[Help] CK Custom NPC/Follower not importing hair

[Deighilt]

So, I've been messing around trying to import a custom character into Skyrim based off one of my recent player characters. After running into a few issues and getting them sorted out - between CK crashes and gray face - I have come across one that I'm not sure what to do about.

 

When I was first making the character I had forgotten to put in a hair mesh only to find that she did not have hair once loaded in - duh. After going back into CK and figuring out how to add in hair mods into the objects list and then adding the specific hair type to her, I thought I had figured it out since it seemed like a simple problem. Still no hair. I went back in then and removed the SG hair model that I had put on her and then replaced it with a vanilla Skyrim hair model, still no hair.

 

Any ideas as to why this is happening, what I am doing wrong, etc.? I'm also confused about this because I had changed the characters name and ID name later on to basically start over since I had too many .esp files connected to it but the once loaded into the game, using the new .esp with the new name, the character still is using the previous name and the new one does not exist as a NPC.

[Swissenergy]

When adding hair mods in the CK to use, did you set the .esp of the NPC as active? Also do make sure to hit ctrl+F4 to export the facegendata and then save the plugin. The CK isn't great when it comes to editing faces of characters especially if you're trying to create an archive. It can still work, just not always perfectly. 

[Deighilt]

Yep, I had the .esp active in the loader. I had exported with ctrl+f4 earlier on before I had remembered to add the hair in, I'm wondering now if that might have been what was going on - that and she kept appearing as naked even when I added clothing to her.

[Swissenergy]

I haven't done any custom NPCs in the CK before but I recently made my own .esp that altered many of the vanilla NPCs and I know that whenever you're exporting facegendata after you've made changes, you need to:

-select the actor or actors you're changing and press ctrl+f4

-click OK when it's done(DO NOT SAVE)

-then navigate to the Textures/actors/character/facegendata/facetint folder inside your main Data folder for Skyrim

-and delete all facegendata(everything) inside of the Skyrim.esm folder and any other .esm or .esp folders that contain NPC facegendata you've altered while in the same CK session

-THEN click save in the CK

-close the CK, then open it again and select your .esp as active and let everything load, then close it again without changing any NPCs

This is what I did and after a failed attempt the first time, (had NPC with grey face/missing colors) I have yet to run across a NPC that has any appearance issues at all.

This is for vanilla NPCs though, it may be similar for custom NPCs but since I've never done that before I don't know if following the same procedure would fix the problem or not.

[Deighilt]

I'll give this a try the next time I am working on it and see if that helps at all. 

[Swissenergy]

Hope it does! If not, you might go through the Creating an Actor  page on the Creation Kit website and see if anything there helps.