[UE 5.7] Character Hierarchy Inversion/Corruption upon Editor Duplication (Alt+Drag & Copy/Paste)

Development Programming & Scripting
, , ,
1

Hello everyone,

I am encountering a persistent and weird bug in the official release of Unreal Engine 5.7. I am trying to debug a friend’s project, and we are facing an issue where the component hierarchy seems to “invert” or break during actor duplication in the editor viewport.

Here is the detailed context:

1. The Setup:

  • Class: Blueprint inheriting from standard ACharacter.

  • Hierarchy:

    image
    image389×185 10.8 KB

  • Settings: SpringArm is set to Relative transform. Use Pawn Control Rotation is ON (toggling it off doesn’t fix the issue).

2. The Bug: The issue occurs when duplicating the actor in the Level Viewport (via Alt+Drag OR Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V). It is not 100% consistent but happens very frequently.

  • Symptoms: Upon duplication, the engine treats the Camera Component as if it were the Actor’s Root.

  • Visuals: The Camera snaps to the Actor’s actual World Origin. The rest of the components (Mesh, SpringArm) move as if they are children of the Camera.

  • Gizmo Behavior: During the translation, the Gizmo appears at the Camera’s origin (visually), but the coordinates shown in the Details Panel are the correct World Coordinates of the actual Actor Root.

  • Resolution: When I deselect/reselect the actor, the bug dosn’t happen anymore with that particular actor.

It essentially feels like a serialization/initialization race condition where the deepest child (Camera) becomes the Root and the hierarchy gets flipped.

3. Troubleshooting Attempts (All Failed): I have already ruled out the following common issues:

  • Selection Error: Confirmed I am selecting the Actor Root, not a component.

  • Construction Script: Disabled Run Construction Script on Drag. The bug persists.

  • Instance Editable Variables: Confirmed that no Component variables are set to Instance Editable (which I read often breaks attachment serialization).

  • Camera Lag: Disabled Camera Lag on the SpringArm.

  • Reparenting: Tried reparenting the BP to Actor and back to Character to clear compilation cache.

  • Root Replacement: Attempted to replace the Capsule Root with a Scene Component (blocked as the Root is inherited from Character).

  • Drag Logic: The issue is strictly related to Duplication (Alt+Drag/Copy-Paste). Standard Drag (Move) works fine.

Has anyone experienced this specific “Hierarchy Inversion” in UE 5.7 or in other versions?

Any help or workaround would be greatly appreciated!

2

Started seeing this problem after adding a foot ik control rig to my character. Pressing Ctrl + D to duplicate the actor in the level causes it to appear upside down. Dragging another actor instance into the level works fine. Bypassing the control rig in the anim bp fixes the problem with duplicating, narrowed it down to the Full Body IK node, bypassing that prevents the actor being upside down when duplicated, but that’s not really a solution. Very strange!