The Old Invisble Follower Problem

[DocClox]

Most of you have probably hit this at some point: You have a follower who just stops being rendered for no apparent reason. She' still there, the cursor highlights with an activation prompt if you point it in the right direction and if you save, quit and reload, she'll be visible again. Sometimes you can even see them slowly fade out as you look at them.

 

I've got this right now. It's happening a lot, and I'm getting fed up of the quit and reload loop. So I'm looking for a fix for SSE/AE.

 

I did some googling, and there a ton of fixes for LE, most of them based around HDT. Trouble is that I'm using Faster HDT-SMP, and the fixes don't apply in a straight forward manner.  I'm guessing that the disable/enable trick will serve as a workaround - if I have a refid for them before they vanish.

 

Anyone find a fix for this?

[traison]

Actually no, never seen that. I think the first thing I'd try is to move myself to the NPC (player.moveto ...). If say you're outside Riften with an invisible NPC but get teleported somewhere far away with this that's a hint.

 

And I guess the obvious question, does this happen with SMP and CBPC completely disabled?

 

Edit: If it's definitely an SMP issue, then "smp reset" could be plan Z. Easier to type than "prid ...; disable; enable"

 

Edit again: Is this a custom follower? If so, did you check if they're using a custom skeleton? If they do, did you try replacing it with latest XPMSE?

Edited January 28, 2023 by traison

[DocClox]

I suppose the other half of the problem is that the vanishing girls tend to be enslaved bandits or similar, so they don't have refids I can look up, and once they do disappear, it's difficult to get one since you can't click on them in the console. I'm fairly sure they haven't actually moved, since I still get an activation prompt from them, and I can talk to them. Just I can't see them.

 

I'll try disabling SMP and CBPC. The problem there is that it's not a problem I can reliably reproduce, so it's difficult to tell if disabling the mods fixes anything.

 

[edit]

 

And just as I'm thinking "it hasn't happened for a bit now..." one slave fades away as I'm looking at her.

 

On the bright side, it turns out I can get a refid from clicking on where she should be, and disabling and enabling does in fact bring her back. So that's someting at least.

Edited January 28, 2023 by DocClox

[traison]

So you disabled physics mods, yet it still happens?

[Gukahn]

Mh..  I did had happen that a lot while using Apropos, I think it had something to do with the way overlays got applied, not the number just the way they triggered too fast. Another Time I had it (recently even) was during a LL scene without it, no clue why. Anyways, I could fix both cases by using slavetats. (sounds stupid, get more overlays on them to fix a problem probably caused by overlays. But it did work.)

 

I dunno how many tats or overlays you let them get, knowing you to play slavery mods, I would just take a wild guess and ask you to try to use fewer and if you use apropos, to lower the severity and maybe disable a few of its after effects ?

[DocClox]

1 hour ago, traison said:

So you disabled physics mods, yet it still happens?

 

Umm... nope. Someone in one of my searches suggested lowing XP32, so I was trying that., and since I fixed the last occurence by disable and enable, I've not restarted since. Still on the todo list though.

 

1 hour ago, Gukahn said:

Mh..  I did had happen that a lot while using Apropos, I think it had something to do with the way overlays got applied, not the number just the way they triggered too fast. Another Time I had it (recently even) was during a LL scene without it, no clue why. Anyways, I could fix both cases by using slavetats. (sounds stupid, get more overlays on them to fix a problem probably caused by overlays. But it did work.)

 

Apropos... did that use the messages printed down the side of the screen? Because DoM uses the same system, if I remember right, and I am using that. Quite a lot, actually.

 

1 hour ago, Gukahn said:

I dunno how many tats or overlays you let them get, knowing you to play slavery mods, I would just take a wild guess and ask you to try to use fewer and if you use apropos, to lower the severity and maybe disable a few of its after effects ?

 

Oddly enough I'm not using any tats at the moment. Well, just the Hentai Pregnancy ones, but that's just one tat, and not on all my slaves. SlaveTats seems really buggy since AE. Tats tend to get lost for some reason, so I'm not using them as much.

 

[Gukahn]

1 hour ago, DocClox said:

Apropos... did that use the messages printed down the side of the screen? Because DoM uses the same system, if I remember right, and I am using that. Quite a lot, actually.

It was the one that could give you descriptions on sex scenes and after effect progresses I think Dom uses the same method to enable those.

 

1 hour ago, DocClox said:

Oddly enough I'm not using any tats at the moment. Well, just the Hentai Pregnancy ones, but that's just one tat, and not on all my slaves. SlaveTats seems really buggy since AE. Tats tend to get lost for some reason, so I'm not using them as much.

yeah never mind that then. Only one tat shouldn't trigger the bug I had

[DocClox]

Had to restart, so disabled HDT. I was fed up of seeing the right hand boobs trying to fall upwards anyway.

 

No fadeouts as yet, but it's early days.

[belegost]

5 hours ago, DocClox said:

Most of you have probably hit this at some point: You have a follower who just stops being rendered for no apparent reason.

 

I'm going to be honest, 11 years and I do not recall running into such problem once.

 

I had this rarely happen with random NPCs during a SexLab scene, but never with a follower out of the blue.

Edited January 28, 2023 by belegost

[traison]

There's a few things I can think of that makes actors invisible. Not all will be related to this case but I'll mention them for posterity:

1. A mod is adjusting the alpha color value.
2. A physics mod (SMP/CBPC) stretches a node too far. May be related to #3 below.
3. One (or all?) of the bones from the NiSkinData went outside the view cone (outside your screen). Could be related to #4 below.
4. The character is being rendered in a different location than where the actor entity actually is. While I'm not sure how Skyrim handles this, it may still be something to consider. This is what the player.moveto idea was about earlier in this thread. Typically the visual representation of an object disconnects from the actual entity during animations. A jump animation for instances usually does not actually move the entity smoothly through the air, but rather teleports the entity from the start of the animation to the end. There's bound to be more such cases where a disconnect happens.
5. The game for one reason or another considers the actor to be too close to the near clip distance, turning them invisible. This is not always connected to your camera. You can see this issue if you stand close enough to an actor to make them invisible, then turn of tfc and fly away - actor remains invisible.

[DocClox]

Well, it just happened again, so it's not my HDT mods.

 

I was enjoying a moment with one of my girls in Winterhold and she faded out on me. I literally looked away for a second and when I looked back:

 

 

She's supposed to be riding my guy, cowboy style.

 

When the sex ended she faded back in briefly, and then straight back out again.

 

 

 

 

First/third person doesn't make any difference, although viewing angle has been known to in the past. Moving away from "Dippy" didn't help so it's not view distance.

 

The disable/enable trick did work to bring her back though.

 

 

[Gukahn]

I just had this thing happen to me again, only to give some insight that may or may not related to your problem. I'm pretty much just throw rocks at the dark anyways.

do the ones that get invisible wear Items that don't get striped? My follower just vanished at the start of a scene while wearing an amulet, I took it away and it "fixed" itself ?

[DocClox]

45 minutes ago, Gukahn said:

do the ones that get invisible wear Items that don't get striped?

 

Possibly I've been making good use of the DoM gags lately. Might correspond with the uptick in invisibility.

 

[edit]

 

Mind, Not every scene with a gag leads to a fade.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by DocClox

[belegost]

Just had a thought:

 

Any chance you're using Dripping when Aroused? Yes, in this mod it happens just with a female PC and only in specific locations, but maybe there's a correlation?

Edited January 28, 2023 by belegost

[DocClox]

Nope, Not a mod I ever used.

 

I honestly thought this was one of those things that happened to everyone sooner or later. Like joining the Skyrim Space Program

[belegost]

4 minutes ago, DocClox said:

Like joining the Skyrim Space Program

 

There are not enough boosters for that.

[DocClox]

I did a bit more googling and found this:

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5204990-npcs-fading-outturning-invisible/

 

Poster there says he identified the problem as too many HDT threads.  And I have a mod that applies HDT to KS Hairdos, and a lot of KS Hairdos in some locations.

 

I'll try disabling that and see if the problem goes away.

[Jotasran]

I had a similar issue a while back and I was driving me crazy.  I think I narrowed it down to a mod called Botox (someone even made an invisibility fix for it... 

)  Since getting rid of that one, the only time it happened to me was in town with a high poly replacer of flower girls.  She had SMP hair and a see-though outfit that I figure just took up too many resources.

[DocClox]

That's interesting! I was using Botox for a while. I think I dropped it last time I rebuilt my load order, but it's certainly worth checking.

 

Even more interesting, the HDT tweak in the mod description looks a lot like the fix that's supposed to work on LE.

 

I shall investigate when I get home.

[Bluegunk]

Traison kindly pointed me to this group. I'm having problems with the mod Miri. Last play-through she was invisible from start, and I sorted it. But I didn't write down what I did.

 

This play-through she's invisible once again.  In the past she's worked fine. 

 

I tried the Botox fix above and for a couple of seconds she faded into view!  But what does that tell me, please?  Miri herself has never been Botoxed.

 

Thanks for any inisghts!

[Jotasran]

The mod says it may work for other mods besides Botox.  I think what my issue wound up being was a combination of things... the most significant was that I didn't cap my framerate in my GPU to 60 (I didn't have the higher FPS mods).    Running at such high FPS causes all sorts of wackiness to my game.  This "Botox fix" mod helped as well.  I know too many hair and cloaks with HDT was also an issue.

 

Edit:  I also remember after all that, that mod seemed to "ping" the NPC and bring them back for a while.  It was a few specific female Botoxed npcs that this happened with.  In the end, I just wound up getting rid of Botox altogether and it never happened again... until just recently with 1 NPC (a flower girl high poly head replacer)... but never with anyone else.  I'm wondering if there is something about the way Miri is textured that causes rendering issues.... especially since it seems limited to that one NPC.  Of course, that's just non-technical notions and guesswork on my part.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Jotasran

[DocClox]

Yeah, basically. It scans NPCs in the area and makes sure they have their 3D loaded.  I was concerned about overhead, but it seems to work like a charm

 

That said, I still need to test it in some high-density NPC areas, but so far it seems to work very well.

[Bluegunk]

8 hours ago, Jotasran said:

I'm wondering if there is something about the way Miri is textured that causes rendering issues.

Thank you. I'll go through her files again. She used to work for me in LE and SSE, but not of late. I changed her pants from slot 52 in case SOS was causing issues, but no luck.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Bluegunk

[Bluegunk]

It's Faster HDT 1.49.3 causing my problem. With 1.49.0 Miri is visible. I've sent a report to the Faster HDT Discord.

I'll park this here in case anyone finds it useful.

Thanks all!

[DocClox]

Good to know - I'll check which version I'm using when I get home.

 

(I had my first fadeout in a while, last night, just when I thought I'd got the problem sussed!)