I learned this just now. I had a scene where I needed to position a dead raider sticking into an object that had collision. When the game loaded, havoc would toss the dead body right out of place, that was the kicker.

First, you select a dead body NPC from Bethesda's list of NPCs that have DEAD in the name. Drag it into the render window and put it in there, hovering above the ground. It will be standing up normally. Double click it, and give it a REF name, like MyDeadBodyREF.

To play around with its posture as a dead NPC, click the havoc button on the GECK. The body will fall and tumble a bit. Then, unclick the havoc button, and look at what you've got. That's your tool for making the body take a particular pose while dead, you do that repeatedly, perhaps letting it bump nearby objects, until you get the approximate SHAPE that you want. Not necessarily the place, but the shape.

Then, you move the body into the location you wanted. You could hit the havoc button once it's there, to see if it settles perfectly the way you wanted, if its helpful.

When the player loads the cell for the first time, havoc and collision will start affecting your newly-placed corpse and depending on what you're doing, it may screw up what you've made. If you see this happen, what you do is - - in the frame the player enters the cell, run this script command against your REF name:

MyDeadBodyREF.SetActorsAI 0

Script command is this one:

http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/SetActorsAI

Then, when you go in game, you'll see your corpse perfectly positioned.

heheheh. I'm having fun with this!

you're sick!

There is a much easier way to position 'any' dead body or creature.

1. Make sure the NPC or creature you are using has 0 health.

2. Drag the NPC or creature to the render window to place it in the world.

3. Press the F4 key to 'see' the grabbable points on the body. The F4 key toggles the Collision Geometry on and off.

4. Click the havoc button and the body will fall to the ground. Do NOT unclick the havoc button until the body is in the correct position.

5. Press the left ALT + left CTRL keys and at the same time, left click your mouse pointer on one of the Collision Geometry zones on the body and drag that part around to position it.

If you miss clicking on a collision geometry zone, just move the mouse a bit and try again. If you grab a zone, the body will move about depending on how you move the mouse.

6. Once the body is in the position you want, you can unclick the havoc button and turn off Collision Geometry (F4)

You now have a body placed exactly the way you want.

Nice!!!

That combined with the script command makes for whole and perfect perfection. *goes into .esp and plays...



Close. It's something thats going into Phalanx's The Pitt compatibility module, which will kick in (mild spoiler)

Oh wow... I think I'm gonna find that very useful. Thanks for the tip!

Yes, using SetActorsAI 0 is a handy way to totally freeze something in place. I've used it a ton from the console and it's a powerful command. 1 caveat though is that when you use this on an actor, dead or not, they lose all presence in the worldspace (detection, activation, collision, grab, etc..). That may be acceptable for lots of cases, but it's useless if you want the player to loot that NPC for something, because you can't activate it. I'm also pretty sure that running scripts on an actor with that state set won't respond to any OnActivate input either, so a scripted assist to getting by the 'can't activate' part of AI 0 fails as well. That said, I have found it really useful for NPCs in many various areas that the player can't approach close enough to find out that they can walk right through these NPCS, and cant steal or loot from them.

well to loot them, you can always hide a dummy container inside the body to loot. just a transparent "corpse" cube, with no collision detection, you pass through it, but can still activate.
it'll look like look like you activated the body and are looting it.

Great input!

This is one for the notes.

I'd like to disable Aniamtion on a live actor, so the player can still engage in conversation, but not have the actor move at all. I'll be using a robot, so the eye movements aren't an issue, but I just want the robot to stay perfectly still and still be able to talk. The idea is that the robot is missing some parts that allow for movement and so is stuck until such time as it is repaired. But it can still communicate to let the player know what is wrong with it. Anyone done this before?

There's an animation - position - something - that the Mr, Handy bot can take where it is sitting on the ground, sorta on its little pod. Not flying, sorta collapsed, its legs folded, and stuff. A Mr. Handy bot that you find in a house in DC does it. Maybe you can find that, and use it.

http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/SetRestrained

Ha! I should have tested SetActorsAI first before assuming that dialogue would be disabled. Apparently not. You can still walk through the actor, so I'll have to adjust for that, but the SetActorsAI will keep it motionless and still allow a conversation. How cool!

SetRestrained keeps the actors from moving about but does not stop the idle anims. But added to a SkipAnim command, SetRestrained does work. Its just, as the wiki points out, the actor flickers. So its not ideal.

Idle animations can be stopped by adding a scriptpackage with that flag checked.