Hair Issues Continued

[thunderclam]

I've been reporting hair and beard issues on STEP forums for over a week now with very little help or attention. I've posted about this elsewhere as well. Either no one knows what causes this or no one else has ever had this issue. If the latter, I figure it's probably a good idea to further document my troubles. So far I've shown vanilla hair and beards. Here are some examples from apachiiskyhair, a hair mod we are probably all familiar with.

 

Needless to say at this point, I am DESPERATE to fix this problem.

 

Because the mod uses somewhat different, more exaggerated layering and texture style, it's easier to see (with some styles) what I've been trying to show. Something, either a mesh issue or a texture issue, is causing there to be a "missing" or transparent effect on hair styles which leads to a sort of hollow or see through effect. In the vanilla hairs, this is readily apparent with patches of hair that don't connect properly to the underlying hair texture, making it look as if they are floating slightly away from the rest of the hair. Apachiiskyhair affords me the opportunity to show some dramatic variations of the EXACT SAME PROBLEM.

 

Please note, this is not a problem associated with this mod. The problem persists. Even without this mod. Even with, as far as I know, an entire vanilla reinstall of Skyrim. I am not sure how I initially caused this issue. I have heard from the author of Beards that it is a "shader problem" which seems to cause a layering issue with beards as well.

 

I've been collecting examples in an imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/aJqaq

 

The last few, the apachii hairs, are as follows:

 

https://i.imgur.com/ucdB1Dh.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/Q99BekJ.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/3AtiMAb.png (my favorite of all modded male hairstyles, btw... now completely unusable)

 

https://i.imgur.com/kaY1Iac.png

 

And a good example of the issue from another vanilla hair example: https://i.imgur.com/XdCZ2CY.png

 

Here are some with the SR recommended retextures from More Realistic Hairs and Superior Lore-Friendly Hair 2k (Rough):

 

https://i.imgur.com/hRVhCdx.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/Rg6ydHt.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/8b7Efpg.png (this one shows a weird shadow effect where shadows from the background extend to the head of a character being created at the Helgen vanilla creation point)

 

https://i.imgur.com/GNkNKpJ.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/GTomN2i.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/OV6rPzA.png

 

https://i.imgur.com/Q1cUQIe.png

 

As always, thanks for any help from the community. I've gotten very little response on this issue which leads me to believe that no one knows what's going on. I really hope someone will help me get to the bottom of it as weeks of searching have only revealed the same old hair problems due to improper installations, mod incompatibilities, etc. I haven't seen anything out there for problems like these. I do think that my issues with beards and hair are almost certainly related. I think it is also possible that my issues with transparency aliasing and texture shimmering (only textures with transparency) may ALSO be related but this seems unlikely due to Nearox corroborating the latter issues but not reporting issues with hair (he has the same GPU as I do).

[Harpalus]

This does sound and look bad. I would try doing the following:

1. Delete everything in the meshes folder in data if it exists.

2. Verify game cache in Steam

3. Go into AMD CCC, hit Preferences, and select "Restore Factory Defaults"

4. Verify that there are no rogue dll files in the skyrim directory (d3d9.dll, etc.)

5. Download DirectX from here and install it (even if you did previously)

 

If none of that works, post dxdiag information (Winkey+R, dxdiag, enter, Save All Information) so we know your system so we know what hardware we're working with.

Thank you kindly for offering to help. I'd stepped out for a moment, but it occured to me when I got back to attempt removing Alternate Start. I was avoiding the use of saved games during testing, so I'd kept it in to save myself the annoying cart ride that I can recite from memory. Looks like I'll be putting up with it again or trying out Random Alternate Start, as Alternate Start by Arthmoor was the culprit. It messes up hair for me, even on a completely vanilla installation.

 

... Taking away EVERY non-Bethesda .esp with the sole exception of Alternate Start, largely just to keep myself from going insane watching the damn starting sequence. ...

So don't I feel foolish. Didn't even think it might have been the culprit, as I generally trust Arthmoor mods and it didn't seem directly related to the problem.

 

Thanks! (Note: never assume a mod isn't causing a problem for you.)

Edited June 15, 2014 by Harpalus

[Harpalus]

Sorry for the bump, but this issue is still affecting me (I haven't touched Skyrim in some time) and I can't find any information on it. I have no idea why removing Alternate Start seemed to fix the issue last time, as I'm experiencing the issue both with and without it. I too have tried searching everywhere for advice, only to come up empty handed. I believe that something is causing parts of the mesh to turn invisible.

 

It's not ENB, as the issue persists without ENB.

It can't be a mesh issue, as it persists in a completely vanilla Skyrim installation.

 

I'm forced to conclude this is an AMD issue. I'm not likely to buy another one of their cards again. I've noticed this issue across several versions of software, running on Windows 8.1. In addition to the texture issues, hair in general (ESPECIALLY one specific bosmer hair) "floats" a little. I've tried setting everything to "Application Controlled" in the CCC software, and this doesn't fix things. My card is an AMD Radeon HD 7900.

 

I know that this isn't AMD tech support, but I'm wondering if anybody has a solution to this issue, as I'm not the only one that's experienced it.

 

Many thanks in advance!

 

EDIT: After some testing, I've noticed why I thought removing Alternate Start fixed the issue. With Alternate Start installed, the hair of the first male bosmer preset is floating noticably, as part of the mesh seems to be invisible. Without Alternate Start, the same mesh is translucent rather than invisible. I'm guessing that this is due to the very different lighting conditions.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Harpalus

[thunderclam]

I too have come back after a long hiatus and still have these issues. :P

 

I've ruled out every possible culprit we've discussed in this thread. Personally, I think it's something with AMD. I believe that it's most likely "transparency" AA-related as I've had AA problems with Skyrim since 2013 including stuff like shimmering transparency (noticeable in loading screens, mountains with snow, etc). It definitely has some effect on hair as many of my hairs have floating textures with invisible connective stuff, meaning you get issues like the screenshots I've posted. But that said, some of that is just the way Super Realistic Hair and other hair mods exacerbate the issues with vanilla Skyrim meshes, where some of the hairstyles simply have "floaty" parts that aren't properly connected to the "head" parts of the hair. 

 

I'm frustrated with my inability to find any info on transparency AA and fixing it. The best lead I've ever got was stuff Neorox had me try almost 2 years ago to no avail. Then there's people who blame Adapative AA which I don't even use. I think it's time I finally settled on enjoying Skyrim and letting these issues just be.

Edited April 13, 2015 by thunderclam

[Harpalus]

I'm also still experiencing this issue, and I remain completely bewildered as to how to solve it. I attempted to get support from AMD over this issue with no luck from either their support e-mail or their support forums. I see this issue in screenshots from time to time, so it's likely that it's a more widespread issue than I initially supposed.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Harpalus

[thunderclam]

I think that I overreacted to this issue at the time. I do think the Wood Elf missing hair patch is truly odd, but other hair stuff (floating bangs and the like) seem to consistently appear across Skyrim screenshots taken by others. As a result and, correctly or not, I've resolved to ignore the issue for my own sanity and just select hairstyles for characters where the issues are not prevalent.

[davidy98]

I know I'm years late but for anyone who ends up here through google like I did here's the fix (sort of), scroll down to the bottom of the page https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3947365-hair-transparency-bug-nord-hairs-and-elf-hairs/

Edited June 10, 2017 by davidy98