So I'm creating my own city and as I was putting in the houses and other buildings I wondered if I
had to put in all the interiors for each individual building (like the generic house) or if there was an
easy to use template that I could use (allowing some variety).
I'm worried that this is a stupid question but if there's a way it'll sure save me time.
Thanks a bunch.
Overload
First off, every building interior should be its own interior cell. The reason being that not only does the cell determine ownership, but also what is processed when the player is in that interior. In the most simplistic terms, if two building interiors are part of the same cell, any action which happens in one interior may be responded to in the other interior (such as theft, murder, trespassing), which can create real headaches in the end.
As you need to make each inferior individually, there are some tricks you can use to make the process go quicker.
1). If you want any sort of specific ambient lighting in the interior, it is strongly suggested that you setup the light color as one of the custom colors within the color palette as it will save you the trouble of having to assign each one manually or keep copying the same cell and hope that you don't get some error. In most cases, the only fog settings you will need are a pure black (to make everything outside the interior dark (hides gaps in seams) set to a far distance of 4000. If you're wanting to have some sort of coloring within the cell, you're usually best off doing it with colored placed lights or a colored ambient light. Ambient light for darker, candle-lit interiors should probably be a fairly dark brown either more yellow or more orange. Grey or white ambient light can make things seem unnatural.
2). Define all of your interiors first in one go (count the number you need based on buildings. Don't worry too much about names, factions, or music settings for now, you can fill in all that stuff later as you populate the interiors. For the cell names, you should devise some sort of numbering system which you can refer back to. It can really help to take an aerial screen shot of the town from within the game, open it in a paint program, and add numbers about which house matches what interior. You should then save this either on your desktop or somewhere else you can access easily for quick reference. You can change cell names as you work, but the numbering can keep things organized while you work. Once you have a house connected to a number, you should go through and
copy render the exterior object into the interior cell.
DO NOT ROTATE THIS OBJECT. Do this for every interior. The reason for this is so that within every interior you have have a direct visual copy of the exterior to both get the proportions of the interior matched up (bravil interiors will not match their exterior, at best you can only get close-ish). Regardless of the rotation of the exterior object, make everything in the interior at 0 rotation, you can fix any discrepancy with a northmarker. As you complete the interior, the rotation of that exterior copy can also be used to get the proper rotation for a northmarker within the cell (since it has the same rotation as the one on the exterior). To do this step, select both the exterior model and the northmarker, then rotate the exterior model until the door of the exterior is facing the opposite way as the door on the interior model. This will cause your northmarker to have the opposite rotation of how the building is rotated in the exterior, and will make it point north.
3). Cluttering... The one word that nobody seems to like, but is a necessary evil. In this case, you should become extremely familiar with how the
copy render and
paste render actions work as it will save you quite alot of time. You should also become aware of how to clear out records for altered vanilla cells and how anything that is mistakenly cut from a vanilla interior will have a 00 at the start of its form ID when placed within your interior. If you have this down, cluttering can be a bit more forgiving, if not, you'll either be spending alot of time in the object browser looking for stuff, or even more time wondering why you have missing tables and clutter from vanilla cells.
Basically, when cluttering an interior, start out with the generic easy-to-find stuff like beds, tables, and chairs. Place these manually within the cell to get a general idea of what other stuff you need for that cell. For everything else, we can go shopping within other interiors for placed clutter like food arrangements, and similar. But, before you leave the cell you want to SAVE THE MOD. The reason being that then if you accidentally move anything while browsing vanilla interiors you will see that little star at the top bar by your mod name to let you know that you will need to do some housekeeping once you're all done. The best interiors to grab things from are of a similar wealth class as what you're working on, and from interiors which people normally don't enter. The IC and Anvil is good for upperclass stuff, Leyawin and Cheydinhal is good for middle class, Bravil and the smaller settlements are good for lower class stuff. Select as much as you think you can use from that cell with either a crossing window, or by adding/removing items to the selection with Ctrl. Just be aware that when selecting multiple objects with a window that everything behind that object within that view might also be selected. Copy render, go to your cell, then Paste in Place. It's usually best to move these pasted objects to a location outside your interior so that you can move them together without accidentally selecting other stuff. Once collected, grab one grouping at a time and move it into your interior. It might still be a good idea to pull from multiple cells to clutter your own cell, but if it's a small cell, it might not be needed. Just duplicate and move what you think is right, and drag a few random items from the object browser to fill any remaining areas.
For books, you're best off not copying any of the ones you find shelved. Instead, the best way is to take either the bookshelf that's in your interior, or one of the same type, and turn it on its side so that all the shelves are standing vertically. Place a collision box in the front of this shelf (but not through) to close it off. Then, open the books part of the object toolbar, and use shift to select several books that you want within that shelf. Now drag all those books into the render window and they should appear grouped together by mesh (books overlapping eachother). Move these groupings into the shelf, scaling them if needed. Handle one group of books at a time. Once placed, press "f" this will cause the books to spread out some. Once you have the shelf filled, select both the shelf and the books and turn it right-side up (making sure that the collision box(s) are still covering the openings). Select only one row of books and turn on the havok sim. This will cause the books to knock around a bit and expand a little more. With the havok sim on you can select individual books and move them within the row to add variation to the order of the books and shuffle things around with the other books getting pushed around a bit. When done, and provided that none of your books went flying, you can now move them row by row to whatever shelf is supposed to hold them. In this way you can rather quickly fill several bookcases. If needed I could even throw together a video tutorial on this part.
4). For placed lights, most everything which has a mesh component, like candles, is under Light > lights. It's usually a good idea to make sparse use of flame based lights, and add most of your placed lighting with non-visual sources. Although this may not have the best looks, having too many fire lights can cause problems with some people's videocards and totally kill their framerate. You can justify most of the lights without a visual source by placing them in places where light might be reflected from other visual sources.
5). For pathgrids, it's best to just keep things simple, add nodes to any places where NPCs are supposed to stand, enter the cell, or use furniture.
Beyond that, it's just hours and hours of work. To cut through the monotony, it might be a good idea to start to develop some ideas about the personality and interests of the NPC who lives in that interior. Not only does this make cluttering a bit more entertaining, but also helps you make more interesting decisions about the NPCs AI habits and possible dialogues.
Hope this helps...
» Fri Oct 16, 2009 5:45 pm 
