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We have a Height Map!

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MarshallR
First Knight

Registration Date: 2007.01.13
Posts: 133
Location: CT

Ahh! I deleted my post!
Well anyways, I think I said something about the size being better now, we have more space for the volcano, and previously Thras would have felt very small, being so barren.

And then I said something about getting the Shivering Isles sometime soon, but I had blown all my money on STALKER and Half Life (which are both excellent games, by the way).

Also, I personally think the textures are off. The land should be ghost white, which is what dead coral looks like. I'm not sure about underwater, I'm thinking that should just be sand, and all the coral color will come from the retextured rocks. (And I don't think we can get away with just retex's either. We need some unique corals too.)

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2007.04.22 18:26

The Old Ye Bard
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Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,351
Location: CHIM

quote:

Originally posted by MarshallR
Ahh! I deleted my post!
Well anyways, I think I said something about the size being better now, we have more space for the volcano, and previously Thras would have felt very small, being so barren.

And then I said something about getting the Shivering Isles sometime soon, but I had blown all my money on STALKER and Half Life (which are both excellent games, by the way).

Also, I personally think the textures are off. The land should be ghost white, which is what dead coral looks like. I'm not sure about underwater, I'm thinking that should just be sand, and all the coral color will come from the retextured rocks. (And I don't think we can get away with just retex's either. We need some unique corals too.)

We will eventually need to make some new rocks, but SI has a vast range the are perfect for coral, so we shouldn't have to worry about making new rocks yet (if at all).

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2007.04.22 21:12

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Lightwave
First Knight

Registration Date: 2006.11.18
Posts: 145
Location: Cymru [Wales]

The SI texture for Thras3 is probably the closest thing to a bleached dead coral, they've got some coral/fossil type patterns in there. It's not as colourful as it looks from a distance. Wink

Thras4 is obviously way too colourful for exposed coral.

I've re-done the textures for Thras3 and Thras4 with Oblivion's WetSand01 and left the files as the straight output from TESAnnwyn - they haven't been loaded and saved in the CS, so I don't know if this will help any compatibility issues MarshallR has had trying to find the worldspace in game. So you should be able to check the size of these maps without SI.

Even if you were to entirely blanket texture the land in a different texture, it wouldn't take you 10 minutes, even for the largest example heightmap. I'm just putting on a starter texture with TESAnnwyn to get a better feel for the area.

Any comments on size and smoothness?

Lightwave

This post has been edited 2 time(s), it was last edited by Lightwave: 2007.04.22 21:21.

2007.04.22 21:20

MarshallR
First Knight

Registration Date: 2007.01.13
Posts: 133
Location: CT

Even like these?

If so, I guess that's just further proof that I need SI.

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2007.04.22 21:21

The Old Ye Bard
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Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,351
Location: CHIM

quote:

Originally posted by MarshallR
Even like these?

If so, I guess that's just further proof that I need SI.

I bleieve it's got those colours, along with a full set of grayish ones that look like dead coral, in various forms (along with a matching set of rocks).

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2007.04.22 21:37

Lightwave
First Knight

Registration Date: 2006.11.18
Posts: 145
Location: Cymru [Wales]

Before this starts crawling (it has been a while folks), have we decided on a scale first. Is the Thras3 sufficient?

I'm not sure that SI quite has that range of coral colours, but several of the mania colours are coral-like. We'll always need more of course ...

Then there's the question of height, do you want me to just improvise out of the lore msyelf or are there strict lore guidelines you can give me. It almost seems a little overkill though for such a small heightmap, one can easily render up and down chunks of land for each island in the render window since they're so small, one can't really create mountains out of that area (and as atolls they'll generally be quite flat anyway).

I haven't done anything more with this heightmap than last time, so if anyone wants me to do more or give me a nudge, please do so. I'm absorbed in higher detail LOD mesh creation at the moment, so I need someone to ask me directly, or it'll be a while before I decide I want to modify the heightmap of my own accord. Wink

Lightwave

2007.05.07 22:32

The Old Ye Bard
Prince

Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,351
Location: CHIM

Just add height as you see fit. Vandor can be flater than the rest, as it will have the city of Vandor on it, but the rest you have free roam of the height.

The colour of the coral on the land will be bleached white and grey; the colour of the coral underwater will be mixed, but water detailing will be done last as it isn't the most important thing right now.

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2007.05.08 03:08

MarshallR
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Registration Date: 2007.01.13
Posts: 133
Location: CT

Wait, which one did we make a decision on? Four? Three? In either case, I need the heigtmap again if anyone has it, I was planning on making a settlement map of Vandor, and need it so I get the scale right.

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2007.05.23 01:52

The Old Ye Bard
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Location: CHIM

quote:

Originally posted by MarshallR
Wait, which one did we make a decision on? Four? Three? In either case, I need the heigtmap again if anyone has it, I was planning on making a settlement map of Vandor, and need it so I get the scale right.

We only have space for one settlement on Vandor, and it would be out of scale (even DF's scale Tongue

) to put more than one settlement there. The settlement, is to be cut into sections however for the imperials, etc, like was discussed.

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2007.05.23 09:01

MarshallR
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Registration Date: 2007.01.13
Posts: 133
Location: CT

Yeah, I was going to do like a concept map of the island, kind of like the one for Chorrol and Leyawiin you see on the TES site.

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2007.05.23 23:06

The Old Ye Bard
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Registration Date: 2006.05.25
Posts: 3,351
Location: CHIM

quote:

Originally posted by MarshallR
Yeah, I was going to do like a concept map of the island, kind of like the one for Chorrol and Leyawiin you see on the TES site.

It's best just to let the claimer do the design.

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2007.05.24 05:31

Vality7
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Registration Date: 2006.08.13
Posts: 132
Location: Nouvelle-Zelande

Some settlement maps would be good for me so I could complete my map. Its best you plan it out before, rather than just let someone make it up as they go.

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2007.05.24 06:54

Lightwave
First Knight

Registration Date: 2006.11.18
Posts: 145
Location: Cymru [Wales]

I've added a little bit of arbitrary height to the 3rd scaled up heightmap (from the 1792x1792 image), which can be downloaded from here. The LOD files are included, of course. It's been base textured in Oblivion's WetSand01.

I've remained true to the original 2D map TOYB gave me, though due to the small sizes of the islands there isn't much I can do with most of them. Part of my problem was finding sufficient sized land to put anything. Wink

Everything I've added has been done in the TES3 render windows then re-exported to TES4 (4x bigger brush in TES3). There's nothing particularly special or dramatic to note, 3 or 4 small volcano like cones (again only on existing bits of islands), Vandor I've left totally flat, Agonio has some space to build on, with some short banks to the north to provide some small defend against rough weather or attack, though now I've read that you might want this to be an unstable bit of land, you'll probably want to scrap that idea ...
Setres, being the larger land also has a lot of land to build on, though I've also made it the most raised of the islands.

A big volcano would be nice, but I just couldn't find anywhere to put one (I've been pedantic about not altering anything of the 2D profile map). Perhaps the 'unknown' island in the far west could be made in to some sort of monster, though it's a little around the fringe of the player's world.

I was going to put a copy of Red Mountain under the water in the lagoon, more a joke than anything else, but you just can't see much underwater anyway, so there's little point. Technically atolls are thought to be formed by volcanic eruptions where coral has formed around the edges of the new formed land, then sea erosion has worn away that land, whilst the coral has continued to grow. The projected 3 million year process this takes flies a bit in the face of Thras, but hey. Wink

Feel free to modify absolutely anything you like, I only added all this undulation last night and some things may fly in the face of what you want, though will be very easy to rectify in the render window. The worldspace, cells and land are all in modindex 00 so you shouldn't have any LOD load order problems or disappearing land issues; this means the heightmap ESP will be as reliable as an ESM (in the case of multiple ESMs, this is more reliable).

Good luck folks.