Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Hi there!I'm new here and I'd like to help. I've been modding alone for six months, learning tesc, blender, nifskope and photoshop, but never released anything because I can't finish the project I've been on (you never go very far when you're alone...). Maybe I'll pick up a claim soon, but now I'm just here because I may have found an interesting tip...

Everyone knows the problem of the buildings popping up from nowhere when entering a cell, the reason is simple: that object only exists in that cell. So if we could link that object to other objects located in the surrounding cells, maybe the first one would be visible from there? And that's exactly what I did accidently: I was building a VERY huge castle, playing lego in blender with oblivion nifs, and exported one giant nif composed of a lot of different nodes (one for castle gate, one for tower and so on). In game I realised that I was able to see the whole castle, which wouldn't have been possible with standard tesc way of building because the castle was too large to fit in 5 cells.

I made an other test with just a couple of buildings to see the result more clearly (screenshots below), same result, objects VWD! (in the second screen, the fog hides the more distant buildings, but I like that Morrowind effect). You don't have to do this with different buildings linking to each other, you can link your mesh with invisible items.

Of course, blender export script forgets the collision, so you have to add it in nifskope, which is quite easy because there is already a collision mesh (bhkRigidBody) for the building you're working on, so open the new nif (for example: the tower you want to make visible, linked to the fantom meshes in the other cells) in one window, open the original tower mesh in another window, copy and paste the bhkRigidBody from the second to the first (don't forget to link collision to the node in the block details window).

So what could be the use of this? Of course it can't replace the distant lod method (_far.nif), for obvious performance reasons (but maybe some important buildings like the Silgrad Tower deserves a better look from mid distance). The main utility could be to build larger cities, without having to ask every time: will the player see the cathedral when entering the gate?

I don't know if the explanation is clear but if you find this tip useful I can make a more detailed explanation. Maybe you already know an easier way to solve the 'building popping up' problem, then forget about my words.

screens:
http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w10/R...-09600.jpg

http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w10/R...1-2192.jpg

Sounds interesting. I'm not an experienced modeller yet, so I can't really say much about this. But I think there's also _far models that can help fix the problem (and give distant LOD too!).

EDIT: An interesting link:

~Reich Parkeep Alpha Development~

Thanks for the tip, I hope your mod turns out great!

I know my method sounds a little weird and complicated, but actually it is not. The premices are simple: nifs do not have a size limit, and they keep the distance that you set between the different nodes in your 3D program. Imagine a city of 20 cells, as uGridsToLoad is set to 5 in the default ini setting, you only have to add 4 fantom nodes around the mesh to make it visible from anywhere in the city(this is theorical, maybe you have to add one fantom node in every cell, I'll check that).

I ask myself how to to this with _far nifs. Maybe I should learn a bit more about that. My main concern about the _far models is the way they switch back to the original model when you get near. It's ok for city walls but for the buildings of a large city it's an immersion breaker.

But maybe is it possible to make the _far nif just the same of the original model (copy and rename), so that the switching wouldn't hurt so much. Problem is: if you set your _far nif to 'visible while distant', it will be visible from any exterior cell, so you can only do this with low poly meshes and low res textures because of performance restrictions.

The fantom node method (let's call it that way) allows you to keep your original mesh and to select the cells where you want it to be visible from.

Sorry for the headaches!

Hi there RideWithTheWind, welcome to Silgrad Tower!

It does sound like an interesting method but I don't fully understand how it would work. If I have a really immense model I see all the more reason why I would want it visible from everywhere?

Apart from being low-poly, another and perhaps even more important advantage is that the _far model can use a different texture. I often make a custom texture file for the _far based on renders of the full model. Once, I took four renders of a tower and mapped it on a basic shape and you can't really tell the difference in-game due to the distance

I see the advantages, it would be a waste to show LOD for every building in the city of silgrad tower, but to make it was visible from within the city would be nice.

If a LOD model is not set to visible while distant, could you not use that in conjunction with this method?

Quote:Once, I took four renders of a tower and mapped it on a basic shape and you can't really tell the difference in-game due to the distance

Ok, then _far models seem more appropriated to show a distant building. But the main goal of my system is to allow modders to build larger towns. Let's say you're building a large open city, in-game you realise that buildings are popping up,

-first alternative: you add a _far nif for each building.
Advantage: your buildings are visible from inside the city and from every exterior cell.
Drawbacks:
1. your buildings are visible from every exterior cell, which can be a problem depending on the model's level of detail.
2. If you make a lower poly/res model in order to allow distant view without performance hit, the switching will be noticeable from inside the city (I have no doubt that Razorwing's _far nifs make the illusion from far away but from inside the city the difference between _far and original could be noticeable).

-second alternative: link the building to a fantom node placed in the part of the town where the building couln't be visible otherwise.
Drawback: some extra work to import/export to the 3D program.
Advantages:
1.from inside the city and from direct neighborhood the building is just the same as original.
2.from further the mesh isn't displayed, which is an advantage in terms of performance but a serious drawback in terms of realism. Without a solution to that problem I must acknowledge that my method is not completely operational. But like DarkAsmodeus suggested, there might be a way to solve that problem by combining with _far nif method, but I need some more time to think about it.

Quote:Originally posted by RideWithTheWind
1. your buildings are visible from every exterior cell, which can be a problem depending on the model's level of detail.

For some reason the effect isn't as negative as you'd expect. I don't know why, but the FPS in Soluthis isn't noticeably affected with 1000 vwd objects active all around you than without them. I guess this inexplicable behaviour is what makes the Almost Everything VWD mod work. The only explanation I can think of is that _far models only exist if you look at them. It seems bizarre to me, but for a games company where the lowest possible system requirement has an impact on how much money they make, it seems logical that they (Bethesda or Emergent) would pursue a solution like that.

The textures used on the _far model does have a significant impact though, much more than the facecount it would seem. I haven't experimented trying to push the envelope, just taken cues from Bethesda, and they do use special, optimized textures on their _far / lod models.

Quote:Originally posted by RideWithTheWind
2. If you make a lower poly/res model in order to allow distant view without performance hit, the switching will be noticeable from inside the city (I have no doubt that Razorwing's _far nifs make the illusion from far away but from inside the city the difference between _far and original could be noticeable).

Well, from ST v1.5 and onwards we use a single worldspace, so there's no technical difference between being inside the city or outside it.

The distance at which an object switches from _far to regular is hardcoded, so it's totally impossible to view a _far model close up. The amount of detail it needs depends on it's size, because the _far of a huge building will in a practical sense be rendered closer to the player.

Perhaps you are confusing _far models with lod models to an extent. _far models are like White Gold Tower, while Bethesda used lod models inside fake city mockups. Usually they're the same model, just named differently. Lod models can have _far models as well, i.e., letting the fake city mockup be seen from afar.

Quote:Originally posted by RideWithTheWind
But like DarkAsmodeus suggested, there might be a way to solve that problem by combining with _far nif method, but I need some more time to think about it.

Looking forward to hearing the results.

So you are proposing a MTAEVWD (more than almost everything visible when distant) mod style thingy for silgrad?
cool :goodjob:

Ahem.... :confused: I'm confused 'cause there is something I forgot to check... In the screenshots you can see the distant buildings because they are virtually in the cell you're in (the five buildings are parts of the same object), but when you travel to the last one, all the buildings disappear :eek:. This is logical because if you go too far away from the cell where I placed the object in the CS, that object disappears, even if parts (nodes) of the object are spreaded through different cells.

So, in other words, you can see A from B but NOT B FROM A :poorme:.
So forget about my method, it only allows to make some things visible from one point. Transposed to the fantom node method to build a large city, this means that you won't see the linked building when you'll be in the cell where the fantom node is (all you can do is to see the fantom nodes from the building, but this is completely useless because they are supposed to be invisible).

There's a way to solve this by doing the process two times, one time to make A visible from B and one time to make B visible from A. But that works only if you want to link two buildings (or one building and a fantom node). If you're working on a city or anything else, you'll have to repeat the process a lot, with the risk of wrong placed objects that will make the buildings suddenly move when you enter a cell.

Aargh... dunno what to say, all apologise for the useless technical chattering. Maybe someone will find something to do with this...