Something about http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/24273#content puzzles me. The fourth preview image is "1-1b - Refined female elves and optional ridges." I like these brow ridges; I don't like my elves - especially Dunmer - to be too smooth... but I can't find the option for said ridges when installing. So I looked through the files and the texture sets in the .esp to see if I could find what's up with that.

This brings me to part two of my puzzlement: There are indeed both smooth and ridged versions of the face normals, for both male and female characters. I determined that with EEO, the "default" female complexion uses the smooth normals, the "age 40" and "freckled" females use the original ridged-and-wrinkled normal texture (a fact for which I am glad; I liked that texture pretty well), the "age 50" uses a new aged normal map, and the "rough" female uses the new ridged-brow normals. However, looking at the male complexions posed another head-scratcher - the "default" male complexion uses the new smooth normal texture, but the new ridged normal texture doesn't appear to be used in any of the male complexions - though the "rough01" complexion has been modified, it doesn't have any texture paths pointing to new textures and seems to just be a dirty edit. This seems a shame, because the ridged texture looks like it's just going to waste.



So what's going on here - is the ridged male texture truly not used, or is it implemented in some way I can't find? Is the Rough01 male Dark Elf complexion actually a dirty edit, or was it supposed to have the Ridged texture and then somehow didn't? What's the deal with "optional ridges," really?