Feral ghoul corpses spawning headless

[MissingMeshTV]

Here’s a weird one that I’m hoping someone can offer some insight on: I’m using feral ghoul loot corpses for the first time. When I go to test the cell in-game, all of the feral corpses spawn with no heads. Repeatedly. I’ve seen this happen in other mods (FROST come to mind) but just assumed it was intentional. I’ve tried using all of the Loot_CorpseFeralGhoul items in the 01 to 05 range and all spawn headless.

 

What’s even weirder is that the heads do seem to be there, as I can just make out the shimmering outline of a head if I hold my Pip-Boy light at a certain angle, like they are using a Stealth Boy. They just don't seem to be rendered.

 

I’ve COC’d into vanilla cells using the same corpses, and of course they all load with heads as they should. The only think I can think of is that the vanilla cells are optimized (precombines and previs) and my cells (and the other mods I’ve seen this happen in) aren’t yet optimized. But I have no idea why that would make any difference since the loot corpses aren’t statics.

 

Has anyone else run into this? Been a while since I've stumbled across an oddity like this.

[gob2]

For me the headless ghoul bug had to do with how LChar lists interact with leveled actors. Creaturepartsghoulhead(sp) are needed though if I remember right without them you'll still have ghoul "hair" floating there. If a custom skin is used that includes it's own head bits, you can get headless ghouls if the game doesn't like it and goes to default ghoul skin which does not include head parts (those are in Outfit), or a custom race is set up for a ghoul and it's part of a leveled actor whose templates don't jive.

[MissingMeshTV]

Hmm...OK. Not totally following the LChar list bit. It would make more sense to me if I was using anything custom, but I'm not. 100% vanilla, taken right from the Object Window, set as Starts Dead in the Reference Window and nothing else. But I do see the hair floating like you mentioned, but no heads. Have re-examined several vanilla cells where they spawn with heads normally by COCing in, and find nothing special about the cell or the corpse refs. If it is a vanilla bug, I'd like find out why they spawn normally in vanilla cells.

[DieFeM]

Hello RedRocketTV, did you tried positioning the corpse using "Run Havok Sim" (the icon of a red bouncing ball and HK letters)? I tested it placing Loot_CorpseFeralGhoul01 in the cell ccEEJFO4VLTInterior01 and it looks good in game.

[MissingMeshTV]

Hey DieFM! I do run havok sim on them since it's the only way to ragdoll them into position. Should have mentioned that in my last post. The thing is, I have tested placing the feral corpses into vanilla cells and they spawn normally, heads and all. But if I put one into a cell I've made, they will have no heads. I can find nothing different about my custom cells I'm testing with compared to vanilla, other than my cells have not yet been optimized. For kicks, I've generated precombines and previs for one, but of course, it made no difference...didn't think it would, just trying to eliminate the variables. Like I said, I've seen this happen in mods that add feral corpses. There has to be something about custom cells that causes this. Damned if I can find it though.

[DieFeM]

I've been testing different things, but the only solution I found is flagging the esp as esm with xEdit, or merging the esp into a esm with Version Control.

[MissingMeshTV]

Yikes! That's rather odd. And extreme. I'd rather have headless corpses! :laugh:

 

Thanks for the info and your time testing. I'll tinker with that when I have the time and see if I can replicate your results here. Now I'm wondering what difference the file header flag would make to rendering the heads. It just works! o_O

[Oynlen]

I tried to replace loot feral corpses in the military base near country crossing with a new loot corpse I made. but it never replaced them. its odd.

have you tried just using regular feral types and then checking the Starts Dead flag instead?

[MissingMeshTV]

Yes. Tried that as well. Not only do they also spawn with no heads, they load in standing in a T-pose even when placed with havok sim in the render window.

[SKKmods]

@RR hey I had the same thing when trying to spawn dead ferals in some base game interiors whether the cell is loaded/attached around the player or not.

 

My scripted workaround was to spawn live actors in a holding cell, KillSilent(), Disable(), MoveTo() their corpses into the world and Enable().

 

Even with an inventory/stash of fresh corpses in holding it is quite slow to process and can be crappy UX if the player is already in the interior and happens in line of sight, but the physics is sound.