Follower got a blue face (not applying head texture?)

[fenristhew]

I recently set up skyrim special edition with mods, and a modded follower from "oldrim" are working, except that her head is blue. Her face texture is fine, her head is as amazing as ever, but she just got a blue head and neck(check attached image). 

Of my LIMITED understanding, facegen(?) is about eyes and other specifically face-related things, and the texture of the facegen(?) shows up right, but not the head texture. The head texture is within the files of the mod, but doesn't work. I have tried supposed Creation Kit and Cathedral Asset Optimizer fixes, neither helped. And I checked in SSEEdit and Mod Organizer, neither says any mod are overwriting it.
Does anyone know any fix? Like is there a way to force the head texture to be used with SSEEdit?

 

[traison]

1. Get More Informative Console.
2. Start the game, load a save.
3. Find the blue follower.
4. Open the console.
5. Select the follower.
6. Use MIC to find the missing overlay and/or override texture.

[Seijin8]

It is most likely a missing texture.  If you are using something to apply textures (like Slavetats), might be that the texture is wrong path or missing or wasn't converted to the right format.

[fenristhew]

@traison @Seijin8 ty both for your replies!
I grabbed MIT and are atm using a save with the companion as the only thing adding anything new to the world model-wise (got alternative start and unofficial patch(required for AS) to get to the companion fast).
All the head files are listed in textures and are in the path listed, so I do ponder if it is a war paint missing (I read it can causes this effect). There are some some ones I cannot find, but their names are "ShinyBright", "EyeCubeMap", and "EyeEnvironmentMask_M". I tried to replace the files of the former name with see-through image fils, will try on the others too, but doesn't seem right.
Do you both have any other suggestions?

[traison]

6 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

All the head files are listed in textures and are in the path listed ... Do you both have any other suggestions?

 

"All head files" makes it sound like you specifically searched for files with names containing obvious head things like "eyebrows". What if your NPC has a head overlay called "raspberry_jelly.dds"? Go through them all.

 

6 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

There are some some ones I cannot find, but their names are "ShinyBright", "EyeCubeMap", and "EyeEnvironmentMask_M".

 

Did you check inside BSA archives?

 

6 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

Do you both have any other suggestions?

 

Something like SlaveTats might be able to show NPC overlays, but it won't show overrides. I don't know what features NPC RaceMenu had, been too long since I used that.

Edited January 21 by traison

[fenristhew]

@traisonFor the first part, I meant the femalehead texture files, as many in the mod as shown on MIT. I will make sure to go through them all, first time through focused on the obvious and the ones that I had no clue what they were (the ones I mentioned obviously now being about eyes, but nothing changes when overwriting them).

I am inexperienced with this kind of file diving, I dunno what is a BSA archive is. But all this mod got are esp, nif, and dds files.

[traison]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1756

https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Skyrim_INI/Archive

Archive Invalidation

 

20 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

But all this mod got...

 

Never assume something like that. Any mod can overwrite any other mod. Files can exist in BSA archives and BSA archive contents can overwrite eachother. Any mod with a dll can change all of this, and be completely invisible when it does it.

 

This is why I never bother looking at peoples loadorders. Even with 10 mods loaded, you're approaching thousands of posibilities, and it only goes up expontentially from there. You need diagnostics tools like xEdit, your mod manager and MIC. Without these modding Skyrim is time wasting guesswork.

 

Edit: The bottomline here is you got a missing texture. It's most likely not a diffuse texture, or if it is, it has an alpha compoent applied to it (i.e. an overlay). MIC is your tool to find it, especially since (like I said) NPC RaceMenu may not be an option.

Edited January 21 by traison

[fenristhew]

@traisonThank you, I'll keep trying! So far my own overwrite mod had no success (made sure it works). I did check on SSEEdit before posting here, with all my mods loaded in, and it showed no overwrite from any of them.

[Grey Cloud]

Do you have a link to the mod? I'll have a look at it if you have.

[fenristhew]

@Grey Cloud

it's a mod no longer up officially, but here's a link to it in the forums. https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/11272683-freyane-the-body-proud-barbarian-mod-for-skyrim-se/

I still got the file from bk when it it was available by the mod author.

[Vortec]

4 hours ago, traison said:

Use MIC to find the missing overlay and/or override texture.

  For clarity what is-   Use MIC to find the missing overlay and/or override texture?.  What is MIC?.

[traison]

15 minutes ago, Vortec said:

  For clarity what is-   Use MIC to find the missing overlay and/or override texture?.  What is MIC?.

 

This:

4 hours ago, traison said:

Get More Informative Console.

 

[fenristhew]

Update; I used NifSkope to load in the head and put on all the textures in the mod for the head, giving this result(pcture 1). The facegendata seems to have had a faulty link, but correcting that in the mod file actually takes away the facegen (the markings).
It is not an issue of not reaching the folder, the same folder got the texture for the body. hair, and armor. 

However, I decided to do a test with my overwrite mod and replaced the 4 face textures with see-through images, ending up with the menacing result of the 2nd image.

I then tried only one at a time, with the basic face skin giving the usual result, and one used for shading I guess giving the result of the third image. And to be clear, the lack of facegen only took away some facial features, it was still blue.
I've gone through the other textures in the mod and realized there were actually some missing textures, replacing them all with see-through images for now, yet no fix. 
If anyone got ideas, feel free to give them!

[traison]

6 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

f anyone got ideas, feel free to give them!

 

Overlays and overrides do not show up in NifSkope. These are RaceMenu concepts.

[fenristhew]

@traison That was not about if it was overlays or overrides, but to make sure it wasn't a question of mixing face textures.
However, I did a completely clear instance on mod organizer with only the companion installed, and the issue was still there, so there is something with the mod, my best guess is that it is trying to access a texture that has been moved or removed within the skyrim files. I am reinstalling the game atm since it seems I couldn't get into the data files, or are they no longer accessable in the same way as in og skyrim?

[traison]

48 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

mod organizer ... I am reinstalling the game atm since it seems I couldn't get into the data files

 

MO2 uses a USVFS, there's not supposed to be anything other than the vanilla Skyrim files in the Data directory. This is the first step in MO2, you should know this by now.

 

48 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

I did a completely clear instance on mod organizer with only the companion installed, and the issue was still there...

 

That makes things simple then. Need to fix this:

 

2 hours ago, fenristhew said:

it's a mod no longer up officially ... I still got the file from bk when it it was available by the mod author.

 

So that the following can happen:

 

2 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Do you have a link to the mod? I'll have a look at it if you have.

 

+1

 

Edit: If you're afraid of copyrights, I can provide a private upload code to my own server.

Edited January 21 by traison

[Grey Cloud]

Mega is saying that I have exceeded my quota and will have to wait 1h and 45mins. No idea what that is about but it looks like it will be tomorrow before I can do anything.

[traison]

5 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Mega is saying that I have exceeded my quota and will have to wait 1h and 45mins. No idea what that is about but it looks like it will be tomorrow before I can do anything.

 

Were you going to do the conversion yourself? I was going to avoid that, as it risks producing a different result from what fenristhew is looking at right now.

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, traison said:

Were you going to do the conversion yourself?

I was going to have a look to see if I could identify and fix the problem with the head. If she has potential I was going to re-jig her to my body and textures etc and add her to my army of followers. 

[Grey Cloud]

Not there yet but progress! No hands or feet but I'll take it.

My test dude is looking pleased with himself as if he's the one who did it. 

[Grey Cloud]

One step forward; two back.

 

[fenristhew]

@Grey CloudWhat did you do for the first one? since excluding the errors it caused, it did fix the error currently there

[Grey Cloud]

11 minutes ago, fenristhew said:

@Grey CloudWhat did you do for the first one? since excluding the errors it caused, it did fix the error currently there

In the first one I had just forgotten to re-path the hands and feet nifs.

In the second image I sorted that but it allowed the default armour to equip which screwed it up again.

So I thought "just remove the default outfit entry in XEdit".

FFS.

 

So I try something else.

 

And something else.

 

I have now lost the will to live.

What you see in the last image is her using my default body and skin. I've changed her race from Custom to Nord and removed all sorts of stuff in XEdit.

I've re-pathed head textures in Niifskope. I know next to nothing about Nifskope so the could be something I'm missing.

Looked in the CK but she only ever had a vanilla head and hair.

I made a jslot preset in RM but couldn’t see any sort of overlay/tattoo/warpaint. I don't know much about RM so there could be something I'm missing.

Looked at her RM in game but saw nothing about overlays etc.

I tried with MIC to look for overlays per @traison's suggestion but I didn't know how to do it so I didn't get far. I couldn't figure out out to navigate within MIC. It said she had 35 textures but I couldn't get past the 15 or so which were on screen.

I can't understand where the game is getting the info for the head from.

 

If anyone has any suggestions I'll have a look but for now I'm out of ideas.

 

The annoying thing (or one of them) is that I'm pretty sure that one of my army of follower is by YuiH and I had a similar problem with her which I fixed. I can't remember her name but she hangs out at Skyforge.

 

 

[traison]

1 minute ago, Grey Cloud said:

I couldn't figure out out to navigate within MIC.

 

Left shift.

[traison]

I'll have a go at converting this as well. Was hoping fenristhew would have sent the files over, but perhaps they're busy with other things.

 

43 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

I have now lost the will to live.

 

That bad huh? From your screenshots, the one with brown face was the closest to a working conversion you had. Brown face = missmatch in current head settings and head settings that were used when facegen was made.

 

Edit: First thing that sticks out is that the facegen has a reference to this non-existant texture:

actors\Character\Enhanced\male\blankdetailmap.dds

Edit again: There appears to be other errors as well. The head mesh for instance, doesn't fit the neck hole.

 

Edit again: Here's the working conversion. Requires the original mod. Note that the head is made for the LE neck hole. Removing her (LE) armor will reveal a neck hole. Find a new (SE/AE) armor for her and I'll see about making the neck fit it.

 

Edit again: It's possible there won't be a neck hole. Had a look at these in blender and they seem to line up fine. I'll leave that testing up to someone else though. Got other things to do.

 

Changes:

*  Converted ESP.
*  ESP -> ESL.
*  Removed reference to actors\Character\Enhanced\male\blankdetailmap.dds.

 

 

conversion.7z

Edited January 22 by traison