High Heels breaks NPCs when exiting "furniture" animations.

[Hugebooblover]

I have a strange problem where NPC animations break when they exit animated positions in the world space (Wall leaning, bar leaning, and mining ore, etc.) When a NPC exits these animations, their lower legs start to spin around like they are riding a bicycle, their bodies contort, and they fly around the world space randomly passing though walls and such. It's nearly impossible to reset them with the command console because of this.

 

It seems to happen if the NPC is loaded in that state, like entering the bee and barb, keerava loads leaning against the bar, and this problem almost always happens to her. I'm pretty sure this is caused by high heels. I use High Heel Condition Spell, and the real high heels mod so all the shoes in the game are high heels.

[PippinTom]

Have different set of HH Mods but observed similar if not the same issue ever since I migrated from 1.5.97 to 1.6.+, never before. In addition to copter legs, there is one more symptom of things going bad under the hood - NPC affected by this issue, cannot be interacted with even before problem manifest/escalates to copter legs, like PC cannot talk to sitting NPC simply because there is no prompt on the screen/crosshair; instead of usual for NPCs contextual "talk" there is "sit/use", like NPC is not actually there at all or it's body has no collision.

 

Unfortunately I haven't figure out how to permanently fix that. Temporary solution I'm using is use console to "moveto player" if NPC is in untouchable state or ragdoll it by "player.pushactoraway <npcRefId> 1" when it managed to take off already.

 

Edited November 24, 2025 by PippinTom

[traison]

Same issue as here. This has been in Skyrim since the early days.

[PippinTom]

24 minutes ago, traison said:

This has been in Skyrim since the early days.

 

From my experience, this never happened to me before Feb/Mar this year, which is when I upgraded Skyrim. So either I was extremely lucky (somehow I don't think it's plausible) or "they" managed to revive very old bug in most recent build (of either game, skse, or some other common base plugin), where I have no clue who are "they" - because If I get it right from everything I have read about this issue so far (incl link you provided), here on LL and on the other community-wisdom providing platforms out there - the ultimate cause is not narrowed down. Lots of false hopes - miraculous cures and solutions that sounds promising, sure, but none of them helped me anyway.

[traison]

24 minutes ago, PippinTom said:

...the ultimate cause is not narrowed down ... this never happened to me before ... [maybe] "they" managed to revive very old bug in most recent build.

 

At least as far as I'm concerned yes. I used to know what caused it, but that was ages ago. Considering I haven't seen this problem since pre-LE I wouldn't rule out the posibility of a regression.

 

As for miracle cures and such: I hope you applied their meaning, rather than taking them literally. What I mean is, if someone fixed it by removing a mod you don't have, then find that old mod, figure out what it does, and find a mod in your setup that does the same or similar things.

 

If we assume the OP in this thread is correct: it's a problem with HH (which seems quite likely to me), I'd be looking into testing exaggerated HH values and what effect these might have on furniture, idle anim markers, (un)equipping items, sl scenes, cell changes and saving/loading ... anything you can think of. Could even try removing all HH mods, and adding a Z axis offset directly to the NPC node of your skeleton - ruling out the HH mod(s) themselves and perhaps proving that the NPC node offset is the issue.

Edited November 24, 2025 by traison

[PippinTom]

27 minutes ago, traison said:

If we assume the OP in this thread is correct: it's a problem with HH

 

I didn't say mine problem is not, I just pointed out that I use different mods for HH support. So either they share some code(logic) that is prone to being affected by "unknown something", or it's just irrelevant at all, because they are just unlucky catalyst of otherwise undetectable flaw in more basic code of game or base plugins (used by other mods, like skse, skee etc)

 

29 minutes ago, traison said:

Could even try removing all HH mods, and adding a Z axis offset directly to the NPC node of your skeleton - ruling out the HH mod(s) themselves

 

That's actually clever idea, I think I'll try that out, not sure yet if I know how but will try since you pointed me in clear to follow direction - learning shit is a fun in itself after all, isn't it?

[traison]

5 hours ago, PippinTom said:

I think I'll try that out, not sure yet if I know how...

1. Open your current skeleton in NifSkope.
2. Find the NiNode named "NPC".
3. Find the translation (or transform, or position) value, and set its Z axis to something extreme like -100 100.

With no HH mods installed, test in game and make sure your character is hovering high abovethe floor.

 

This is what I'd do at least. Maybe it works.

 

Edit: Got the z axis orientation wrong, use a positive value (up) instead of a negative value (down).

 

Edit again: Should perhaps clarify that RaceMenu is one of the "HH mods". Set bEnableEquippableTransforms to 0 in skee64.ini to disable this part of RM.

Edited November 25, 2025 by traison

[Hugebooblover]

Interesting. I've never seen the problem before I started using HH mods, which is why I believed they were connected. I was watching the problem happen again last night with Adrianne at the forge. I think it has something to do with how the NPC scales when using animated furniture, then rescales back and enters an idle stance. But there is still something inconsistent happening, because the problem doesn't happen to all NPCs 🤷‍♂️

 

I found there are patches for the High Heels Condition Spell and the conditional high heel animations, I will see if this changes anything.

[Solid8Spirit]

  I too had this problem.  Next to no information after searching for a very long long time, this post was the closest thing I found that explained what was happening.  It is a regression of a old bug back to bite us in AE.    The problem stems from Racemenu transformable euips, which you can disable in the racemenu ini. however this also negates the high heel effects (no good).  The author of Heel Fixes (scorrp10) has generously publicly hosted a version of Racemenu from user Velessir on his own google drive with a modified dll which fixes this problem entirely (very good).   Drop by Nexus and give him some kudos.  I'll leave link here - may others not know my pain of experimenting with their mods and or searching endlessly for a fix.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N_KR_b5PYyPU7UJ2uL2t-qmgr8XsyKH4/view

 

 

[traison]

1 hour ago, Solid8Spirit said:

The author of Heel Fixes (scorrp10) has generously publicly hosted a version of Racemenu from user Velessir on his own google drive with a modified dll which fixes this problem entirely (very good).   Drop by Nexus and give him some kudos.  I'll leave link here ...

 

This is not suspicious at all.

 

</sarcasm>

[Solid8Spirit]

??? @traison.  Legit fix which helped me solve this problem after months and months of searching and experimenting with my mod list.  Accurate description giving credit to the source of the fix.  Nothing suspicious at all my friend unless I'm missing something.  Doing web searches this is one of the few posts that showed up explaining exactly what was happening yet had no fix attached.  Kept hopping back hoping a fix would sooner or later be posted.  Just wanting to share with others after trying myself to get to the bottom of this glitch with no success.  It was such a relief - it was seriously hurting my enjoyment of game.   I nuked my modlist from orbit at least 4 times trying to remedy this with no success before finding this fix which has been plaguing me since I updated to AE after switching my OS to linux after Windows 10 lost support (f*ck Bill Gates - not another penny).  Hopefully it helps others experiencing the same problem.  

 

bcdowling -  I can report that downloading the RaceMenu fix posted by Velessir in the link above completely fixed this for me - thanks for figuring this out. Fair warning - it a Russian site so you'll need a translator (or you can just sort of figure out what to press for "download", which is what I did). I scanned the file a couple times to make sure it wasn't anything harmful - seems legit. Just drag it in and let it overwrite RaceMenu and you should be good to go.

 

Velessir link no longer works.

 

scorrp10 -  Good stuff, thanks for posting this.   This did always looked to be a Racemenu (skee64.dll) issue to me, likely something related to inverse foot kinematics, but I never managed to get Expired's attention to fix it.   I guess someone finally took it upon themselves to handle it.   Interestingly enough, I am still running game version 1.6.1130 and RaceMenu version 0.4.19.15 - and I frankly don't recall when I saw this bug last time.   So this helicopter thing might be something (re)introduced in 0.4.19.16.

Just in case, I will make this file available on my Google Drive.

Edited March 1 by Solid8Spirit

[traison]

5 hours ago, Solid8Spirit said:

??? @traison. ... the RaceMenu fix posted by Velessir ...

 

Nexus: 0 mods, 0 collections, 0 media. Joined 12th of May 2025. BANNED.

 

The reasons for why I found this suspicious when you first posted this:

• High Heels fixes is a mod released on the Nexus. Why hide this RaceMenu fix in a random Google Drive folder?
• The RaceMenu source code is not available, yet here comes a fixed build of it some 10 years later. Bytecode patched perhaps?
• Claiming Velessir released this on Google Drive, but there's nothing on Google Drive pointing to this Velessir user.
• No proof of where Velessir originally posted this link, no link to a forum post, not even a Discord link.

 

Edit: And yes I know getting banned from the Nexus doesn't mean much these days; could even be seen as a positive in some cases.

 

5 hours ago, Solid8Spirit said:

...it a Russian site...

 

Ah. Right.

 

No links to Russian sites have been posted by you btw.

 

5 hours ago, Solid8Spirit said:

I scanned the file a couple times...

 

The unfortunate thing with practically all virus scanners today is that they're quite bad at labeling things unless the file checksum is already known. To put that another way, I could bytecode patch a version of RaceMenu with something malicious and send it to you without it ever tripping any virus scanner.

 

5 hours ago, Solid8Spirit said:

Velessir link no longer works.

 

That was quick. Who removed it? Why was it removed?

 

5 hours ago, Solid8Spirit said:

Legit fix which helped me solve this problem...

 

Big if true, as the kids say.

 

At least until the next official RaceMenu version is released and this shadow patch falls behind with no source code, delta patch or (likely) maintainer.

Edited March 1 by traison

[Solid8Spirit]

  No sunny side up for you huh?  I'm a just a guy that enjoys his nsfw modded Skyrim to unwind after a shitty day of busting my ass.  This floating/helicopter leg glitch was a real pain, and although I found few posts about it - alas it was all speculation of what was causing it and no fix.  You did bring up some valid points though. Velessir was banned for political comments - Nexus is extremely left leaning and easily offended (moderators - not community as a whole).  No I didn't post a Russian site link - the link is scorrp10's (the mod author of heel fixes on Nexus) personal google drive.  The Russian link was already broken when I stumbled upon the posts in Heel Fixes on Nexus where scorrp10 graciously made the file available for those that needed it.  Expired6978 is the mod author of RaceMenu and is unwilling or does not have the time to address this bug although he is aware of it apparently.   Perhaps he did not give permission for it to be posted - as Racemenu is his mod.  This unofficial version of RaceMenu totally  fixed this issue for me.   Your concerns got me thinking so I got  my brother (who is a computer science doctorate that does bio-metric security for Northern Health here in Canada) to check it out.  This dll (which is the only change from the original Racemenu AE mod) does not try to handshake with any outside sources according to him and I trust him.  I did not even know Racemenu was the culprit before stumbling on this fix.  I was playing with tweaking fps, niodes, heel off sets and different animation configurations - it was a real time suck and NONE of it worked.  I'm no computer guy, I work construction and enjoy modded gaming.  It is incredibly frustrating at times - I  merely follow directions and stumble my way thru via trial and error.   Use at own risk - I was just trying to help others remedy this glitch if they were so afflicted by it.  Lol - no good deed goes unpunished as they say.  

[traison]

56 minutes ago, Solid8Spirit said:

No sunny side up for you huh? ... Lol - no good deed goes unpunished as they say.

 

Don't take what I said personally. You should be equally suspicious if someone sends you an unprovoked email with a link to an executable, claiming it will fix whatever problem you're currently having. There is no Nigerian prince that wants to transfer his millions to you for safekeeping from the rebels.

 

Had a quick look at the new dll. On the surface it looks ok. I did NOT however run it in any form, be it in a sandbox or in a VM. It's easy to hide things from the methods I used. The dll has been recompiled, this is not a bytecode patch. Adding, altering and/or hiding code is significantly easier with a recompile than it is with a bytecode patch. VirusTotal sandbox behavioral analysis seems to fail on both this and the original 0.4.19.16. Both result in a WER handled crash.