Unique Face Woes

[winterlove]

Just started a new game, ran into a problem in that Vilja's face simply didn't match her body, in terms of skin shade. It wasn't the infamous black-face bug, just that her face and body were different shades.

Started to dig deeper. I'm using a CBBE-derived body mesh replacer, with CBBE default face and body diffuse map textures and Navatsea normal maps (ish - I'm running a mod which uses a variety of body normal maps to simulate degrees of muscularity amongst NPCs, but Vilja isn't affected by that mod (which I know because I wrote it and know how it works)). Because of this I was using the Unique Face CBBE patch, but the Vilja-specific textures in that didn't match my baseline body textures, leading to the problem.

I've fixed this for myself by hacking on the Unique Face CBBE patch so that the mesh refers to standard vanilla face texture resources, and she now looks lovely as before. Still at a loss to understand why I wasn't seeing this in my old game, though.

Anyway, just to say that I think there is a need for an "official" "Unique Face CBBE with Default Vanilla Face Textures" patch or something, and presumably variants for the various hair patches too. Happy to forward my own hacks, but I'd hesitate to call them production-quality, as it were, just good enough for me.

[rollerpig]

Welp.I am by no means an expert.Not even close.But I would assume it is excacty the problem you discovered.What is the question?

Vilja, all though much more attractive and less "dirty" than a normal NPC uses vanilla textures for her face.So if you use a replacer for the body, both colour(because of the lack of "dirt") and sheen will be different.

Is the unique face CBBE patch for Vilja?or is it a standardized CBBE fo all NPC's?

I do not know all the patches available fo Vilja.

[winterlove]

No question, really, more an observation. Vilja's unique face is composed of unique mesh *and* unique texture resources, which is fine - but can look odd if these resources don't match the body textures that will get used for her body. But as far as I can tell it is quite possible to use the unique face mesh with vanilla face resources (or whatever replacers for those you have installed) so that at least her face and body looks consistent.

[Wolf]

Yes, calling it woes is the right word for it.

Of course you can easily assign the textures of the vanilla folder for Vilja's face. But as it is, it still doesn't work on some computers although you are using textures of the face and the body which usually turn out to be (nearly) seamless. And even exporting the facegen data again from the CK is sometimes of no use.

I really can't explain why... wether the game calculates the tints of the textures differently, whether there is a difference between graphic cards (NVidia calculates for example normal maps differently as it seems)... I have no idea.

I think you get the best result if you use the Unique Body Patch which must be loaded after Vilja's mod. This patch gives Vilja a body of her own and both the face and the body have their own texture set. They do not use the texture links from the .nif files.

What you have to do is to copy and paste your body textures into Vilja's texture folder and let them overwrite the existing ones. Delete the files which are called something with EMViljaHead and then copy and paste the necessary matching face textures into the same folder. You must rename these files (usually called femalehead...) to EMViljaHead...

Eventually you must also export the facegendata again with which you lose the little face morph.

[winterlove]

[quote author=wolf board=skyrim thread=711 post=16409 I think you get the best result if you use the Unique Body Patch which must be loaded after Vilja's mod. This patch gives Vilja a body of her own and both the face and the body have their own texture set. They do not use the texture links from the .nif files.[/quote]

Well, there's the thing, I think. They do give her a unique face, but not a unique body. The patches contain only face texture resources, not body textures. In fact, the main mod itself contains no body texture resources, and Vilja's body is made up from the standard game resources for all NPCs in the game.

[Mike Sierra]

Hi Winterlove

Wolf is speaking of the Unique Body Patch. This allows you to modify Vilja's body meshes/textures very well. It's important to read the included instructions.

here is the dl- link

skyrim.nexusmods.com/download/1000002794

[winterlove]

Oh, I see! Yes, I can see how you can use that to make Vilja's face and body consistent between themselves. Thank you

[winterlove]

OK. After a bit of playing around with the Unique Body Patch, I've decided to stick with my hack of using the CBBE Unique Face head mesh modified to refer to standard texture resources. It achieves the same effect as I would get from using the UB patch in my setup (let me stress that, in my setup) for about the same level of initial effort, given that the UB patch needs to be customised before use anyway. Furthermore, with my hack I know I can swap around the standard body meshes and textures as I see fit, and know that Vilja will pick up the changes along with all the other NPCs in the game, something that I'd have to remember to do each time especially for Vilja if I was using the UB patch. (This is not something I consider a limitation of the UB patch, since it explicitly allows for Vilja-specific customisation independently from other NPCs. It's just it's a feature I don't want to use, and I'd rather not have the ongoing maintenance effort of keeping a custom UB patch up-to-date.)

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my comments