The Neck Seam Hunt, or using Text Blend with SE textures

[BreadDain]

Hello! I've decided to write a short guide on how to deal with neck seam caused by use of different body textures in Skyrim SE. There is an "old, but gold" utility on Nexus called Caliente's Texture Blender, but the problem is that it was made for LE and specifically for CBBE body. Trying to boot the same utility in SE will cause a lot of issues and is not an automated process, like many people tend to claim. And at this point some of people will ask themselves if it is even worth to bother with the tool when they can make a quick edit with Photoshop, GIMP or Paint.net for desired result, which I can't really argue with, but the point was to make necessary fixes to make the tool work.
 

Alright, let's get started. For making it work we need following tools:

1. Caliente's Texture Blender (duh!) https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5737?tab=description
2. Paint.net https://www.getpaint.net/
3. and maybe GIMP, if it more convenient for you to use. https://www.gimp.org/

Download everything, unpack and install, don't forget destination directories. For my own purposes I've also integrated TextBlender with MO2, but that's not required if you use anything different, the integration is usual as with every other tool.
 

Go to TextBlend folder, search for Config.xml and open it, find GameDataPath and TexOutputPath, uncomment them by removing comment tags "<!--" and "-->" and change them according your own game path and desired output directory (you can choose any, it doesn't matter).
 

Now pick 2 full! body texture sets. I was blending Bijin face textures with Diamond Skin body. First, open in Paint.net your target head diffuse texture (femalehead.dds) located in textures\actors\character\female within your game or desired mod folder, the one that would be used as a source for result. We need to resave it in BC1 DXT1 texture format since TextBlend seems to fail working with SE standart, which is BC7 DXT11+. Don't forget to make a backup before if you are unsure with your own actions.
 

Once you've resaved it, you need to make your own blending template. Go to mod that you want to blend you head with (or whatever part accordingly), and find similar texture (for me it was Diamond Skin face diffuse). Open it with Paint.net (because it is the only one that can read BC7 format) and then proceed editing it by following template. If you want to use GIMP for this part, just copy-paste it there, it doesn't matter, and when you are done bring the result back to Paint.net.
 

1) Open Calientes Texture Blender\Library\Head\Color\CBBEv3_2_HeadNeckBlendColor.psd

2) Colour Select opened texture so it looks like this:
 

Spoiler

3) RMB - Selection - Selection to Path
4) Select whole image (Ctrl+A hotkey). May require creating new Layer for selecting whole image Space.
5) Go to Paint.Net where you've opened face diffuse that you want to get your blending imprint from (Diamond Skin for me) and copy-paste it to GIMP as new layer.
6) Go to Paths (right bottom corner), right click on the path that you previously created and choose Path to Selection
7) Invert Selection (Ctrl+I) and delete everything selected and above the selection, so the remaining shape is similar to one that was provided with TextBlend

Spoiler

8 ) Now select Eraser tool, edit its settings so it is as soft as possible (I did 300 radius, 20-30 transparency and lowered Hardness and Force a bit. Clean the top of the remaining texture carefully, so it resembles the one that was provided with TextBlend originally and looked like this:
 

Spoiler

9) After you are done, save the result (you can overwrite original files if you want).

Now when you've completed your template, open TextBlend, select Head and Colour from dropdowns, tick Use Currently Installed Textures, double click on femalehead.dds and HeadNeckBlendColor so they appear in selection on the right. femalehead supposed to be in BC1 format at this point. You can click Preview to see the result and if you are satisfied with the expected result - hit Blend Images. The output will go to the folder that you have specified at the beginning. Open it with Paint.net and resave with BC7 DXT11+, and then move to your game/mod folder, and you are done.

I hope that the guide would be clear enough to understand since my language is far from being perfect and I did this one on a quick hand without replicating steps too much, so there could be logical mistakes. If anything is unclear (beside GIMP and Paint usage) - write in the comments, I'll try to elaborate it. And if it really helped someone, feel free to leave a tip on my Patreon, although this is completely optional.

[Guest]

Moved and cleaned up.