(MNC) Draugr and Skeleton become invisible during indoor sex scenes (but not outdoors) (SOLVED!!!)

[Kastagir]

22 hours ago, Serenity_XXI said:

Okay I understand...

 

Which overwrites am I checking? Things that overwrite records of Draugr in MoreNastyCritters.esp? Because this I already checked and didn't find any issues...

 

As far as I can see all these things are correct. Skeleton, Armor Addon, all point to correct file paths, and files are verified to be there. Race is correct. Correct keyword is added by MNC.

I haven't seen confirmation that you've verified which mesh is being used by CF.  You haven't posted a screenshot of the issue with the affected mesh and the info provided in the console so I'm not sure what more help you expect.  Like I said previously, the info in the console should provide:

• FormID of the draugr - will identify whether this form is from the base game or replaced by a mod.  If it's not a standard draugr FormID you need to try with one that is.
• Any spell effects on the actor - any spell effects will have a FormID, identifying the mod responsible.  Many mods use cloaks to apply effects on actors, sometimes with undesirable results.
• Actual appearance of the issue.  You'd be surprised how much info a screenshot can provide.  You may not know what to look for but someone else may see something.

Have you tried in a mod interior not covered by your lighting mods?  Something like GomaPeroLand or a house mod will likely not be directly edited by the lighting mods you're using unless they change base lighting templates.  Why does this matter?  Skyrim uses different methods to render draugr.  For example, Labyrinthian draugr use a normal map as their diffuse and they are partially transparent.  Skyrim has a ton of transparency bugs that have been a common topic in ENB development.  With the right combination of textures, meshes and lighting mods an actor could be rendered 100% transparent (which is invisible in Skyrim) in the right circumstances.  Or it could be a transform issue due to a skeleton mismatch.  You need to provide a screenshot with the console information.

[Serenity_XXI]

37 minutes ago, Kastagir said:

I haven't seen confirmation that you've verified which mesh is being used by CF.  You haven't posted a screenshot of the issue with the affected mesh and the info provided in the console so I'm not sure what more help you expect.  Like I said previously, the info in the console should provide:

• FormID of the draugr - will identify whether this form is from the base game or replaced by a mod.  If it's not a standard draugr FormID you need to try with one that is.
• Any spell effects on the actor - any spell effects will have a FormID, identifying the mod responsible.  Many mods use cloaks to apply effects on actors, sometimes with undesirable results.
• Actual appearance of the issue.  You'd be surprised how much info a screenshot can provide.  You may not know what to look for but someone else may see something.

Have you tried in a mod interior not covered by your lighting mods?  Something like GomaPeroLand or a house mod will likely not be directly edited by the lighting mods you're using unless they change base lighting templates.  Why does this matter?  Skyrim uses different methods to render draugr.  For example, Labyrinthian draugr use a normal map as their diffuse and they are partially transparent.  Skyrim has a ton of transparency bugs that have been a common topic in ENB development.  With the right combination of textures, meshes and lighting mods an actor could be rendered 100% transparent (which is invisible in Skyrim) in the right circumstances.  Or it could be a transform issue due to a skeleton mismatch.  You need to provide a screenshot with the console information.

You're correct on all points. The reason I haven't posted all of that information is because it's very time consuming getting all of that organized, so I just didn't get around to doing that yet. At the end of the day this is just a hobby. A lot of IRL stuff gets in the way In the meantime I did check many of these parameters and couldn't identify an issue (all seem identical whether indoors or outdoors). Nevertheless, I will get to it and make a more detailed post with all the relevant information. Might even record a video to make it easier. Thank you for your patience!

 

I have tried with interiors that do not have lighting mods applied to them, and you're correct, the issue doesn't happen there.

However, do you think interaction with lighting mods accounts for Textures being completely missing from the NPC (when examining it with more informative console), rather than the textures being applied but *appearing* invisible?

Edited January 11, 2025 by Serenity_XXI

[Tlam99]

assume either double applied, very likely fsmp addon. This can make the whole npc invisible.

or as @Kastagir descriped in detail, pure light problem.

Edited January 11, 2025 by Tlam99

[Serenity_XXI]

BIG UPDATE:

 

 

I figure it out! Well, sorta... but definitely on the right track.

 

I managed to get an invisible creature to appear and work normally during an animation, by editing its naked worn armor in SSEEdit (after getting the armor EditorID in console), and corresponding *.nif file, and simply changing the equip slot to something random, like slot 50 - Decapitated Head.

 

Before that the equip slot was 30 - Head.

 

My guess something is "competing" for this slot and therefor the naked armor is being overridden somehow.

 

But how do I troubleshoot this? Using the command showinventory on the NPC doesn't show anything else in its inventory other than the naked armor (showing status as "Worn"). Sexlab equipment slots also only shows the naked armor and nothing else.

 

Is there a way to see what all body slots on an NPC are being used by?

 

EDIT: Okay, the thing it this doesn't make sense, because the non-naked "armor" of the creature is using the same bodyslot (before my edit). So why isn't it invisible also then? My only guess is the original body armor isn't being "unequipped" resulting in nude armor being worn over the already default armor and therefor not rendering? But then why would indoors/outdoors matter?!

Edited January 11, 2025 by Serenity_XXI

[Kastagir]

A typical draugr installed by ABC (e.g. \data\meshes\MoreNastyCritters\draugr\draugrmale01_naked.nif) would use slots 30 (head), 33 (hands) and 32 (body) for dismemberment.  The "junk" would not use a slot in LE since it is set up as NiSkinInstance and not BSDismemberSkinInstance.  Any time the slots in a .nif and the slots in a ARMO/ARMA record don't match the mesh will not be rendered in game.

 

You would have to identify which mod is switching the affected draugr's "aroused" mesh when it is affected by this problem and use its FormID to determine which mod is responsible.  Then you can see what records are in that mod and if they are introducing a slot mismatch between the draugr's ARMO/ARMA records and the .nif.

 

Open your lighting mods and their patches in SSEEdit to see if they are editing any draugr records, perhaps for their glowing eyes effect.

 

Edit:  hell, load all your enabled mods in SSEEdit and see which ones are editing draugr records or causing conflicts with MoreNastyCritters.esp.

Edited January 11, 2025 by Kastagir

[Serenity_XXI]

22 minutes ago, Kastagir said:

You would have to identify which mod is switching the affected draugr's "aroused" mesh when it is affected by this problem and use its FormID to determine which mod is responsible.  Then you can see what records are in that mod and if they are introducing a slot mismatch between the draugr's ARMO/ARMA records and the .nif.

But that's just it, the aroused mesh is NOT being switched.

 

Allow me to clarify:

The naked aroused mesh that's equipped when a creature is invisible during sexlab animations is the *correct* one. I merely looked up it's EditorID and changed the slot it occupied in the Armor, and Armor Addon records from [30] to [50], and by looking at the corresponding nif's specified in the Armor Addon section, I edited the naked nif and made sure the slot there also matched my edit to be slot [50].

 

Once that same nude armor/mesh was equipped in slot [50], it showed and rendered normally.

 

I inspected MoreNastyCreatures.esp to see if any draugr records are overridden by any other mod, and MNC is loaded last and wins all conflicts.

 

I also double checked just to be sure. None of my lighting mods edit NPCs at all. It's always Cells, Location, Interiors and things like that...

Edited January 11, 2025 by Serenity_XXI

[Tlam99]

what would be interesting, does the npc disappear in the blue palace or bard academy.

 

[Serenity_XXI]

HOLY SHIT I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT!!!

 

TL;DR - It was caused by the mod Dynamic Lowered Hoods.

 

It was actually ChatGPT that pointed me in the right direction after I described the issue in detail to it 😆
 

Quote

 

5. Other Specific Factors

• Slot-Specific Behaviors:

  • If slot 32 is affected but changing to slot 50 resolves the issue, this points to slot-specific logic. Some mods manipulate slots for visibility reasons, like cloaks or immersive armors.
  • Inspect mods like Immersive Armors, Immersive Equipment Display, or Dynamic Armor Variants.

 

Dynamic Lowered Hood uses Dynamic Armor Variants, which is how I managed to put 2+2 together.

What that mod does is basically change the worn hood mesh to a "lowered hood" one (provided with the mod) for both NPCs and the player when indoors. Sort of like taking off your hat when you go inside kind of thing. It's actually pretty cool and adds to the immersion.

 

On the technical side it seems to accomplish this by using a function provided by the mod Dynamic Armor Variants called "Hidden Equipment". It's used on the worn hood of the player/NPC when indoors to render it invisible, so it can easily be replaced by the corresponding "lowered hood" mesh, without unequipping the actual item ("dynamic").

 

What the mod didn't have was an exclusion for creatures (e.g. Draugr) presumably as that's not a scenario encountered in the vanilla game experience (i.e. Draugrs are usually found inside dungeons/crypts etc.). It just viewed them as regular NPCs.

 

Due to what I can only assume is a bug in the mod, it applied the hidden equipment function to their head slot indoors, even though it shouldn't have because putting aside the fact that they're "creatures" and not regular NPCs, they weren't even wearing a freakin' hood!! xD

 

Since the mod affects the head slot only, and that's the slot used to equip the full-body creature nude armor, it would make the entire creature go invisible indoors during sex scenes. That's also why moving the nude armor from the head slot to another slot in SSEEdit solved the problem when I experimented with doing that.

Anyway, this "bug" has been haunting me for a LOOOONG time, I'm glad to finally be rid of it

Thanks to everyone who took the time to try and help me solve this:

@Tlam99 @MadMansGun @Kastagir

 

Appreciate your guys' time and input! 🙏

 

Edited January 22, 2025 by Serenity_XXI

[Tlam99]

congrats !

Btw, bard academy and blue palast make in some aeras certain meshes invisible. Testing places.

[MadMansGun]

never used that mod, but that's indeed a stupid bug for it to have, it's not hard to exclude the creature faction, or just make being in ActorTypeNPC faction a requirement.

[Kastagir]

2 hours ago, Serenity_XXI said:

TL;DR - It was caused by the mod Dynamic Lowered Hoods.

These mods have plugins and add equippable items.  If it's applied to the draugr actor it should show up on the actor's inventory ("showinventory" or "openactorcontainer 1" console commands) with a FormID that you could track to the mod in question.  This is the sort of thing I would have looked for if you had posted a screenshot with your more informative console mod.  The mod has quite a few bugs opened against it, but you should consider suggesting a fix to the author that excludes actors or factions.  It would be easier than changing slots.

Edited January 21, 2025 by Kastagir

[Serenity_XXI]

14 hours ago, Kastagir said:

These mods have plugins and add equippable items.  If it's applied to the draugr actor it should show up on the actor's inventory ("showinventory" or "openactorcontainer 1" console commands) with a FormID that you could track to the mod in question.  This is the sort of thing I would have looked for if you had posted a screenshot with your more informative console mod.  The mod has quite a few bugs opened against it, but you should consider suggesting a fix to the author that excludes actors or factions.  It would be easier than changing slots.

I think you glossed over some of the details I mentioned Nothing showed up in the Draugr's inventory. Believe me I looked over its inventory dozens of times (as mentioned in previous replies). That's not how this mod works either. Even if it's targeting a valid NPC as opposed to a Draugr. It uses a function to render the currently equipped hood's mesh invisible, and then adds its own "lowered hood" mesh alongside the (invisible) existing one. The original item is not unequipped at any point, nor is any new item added to the actor's inventory.

 

The fact that it targeted a Draugr with its invisible item function is a bug in that mod unfortunately.

 

The mod itself is no longer maintained, though I did suggest a fix to another modder who makes patches for it. We'll see how that goes:)

 

For now I just opted to disable it.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2025 by Serenity_XXI

[Serenity_XXI]

UPDATE:

 

Just in case anyone does want to use Dynamic Lowered Hoods and have it work correctly alongside creatures, I figured it out via DAV's documentation.

 

Just need to edit

Data\skse\plugins\DynamicArmorVariants\DynamicLoweredHoods.json

 

Then add the condition under states > variant > "DAV_HiddenHelmet"

"HasKeyword ActorTypeNPC == 1 AND",

 

So it looks like this:

  "states": [
    {
      "variant": "DAV_HiddenHelmet",
      "conditions": [
        "GetIsRace ManakinRace == 0 AND",
        "HasKeyword ActorTypeNPC == 1 AND",
        "GetIsRace CLWGildedRace == 0 AND",
        "GetInCell AbandonedShackInterior == 0 AND",
        "GetIsReference Player == 0 AND",
        "GetIsID 018Auri == 0 AND",
        "GetIsID Ulfric == 0 AND",
        "IsInCombat == 0 AND",
        "LocationHasKeyword LocTypeDwelling == 1 OR",
        "LocationHasKeyword LocTypeInn == 1 OR"
      ]
    },

Tested it and works like a charm!

 

EDIT: The author of Dynamic Lowered Hoods Fixes has integrated the above fix into his mod. So just d/l the latest version and you're good to go.

 

Edited January 22, 2025 by Serenity_XXI

[nilead]

This thread was difficult to find. Thanks for posting the solution. Should probably be also mentioned in MNC support thread. 

Edit: Also, the condition needs to be applied to any json that uses dynamic lowered hoods, not just the base mod.

Edited August 27, 2025 by nilead