I was just thinking, wondering if this simple idea I had would be possible:

Create a customized bed cover mesh with the covers lifted to encapsulate a sleeping, humanoid form (this would be made to mesh nicely with the vanilla single and queen-sized beds). Then create a sleeping animation to be applied to NPCs.

The covers could be setup to be "worn" by the NPC. I think t'd be easier and might be less resource intensive than to script them be an entity in the world to enable/disable.

There wouldn't be an animation for climbing into bed. The NPCs would wait until the player is no longer in the cell before moving to bed, equipping their bed covers (sounds funny), and assuming the sleeping animation. They're nervous about sleeping while watched.

The only problem I foresee is the player breaking in and attacking sleeping NPCs. Perhaps the lack of a climbing out of bed animation would be worth the trade off of seeing them sleep?

Anyone have any thoughts or input? While I am capable of making the covers mesh, and probably even the animation (if I took the time to refresh my memory), I'm not sure I'd have the time - hence why I tagged this as an idea. I'm curious if anyone wants to run with this idea, or discuss its feasibility.

I must say I really like the idea. But it seems that at least animation for waking up would be required. If attacked, the NPC would unequip the cover and then the waking animation would be played.

I had considered it, though I'm less confident about how well that would work in reality, with Morrowind's collision and everything. Plus I'm not a terribly talented animator. Just making the sleeping animation would likely take me some time. Perhaps someone else: Anteres, ThatGuyFromBlade, Fae, or someone could speak for its feasibility.

There are already animations for going to sleep, sleeping, and waking up, MD. Emma's Lara Croft used them. The only issue I see is actually getting the NPC into the bed because it's higher than what the normal navmesh allows for traveling. Once you got the NPC into the bed, you'd have to position them properly so that when they laid down, they would be fully on the bed and not hanging off anywhere. Making sick/sleeping NPCs without the extra animation would be pretty easy provided there was a "blanket" piece of clothing for them to wear.

I remember a few sleeping animations, now that you mention it. So, perhaps, what the true idea of this thread would be to make a bed cover mesh for them to wear, while in bed.

From what you say, it sounds like it would be difficult to make an animation for getting out of bed? But you say there is already a waking up animation?

Reminds me of Fable and how everyone went to bed and got in under the covers - that game was amazing for what it did to your own character - making you grow fat or thin depending on what you ate - I see it has a refresh coming up - be nice if Bethesda ever got their HD pens out and refreshed Morrowind with up to date models

Anyway the sleeping animations are set to the floor - so if you are sleeping on a bed roll they work fine but otherwise the character stands up on the bed

For Maid in Morrowind I used a lying down animation for Fleur but also had to set her to not talk otherwise if you walk in the sleeping person's head can turn eerily around to face you

In Veloth's Child I have used body doubles for sleeping NPC's the real ones go off to a holding zone and I have to track if someone kills their body double at night so as to not have them appear in the morning

Animations would solve this - I think you also need to fix the collision mesh of the bed - I had to put a collision block under the bed for Fleur so she didn't fall through

One other thing with sleeping animations they have to finish exactly where they started - the one I used had a little twitch and Fleur could slowly move down the bed

I'd love a blanket mesh - be very good for immersion

I'll take a look in my resources folder for a sleeping animation, a blanket mesh would be painfully easy to make so long as I have something to model it onto.

NPC animations or Groovy Moves or one of the animation packs has other sleeping anims. One where the NPC lays on their back with their arm for a pillow, and a matched pair of male/female anims where they face each other in bed. The pair has a scaling problem, though; when applied, the male is close to 2x and the female is reduced to .80 or so. So, you need to set the NPC's scales accordingly.

I think there is another problem. Where to place NPC once they stand up.

Well, my original idea was just to forget trying to make them dynamic in the player's presence. So, they'd just go back to standing wherever they usually are when they wake up, but only if the player isn't in the cell.

From what Jac said, it sounds like there may be engine restrictions to shifting them out of a full height bed.