So, I've downloaded the game, and the Critical Rebuild Patch, and I'm running into a strange issue.
When I'm making a character, everything is fine, but I can't actually see the aesthetic options I'm changing. Hair, head shape, skin colour, tattoos, etc. -- nothing shows up in the preview box.
I can get into the game just fine, and I see my character normally there, but I can't tell what I'm making him look like.

Short of constantly going into the game to see if I like this character or not, is there a way to fix this?

I'm running on Win7 64-bit.
I've got the Critical Rebuild Patch.
I'm running as Administrator.
I'm running in WinXP SP2 compatibility mode.

Why the critical rebuild patch? You generally only needed to download and install this when you patched the earlier versions of the game incorrectly or installed the expansions out of order. This shouldn't be an issue with GoG version of the game since it's patched up the to last Bioware-available version, 1.69.

Specifically because of this post:
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/neverwinter_nights_diamond/customization_issues_with_color/post33

Hunh. Don't have the missing customization options, but lo and behold I get the shiny skin/no color problem. Hey GoG...you did test this on Win7 x64, right? Jeez. Off to see what the critical rebuild does...364MB we shouldn't have to load (mutter mutter)

Interesting. I've done a reinstall and applied things bit by bit. The base game, it works fine. With the Critical Rebuild Patch it works fine. So this means that it must have been how I installed the graphical enhancements from this thread that mucked it up.
Okay, narrowed it down further. Specifically it's the NWShader enhancement that is breaking it.

I have the same issue with an invisible character but I have NOT installed any graphical enhancements. I have tried both with and without the critical rebuild patch. Tad bit annoying.

Ahhh this is a video driver and game incompatibiity issue, or it was when it happened to me acoupe of years ago. There's a few ways to solve it, but the best one is of course to download new drivers.

If it doesn't work (and it took a while before I found one for that od computer that worked well), there's a few options.
1: Go to video settings ingame and play with "show environmental effects on character"'. Might cure it or it might make your character invisibe ingame as well. Depends how lucky you are *grin*.
2: Create your character in http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=modules.detail&id=4215[PGCC[/url], ignore how they look on creation and use the ingame appearance changer in the module to do your appearance and then save him/her and start your game with this premade character.
3: put this wonderful Character customiser in your override and you can adjust your appearance on the fly in any module that doesn't have a special crafting conversation.

Ultimate link list

Have fun :)

I encountered this problem just now.

If you're using an ATI card, my solution was to reenable Catalyst AI. I had to disable it to quit the flickering/glitching that occured on Infinity Engine games like PST and BG1/2, but to make the character models appear in NWN I had to reenable it. Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot. Combined with installing the 1.69 HotU Patch, this fixed it for me. Everything working as intended now.

Just searched around for a solution to this problem (just recently got the GOG version), and that did it for me too. Thanks a bunch!

What about Nvidia chipsets? I'm still stuck with my shiny golem-like character...