Slave Tats, Resolving inky blackness on body and screen cut-off

[Softly_909]

When using the mod Slave Tats, my character's body has developed a black film on much of their skin, and sometimes the screen goes mostly black (from left to right, a vertical section on the right is visible).
These issues can be temporarily resolved by opening and closing Slave Tats in the MCM, and opening and closing the world map, respectively.
But the black coating returns when I equip/unequip clothes, and the screen cut off returns during animations.

I found this issue referenced before, can you help make sense of these?


"I've had that too. I can get it too go way by switching to first person and looking at my map. It straight up doesn't happen if all my overlays are occupied by something other than "blank" from slavetats though. Mentioned it before too. Usually the half a black screen only happens in the change race menu for me though. Either way, occupied overlays negate whatever's doing it. Even if the overlay is completely transparent."
 

"That mean the problem is NOT caused by SlaveTats. The tats are only pure textures that show over the craracter and can not cause any similar problem.

Probably, you have an HDT problem and that strange things that you see in the screen can be mesh streched to the infinite. Revise your HDT configuration, try disable mods with HDT hair, clothes, earrings, necklaces ...

Aditionally, can be and ENB problem. Try disable your ENB and make test."

I'm getting a message in the console which reads 'Warning: access to non-existing object with id...'     There are two warnings for two different objects, so I'm pretty sure that Slave Tats is having issues dealing with two piercings, worn by my character, added by Devious Devices.
Removing the piercings, saving and loading, stopped the warnings but not the ink/cutoff.

~ Please and thank you!

Edited October 23, 2022 by Softly_909

[traison]

The so called black vertical "cut off" is most likely the mipmap of whatever texture is the "black coating". So, I'd do this:

1. Identify the tattoo in SlaveTats. If it's not there, find it in RaceMenu.
2. If it's not immediately obvious where it came from, go through all *.json files in .\textures\Actors\Character\slavetats.
3. Once you've found the source mod, open its slavetats json file (path above).
4. Locate the texture referenced in the "texture" key.
5. Open the dds file in Gimp, Photoshop, Paint.NET, ...
6. Save it without mipmaps, or alternatively remove all mipmaps and have the app regenerate them when saving.
7. Alternatively save using a format other than DXT5. Most likely one that supports alpha channels.

Edited October 23, 2022 by traison

[Softly_909]

I'm not actually using any tattoos, I just had some applied temporarily by S.L.U.T.S Resume, but I'll have a look.

[Softly_909]

Yeah, so I did all that with all of the dds files I could find under textures\Actors\Character\slavetats, in this case they were in folders called whipmarks and rapehands (although my player character hasn't been whipped or marked recently).

Saved them in Paint.NET (with generate mipmaps box unchecked).
Error still persists.

Did you read the quotes I included? The one about occupying the overlays seemed to be a real solution.

[traison]

Do you have something overriding this file: textures\actors\character\overlays\default.dds

[Softly_909]

I don't even have a folder called overlays in textures\actors\character. Running a search for default.dds in Data also yields no results.
We are looking under the game directory (The Elder Scrolls - Skyrim - Special Edition), right?

[Softly_909]

If there's anyone out there who can explain how to implement the fix I referenced in my original post (installing a transparent overlay), please don't hesitate to chime in.

[traison]

14 hours ago, Softly_909 said:

I don't even have a folder called overlays in textures\actors\character. Running a search for default.dds in Data also yields no results.
We are looking under the game directory (The Elder Scrolls - Skyrim - Special Edition), right?

 

Depends on what mod manager you have. If it's MO2 then no, at least not if you're viewing it in the regular windows explorer.

 

Edit: Also the file can apparently be inside a bsa/bs2. The original blank texture seems to be inside RaceMenu's bsa.

Edited October 24, 2022 by traison

[traison]

12 hours ago, Softly_909 said:

If there's anyone out there who can explain how to implement the fix I referenced in my original post (installing a transparent overlay), please don't hesitate to chime in.

 

Well if you think it will help, here you go. Search for "Softly_909 Blank" in the body overlays. The file it references is Actors\Character\Overlays\softly_909_fix\blank.dds in case you want to change it. The script was compiled for SSE, so if you're on AE its possible you'll have to recompile it. It has no dependencies however so that is not as bad as it sounds. Compiling can in this case be done quite easily with the CK.

softly_909 fix.7z

[Softly_909]

Thanks for the fix.
The frustrating thing here, dude, is that the advice everyone gives is, at best, incomplete. Like, if you feel like I haven't been taking your advice seriously, it's because you ignored what I actually asked about in the post and continued to ignore it.
Save it without mipmaps in software you've never used before, and I'm not going to explain how - Okay, I guess I'll go and figure out how to do that on my own.
And then you say, is something overriding this file? But you don't give the whole address, so I don't even know where to look.
Even in this last post, you haven't actually said what I'm supposed to do with this fix, where I'm supposed to paste it, if indeed I am supposed to paste it anywhere.

It seems like there's this attitude on this site of: You only deserve help if you're so digitally savvy that you almost never needed help in the first place. To the point where mods don't even come with installation instructions, or their download files aren't marked with version numbers. For example, the Skyrim technical support guidelines need a complete description of how to set up your papyrus log. It's bizarre, every time you guys choose not to make your material foolproof, you create more work for yourself down the track.

I bit the bullet and loaded an earlier save, and have resolved to make more manual saves in future.

[bm78]

Ive been following this for a couple days since i also have this problem, and decided to try installing the fix. The problem is it requires community overlays as a master, and installing causes a "cyclic rules error" according to Vortex. Might just be a vortex thing idk.

But i have noticed that changing all racemenu overlays to Default fixes it, until you put another tattoo on and then remove it, so my guess is that if theres a way for Slavetats to use Default instead of blank, it might fix it. Though it sounds like thats what your fix does, but i cannot get it to work.

[traison]

7 hours ago, Softly_909 said:

Thanks for the fix.
The frustrating thing here, dude, is that the advice everyone gives is, at best, incomplete. Like, if you feel like I haven't been taking your advice seriously, it's because you ignored what I actually asked about in the post and continued to ignore it.
Save it without mipmaps in software you've never used before, and I'm not going to explain how - Okay, I guess I'll go and figure out how to do that on my own.
And then you say, is something overriding this file? But you don't give the whole address, so I don't even know where to look.
Even in this last post, you haven't actually said what I'm supposed to do with this fix, where I'm supposed to paste it, if indeed I am supposed to paste it anywhere.

It seems like there's this attitude on this site of: You only deserve help if you're so digitally savvy that you almost never needed help in the first place. To the point where mods don't even come with installation instructions, or their download files aren't marked with version numbers. For example, the Skyrim technical support guidelines need a complete description of how to set up your papyrus log. It's bizarre, every time you guys choose not to make your material foolproof, you create more work for yourself down the track.

I bit the bullet and loaded an earlier save, and have resolved to make more manual saves in future.

 

The thing with modding is that it is literally the old (original) definition of hacking. Hacking meaning to use something in a way it wasn't intended to be used. Thus a hacker was typically a person with an insatiable need to learn how things worked. A hacker was also commonly thought of as some kind of genius, sometimes mistakenly confused with a nerd. Hackers I'd say are to blame (thank) for what we have today, at least on the tech side of things, as many new techologies started because some "nerd" in MIT decided it would be fun to make.

1. I ignored the idea of creating another blank texture and using this instead for all slots as a reasonable fix because there already is a blank texture; we should fix that instead to find the real problem. If you never find the fix, you never learn anything useful. Granted a workaround can be useful, but you can't keep working around all the problems you have.
2. At any time you could have said "I don't know how to do that" or "I don't want to do that". I do not know your skill level with computers. To save my own time and sanity I'm not going to start by assuming that people do not know the basics. By basics I mean using the Windows Explorer, working with archives, searching for information on the internet, editing files in notepad and stuff like that. If the problem at hand could be considered complicated, and the person with the problem was having trouble finding notepad, that's when I'm out, simply because I don't have time to teach someone 3 years of computer basics. This is not an attempt at being hostile or gatekeeping people. See my paragraph about hacking above. Just like not all people are ready to be "hackers", I'm not ready to be a surgeon.
3. The reason why I didn't go into detail about Gimp, Photoshop or Paint.NET is that if I were to do that, I'd still be writing that post. I expected you to google the bits you didn't understand, or post a followup question.
4. The file path I posted was as complete as I can make it without you first sending me the path where you installed Skyrim. Windows is not like a Playstation or Xbox, in Windows you're allowed to place things wherever you want. Granted they are dumbing this down every day as we speak so who knows in 5 years, but for the time being this is still true. Also you could have looked at any other mod archive and immediately realized that the path is relative to the data directory in skyrim. Practically every mod is like this.
5. The fix I posted is in a standard mod format, there is nothing weird about it. Any competent mod manager (Vortex, MO2,...) will be able to handle that.
6. The reason why this fix isn't "foolproof" is because:
   1. I do not believe it will work.
   2. It's a terrible hack (as the quote below proves) made to barely cover the needs.
   3. If it works, and this is a common problem people are having, we can improve upon it, add all the documentation people will ever need and the version numbers. You can even claim it as your own, I even put your name on it. But until its proven useful, I don't see the point.

7 hours ago, bm78 said:

Ive been following this for a couple days since i also have this problem, and decided to try installing the fix. The problem is it requires community overlays as a master, and installing causes a "cyclic rules error" according to Vortex. Might just be a vortex thing idk.

But i have noticed that changing all racemenu overlays to Default fixes it, until you put another tattoo on and then remove it, so my guess is that if theres a way for Slavetats to use Default instead of blank, it might fix it. Though it sounds like thats what your fix does, but i cannot get it to work.

 

So it does, an oversight by me. I didn't expect it to link the player reference to the community pack. Side effect of me copying things over from the community pack to save a bit of time. Anyhow, I swapped the masters around now, no more community pack.

softly_909 fix2.7z

[Softly_909]

Most of what you've said here is pretty fair.
We should have just made a new post dedicated to solving the issue properly - based on prior experiences I hadn't thought anyone would be interested in helping that much.
I think maybe you've forgotten what it was like when you were new to modding and tinkering with software - it takes time to pick these things up.
And locating the texture referenced in the 'texture' key and saving in a format that supports alpha channels isn't exactly basic, buddy. Or easily googled.

[bm78]

I think i found a fix

In SKEE64.ini i changed these 2 settings to these numbers, and after doing some tests the problem seems to be gone

Under [Overlays/Data] 

iAlphaFlags=4844 
iAlphaThreshold=128 

 

 

[traison]

9 hours ago, bm78 said:

I think i found a fix

In SKEE64.ini i changed these 2 settings to these numbers, and after doing some tests the problem seems to be gone

Under [Overlays/Data] 

iAlphaFlags=4844 
iAlphaThreshold=128 

 

 

 

Hm nice find.

 

There may still be a problem somewhere else, as the defaults are different. Just something to keep in mind, should similar issues occur in the future. The comments in the ini mention those values being suitable for solid overlays, whatever that means. These are the defaults, for posterity:

Spoiler

[Overlays/Data]

; Assigns these alpha properties to all overlays when they are applied

; 4844, 128 is recommended for solid overlays (they will render correctly underwater)

; Changing the overlay's alpha value ingame acts like 4845 regardless of assigned flags

iAlphaFlags=4845 ; Default[4845]

iAlphaThreshold=0 ; Default[0]

sDefaultTexture=textures\actors\character\overlays\default.dds