[REL][ALPHA] Better flora : III

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 8:36 pm

Better flora 0.1: Ascadian Isles

Authors: Moranar (meshes), raddimus (esp for the grass, test). Special thanks to trancemaster_1988 for help with testing.

Requirements: Morrowind

[Information]

This plugin replaces most of Ascadian Isles's (not only, these plants may be found in other regions too) plant meshes with smoother and high-poly versions, along with correct collisions. Included are also optimized vanilla meshes, which look like original, but have a lower polycount and correct collisions. These can be found in the directory "lowpoly". In addition, there is a module with grass for MGE/MGE XE, based on the models of original plants.

The plugin consists of three blocks, which may be installed independently of each other:

[Plants]

- This module will replace plant meshes.

Installation: choose between smoothed version and optimized vanilla meshes and copy the "Data Files" directory into root directory of the game. For smoothed meshes there is an option, which disables collisions of small plants and water flora, so you won't get stuck in them. This block will conflict with all mods that replaces plant meshes. Texture replacers work fine, however.

[Trees]

- This module will replace Ascadian Isles trees with sprite ones.

Unfortunately, MGE and MGE XE doesn't work well with model which have sprites, when generating distant land. To distant trees look relatively fine, before generating of Distant land OBLIGATORY SET SPECIAL MODELS OF FOLDER FOR_DISTAND_LAND! After that replace them with models from directory "sprite trees". When you generate distant land again, don't forget use models from directory FOR_DISTAND_LAND! This block will conflict with all mods that replaces tree meshes in the Ascadian Isles. Texture replacers work fine, however.

[Grass]

- This module will add grass for MGE/MGE XE based on vanilla flora meshes.

Models of the grass have two variants as well: smoothed and optimized. Using optimized meshes increases FPS by approximately 10 %. Optimal density of the grass for generation is about 50%. If you choose greater density you will get a bug with "twinkle" grass, because MGE XE can only display/handle a limited amount of models on the screen simultaneously (and our grass mod has a lot of them). Right now there's only grass for the Ascadian Isles, but we plan to implement grass in other regions as well, taking into account the species composition and the quantitative ratio of plants in the original game.

Thanks to Yacoby, for creating Mesh Generator, which has been used for planting the grass.

[Permission]

All meshes and esp-files from the mod can be used anywhere without asking, but you must remember that it is only an alpha-version, and stay tuned.

[Screens]

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/uTXGjyt2.png

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/jCKhHahG.png

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/tY9ihhDS.png

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/kV6chPB3.jpg

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/dUBT39hJ.png

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/yS4Mth2C.gif

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/TqLMws0j.gif

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/jNNJPQOM.gif

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/BNsHk7a9.jpg

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/0liOVhUk.png

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/xzTg3FVF.jpg

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/VazBZXZb.jpg

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/bJWlc5kP.png

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/0hupmTwS.jpg

http://pic.fullrest.ru/upl/ZQw9KKUt.jpg

https://yadi.sk/d/oS2baoalbaNx6/http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43288/?/http://wolflore.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2183&sid=3a9b2fb6ca728638a47a11b6e6893add/http://tesall.ru/files/file/6551-better-flora/

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 2:09 pm

Nice work! Most of the plants will be a keeper, I like especially the ferns (no-collision, yay!) and the kelps (less poly * thousands kelp = yay!)

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:51 pm

I had a CTD with the "plants - smoothed without collision" version. The smoothed and low-poly works as intended. The first tiime I coc'ered Arrile′s Tradehouse the game crashed. The same situation for Morrowind Vanilla and OpenMW. Playing with the GOTY english version.

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:36 pm

oh! thank you all for your hard work!! these pictures seems really vanilla style for the plants/trees/grass.
:tes:

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:15 pm

Fixed.

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:19 pm

Perfect. Thank you!

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 5:16 pm

Uhm, are all those empty RootCollisionNode meant to be this way? Never seen them used this way so far... you could use a http://provincecyrodiil.project-tamriel.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=964 instead
[EDIT]url fixed

[EDIT2]Well, no more crashing with the fix anyway, so I guess a empty RootCollisionNode works like a NCO... thanks I learned a new thing!

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:37 pm

I didn't know this either. Does that mean I don't need to remove the collision flag from all the other objects when I have a RootCollisionNode present? :facepalm:

These look great, Moranar. Fantastic job smoothing them with minimal polys and keeping them super close to the originals. Are they compatible with Graphic Herbalism?

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 2:23 pm

I didn't know that, I have only seen meshes where the RootCollisionNode was very small and positioned somewhere where it could not possibly interfere with the player, e.g. so low that it would be below the ground.

Well, this I know: If you have a RootCollisionNode, with geometry or without, the collision is just applied to that, and there is no need to remove anything anywhere else.

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 10:52 pm

Those new models look very nice! They're very accurate to the originals, yet are smooth. I will definitely be adding these into my game.

But, as a botanical illustrator, I have a question: are you interested in making them look more like real plants? By "real plants" I don't mean earth plants, I mean, they just look like cartoons of plants instead of like actual living plants. That's a problem the original game had, of course, but with all those shiny new polys you might be able to improve their appearance by more than just smoothing.

» Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:08 am

As a gardener and plantsman I am really happy to see Morrowind plants represented in bud . A nice touch of realism . In fact , is there any chance of releasing the " in bud " models as a modders resource ?

» Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:15 am

Now this mod can work normally with Graphic Herbalism, but the patch for the plugin will be made later. This patch will include smoothed/optimized versions of Graphic Herbalism's meshes.

Sorry, I intend to save the original style of Morrowind flora.

May be later.

» Tue Sep 23, 2014 2:46 pm

Does anyone else think the flowers in this game are just way too big? I mean, yeah, they are like, literally as big as the character. Granted, considering the giant-sized mushrooms, this might have been the intention, but even with these better meshes, they don't look good enough to work very well in this size. So I began experimenting a little. I took the original single flower meshes (or rather, these better versions of them) and put them together in groups of two or three in NifSkope, while reducing their size by about 1/2 and positioning them around the center point. Now there are smaller, but more flowers, and instead of only two or three there are six to nine or even more flowers in a single spot now. Together with Graphic Herbalism, it is still easy to see which ones have been harvested already. And as there are more flowers in a single spot now, they should still be easy to spot. However, there is a problem: The plants are placed in the game in many different heights, causing the smaller versions to either float above the ground or be partly submerged. So in order to make it work, I would have to adjust the positions of every single flower in the game. There are quite a few of them, but it's not impossible... just a little tedious. With gold kanet, many of the instances seem to be placed so that it already works, but black anther really is problematic. I will give this a little more thought and then show some progress, if anyone is interested.