Strange issue with new creature mesh, looking for advice

[beanspan]

I recently decided to add a new creature to Fallout 3, a humanoid that needs to be able to use/fire a gun. Proportionally it made perfect sense to use the human skeleton (meshes/characters/_male/skeleton.nif) and so I did. I rigged my creature in Blender 2.49b, imported the skeleton, and exported the mesh with the correct settings.

 

Then I set the creature up in the GECK editor: gave it a custom bodygroup, a weapons list to use, choose the correct skeleton in ModelList and selected its mesh. So far so good. Upon loading Fallout 3 the creature moves around, immediately draws its gun and fires on me. Perfect, I think to myself.

 

Upon killing the creature I notice something - once it falls down dead, it ceases to have any ragdoll physics. It does have physics at the time of death - it falls over, flies back, etc just fine - but once it comes to standstill, the ragdolls stop. I can still loot my creature, and even continue to attack it, but doing so - especially if I dismember it - crashes the game to desktop. I panic and load the mesh in Blender, triple check my weightpainting/etc, re-export it, and get the same thing - dismembering the creature post-death 100% crashes FO3 to desktop.

 

I'm convinced nothing is wrong with the mesh at the 'Blender' level, so I think of another way to test it.

 

The creature uses the human skeleton and has the same kind of rigging, so I decide to test the creature as an equippable armor. I make it into an armor and give it to an Enclave soldier in the GECK editor, and drop him in the game near Vault 101. I load Fallout and head to V101 and there he is, wearing my creature as armor. I attack and kill him, and notice I can drag his body around just fine after death. I shoot the body tons, dismembering it over and over, and there are no crashes. Just to be sure I retested this 10 or 11 times. 0 crashes dismembering the creature mesh - when its worn as an armor.

 

Sorry for all that text. I figure the more specific I am, the better the chance someone might know what issue I'm running into.

 

My question is this: why would a mesh that works perfectly as an armor - ragdoll physics, dismemberment, etc - cease to have ragdoll physics upon dying, and crash the game when dismembered as a creature? Is there a way to give a custom creature proper ragdolls or otherwise prevent this from happening?

 

 

 

 

[beanspan]

Problem fixed, disregard/delete this topic please.