dark/black/grey/brown face bug guide

[3blake7]

I ran into this issue with several NPCs and searched everywhere on the internet for a solution. The only solution I could find was to load up Creation Kit, go to Actors > Actor > Actor in the Object Window, highlight the NPC or multiple NPCs then hit CTRL + F4 to generate new FaceGenData. This did not work for me and I couldn't find a more detailed solution or explanation of why this happens.

 

The bug is caused by the FaceGenData not matching the NPC in-game. For example, if you have a mod that replaces the vanilla hair meshes. If you export FaceGenData using only the vanilla setup, then the FaceGenData will have the vanilla hairs and in-game your NPCs will be using the new hairs in the vanilla hair replacer mod. They will not be matched, which causes the bug. The solution is to load Creation Kit with the vanilla hair replacer mod enabled, so that the new FaceGenData includes the new hair meshes. If you want to play it safe, you could enable ALL of your mods, then do CTRL + F4 but that would probably take a long time to load in Creation Kit. 

 

Another problem I ran into, is sometimes mods will update an NPC by accident. I guess the mod author accidently changed an NPC and didn't realize it. In that case it is very hard to guess which mod has changed the NPC and needs to be loaded before you export new FaceGenData. The easiest way to find out what mod is messing up your NPC is to load up TESEdit or SSEEdit and Select All ESM/ESPs. Then expand the tree, go to Non-Player Characters and locate the NPC with the brown face. It will show you every mod that makes changes, with each mod having it's own column. Then you can either delete the NPC record in the offending mod or enable it in Creation Kit before you do CTRL + F4. I have had a mod that made changes to NPCs when it wasn't suppose to. In that case I just right-clicked Non-Player Character under that mod and then selected Remove to delete all of them using SSEEdit.

 

Most mod authors do FaceGenData export for you and include them in their mods but you can still get the face bug. For example, if they used vanilla hair on a new follower and they exported the FaceGenData. If you have a vanilla hair replacer mod, then it will cause a brown face. It could also happen if they used a different vanilla hair replacer mod.

 

Hope this helps!