Character discoloring even after clean install

[BossSugarQueen]

I imagine I'd have to move my steam installation there as well? If it fixes the problem, I'm certainly willing.

EDIT: Figured it out and moved the whole Steam whopper to another drive. I'll try it out in the morning. Keeping my fingers crossed! X

 

[BossSugarQueen]

So I moved my entire Steam install to another drive. It changed nothing. I fiddled around with shades in the creation kit, but there's really nothing that allows you to alter face and body colors separately.

I'm totally stumped. Vanilla Skyrim is not supposed to be like this; I know, I've scrutinized screenshots and videos of the normal game, and I played for 280 hours without problem, so what the crap happened? It's not a lighting problem, because it shows up in the CK raw preview. It's not a mod, or old save file data, or loose files, and it's not a rendering problem.....so what the ferkashmurk?! Is NOBODY else in this dilemma?!

 

[BossSugarQueen]

I screwed around with a couple of things in the creation kit. Didn't really know what I was about, though.
I KNOW Skyrim isn't supposed to look like this. The pictures above are low quality, but the color difference is sickeningly obvious in game, even after using body and face replacer mods that are made to fit together with any seam. Something is causing the actual color of the face and body to be perpetually off from each other. I don't know which is the problem though, and how to fix it.
I noticed when checking the body maps in the CK, that they don't have a detail map; not even a blank one. Is this supposed to be the case?

 

[Silas]

try going in the creation kit. then make the changes you want in the actor editor, then exit that screen and save. then highlight the actor, then hold ctrl and press f4. it asks if you want to export, then click yes. this worked for me, now the npc i created looks just like i want him to, hope it works for you.

a member called hyp3rstrike gives this answer with technical reasons that i dont understand here:
http://skyrimforum.com/threads/help-fixing-follower-skin-coloring-mismatch.12385/

 

[BossSugarQueen]

Thank you, but that's the solution for a totally different problem.

 

[Silas]

sorry, good luck resolving your issue.

 

[Iveri Sarothil]

Good suggestion, Silas...that's the general fix for NPC's with this issue. This one lies deeper, I think.

 

[BossSugarQueen]

Yes, of course thank you Silas; I'm just frustrated and annoyed.

So....after banging a bruised forehead on the issue for a while, I've determined to do some digging and fish up the root of the problem myself.

So...I don't know if I should post this somewhere else, but I'd appreciate it if some people could provide me with or point me to pics of Player Presets and NPCs as shown in the CK full-body preview with only Skyrim.esm and/or Update.esm loaded. I'd like to see quality shots, both close-ups and far-aways, with some focused in closely on the neck area where head meets body. I'd like to see as many as possible.

Thanks much

 

[Tiger61]

I am having the EXACT same problem, and i just reinstalled skyrim through steam yesterday. So far i have not fixed the problem but i have tried installing skyrim on 3 separate hdds and rolling back my video driver and no luck. I think steam has a bad copy on their server.

 

[BossSugarQueen]

My gosh, it's such a rare problem, it's almost relieving to find someone else who's dealing with this. I haven't played in weeks; Xaihady's sitting at Heljarchen with a discolored head and missing me :'(

This just doesn't make sense. At all. And it freaks me out. I've found threads as early as last June trying to resolve this problem, but they all die out with no solution. If steam had a bad copy on their server, wouldn't everyone installing have this? >_<

I've installed on different drives, updated my video card, defragmented, cleaned, and error-checked my drives, uninstalled and reinstalled the CK, disabled and cleaned out Steam Cloud, and removed everything that could ever possibly be related to the game, including NMM and Boss and Wrye Bash and Et cetera, just for good measure.

Resigning myself to brief defeat, I implemented a number of body, head, and skin mods. Every single mod set that was supposed to eliminate neck seams (and according to hundreds of people, did the job flawlessly) was still subject to this nonsense.

The only thing I can think of is the two folders sitting on my desktop, holding my old saves and edited plugins. There's no way on earth I'm deleting those, but I honestly have no place to put 11 gb ^^'

If getting those out of my system doesn't help, the only thing left is to hunt through every friggin' folder and file on my friggin' computer for the a**hole of a file that's dicking with my game.

 

[Tiger61]

it is something wrong with the skyrim master file or at least something with the base game, I tried using a custom race with it's own textures and it was fine, but anything that is vanilla skyrim or modifies vanilla skyrim has the neck to face discoloration, not to mention all old females in the game have young skin, and i tried installing it on another computer and had the exact same problem.

 

[arsha]

I run my game with GT220 video card (which is not too good) and I have the same issue.
my High Elf has different color tone in his neck. the neck seems brighter than the chest. and I'm not using any mods.

I don't take it seriously since I wear robes

 

[Suleku]

This is a long shot but try this save cleaning mod with everything checked on... and yes it'll backup your save for you just make sure you follow the instructions and you should be good to go hopefully it can fix the problem too.

 

[Dirty Mac]

I had to reinstall windows last month, and I lost all of my data, I re-installed steam and then re-installed Skyrim, and still had my lvl 51 archer.
So obviously steam keeps some of your data on their servers. is there an option to clear the Steam Cache?

 

[Tiger61]

I was able to fix the color discoloration with this mod:
This is a hi res dlc fix, and it came with normal maps for all races and genders, so i think this is the mod that fixed it
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9080/?tab=2&navtag=/ajax/modfiles/?id=9080&pUp=1

 

[Gehenna]

From the screenshots it looks like you guys/gals simply have mismatched head and body textures, which can happen when you install new face textures (of course).

Then there's the possibility of resolution not being the same in face vs body, even if the colors match. There are also factors like compression and normal maps and specular maps. If any of it's mismatched you get assorted weirdness and because these are just textures, there's no esp to remove or disable most of the time, which I think is what throws everybody for a loop when they use programs like NMM.

If you're replacing the head texture I'd recommend also replacing the body textures, because a high-res face with vanilla body textures just isn't gonna do right. Sometimes the author of the face textures will give you recommendations on what body textures to use alongside. I'd recommend reading everything thoroughly and also checking mod comments to see if anyone else has had issues and if so, what they did to resolve them.

 

[Tiger61]

From the screenshots it looks like you guys/gals simply have mismatched head and body textures, which can happen when you install new face textures (of course).

Then there's the possibility of resolution not being the same in face vs body, even if the colors match. There are also factors like compression and normal maps and specular maps. If any of it's mismatched you get assorted weirdness and because these are just textures, there's no esp to remove or disable most of the time, which I think is what throws everybody for a loop when they use programs like NMM.

If you're replacing the head texture I'd recommend also replacing the body textures, because a high-res face with vanilla body textures just isn't gonna do right. Sometimes the author of the face textures will give you recommendations on what body textures to use alongside. I'd recommend reading everything thoroughly and also checking mod comments to see if anyone else has had issues and if so, what they did to resolve them.

Unfortunately it had the problem no matter what body/face texture mod was used, even in vanilla skyrim with absolutely no mods installed the face to body discoloration was there.

 

[Silk Zither]

In vanilla skyrim, there's very little texture difference between the face and body, though if you look very closely you do notice a slight difference in color and textural quality.

However, I think what you're experiencing isn't an issue at all, but simply the way skyrim casts shadow and highlights on characters under backlighting conditions. If we face our character's face towards the sun, everything seems pretty normal, however, if we face her away from the sun (backlighting), she gets a greyish/greenish shadow highlight cast on the face and neck. The shadow comes to an abrupt stop at the lower neck area (just above collarbone), creating what seems to be a body and face color mismatch.

You also notice the same shadow property cast on other parts of the character as well: legs, back of body (especially the middle section), etc, which only seems to happen under backlit conditions.

This shadow is apparent on many npc characters too such as Ysolda, when you have her face backlit. And this is something that's been there since the first release of skyrim. And I don't think the latest patches affect or modify this.

Male characters get this highlight as well under backlighting, but not as obvious; possibly due to rougher and less clean face texture.

In general, I think it's mainly due to the way skyrim casts indirect lights and highlights on faces under backlit conditions. Of course there is also the slight difference in texture between the face and body themselves, but this is almost negligible.

 

[coldblackcoffee]

Well, now i realise there's lot of people more frustate than me.

It's a shading problem around GPU driver, if i'm not mistaken lot of people stumble with this problem is the one who use mid Resolution..

to be honest i don't even think this is a bug, it's a feature.. iirc, first i played in version 1.16.. following hogvar to Standing Stone, and there it's the face is all green..