I've noticed an astounding degree of difference between the head morph that the NPC preview window shows, and the head morph that the render window shows.

Example: http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3245/different.jpg

That large a degree of difference is not acceptable to me. As someone who's trying to achieve a very specific head morph (one that the preview window shows me the engine is capable of generating) it's extremely frustrating to go to the render window and find that the engine generated a very different head morph from the one it showed me in the preview window.

To note, I was careful to match the camera distance and angle between the two windows for that example. It's not a preview/render camera issue; it's a mesh/morph target issue. I have absolutely no mods installed at the moment, cosmetic or otherwise. I even did a clean reinstall of both Skyrim and the CK to see if traces of mods were the problem; they weren't. The integrity of both the game cache files and the tool cache files checks out, too.

this is one of the reasons why i dont bother with the CK to create NPCs faces

i'd rather create them in game using console:
showracemenu

then

spf customNpc


will create a customNpc.npc file in skyrim root folder.


open CK and import the npc file in the chargen parts tab



i even made a personal tool mod for creating npcs. its basically an empty room using BlackPlane on all 4 sides with 3 point lighting so that i get a good look at what i am creating in game.

what i end up with will always look correct because it was made in the actual runtime game engine

Thanks for the tip; I'll definitely have to try that.

Does this method eliminate the grey face bug ?

you still have to export face geom data once you've imported the .npc in the ck and finished creating your npc.

but i'm one of those wierd people who never get the grey face bug for some reason (i get the no lips color, and strange eyeliner every now and then though).

Worked like a charm!