Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Just to let you know that I released the program I used to export and reimport the 2x Vvardenfell landmass (the 2nd version with interpolation) last night.

It's a pretty versatile TES3/TES4 heightmap exporter and TES3 heightmap importer. It will turn a grid of height points stored in an 8/16/32-bit RAW or BMP file into a 3D landscape ESP file, or vice-versa. The maximum range of detail with a 16-bit RAW is 7km (4 or 8x more than the CS), 69km with the 32-bit files. The images can be of any size too (not requiring dozens of 1024x1024 quads like the CS).

You can emboss/engrave photos on the surface of the landscape (a neat, but pretty useless by-product), import real world heightmaps or geometric heightmap sculptures, or export landmasses for visualization or scaling, stretching, processing in 3rd party image or heightmap tools etc.

Currently I still use TESPort for moving the TES3 landmasses to TES4, but will add this directly to TESAnnwyn in due course.

I posted it to the Elderscrolls forums, though there's diddly-squat happening in reply atm, nothing unusual there. This is the post.

The readme includes example steps required do various things, such as scale a landscape up or down. The specific example given for 2x scaling is Bloodmoon's Solthseim. The miniaturization example is a 1/16 Tamriel worldspace (the entire worldspace from Oblivion, including Cyrodiil and the 60% you can't normally travel to); it only takes up 4x4 Morrowind cells. There are some screenshots just off the main page, you can download the esp output of the the miniaturized Tamriel landscape for MW from the screenshot page too.

Lightwave

Thank you for your hard labors. Do you have a time machine that you use to make all this progress? I'm on to you Lightwave.

Is it possible to export TES 3 Heightmap as a raw file then import it into Oblivion through the Heightmap editor?

I think if it is possible and works, this might be a better way to take the Heightmap into Oblivion, this way its just the heightmap and not the NPC's, Books etc that TESPort brings across.

Still great work Lightwave :goodjob:

The 2x scale version of Vvardenfell only copies the enlarged landmass of Vvardenfell IIRC, no NPC's yet.

Quote:Originally posted by InsanitySorrow
Is it possible to export TES 3 Heightmap as a raw file then import it into Oblivion through the Heightmap editor?

Not on this scale, it requires too much memory for Windows XP to handle. Even without the fundamental memory issue it's a huge amount of hassle, you have to split the RAW file up in to 36 smaller 1024x1024 RAW files, and rename each one for the correct import quad, then you have to manually re-join every one of those 36 quads after importing in the render window and hope to high heaven you didn't make a mistake when you split one of those RAW files or during renamed them, or you'll have to start again. Then any drastic deformations caused by inevitable overflows and underflows caused by scaling aren't caught giving way to huge sink-holes or dramatic jagged rises. Whereas the CS requires over 2Gb to import this scale of heightmap, TESAnnwyn requires just a wincey 1Mb, since it doesn't have to try and load the whole thing in to memory and hold it there like the CS does.

It's not a practical system for large mods and impossible for really big mods like this.

The CS heightmap importer/exporter has a lot of other limitations too, such as a lower height range, and inability to shift or scale height during output etc (you need to scale the height or all you'll get is a wider flatter landscape when scaling the 2D RAW heightmap), or ignore vast tracts of duplicate underwater cells if desired.

I made a 4x Cyrodiil last night, partly as a joke, something Cryonaut asked me about, I don't know how serious he was. 276576 OB cells, a 360 square mile landmass (includes all the Tamriel worldspace scaled up), the highest peak in Skyrim reaching 3km. It imported in 20 minutes, I loaded it in to the game, COW-ed to the Skyrim peak and after 30 minutes travelling south-west I still couldn't find the Imperial City. I realized later I was still 15km away!

In the CS, this would have required 8Gb of RAM and simply been impossible, plus requiring 324 separate RAW files (18x18 quads), all which need fixing when imported etc. But to load this massive a landscape as inactive in the CS only requires only 350Mb of RAM.

Only trouble is the game doesn't display the LOD NIFs for anything beyond +/-96 cells from the world centre, I don't know why, but it's a known limitation, even though the CS generates the filenames correctly.

Quote:this way its just the heightmap and not the NPC's, Books etc that TESPort brings across.

TESPort can be made to be selective (just not the one you currently have )

If you'd read the main threads here you'd also see there's already an NPC ESP (generated from TESPort) which is a good start. But we could make a new one with slightly different lookup files so they use Silgrad Tower armour/weapon meshes for example. For placing the NPCs in their original 2x locations requires just doubling the X,Y,Z co-ordinates and shifting them down (AFAIR) 8 OB cells (I had to drop the landmass south for the LOD).

Quote:Originally posted by The Grey WizardDo you have a time machine that you use to make all this progress? I'm on to you Lightwave. [/i]

You're a sharp one. After a bit I realized I didn't have to use it create more time for myself, it was much simpler to just jump ahead a few years, grab everyone's useful utilities and rename them as my own. There's some really cool stuff coming down the line ... but TES7 was a real disappointment, all graphics, no real depth, scale, plot or gameplay.

Truth be told I'm unemployed. I gave up my job at Sony over 4.5 years ago and traveled the world for much of that time, updating TESfaith a couple of times in internet cafes. And now I'm back it's difficult to find a job that's anywhere near as rewarding as modding, or programming for modding. It's funny, but I either go from being a completely chilled out semi-nomadic traveller to being an obsessive programmer who'll spend most the day programming! I'm doing Jury service this week at the UK's 3rd worst place to live (apparently), but have my first real job interview next monday, I just hope the job's fun ...

Lightwave

So its alot of effort and the outcome may not be what you want. Well i suppose the best idea is to stick with TESPort. Just wondering thats all

TESPort can be made to be selective (just not the one you currently have )

Any chance of a release of this one, please