realy good skin. .)

In some indoor lightsources with less ambientlight i have this seam too.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41482

 

 

 

[Tiress]

1 hour ago, sativa said:

I think this is a normal seam especially on the backside of the neck.Maybe you can hide it more with a another enb.Try Rudy enb,iit makes a realy good skin. .)

In some indoor lightsources with less ambientlight i have this seam too.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41482

Oh no, I was afraid it would be something like this.

 

I'll give Rudy a try and see if it at least hides it enough. Thanks

[t.ara]

4 hours ago, Tiress said:

Sadly, yes, even when character is naked.

 

I'm not sure how to go about editing the head's skin. Could you point me in the right direction, please?

I would ONLY edit the head if the error is not possible to be solved at final. If you have the ody installed and BS-(bodyslide)....the correct skeleton and the race-menu (maybe), your skyrim should work. Maybe there´s a differentmod replacing the HEAD, which CAME by installing the BODY. So maybe you could reinstall the BODY  and then have again a try.

[Tiress]

4 minutes ago, t.ara said:

I would ONLY edit the head if the error is not possible to be solved at final. If you have the ody installed and BS-(bodyslide)....the correct skeleton and the race-menu (maybe), your skyrim should work. Maybe there´s a differentmod replacing the HEAD, which CAME by installing the BODY. So maybe you could reinstall the BODY  and then have again a try.

I tried UUNP (several types, I event went as far as using several versions of Bodyslide to generate those), 7B, UNP and UNPB. It's visible with all of them and I'm pretty sure they were not overwritten by another mod. Neither was the head mesh or head texture.

 

Rudy ENB seems to cover it a bit, but sadly, it's still visible. I bet I never had this happen like.. 4 months ago, now I can't get rid of it.

[xxnierxxautomata2b]

On 12/1/2019 at 6:03 PM, Tiress said:

I tried UUNP (several types, I event went as far as using several versions of Bodyslide to generate those), 7B, UNP and UNPB. It's visible with all of them and I'm pretty sure they were not overwritten by another mod. Neither was the head mesh or head texture.

 

Rudy ENB seems to cover it a bit, but sadly, it's still visible. I bet I never had this happen like.. 4 months ago, now I can't get rid of it.

Did you ever figure out a solution to this problem? I am having the ame exact issue and noticed it with cbbe 3ba body replacer. I even tried sculpting my dead through racemenu and still appears.

[Zaflis]

1 hour ago, xxnierxxautomata2b said:

Did you ever figure out a solution to this problem? I am having the ame exact issue and noticed it with cbbe 3ba body replacer. I even tried sculpting my dead through racemenu and still appears.

Is there a difference when looking at the neck seam when wearing armor or when naked? Because if it only happens with armor on it could be a case of missing Bodyslide build for that armor you wear. Everything that you can wear in the chest/hands/feet should be built in Bodyslide and it does make some Nexus armors unusable, although there are often Bodyslide conversions for them made.

 

But there are also tools and guides made to fix neck seam. Some clues there too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/6zbtdb/neck_seams/

 

When i do a search in my MO2 folder i see there is TexBlend already installed with Bodyslide. I don't remember anymore if simply running it from there is enough for it or how to use it. TexBlend might fix coloring errors, not mesh errors where clearly there's an invisible gap caused between polygons. Of things that change the head mesh, Enhanced Characted Edit (ECE) comes to mind... it could be all kinds of trouble anyways so i wouldn't use it.

[xxnierxxautomata2b]

9 minutes ago, Zaflis said:

Is there a difference when looking at the neck seam when wearing armor or when naked? Because if it only happens with armor on it could be a case of missing Bodyslide build for that armor you wear. Everything that you can wear in the chest/hands/feet should be built in Bodyslide and it does make some Nexus armors unusable, although there are often Bodyslide conversions for them made.

 

But there are also tools and guides made to fix neck seam. Some clues there too:

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/6zbtdb/neck_seams/

 

When i do a search in my MO2 folder i see there is TexBlend already installed with Bodyslide. I don't remember anymore if simply running it from there is enough for it or how to use it. TexBlend might fix coloring errors, not mesh errors where clearly there's an invisible gap caused between polygons. Of things that change the head mesh, Enhanced Characted Edit (ECE) comes to mind... it could be all kinds of trouble anyways so i wouldn't use it.

It's not much of a neck seam at all. It is flickering sparkles and it is only noticeable on the side and on the back of my characters neck if you look really closely. You can't hardly see it from a far. I never really noticed it until recently. It appear when just installing regular cbbe without 3ba.  

[Tiress]

1 hour ago, xxnierxxautomata2b said:

Did you ever figure out a solution to this problem? I am having the ame exact issue and noticed it with cbbe 3ba body replacer. I even tried sculpting my dead through racemenu and still appears.

 

Sadly, no. I took a break from Skyrim for some time after that and never noticed it since then, but it's fair to say I really tried to not look there anymore.

 

I'll take a look later today.

[Tlam99]

Subsurface scattering.

As it appears under the chin, too, it might be a possibility.

 

[Tiress]

I'm unable to replicate it, it's perfectly smooth now. What was pretty noticeable before is now either hidden or non-existent.

 

I wish I knew what was the cause, but sadly I have no idea.

[xxnierxxautomata2b]

Thanks for the quick responses guys. I have it on every character. It's weird because it is also on other npc females too in my game. I will try subsurface scattering and go from there. I just never seen neck sparkling like that before and just unsure where it came from. It doesn't matter what skin, or body texture I use. It's not a neck seam which is even stranger.

[Zaflis]

6 hours ago, T-lam said:

Subsurface scattering.

As it appears under the chin, too, it might be a possibility.

Oh that, it is then definitely texture issue. I do use this mod for sub surface correction on UUNP:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30050

Important to note also if you use shaders or not, there seemed to be other mod for that too on nexus. Could also be different for CBBE.

[Tiress]

In case someone finds it useful, I used latest XPMSE, 3BA and Bijin Skin for the test, not much else, w/ and w/o ENB. I also tried pure vanilla and even though the neck seam was pretty visible, there still was no neck gap.

[xxnierxxautomata2b]

So I was experimenting with a lot of different setting in my enblocal and skyrim settings and made things less visible around the neck. I somehow reduced the sharpness of not just my character, but everything else around me such as trees, objects etc.. It's subtle now and I appreciate everyone's insight. This will have to do

[Grey Cloud]

I think you are all barking up the wrong tree here. I use UUNP and generally have more than one skin texture in use but I don't get neck seams.

[Enaya13]

Ok, I'm not sure if it is still a relevant problem, but  I’ve dealt with similar several times - it could appear on any seam of the 3d model.

May be it will be useful for someone.  In my case, this "gap" was particularly noticeable on the top of Solas' head,  on his neck, and also I had it on SOS body with "Fair skin for men" by RomeoZero.  It's (mostly) a normalmap problem. I don’t know exactly why this is happening, but the solution  is quite simple. You can do it in two ways - in Photoshop\Gimp, or in any 3d soft. 
I’m not sure if this is the correct, maybe there’s another way to fix it, but it worked for me.

 

In Photoshop:
1. Open "problematic" normalmap in photoshop\gimp.
2. Select neck seam (or other seam which need to be fixed) and move it slightly to the edge of texture. 
3. Make some tweaks to texture if needed. 
 
In Blender - just re-bake textures with higher "Margin" value (for example, in xNormal it's called "Edge padding") in Bake tab (default is 16, I have good result with 24-32). It is desirable to do the same for diffuse map.