In helping another user troubleshoot issues with a mod hairstyle, I think I've discovered either a problem with the GECK and/or the game with hairstyles not using facegen.
Quick aside, I tested and publishes my eyelashes mod, and those custom files work fine, but those are applied in the race>tongue slot.

The problem seems to be related to loading hairstyles that use facegen sidecar files from the disc, rather than in the .bsa archive.
So I took a vanilla hairstyle asset (haircurlyF) from the .bsa archive (nif, egms, and dds files), and placed them in the appropriate locations in the \Data\ folder. Checking the result in the GECKs NPC preview window, I see that the hair does not deform.

I then made duplicates of the set of files, prefixing filename each with "1", so there's no match in the .bsa. I then created a new hairstyle, assigned it to a race, and checked the result. Again, no deforming. On the offchance that numerics were a problem, I also tried a prefix of "AA" instead of "1", same problem.


So, going back to the modded hairstyle in question, I used Fallout Mod Manager's BSA creator to create an archive for said asset. Deleted the loose files from the game dir, and put the new .bsa in place. The result is that the hairstyle now works with FaceGen as expected.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that any time I created a new hairstyle I also did Character> Update FaceGen Availability.

Any suggestions to avoid the need for this?

Would the status of 'bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles' in the INI matter for this? The NV default is off.

In the case of hair, no. It relates to the tone changing aspect of heads and bodies. Also, if that setting is off in the ini, i'd guess this setting isn't used. But one never knows, I'll give it a go.

So basically the hair issue ive been seeing is related to me having unpacked the BSAs? Geez thats... lame...

Edit: Confirmed. If you are having hair problems then simply rename the hair folder under Meshes/Character and everything should revert back to default. Though that doesn't help with hair mods.

*EDIT* Wrong thread.

Adding a bit more info from other threads:

Update FaceGen Availability: Apparently writes 'bad' or missing data for all vanilla headgear; even when running this command in a completely blank mod and saving. The result is that all vanilla hats are sideways. One user reported downloading a mod that caused this problem. They loaded the mod in the GECK, ran the command and saved; apparently fixing the issue.

Also, I don't know about anyone else, but I had a *lot* of crashes trying to use the NPC face editor. Usually when the render window was active, then clicking into a slider, and once by clicking to resize the window. Another crash was changing hairstyle before making any edits to a face.