Excuse me if this is in the wrong location, feel free to move it to a more appropriate place. I think this may be a software issue with the Creation Kit and/or the game itself.

The following was noticed post 1.8 Skyrim & pre CK update. It was again confirmed post CK updated.

This doesn't affect the stock game setup, but it does affect how the files are used in customization.

Basically, I have a mod which allows each race to have custom head, body, hand & feet meshes as well as textures.
I don't know how these files/records behaved pre 1.8 as my mod was originally set up with the Nord race using the existing default location. I needed to move the Nord race out to allow for compatibility with another mod that one or more of my users wished to use. No big deal. I moved 'em and everything seemed to be working this was just prior to 1.8 Skyrim update.

However, I personally use the same face mod for all the races so I had set up a custom installer to put said face mod files in the proper unique locations. After having moved the Nords out, I again adapted the face mod to work with my unique locations. But I didn't start a new game or use the new custom installer for the face mod till after the 1.8 Skyrim update. Everything installs to the proper place. The unqiue race mod has everything assigned to the proper place. Yet with everything proper there is a very noticeable neck seam.

There is a solution and that is to make custom head meshes for each race and assign the texture entries to the proper unique location. That's fine and good, but the purpose of the texture set records in the Creation Kit is to have those entries used instead of the entries on the nif itself.

So the bug here is that the texture sets in use for head data are not being properly used. At minimum the _s & _sk maps are not being used from the texture set and instead being used from the nif file.

I suspect that this is either a Creation Kit assignment error internal to the CK or that the game itself isn't reading the texture set information properly.

Can anyone confirm this?

My mod is available at the Nexus and is called Unique Races if you need to double check to make sure that nothing is incorrect on my end. I would post a link but so far I've been informed when trying to post that I cannot post links.

Thank you for your time.