OMG how to troubleshoot brown face???

[timstertimster]

I'm about to eat my keyboard.

 

I installed a follower mod with several custom NPC's in it, works nice. Then I messed around in xEdit and made brownface because I changed head parts on one specific follower. Fine. So I removed the meshes and textures from overwrite folder, removed the esp that had my changes, but still have brownface.

 

Then I uninstalled the original follower mod and reinstalled it from the original zip file. 

 

Guess what: brownface!

 

How in the world is that possible? I manually removed everything I can think of that would have been changed, and yet... brownface!

 

Then I made a batch script to load all the NPC's from the mod, and they ALL have brownface, even though I actually only made changes toa single one of them!

 

What the fliping heck is this voodoo?

 

 

[Le_Spectre]

Possible solutions that i am aware of:

 

- try a new game and see if this fixes it

- 'recycleactor' console command sometimes worked for me

- ESP reordering might also be a factor, try changing the load order

If it still doesn't work try reading this other topic on a similar topic

 

[mouton18]

Spoiler

8 hours ago, timstertimster said:

I'm about to eat my keyboard.

 

I installed a follower mod with several custom NPC's in it, works nice. Then I messed around in xEdit and made brownface because I changed head parts on one specific follower. Fine. So I removed the meshes and textures from overwrite folder, removed the esp that had my changes, but still have brownface.

 

Then I uninstalled the original follower mod and reinstalled it from the original zip file. 

 

Guess what: brownface!

 

How in the world is that possible? I manually removed everything I can think of that would have been changed, and yet... brownface!

 

Then I made a batch script to load all the NPC's from the mod, and they ALL have brownface, even though I actually only made changes toa single one of them!

 

What the fliping heck is this voodoo?

 

 

 

What is your follower mod?

 

 when a mod is not using vanilla asset, exporting facegen will fix the brown faces. in case of two mod overlaping a mod manager and load order might fix it, cleaning records in xedit and proper load order will fix it. if its with a overhaul you need to load your mod and that overhaul to export facegen aka shiva's
and theres the follower mod using a third party nif file while keeping ck vanilla asset that needs to be recreated and will cause an everlasting brown face aka, shiva+cicero female

[Lux Lux]

You need to Open in CK , find the NPC and cntrl-f4. that should fix it. 

 

You cant change "head parts" in edit programs. You can change colors and "add-ons" like hair (its not actually part of the mesh) but if you change something like the nose that changes the "shape" (geometry) of the face the game has to create a new mesh to render that correctly.  If the meshes dont match youll get black face. 

 

If you want to make a lot of changes, its better to do in CK and create a New .esp. Just open the all the data files with choosing an active and it will create a new esp when you save. For instance I just just changed everyone in BBLS. If I do something that messes them all up now, all I have to do is disable my mod or edit my esp to it to fix without messing up the original. 

 

Another thing to keep in mind is esm's vs esp's.  In my set up. Apachii hair is an esm (master) while KS Hair is just an esp. So if i give an NPC KS Hair, it wont show up in game because its not  a "master" file and the game will act like it cant find it. Thats why you have to do what the other poster said and copy it to the NPCs esp/esm, preferably to the esp you created

[timstertimster]

2 hours ago, Lux Lux said:

For instance I just just changed everyone in BBLS. If I do something that messes them all up now, all I have to do is disable my mod or edit my esp to it to fix without messing up the original. 

I'm a little lost... can you explain a bit more in detail? For example, if I have KS Hair as an esm (I did change the flag in xEdit and renamed it esm), and now I edit the Headpart in xEdit to use a different hair, why would that not work, and how am I supposed to do it?

[Blue Astra]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33709

[Lux Lux]

20 hours ago, timstertimster said:

I'm a little lost... can you explain a bit more in detail? For example, if I have KS Hair as an esm (I did change the flag in xEdit and renamed it esm), and now I edit the Headpart in xEdit to use a different hair, why would that not work, and how am I supposed to do it?

you can "usually" edit hairs with no issue at all in the edit programs. Some mods for custom followers can put the hair in the mesh though so there isnt really a hair option you can change. An example is AVA follower. You'll get a crazy streak coming off him/her in game because the author did some crazy stuff. The hair is actually a "mouthpart" and in the actual head mesh.  So when dealing with custom followers like you said we were using, you are sometimes at the mercy of how they created them. 

 

I was just trying to explain that not using "masters" (or not putting dupes in the folder) is often the cause dark face bugs. Like I said I was doing BB revamp. I was giving me fits because I kept getting darkface and generic heads in game. The reason turned out it was because I was giving them eyebrows that were from an ESP. 

 

As an aside - and easy way to not even deal with any of this is to use Apaachi or KS wigs or https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4444 if you just want to change a hairstyle.  The spell is limited but it works on any NPC

[timstertimster]

OMG I am so excited that I finally demystified this problem for myself:

 

in this awesome unrelated post about changing placed actor ESP's to ESL (which typically throws an error in xEdit due to formID shenanegans), it finally made sense to me what is happening.

 

In a nutshell:

 

A lot of the time, brownface occurs due to a form ID no longer matching the face nif's hardcode-stored tintmask texture path. Nowhere have I come across posts or explanations that mention the hardcoded tintmask path.

 

Man. I really hope that next gen TES game will utilize a proper database file, and use a more object-oriented approach to their asset management, so modding doesn't have to mess around with hard coded file paths.