Head & Body Mis-match for FNV

[Nichoice]

So what I have done is manage to replace an in-game NPC with a custom race (in this case replacing Sunny with Liara T'Soni by Isquall). 

 

Everything is fine but the Head and the Body's skin colour do not match. Her Head is alot lighter then her body. 

 

I have done some reading and I know that this is a common problem. 

 

I have tried adding bloadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles = 1 line in Fallout.ini, tried changing it to 0 as well. 

 

I have tried to flag the plugin as an ESM and the same problem occurs. 

 

I have tried editing the tone of the head to try and match the skin colour but the slider doesn't effect the head. 

 

What I have noticed however is that when a light (flashlight mod) is directed on Liara, her skin color will match her head. 

 

I suspect then I can perhaps fix this problem by altering the shading effect of the skin? 

 

My modding experience ends at copying and pasting stuff here and there in FNVedit, so any help would be appreciated. 

[jonas_opines]

One thing I've noticed when I've made a custom race is that where the texture files for it are kept matter a great deal.  If they are not located in the default folder (data/textures/characters/your race folder), then they will not be affected by skin tone selection or shading.  

 

If it uses a special body, it would be worth it to check in nifskope to make sure that the body is set to the Skin Shader setting.  That's a little long of an explanation, but I have a nifskope tutorial up on the Nexus that I believe covers that point, if you don't use nifskope (and if you don't, you should as it's super easy!)

http://www.newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/45444

 

Finally, I've noticed that you'll just tend to get the body mismatch no matter what unless you make your file an .esm.  You don't actually have to rename the extension, just change the header marker in FNVEdit.  

[A.J.]

I have the same exact issue, that goes away when I turn on a flashlight, as OP said. I'm curious on how I could solve it. On nifskope I selected Skin Shader and I also flagged SF_Facegen.

 

 

Finally, I've noticed that you'll just tend to get the body mismatch no matter what unless you make your file an .esm.  You don't actually have to rename the extension, just change the header marker in FNVEdit.  

 

Did I understand well? I have to change my esp in a esm to make things work? Could this be the same reason why my custom races have invisible or violet parts until I don't place everything (mouth, eyes, hands etc.) inside their mesh and texture folder and change properly the vanilla path to point there?

[jonas_opines]

 

Could this be the same reason why my custom races have invisible or violet parts until I don't place everything (mouth, eyes, hands etc.) inside their mesh and texture folder and change properly the vanilla path to point there?

 

I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure I understood all of that fully.  The only thing that changing your file to an .esm header will change is fixing any mismatch between body and hands/head.  It will fix it only if everything else is set up properly, though. 

 

Invisible parts, however, usually mean that you are missing a mesh file. (eyes, mouth, hands).  They don't show up because the game is looking in one specific location for one specific file that is not there.  You would definitely have to change that from the vanilla setting to work right.  

 

The violet parts are usually because you are missing a texture file.  

[A.J.]

Sorry OP I don't want to move the attention from the topic, I was wondering if the esp > esm solution was connected in some ways with this other problem.

 

Jonas

 

What I mean is this: let's make a new custom race, and let's think it has a custom body (only the body, not the rest like hands or mourth or teeth etc.). Now if I change ONLY the mesh path in the race window (and not the rest, since I suppose it should be vanilla), everything else turns invisible (it misses the mesh) or violet (that mesh misses the texture). Now I don't know if this is normal, I was wondering if it was another problem solved with the esp > esm trick. For now I need to correct it placing EVERY (even the unchanged ones) mesh and texture in the custom race folder, and pointing the path there in the race menu. It's silly, because I have 14 custom npcs, it means I'm occupying a lot of space with many duplicated parts of the vanilla.

[jonas_opines]

I've made a couple of custom races, and I've never had the problem that you described.  Strange.  I don't think that the conversion to an esm would fix that, but i suppose it might be worth a try.  

[A.J.]

Yes I though so, Jonas: when I download custom races, I see inside they don't have all the meshes so I really can't figure why mine are wrong. But well, I don't want to spam more, I understand now it's completely unrelated with the OP topic and it would be better if I open a new thread. Thank you very much Jonas, the esp > esm for the textures was an answer I really looked for a long time.

[Nichoice]

One thing I've noticed when I've made a custom race is that where the texture files for it are kept matter a great deal.  If they are not located in the default folder (data/textures/characters/your race folder), then they will not be affected by skin tone selection or shading.  

 

If it uses a special body, it would be worth it to check in nifskope to make sure that the body is set to the Skin Shader setting.  That's a little long of an explanation, but I have a nifskope tutorial up on the Nexus that I believe covers that point, if you don't use nifskope (and if you don't, you should as it's super easy!)

http://www.newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/45444

 

Finally, I've noticed that you'll just tend to get the body mismatch no matter what unless you make your file an .esm.  You don't actually have to rename the extension, just change the header marker in FNVEdit.  

 

What do you mean by custom body? As in custom mesh and skeleton? 

 

I will first try to move the textures into the default folder (if they are not already) and change the paths for them in FNVedit then try flagging the esp to an esm. 

 

If that doesn't work, then I will have to try Nifskope to fiddle with the texture file's skin shader setting. 

 

Further, I also read your post regarding Face presets. I tried to just change the values under FNVedit, but the game just crashes. The base for Sunny i think is hispanic, not sure what the base for the Liara race is. 

 

UPDATE: I tried flagging it an esp to an esm, and there was no change to the skin tone mismatch with the head. The files were found to be in the default folder. 

 

Could you be more specific as to which part of the tutorial you are referring to?