Character discoloring even after clean install

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After 250+ hours of Skyrim gameplay without once hitting coloring problems, I decided to test out Beauty Faces for Females and Xenius's Detailed Faces and Detailed Bodies. Being dissatisfied with the former, I uninstalled it, decided to try out the latter two, and lo and behold, my character's face and body mismatched in both texture and color, as well as those of several other NPCs. It wasn't a black and white sort of color problem, but it was definitely noticeable. I uninstalled all of Xenius's mods, loaded a previous save, and the problem persisted there too.

After hours of trying to fix the problem, I decided to clear all of my mods and completely reinstall the game. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the problem. I started a completely new game on a fresh install with zero mods, and the head/body discoloration was still present.

This is the first problem I've hit that I have not even the first idea how to deal with. I'm tired, frustrated, and have no clue what's going on. The only factors I can possibly think to blame are either the Steam Cloud or other files somehow drifting around on my computer. I wouldn't know.

I can provide screenshots if necessary.
Please, I'll take any suggestions.
 

Mimodo

New Member
Being absolutely clueless about these things, my only suggestion is to look in the instal folder (usually found in program files), in case there are leftover files there
 

Dagmar

Defender of the Bunnies of Skyrim
What folder did you delete? There are 2 locations for Skyrim Folders and the one you want to delete is in your common subfolder in your steamapps folder not the one under your my games folder.
 
I deleted all the files from My Documents, dumped the whole Skyrim install folder and the folder in Appdata, turned off steam cloud and automatic updates, and purged anything else Skyrim or related to Skyrim that I know of from my system. I've reinstalled THREE times this way, to no avail. Did I miss something?

This problem is occurring both in my saved game AND with characters at the very start of a brand NEW game on a FRESH install; it's on all races, all genders, all skin tones and weights.

The freaky thing is, this mismatch shows up in the Creation Kit, too. When I change skin tones, the faces match the palette color perfectly, but the body is always one shade off. Both in-game, and in the kit. Which I have also reinstalled. Twice.

So at this point, I'm way beyond pissed off. I tried exploring a bunch of skin and head texture mods; mixing and matching and trying stuff out. Not even a matching head and body texture set could defeat this bloody seam. The heads are perpetually just a shade darker or more saturated than the body. Always. Sometimes less so or more so, depending on mods, but never not.
Please, I need some help here. If three clean installs couldn't fix it, then I've not the slightest idea what to do.

I need some seriously expert help!!!
 

Iveri Sarothil

Active Member
Screenshots, perhaps?
This is sounding like it could possibly be a graphics card issue. Is it updated?
 

Dagmar

Defender of the Bunnies of Skyrim
The Skyrim folder you want to delete is in your common subfolder of your steamapps folder, not your my games folder or install folder or appdata folder. If you don't do that the mod textures may still be in your game.
 
Dagmar - That's where the install folder is. In the SteamApps folder. The Skyrim folder; that's the install.
Iveri Sarothil - Um, let me check...okay, so it looks like it just updated something. I'll go see if anything's changed. Thanks! :)

EDIT: Yeah, that didn't do anything either. At least I updated my card.

The way I see it, there has to be something different about these installs from my first install of the game. Heck, I had to reinstall about a month ago too, and there were no issues then either. Something must've happened two weeks ago to royally screw up the game.

Now, I wouldn't call myself a technologically savvy person, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine there's something else floating around in my hard drive that's affecting the file. Is that even possible? Because it's the only theory I have left.

I haven't played Skyrim in two weeks.....I'm positively itching for a dungeon crawl, but I don't dare pile up more saves without fixing the problem first. It'll bug the crap out of me anyway. If I had a game without neck seams before, 280 hours worth of game, I shouldn't have to live with them now.
 

Iveri Sarothil

Active Member
Can we get some screenshots of this? Might help - I have an idea of what you're talking about, but others might not.
 
Can do

So my regular saved game was running No More Blocky Faces, as well as Better Males for the...well, males; as far as skin, skin textures, skin colors, normal maps, or anything skin, face, or body related, that was it. I'm pretty dang sure I DID NOT have this problem before.

I'm worried that one the of the mods I had downloaded, one of Xenius' others or Beauty Faces for Females or maybe something entirely different, planted something on my hard drive in a place I wouldn't normally need to clear Skyrim data from to reinstall. Again, I don't even know if that's possible, so feel free to call me out on that if I'm absolutely wrong.

Attached are some pics depicting my problem. Due to file size restrictions, the in-game screenshots are in the next post. Bear in mind, these are all of presets for Player Characters, but the discoloration persists with NPCs as well.

In CK: The seam isn't incredibly prominent here, but there's a definite color difference between faces and bodies, especially in the Altmer/High Elf. Up close, it appears that there's also a screaming difference between the actual textures.
CKhighelfpreset1.jpgCKmaleredguardpreset2.jpgCKorcmalepreset1.jpgCKnordfemalepreset1.jpgCKdarkelfmalepreset1.jpg
In Skyrim: I apologize for the blocky and awful screenshots; I have a lower-end PC and am running ZERO mods right now.
Being in a brighter, outdoor setting, the seams and color contrast here don't look nearly as horrific as they do in dimly lit areas. It's especially bad looking at the back of your char's neck.

72850_2013-04-07_00001.jpg72850_2013-04-07_00004.jpg72850_2013-04-07_00005.jpg72850_2013-04-07_00006.jpg72850_2013-04-07_00003.jpg72850_2013-04-07_00002.jpg

So, does it look like this is a legitimate problem? Or is this normal and I just suddenly became paranoid? If I'm just crazy or immensely OCD, please tell me, because I can swear to the moon and back that I didn't use to have this issue.
 

Iveri Sarothil

Active Member
Ooookay, so I was thinking of the glitch that makes everybody have a very, very dark version of their facial texture.

It looks like the game's pulling the textures from elsewhere. You said you've deleted the Data and the Appdata folder? It's acting like the Better Males and Beauty Faces or something is still there. Did you install this manually, or did you use the Nexus Mod Manager? If you've taken everything out of the game, it should be virtually impossible for it to pull those textures from anywhere else.
 
I stored the old versions of my game folders on my desktop, which I believe is actually part of the C drive. That's honestly the only answer I can possibly think of. I'll move them to another drive and see what happens.
 

Iveri Sarothil

Active Member
Anyone else have any ideas? o_o

It looks like a neck seam glitch, but it's impossible for there to be a neck seam glitch when there's only vanilla textures in the game.

Okay....do you use Nexus Mod Manager? If you do, try opening it and seeing if there are mods still there.
 
I uninstalled and deleted every mod. Then I uninstalled NMM, for good measure.

Something's seriously wonky. You saw my pictures of CK character previews? The only plugins loaded when I took those were Skyrim.esm and Update.esm.

I KNOW other people have had this problem; I've hunted down their threads and posts. They all end without any answer, or any clue.
 

Dagmar

Defender of the Bunnies of Skyrim
You may want to try posting to the Nexus forums. There are a lot of folks there that have a firm grasp of the Creation Kit and may be able to guide you through a fix or at least figure out the source of the problem. You may already know this but tread softly if you post over there. The mods have been known to ban people there for the slightest perceived infraction of the forum posting rules and there several more posting rules there than there are on other sites.
 
I've already posted there, friend. Twice, regarding different problems within this same issue. This is the kind of predicament where I need to look for help everywhere so I don't miss any somewheres and, thus, somepeoples.
 

Iveri Sarothil

Active Member
I've been googling as well and the threads just die out. :/ It's certainly one of the more confusing bugs out there. I would suggest moving the game to a different hard drive if you can, just to see if the problem persists, but other than that, I don't get how the game's still reading textures.
 

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