I extracted the northern borders of the Tamriel worldspace abd created my own test worldspace, so we can start the discussion about landscaping. A small part to the east is missing, but I can't attach it in the moment, because my CS is busy since 3 hours with generating a testregion for the map
(whoever wants do do landscaping needs a powerful PC).
As you can see OB looks quite different from the lore map. The Morrowind part is much bigger, which is good, since ST needs more space. Basically we could build from the part Bethesda already did and expand to the north and east.
Edit NR 7.23.2006: Deleted images.
Personally I think it's better for us to use a separate worldspace altogether for our landmass.
RW: It may be. If we do that, could we have a fast travel map? I was looking throught CS and noticed that you have to assign maps to the cells.
If not, I think it would be better to have it connected this way. :confused:
I would think you would have to dismount, land, what-have-you, before you crossed the borders with or without a separate world space. I don't think the guards and militia would take kindly to strangers from out of the province popping into their capital cities, etc. I feel that strangers would be required to go through a gate/pass/checkpoint or something just to keep the criminal population on their toes if nothing else. So.. fast travel to a border town or outpost, cross through the gate.. fast travel to your destination.
@Razorwing
I agree. In fact the picture already shows a seperate worldspace. My question was if we should continue from the border parts Bethesda has provided or not. The advantage would be that the border toward Cyrodiil looks right and seamless. Everything in our part can be changed of course and everything on the Cyrodiil side that isn't visible can be cut out.
But anyway, currently I have no success getting the LOD generation to work properly. Here is my problem. The CS wiki tells me this:
"Generate LOD This option allows you to generate LOD meshes, in Gambryo's .NIF file format, for use in the game world. Additionally, the LOD generation process will create normal maps based off of the terrain height information for the LOD terrain textures, as well as combining the terrain LOD mesh normal maps with any potential user-made terrain LOD texture normal maps. The final results for the texture combinations are saved out as .DDS format files, with an _FN suffix in the file name. There are two LOD generation options, which vary only in generation speed and accuracy. They are Quick Prototype and Full and are less accurate but faster, and more accurate but slower, respectively. Diffuse maps for LOD terrain textures are generated through the right-click menu in the editor's render window."
I can succesfully generate the landscape nifs, but the normalmaps are not generated. They are neccessary to see the distant landscape around you. I have a 7800 GT graphic card and installed the newest drivers, but it wont work.
EDIT: Solved the problem. Lets see how far I can go from here.
Zarkis: Oh, ok. Then I think it might be a good idea too.
I admit I don't have any concept of how heightmaps or terrain generation works. I've mostly been busy in Max and tooling with Reich Parkeep. Say, would you be interested in putting together such a heightmap and worldspace for the mainland mods? Later on I imagine I can just paste an exterior mockup of Reich Parkeep in that worldspace and link it to the worldspace I'm working on right now. I think that would be a good idea, if you're interested that is?
I have to overcome some problems first. Currently I have trouble creating LOD displacement maps that are neccessary to display far away terrain in the game (the game uses generated landscape nifs with normal maps and displacement maps for all the terrain beyond the cells which are loaded around the player in the game). The problem may be related to my PC, so if you could do a simple test this would help clear the matter. Just open any cell in the Tamriel worldspace, right click in the render window and choose generate LOD for this quad (a quad is a fixed assembly of 32 x 32 cells). The CS wills start to render each cell, which will take quite some time, so better do it when you leave your PC for an hour or so. After the process is completed, you will find a new directory \data\texture\landscape lod\generated. There should be a new dds looking like this: 60.xx.xx.32.dds (60 is Tamriel worldspace, xx are the cell coordinates of the first cell in the quad). There is also another directory called \partial, which you can ignore. Just open that one file and look if it shows the terrain of the 32x32 cells properly. My files don't work for whatever reason. They are always half black.
Something about the scale: It looks like one cell in MW corresponds to 2 cells in OB. So ST would be about 42 x 32 cells, if we just double the cell count.
Alright, I'm on it. The CS is writing files to the "Partial" folder and I imagine once it's finished the operation the LOD will be moved to the landscapelod\generated folder. But once it's finished, how do I open it?
It's an dds image file. Since you are into modelling, i guess you have a viewer...
Quote:Originally posted by Zarkis
It's an dds image file. Since you are into modelling, I guess you have a viewer...
Aah, was it
that easy to view it
Here it is. I started in the cell "Aerins Camp" in the Tamriel worldspace. Not sure what to check for in it, but I bet you know how to tell if it worked or not.
Edit NR 7.23.2006: Deleted 60.32.32.32.7z (170 kb)