Character Mesh Keeps Disappearing after Restarting Engine

I have several character BPs that keep losing their skeletal mesh reference every time I open up the project. Even if I add the mesh back in and save it… the editor keeps losing the reference after reopening the project! Is this the sign of a corrupt blueprint?

I’m using version 4.9.

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Hey,

this could happen if you are cross-referencing your pawn and something else.

If your pawn got the reference of another blueprint, and this other blueprint has a reference(from the pawn) to the pawn (if it doesn’t go through an interface) it is a cross-reference.

Finding this error is easier if you are using perforce or something similar.

I hope that helps you.

I actually have several of these character BP’s doing the exact same thing… and they’re all children of a base character BP using the same mesh. Would this be a cross referencing issue with the parent?

So I think I figured it out! Someone else suggested removing the mesh reference from the parent BP and just assign it on the child BP. It’s working great so far!

Hey ! sorry for the late reply.

After running into the same problem again, I have to correct myself:

it is a cycle reference - I also have a parent character and several child characters. If the parent character has a reference to the Gamestate, and the Gamestate has a reference to the child character (and as a child character it has obviously a reference to the parent character) then it is a cycle reference.

Parent Char → Gamestate → Child Char → Parent Char → Gamestate …

This leads to unexpected behaviors like the reset of the character mesh, animation blueprint, transform etc.

If assigning the mesh in the child characters works I’m glad, but I fear this error could have other consequences.
(The reference viewer in UE4 - right click on an asset in the content browser - can help you locate the wrong references . )
IMPORTANT: After you found a cycle reference and removed it, the error will not go away. The character blueprint seems corrupted and will reset itself over every restart of the engine. To test if this was the only cycle reference, I had to make a new child character from the parent. Copied all events and functions inside it and created all the variables.
Mark the old child char and the new one and replace the references from the old one with the new one. Restart UE4 and check if the error is gone. If it isn’t, Try to find all cycle references and try again…

I really hope there is a better way to get rid of this error and I just haven’t found it. If anyone found a better way, please let us know! =)