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发表于 2022-10-11 01:41:43
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Guide: The Dark Face Bug and What Causes It (And some fixes)
PC SSE - Discussion
Most Skyrim modders who downloaded mods which change NPC appearances have probably gotten the dark, black, brown, grey, etc. face bug at some point. This can be a frustrating problem to fix if you don't yet know what can cause it. I've read many discussions on it over the years, but I never saw oneI felt was sufficiently comprehensive and after seeing someone accuse Guards Armor Replacer of giving their NPCs dark faces, I decided it would benefit the community to have a more in-depth guide on the Dark Face Bug.
Since over the last two years I've been gaining experience and leveling up my modding skilltree, I can hopefully explain this bug in detail and in a way a casual modder will understand.
The first thing to understand, is that the Dark Face Bug is not actually a bug in the game engine. Rather, it is user or modder error caused by one of two things: Missing facegen data or incompatible facegen data.
Missing Facegen Data
Facegen data is a mesh file which basically describes the features of an NPC's face. If a facegen mesh file doesn't exist for an NPC, the game will default to auto generate a dark head for them. Characters in Skyrim have corresponding facegen mesh files which come with the game, so missing facegen data can only affect NPCs which are from a mod, not Skyrim or its DLCs.
One way to remedy this in-game is to set the NPC weight in console, which will align their face color with their skin color, but this is a bad solution because it is tedious, the face will not be the custom face it should be (will look ugly and generic), and it may not even permanent between game sessions.
A better solution is to regenerate these facegen files using the Creation Kit. This is a SSE guide for facegen mesh generation.
Incompatible Facegen Data
This is a situation when facegen does exist for an NPC but the facegen mesh of the NPC conflicts with what the latest .esp file to modify that NPC says they should look like. To put it plainly, if A.esp says Lydia's face should look like A and includes a new facegen mesh for her but B.esp is loaded later and says Lydia's face should look like her vanilla face, the game will try to load part of her appearance from A's facegen file and another part of her appearance from B.esp, and when it realizes the two don't make a coherent face it defaults to auto generate a dark head for her.
It is important to understand that mods which are not intentionally appearance replacers still override appearance data in their .esp files.
Using the above example, let's say you want to give Lydia a sexy new face with Bijin Warmaidens and a sexy (in the practical sense) new armor with Guards Armor Replacer.
Bijin Warmaidens comes with a facegen mesh file which overrides Skyrim's facegen mesh for Lydia. Bijin Warmaidens's .esp file describes her appearance.
Guards Armor Replacer doesn't come with any facegen files because it isn't intended to modify Lydia's appearance. However, the Guards Armor Replacer .esp does describe her appearance because every single mod which edits an NPC's record must come with data describing their appearance.
So, what you are left with when you try to load Bijin followed by GAR is facegen from Bijin paired with .esp face data from GAR- this is incompatible and causes Lydia to have a dark face.
Solving Facegen Conflicts Between Appearance Mods and Mods Which Edit NPCs
The Lydia situation above is one such conflict. This is solved with a patch which carries over changes from the NPC appearance modifier and then adds changes from the other mod to the same NPC entry in this patch. Sometimes these patches already exist. Other times, you will have to make your own with SSEdit.
Open both mods with SSEdit.
Open the NPC's entry in SSEdit.
You will see an entry in the form of a column for each mod which edits that NPC.
Right click on the top of the appearance mod's column.
Copy as override. Create a new .esp for the patch, or select another .esp to put the changes into.
Then, right click anywhere on the data in the columns.
Hide no conflict rows.
You will now have to manually resolve the remaining conflicts in the new column you made. In the Lydia example, this means setting her outfit to whatever was defined in GAR.
Close SSEdit, and allow it to save the new .esp.
Make sure your patch is loaded after the original two mods.
Solving Facegen Conflicts Between Multiple Appearance Mods
This occurs when multiple appearance mods (that is, mods with facegen files) edit the same NPC and the last loaded .esp is paired with the wrong mod's facegen mesh file. For example, you get an NPC appearance replacer which modifies every NPC in Skyrim, but decide you want another mod to define Serana's appearance.
Mod Organizer users are the most vulnerable to experiencing this situation, which occurs when the load order of the mod files is A-B, but the load order of the mod .esps is B-A. It needs to be either (A-B and A-B) or (B-A and B-A). So, you need to do one of two things.
Reorder either the left or right pane load order so the order facegen files are loaded is in-line with the order .esp files are loaded. OR
Delete the offending mod's facegen mesh file or NPC entry in the .esp.
The End
I hope that helps you if you didn't previously know what caused the dark face bug or what to do about it. If something is unclear, leave a question and I will do my best to answer.
Edit; some important information from the comments
I forgot a couple of things when writing this guide, and saw them in the comments, so I'll add them here. First off, this guide includes the most common causes of the dark face bug, but not every single cause.
The dark face bug can also be caused by edits to head parts. As Blackbread pointed out, RS Children does this. Any other mod-added children require patching to match up with RS Children's edits.
The dark face bug can also be caused by race data conflicts. However, I have never run into this and unfortunately cannot tell you how to fix it.
There are multiple patchers which can automatically carry over appearance edits to NPCs. Requiem's Reqtificator is capable of this, as are several others. |
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发表于 2022-10-10 01:51:25
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