How do I get properly gray/black skin on my Dark Elf?

[NotAWeaboo]

Title. I'm struggling to get skin colors behaving the way I want for my Dark Elf character. Setting the sliders to "as black" as is possible results in brown skin, which makes sense for other races, but not so much for Dark Elves. 

 

Spoiler

 

Like, this is about "as grey" as I can make her look, and it's achieved through a careful balance of green-blue skin color mixed in. I'd like this to basically be the the skin color at 0% color saturation, so i can apply colored tints to this base. 

 

Spoiler

 

Is there any way to achieve this without needing a whole new skin replacer?

[Grey Cloud]

Find a follower or RM preset with a skin tone you like, install it and get the values it uses.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 10:11 PM by Grey Cloud

[RamasesII]

This is the closest I could get my DElf but I maybe able to go a little darker.

[shrtjsrtj]

Have you tried removing color from the skin .dds texture file? Most skin mods come with a pink skin texture and maybe that's causing it. If you're too lazy to try that, you could try different skin mods like "marshmallow" which should be less pink or maybe something else that's way out there.

[NotAWeaboo]

16 hours ago, shrtjsrtj said:

Have you tried removing color from the skin .dds texture file? Most skin mods come with a pink skin texture and maybe that's causing it. If you're too lazy to try that, you could try different skin mods like "marshmallow" which should be less pink or maybe something else that's way out there.

 

I getcha, but I was hoping to find a solution that wouldn't require changing skin textures. In theory I could just desaturate the one I have installed, but it becomes a hassle since both Dark Elves and all the human races use the same base skin texture, so changing it will affect everyone. I suppose a mod that lets me set a custom texture for just my player character could work, but I'd like if there was a more general solution. I find the Dark Elves in my game too pale overall. 

 

21 hours ago, RamasesII said:

This is the closest I could get my DElf but I maybe able to go a little darker.

 

It's not bad but the issue is that I'd like to add a purple tint to the skin, and I can't do that if I need a different tint to "cancel out" the normal skin color. 

 

21 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Find a follower or RM preset with a skin tone you like, install it and get the values it uses.

 

What skin color those values result in is still going to be different depending on what skin texture I have installed as compared to which one the mod/preset uses. That's not a solution. 

[Dorabella]

32 minutes ago, NotAWeaboo said:

What skin color those values result in is still going to be different depending on what skin texture I have installed as compared to which one the mod/preset uses. That's not a solution. 

Are you familiar with photo editing? You can create it this way . However, this will make all Dark Elves the same color. To get around this problem, you'll need a Custom Race

 

Custom Races SE

[Dorabella]

Spoiler

 

 

The first screenshot shows the texture converted to grayscale; the second shows the darker skin

 

With Paint.net

Import DDS , adjustments, black and white . Adjustments , Brightness/Contrast , set contrast + 50 . The higher the contrast, the gray/black it will appear

Spoiler

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Dorabella

[Grey Cloud]

2 hours ago, NotAWeaboo said:

What skin color those values result in is still going to be different depending on what skin texture I have installed as compared to which one the mod/preset uses. That's not a solution. 

Firstly, the difference will be minimal. Your lighting mod, ENB, video card, monitor and god knows what else will influence the visuals to a greater or lesser degree.

Secondly, what I was suggesting was using the preset's values as a starting point.

 

On a side note: making the skin too dark will result in her being very hard to see at night and in dark places.

 

These are the darkest I could find in my screenshots.

 

 

I wish my dungeons were still as bright as they are in the first shot. ☹️



 


 

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Grey Cloud

[NotAWeaboo]

2 hours ago, Dorabella said:

Are you familiar with photo editing? You can create it this way . However, this will make all Dark Elves the same color. To get around this problem, you'll need a Custom Race

 

Custom Races SE

 

I wouldn't mind all Dark Elves changing, but the issue is that they use the same skin texture as all other races (minus argonian and khajiit), so it would change *every* race, not just Dark Elves. To get around this I'd need to patch in a separate texture for Dark Elves and the compatability headache that brings is just... yikes. 

 

Some screens to illustrate why this approach isn't practical. I just took the skin textures I use and turned them greyscale with paint.net. 

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Like, yeah this looks pretty nice, and I can add tints on top of this. Not bad.

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But the issue is that this affects *all races* (except khajiit and argonians). I don't think my Bretons should look like this.

Spoiler

And yes, I can adjust the skin color myself to make it look reasonable, but those changes only apply to the character I create. All NPCs are gonna be messed up with this approach.

Spoiler

 

And as you can see in the last pic it also requires me to patch SoS addons which is even more work. 

 

Using a custom race for my player character... might work? But I'm concerned about compatabilities with mods. Like, will I be able to use eyes and hairstyles etc without manually patching them, will other mods malfunction because they don't support my custom race, will I need to patch clothes and armors to show the right skin texture? 

[NotAWeaboo]

4 hours ago, Dorabella said:

Are you familiar with photo editing? You can create it this way . However, this will make all Dark Elves the same color. To get around this problem, you'll need a Custom Race

 

Custom Races SE

 

I decided to give this approach a try. It actually seems to work really well. My hair styles and eyes work without further tweaking, the correct skin texture shows when I equip clothes/armor. SoS would need patching, but I'm not planning on schlonging my character, so no problem. I haven't noticed any incompatabilities yet. Only downside is that other Dark Elves in my game are obviously not affected by this. Oh well, can't get everything you wish for. Thanks for the suggestion!