The Vvardenfell Heightmap

[KuKulzA]

Originally posted by EnnJ
Very Nice! :bounce:

I'm glad you come back to check on us even though you can't help us out right now :yes:

[EnnJ]

I've been thinking about doing some modding, just need to learn the CS properly. Then perhaps I can help you out with some caves or something.

Going to try out the landscape now... So bored atm

[Lightwave]

Since I haven't seen it mentioned in these forums yet, FYI Bethesda have released an official Patch 1.2 for TES4: Oblivion.

One of the things they've added is a speckle texture on all LOD textures (it appears to be in Data\Textures\Effects\TerrainNoise.dds). This gives the impression of adding detail to otherwise bland LOD textures, which improves the detailing effect of the previously wishy-washy standard 1024x1024 LOD textures generated for all TES4 Worldspaces. It gives the impression of a more detailed landscape at a cheaper cost to graphics performance than the 2048x2048 and 4096x4096 LOD textures demand - in fact there should be no detriment to graphics performance using the speckled LOD over standard LOD. The current texturing on Vvardenfell definitely benefits from this effect - it'll get rid of the pasty blandness of the ashlands for those still using the standard detail LOD texture pack. It even enhances higher detail LOD textures too.

There are some places where Bethesda's speckle might make the land look a bit spotty, whether and how much it could be detrimental to some terrain will remain to be seen (e.g. desert-scapes might suffer), but it's definitely worth checking out, the patch fixes some other TES4 bugs too, but there's no new CS yet.

At least one person (see this forum thread) has already released an improved version of this speckle texture - you can see some screenshots of the standard Bethesda 1.2 speckle and the modified dds in that thread.

Lightwave

p.s. In case you're interested, here are the download statistics for the Vvardenfell heightmap and LOD files so far this month:

Vvardenfellx2-LW5 Heightmap: 93
Standard Detail LOD Pack: 47
High Detail LOD Pack: 3 (!)

[Hector the Hooded]

Yes, I know that.

[Lightwave]

Originally posted by Hector the Hooded: Yes, I know that.

I thought as a moderator you were supposed to tell people not to post things like that, not do them yourself.

Anyway, the post was there for those who weren't aware of it yet, and KuKulzA said not long ago that he hoped to get some good shots together sometime to promote this project. The patch will make a real worthwhile difference to those shots - possibly more effectively than my high def texture solution does even.

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

So is it safe to start working on building the regions in the CS with the current heightmap? I made a Maar Gan region for the Ashlands-type weather as temporary for when the proper regions are made. The change in weather types switching to and from different regions may really add immersion.

Oh, and will (most) trees, rocks etc. be precedurally generated, or are we doing it by hand?

[Lightwave]

Originally posted by Dave_91So is it safe to start working on building the regions in the CS with the current heightmap? I made a Maar Gan region for the Ashlands-type weather as temporary for when the proper regions are made. The change in weather types switching to and from different regions may really add immersion.

I'm sure it will. Absolutely, I think the regions should be created next. It's not simple for me to just copy over the region data from Morrowind.esm as it's stored very differently for TES4 than TES3 so is quickest done from scratch.

My thoughts are that maybe you could post the weather settings for each region as it was in TES3 in a new thread and ask for feedback since, like the other ecosystem changes, the weather percentages will have altered since Dagoth Ur's fall. When the master ESM is available, you could merge in these region settings so everyone gets them automatically in one place, just keep it as a separate ESP for the time being. Alternatively I could probably merge those records with the heightmap ESP.

Procedural generation is certainly worth experimenting with, but I'm not equipped to comment due to my little experience playing with it. All I've summarized from other modders is that it works well on some terrains and not on others. There must be a lot more experience available amongst the modders on the Silgrad forums regarding this topic. It might be easier and faster to start with a smaller test sub-region rather than a full region, just to see how it turns out. A lot of the time and effort will be making sure you've only got a good selection of Vvardenfell applicable statics in the population list and with correct placement heights - the latter may have to be more a trial and error thing. How well the CS works for a more varied landscape like Vvardenfell could be kinda fun though.
Whether you want to automatically regenerate all the land textures too (which will totally replace the converted TES3->TES4 'template' I've provided with the heightmap) is up to you I guess. The converted textures needs more detailed texturing, that's for sure, but procedural generation might lose some of the non-generic precision, especially on roads surfaces, daedric ruins, towns etc; it will be more difficult to find these locations to replace them if the textures in that area are totally different to TES3. I don't know if procedural generation removes features from the vertex colour map either, I know it adds darkened splodges and rings around any statics it places though ...


Alternatively, it's not impossible for me to produce an ESP containing placed trees and rock statics from Morrowind.esm, but I need some kind of conversion list (i.e. a Morrowind tree gets replaced by the TES4 FormID for another tree). The problems of getting the heights correct are the same as for Procedural generation using new meshes, for example if you swap TES3 trees for some TES4 trees, they float in the sky because the centre of the meshes is different, and they had deeper 'roots'.

Although there is some work in generating this list, having the entire 2x land suddenly repopulated with common fauna and rocks would be a massive reduction in time. But I don't think we have enough replacement tree and rock meshes, yet, do we? And it will still be a bit sparse because of the spreading out on a 2x landscape. And again, since the fertility of some terrains are going to be quite different to TES3, maybe it's better to start from scratch with procedural or hand placing ... hrug:

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

My thoughts are that maybe you could post the weather settings for each region as it was in TES3 in a new thread and ask for feedback since, like the other ecosystem changes, the weather percentages will have altered since Dagoth Ur's fall.

Yes, that's a good idea, and a good point, I'll start a topic shortly.

The obvious strong point of the precedural generation is the time that could be saved, the weak point is, as stated, it's somewhat iffy because of the way it places the statics. If we used it, and saved the time, we'd probably have to drop most of the statics to fit into the ground realistically anyway, so the time saved may be slightly ironic given the fact we may take just as long to place the objects correctly.

I'm personally 50/50 on this, I think we should do as you suggest, and make some kind of testing region/worldspace when we have the statics needed, to see how it goes. Sadly though, we're lacking those statics; heck, the closest thing I can get to an Ashland-looking tree is the burned Kvatch tree, which even then, looks a little unnatural in most places.

I think now we have saved time with the heighmap, instead of manually editing the landmass in the CS, that time saved could be used 'constructively' hand placing the objects to maximise the realism and keep the look. The thing is though, is that we don't have the objects yet.

[Lightwave]

This is my grumble for the day.

I've recently realized that the LOD mesh problems that afflict the Vvardenfell landmass afflict Bethesda's own Tamriel LOD mesh in equal measure. The same problems are there, mis-joins at nearly every quad boundary, slopes cut short with sheer faces, non-existent islands block certain rivers from a distance and there are even some gaping holes in to nothingness.

I've reinstalled the game on to new hardware, on 3 different PCs and some other modders have also confirmed (in this thread - there's even a link to an official PS3 screenshot of OB with an LOD join problem in it!)

I've taken some pics here (low detail, low on web-server space) showing these typical problems as they occur in Bethesda's mesh. I'm a bit shocked really ...

So it doesn't look like Bethesda have a working LOD mesh generator either, which dumbfounds me. I suspect it's just the way the CS heightmap editor approximates the heightmap for each quad individually as it generates the LOD mesh and it doesn't take in to account how the approximated joins are going to line up to the neighbouring approximated mesh. The entire worldspace heightmap should always be approximated first before the meshes are created and this would guarantee each mesh could join; assuming the CS really is the sole cause and it's not a more fundamental game engine problem. I'm just surprised how nearly a year on, the original Oblivion game still has this problem (and I mean it has it all over the landscape where the quads join) ... yet no patch attempts to fix it. :eek:

Oh well, you've got to laugh I guess ...

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

Yeah, I noticed a join error in the landmass a few days ago, near the Imperial City, north-ish, I might have a shot somewhere. Clear as can be. I find it interesting how the game developers had the same problems, yet they didn't fix it. Just shows how buggy the CS is...

Do you think there will be a way fix the errors the CS creates? Because I would have thought the game developers would have made some kind of fix by now, like you say. Very strange.