Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

[blockquote]"Valley of St. Seryn" lies beautifully secluded between the mountain and the North Imperial District. It's possible to get here from the Temple's courtyard in the east, but that road is almost never used by locals whom prefer to come from the west, through Venim's Hold. The valley got its name from the famous Dunmer saint Seryn the Merciful, patron of brewers, bakers, and distillers.[/blockquote]

Location: MAP #01
Interior model to use: 05
Model Nickname: Oval Home
Northmarker Rotation: -180
Neighbourhood: Valley of St. Seryn


Status: Claimed by noremorse., completed by Razorwing.


[title]Information.[/title]
Extended information on modding in general can be found in sandor's excellent thread Technical Info concerning Interiors, and naturally the articles on the CS wiki are always worth reading. But don't forget to run forum searches here as well, because often you'll find the answer here instead of the wiki. If you don't find the answer, feel free to post the question here in your claims thread But beyond that it's worth remembering that trial-and-error is an integral part of modding and it's only natural that you have to playtest your work to see if what you did worked or not.
- Confused about claim codes used in this thread?

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Here it is, ready to check.
Known problems that I'm too lazy to fix right now: The door will not lead outside. The NPC is still needs AI packaging, and I won't do that until later.

RW: Could you check into some of your model's collision meshes? Namely the screens, the bed, and the shelves. The cell's framerate is pretty bad.

-noremorse

Quote:Originally posted by noremorse
RW: Could you check into some of your model's collision meshes? Namely the screens, the bed, and the shelves. The cell's framerate is pretty bad.

Yup, that's an on-going process. I think I've fixed most of them by now, but some remain.

Edit 2006.08.27, 15:42 C.E.T.:
I checked it out, and it looks really nice The only thing I could think of is that I would suggest that instead of using the Light StLightDunCandle03, using the Static StStaticLightDunCandle03 and positioning the Light DEFireCandleFlame on top of it. I added the candle model to the Light category before I found that there was an animated candle flame in the CS. It looks a little bit better with the animated candle flame.

I attached a few model updates that should hopefully help with the FPS in your cell. Oh, and funny thing, I noticed the wallscreens have transparancy now

Ed.Rw 060910. Deleted attachment. The models are Reich Parkeep v9, released after this discussion.

Lights :check:

I'm still getting a poor fps rate in the cell. I don't know what it could really be. Unless the interior Redoran house model has a high face count for it's collision mesh. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.

Wallscreens look cool with the transparency, but in some places it is weird.

I noticed that effect on the wallscreens too, but I didn't really know what to think. The model does have transparancy set up, but because it's exported with the Niftools exporter, it's not 'supposed' to have transparancy. And indeed, when checking it out in NifSkope, the blocks that are needed for transparancy just aren't there. My only conclusion is that your normal map enabled the transparancy, which I think is really cool even if it maybe looks strange at certain angles.

I playtested your interior now, and yup I experience the same FPS problems. I picked up a loaf of bread with the Z key and threw it on the floor, and immediately the FPS dropped to like one frame per second. Admittedly it was a bit jittery before then too, but manageable, I thought. I wonder what the devil is going on... hrmmm... I'll do my best to investigate it.

A mug on the StInRedBuilding05 is floating.

Use an activatorflamenod04 etc. (gives a nice sound of a burning fire).

Add a fooditem count -1 to the inventory of the NPC.

Assign owernship to the cell.


It's a nice looking interior.

Oki, I've done some tests and tweaks and I think I'm on to a solution. In my first playtesttest earlier today I picked up one of the loaf of breads in the back of the hut and hurled it onto the floor, and it caused the game to drop to about one frame per second. In the second playtest just now it was about three frames per second, but as soon as that loaf of bread hit the floor, the FPS returned to smooth and normal for the whole hut.

The likely cause? The collision mesh for the hut interior was... *cough* ...about 4,500 faces... giving one's computer's CPU a run for it's money as it tried to calculate how to bounce the loaf of bread. It also seems (which I've suspected) that Havok isn't always on, it has to be activated, like for instance moving that piece of bread like I did.

In my second test the collision mesh was about 1,000 faces, which I got to by simply optimizing the old collision mesh. Strange things happened of course, so I'm going to remodel the collision mesh from scratch instead. Once I get the hut's collision mesh down to a reasonable face count I hope it'll be smooth sailing.

Just gotta remind myself that four months into *Morrowind's* lifespan modelling had barely got started. So we're ahead by leaps and bounds even if the tutorials and other information one would have liked to have have yet to be written.


Edit: Alrighty I managed to get a pretty decent-looking collision mesh weighing in at just 253 faces, and as I hoped, I experienced virtually no FPS drop in my playtest. Can you check it out nr and see if it helps on your system too?

Ed.Rw 060910. Deleted attachment. InRedBuilding05.nif in Reich Parkeep v9, released after this discussion.

The framerate is much much better now. The only problem I have with the collision mesh is that you should move some parts to the interior of the real model. Look at the first screenie to see what I mean.

I figured out that the transparency of the wallscreen only shows the model and it's normal maps on the other side. It doesn't show regular texture or effects at all (such as an NPC's hair). Second screenie.

noremorse: I'll try to fix it so the player can't look out of bounds like you could in your playtest, thanks for testing it. It's tricky because if I bring it in too much it'll block the player, not just from walking near the wall but from interacting with stuff near the wall, like if a modder places a sack inside it. And if the collision mesh is too detailed it'll hurt FPS. But I think I can improve it with little noticeable effect.

Yes, the wallscreen effect has to be texture-based I think. I don't even think the color texture has an alpha layer for transparancy, so even if I could enable transparancy for it by exporting it as Civ4 it wouldn't look right. To me it would seem there are two solutions; either if you could modify the color texture to give it a transparant alpha layer to fit with the transparancy you set up on your normal map - which would mean I'd export it as Civ4, thus it would have no collision - or if you removed the transparancy stuff you added to your normal map. Personally I would favor the first solution because one day we will be able to export models properly, whether by getting an official exporter or by Niftools updating theirs, and when that day comes the assets would already be there to make the wallscreen work like I think you hoped it would. What do you think?

Posted 2006.08.28 20:36 To be honest, I didn't do anything to make it transparent. It's a cool side effect, but I haven't a clue how it happened outside of the initial export. When I exported the normal map, I saved it as a DXT1 (no alpha) so the alpha channels aren't recognized by OB. Or, at least, shouldn't be. If you open them up in PS or PSP, the alpha channel is white. If it were a DXT3 (explicit alpha) then the fabric would shine really bright in the light.

Besides that, the normal maps and the diffuse maps ' transparency won't work properly if it's not specified in the .nif file itself. I double checked the wallscreen in nifTools just now, and you're right. It's not even a string in the file. So I am stumped. ?(

Posted 2006.08.29 00:40 Got a new warning. I haven't changed anything at all. Just loaded up the cs and my cell and this is what I got. The cell still loads fine though.

EDIT: I can't figure out the interior door. It's there, it's connected in the CS, and the NPC even exited when I attacked him, but I cannot leave the cell through the door. I even disabled some of the objects around it using the console, including the redoran building itself, and I still cannot click it. ???

I have the same problem with the doors. So it might have something to do with the actual collisison of the door, and activator points. The AI can leave as the door is within reach of the NPC, regardless of what is in the way (I've had NPC's go through entire ceillings once to get to bed). That's my theory.

As for the alpha material property or whatever, I get that a lot for some of Vanilla Oblivion's models too, don't worry about it.