Neck seams/lines

[HecateMT]

Good evening, lurker here
I'm experiencing some neck-seam on my player model, usually I have this issue with npc's but this is new territory for me, funnily enough.
I've sort of isolated that what I'm seeing isn't really caused by texture incompatibility: I've re-installed my meshes and textures one by one and after great improvement to the problem after installing Bijin Skin, and there is still a seam on close examination. 
Here are screenshots taken with (in order)

1.  *supposedly* (I'll admit I half-assed this to see if the seam persisted) no mods affecting the body/head installed,
2.  UNP Female Body Renewal installed and overwriting, tried this because it came with files for specular and normal maps for the head/body that SHOULD match each other, then
3.  Bijin Skin installed, overwriting UNP FBR textures

Viewed on Dunmer, Nord, and Redguard for variety in skin tone (the Nord example is pretty unnoticeable and makes me feel like a psychopath for caring so much) sorry for cursor

Spoiler

I'm mainly asking for ideas as to other ways that this can arise (skeleton, facegen, Mercury in Retrograde), research really only nets the same suggestion of "fix your textures" from years ago. I'm familiar with what texture incompatibility looks like and compared to that, the Bijin examples look more like the textures match but are stretched/placed incorrectly. The fact that installing Bijin improves the look has convinced me that this is not caused by textures, but if I'm wrong in this assumption please dunk on me.

If anyone wants to help I'm more than happy to produce a load order or more details, I'm at a loss for what could be causing this.
I would love to be able to play the game again without concern for this extant minor graphical oddity, assume that's not an option.

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by HecateMT
clarity?

[bnub345]

This is just how skyrim works, the head is a separate piece from the torso. There will be a seam at the neck, how noticeable it is depends on how well the textures are blended. It's been like this for... 11.5 years now?

[HecateMT]

That's more or less the response I expected, yeah man I get it. I'm just frustrated about the only surefire way to eliminate it being to clean reinstall then do your best work to get it right, then not mess with it- and like everything else in modding this game I'm stubborn about: "there's gotta be a way to fix this." I went into asking this thinking there was something I'm missing but if it really is just 'get fucked, do it over,' so be it. 

[HecateMT]

1 hour ago, bnub345 said:

This is just how skyrim works, the head is a separate piece from the torso. There will be a seam at the neck, how noticeable it is depends on how well the textures are blended. It's been like this for... 11.5 years now?

Do you think this looks rectifiable by tinkering with the textures myself or is my install messed up. I thank you for trying to explain to me,  just had a hard time believing this was still the issue since installing bijin had completely fixed this for me in the past, meaning at that point it was solely texture mismatch. 

[traison]

Most likely the *_msn.dds texture. Make sure all body/hand/foot/head textures are from the same mod. Check the meshes for texture paths. If they are, then that's how it was intended/the best they could do.

 

It could also be the meshes themselves, as they can contain vertex colors, specularity and other settings. This would not be my first suspect however.

 

If this tiny thing bothers you however, I wonder how you managed to miss the other 25,000 glaring issues in the world of Skyrim. Ever seen a floating tree? ?

[HecateMT]

 

14 minutes ago, traison said:

Ever seen a floating tree? ?

Look, I really don't get it either- if I come across as deranged, trust me I feel like it too. Thank you, this kind of obscure bs is what I was asking for.
 

8 minutes ago, traison said:

Check the meshes for texture paths.

What does this mean, how would I do this. 
As stated my best fix for this has been to re-do everything so in case it isn't clear I'm stupid and lazy, but willing to learn lmao

 

13 minutes ago, traison said:

It could also be the meshes themselves, as they can contain vertex colors, specularity and other settings. This would not be my first suspect however.

If a mod requires editing on that depth to have it compatible with a specific installation of a game, is it the modder's fault for creating it that way or is it the user's for mucking things up 

if you'd like to instead point me toward a guide for any of these I'd appreciate that too

[traison]

2 hours ago, HecateMT said:

What does this mean, how would I do this.

NifSkope. Textures are in each BSTriShape -> BSLightingShaderProperty -> BSShaderTextureSet

 

Meshes that make up the body can be found in xEdit:

 [00] Skyrim.esm (7CAB85A9) \ Race \ 00013746 <NordRace>

 [00] Skyrim.esm (7CAB85A9) \ Head Part \ 00051623 <FemaleHeadNord>

 [00] Skyrim.esm (7CAB85A9) \ Armor \ 00000D64 <SkinNaked>

 [00] Skyrim.esm (7CAB85A9) \ Armor Addon \ 00000D6E <NakedFeet>

 [00] Skyrim.esm (7CAB85A9) \ Armor Addon \ 00000D6C <NakedHands>

 [00] Skyrim.esm (7CAB85A9) \ Armor Addon \ 00000D67 <NakedTorso>

 

So, for example:

meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalefeet_1.nif

meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalehands_1.nif

meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalebody_1.nif

meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalehead.nif

[HecateMT]

New to these tools, I appreciate your patience with that. 

25 minutes ago, traison said:

Meshes that make up the body can be found in xEdit:

I can navigate to tabs you listed without issue, what am I looking for in each of these  or was this to simply find the meshes

Checked the meshes you listed in Nifskope before you responded, I was familiar with their location in my Data folder; each of the nifs look like they're pathed to the correct textures

Am I making a mistake in viewing straight from my meshes folder instead of finding something through xEdit.

 

[traison]

8 hours ago, HecateMT said:

pathed to the correct textures

 

Correct textures according to who? Correct textures could mean they're pointing to the textures you expected them to point to, or the textures *some* mod author intended you to use.

 

On 6/14/2023 at 1:05 AM, HecateMT said:

no mods affecting the body/head installed

 

Where did the tits come from then I wonder.

 

On 6/14/2023 at 1:05 AM, HecateMT said:

UNP Female Body Renewal installed and overwriting, tried this because it came with files for specular and normal maps

On 6/14/2023 at 1:05 AM, HecateMT said:

Bijin Skin installed, overwriting UNP FBR textures

 

In my eyes you got some random assortment of diffuse, msn, sk and s textures; pretty much explaining the neck seam. This is probably not what any mod author intended?

 

8 hours ago, HecateMT said:

finding something through xEdit

 

xEdit paths were provided because different races can point to different records. In a vanilla setup there's not that many differences, mainly the beast races and potentially vampires.

[HecateMT]

2 hours ago, traison said:

Correct textures according to who? Correct textures could mean they're pointing to the textures you expected them to point to, or the textures *some* mod author intended you to use.

 

nah, good point, I said that to mean that I see they're pathed to the textures folder, no shit at which point idk how to check which file is from which mod. I communicated this, poorly: I'm able to get to this screen but I don't know what to do from here
 

Spoiler

 

 

2 hours ago, traison said:

Where did the tits come from then I wonder.

2 hours ago, traison said:

In my eyes you got some random assortment of diffuse, msn, sk and s textures; pretty much explaining the neck seam. This is probably not what any mod author intended?

 

u right
I'm starting to accept that much of it is my slipshod attempts at disabling, reenabling, or reording to try and fix it, in the process scrambling which texture or mesh is used and what's leftover. The thought process was to use the appearance of Bijin, meshes and lighting maps from FBR- I'm only so feverish about all of this because it literally worked fine for like 2 weeks then after installing a mod that should have in no way impacted the player model (I checked its archive, I believe it only changed the .nif and .tri of NPCs from a specific mod) , the lines appeared
 

On 6/13/2023 at 6:05 PM, HecateMT said:

 UNP Female Body Renewal installed and overwriting, tried this because it came with files for specular and normal maps for the head/body that SHOULD match each other, then

 

stupid question, because this is what's most confusing to me still; How does the seam persist if a mod like this one is used that has files for matching meshes and textures

 

 

[HecateMT]

On 6/14/2023 at 3:06 PM, traison said:

that's how it was intended/the best they could do.

 
please forgive some parts of my last post, it was 6 am. 
 

Spoiler

10 hours ago, HecateMT said:

use the appearance of Bijin, meshes and lighting maps from FBR

 
I realize now that this is madness
 

 

11 hours ago, HecateMT said:

it literally worked fine

I meant that as in flat out overwriting every conflicting file between UNP FBR and Bijin UNP in Vortex looked fine for a while, I installed a couple mods mid-playthrough and it got messed up. Shit happen, Ik.

My issue was finding a mod to use the meshes from since Bijin lists a requirement for any UNP compatible meshes
My dumb ass didn't see there's a meshes only option on the downloads page of the same mod I was attempting to overwrite with textures from Bijin, tried using that since there are now no conflicts between either mod as far as Vortex can tell me, as well as no conflict between the skin textures from bijin or any other mod I have installed. Reinstalled BHUNP, then meshes, then Bijin, and it looks about the same while in motion as the 3rd example in my original post.