npcs go invis

[7thward59]

if you kill or knock out a npc of any kind they will go invisible if i try to run while holding them and i have to look at the npc a very specific way or they won't come back and they stay invisible this has been a problem since the beta

[Keadeツ]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3457532726

[Shaken_Widow]

yeah that's because npcs are skinned ragdolls which use an armature to deform the actual visible mesh and is copying the rotation/location of a rigid body doll that uses constraints to form the joints, and when you "kill" or "knockout" an npc it releases the ragdoll from its pins and the character no longer is controlled by the control rig, (another armature that uses pins to animate the rag doll accordingly when they are "alive,)

when they are released from their pins, the armatures origin doesn't follow the ragdoll because it as an "object" doesn't follow the ragdoll, only the bones do.

so while the armature is active and moving with the bones it has a "texture space" where it remains visible, and the texture space is a box defined by the objects origin at its center. - this is specificially talking about the mesh that is being deformed by the armature itself, while being moved the meshes origin will remain where it is locally to its parents origin: the armatures.

if it exits that texture space it vanishes.

in almost all game engines, the way to fix this is to simply have the armature that follows the ragdoll to be parented to the base part of the ragdoll itself, (usually the hips because they aren't constrained to anything to begin with as they are the base of the ragdoll; the legs and abdomen are constrained to the hips, not the other way around,) so while the ragdoll moves away from the control rig while unpinned the armatures object origin will follow as well.

fallout new vegas had this issue as well with dropped loot.