Since starting modding, I've gotten a fairly good grip of dialogue and scripting, but one thing I've never managed to do well is designing interesting interior cells (I haven't even dared to try landscaping much). No matter how long I spend working on a cell, the results always seem to come out bland and basic. When I look at the stuff other modders have done, I'm amazed by their creativity and how interesting they make things look. So, does anybody have any advice on how to make better, more interesting interiors?

For interiors, try to think about how said interior would be detailed depending on who's living there/using it. If it's a house, think about the things the person would have in their house, whether they are a messy or tidy person, how wealthy or poor they are, etc. For something like a tavern, think about who the tavern serves and what kind of people it's owners are. For instance, the council club in Ald-Ruhn is a very tidy place because it is a social gathering place for nobles and acedemics, whereas the Council Club in Balmora is the hangout spot for local gangsters and isn't the most fancy looking place as a result.

For exteriors, think about the geography, geology, and biology of the region, what kind of plants would be growing? What geological processes happened to form the landscape? What do you find fun and interesting when exploring landscapes?

The main thing I think about when designing landscapes and interiors is the why/how, and simply, what I would expect/like to see as a player exploring. It's the main driving force behind a project like MaDW, I found the landscapes from Unique Landscapes for Oblivion, and vanilla Skyrim so fun and interesting to explore, and want to bring a lot of those elements to Morrowind.

Something I remember Andres Indoril over at TR saying was that he'd look at an existing, complex real-world interior and then try and work out how he'd duplicate it in Morrowind using its assets. Led to creative use of those assets and some ideas he included in his rather cool interiors. http://andresindoril.blogspot.co.uk/ is/was a fun read too.

Don't be afraid to put stuff together that doesn't match. Look at the insanity of LadyPhoenixFireRose's Mod Town plot. Look at Cratehall in DEM. To quote Todd Howard: It just works.

One of the things we tried to do in the Big City mod (the full version in particular; the one on the Nexus has just a few of our exteriors) was create spaces where you wanted to know what was around the corner. We did this by giving you a glimpse of the buildings or landscape that lay behind another structure. In other words, work with 'layers' when you are building exteriors, thinking about what will invite the player to explore more of the environment that you have built.

Take a boring object, and do something weird with it.

Make it big, make it small, turn it upside down. Look at it from a new perspective and all of a sudden you have an object that is completely unique to your mod, despite it being something everyone has seen a hundred times before.

If you're struggling with making random houses unique, don't worry about it too much. When playing through them in-game, people expect them to be a bit generic and won't even mind that House 1 and House 2 were simple, especially if House 3 has something memorable going on in it.
Just don't copy/paste from vanilla cells, because people will notice.

Come up with a basic concept and feeling for the interior: what atmosphere are you after? What does the combination of local circumstances, the current inhabitant, and the purpose of the interior tell you? What story do you want the interior to tell?

Try to create small implied scenes within the space of the interior to give the player a feeling of it being a living space, but don't clutter it without purpose.

Alternate between looking at the interior in the editor with looking at the interior ingame. Walk through it like a tour starting at the door through which you enter, and keep thinking "what is missing here, and where is it missing?". Then take the tour out to the entry again.

You'll get further with good design than with an abundance of blunt effort: knowing what not to add is as important as knowing what to add. Also remember that this is a game: a perfectly realistic setup of items, furniture, utilities etc. is not what you're after. Work with representation and suggestion. Read up on the world the interior is supposed to be a part of, and make it feel like it really belongs.

If you have a specific idea about how you want things to look, but can't find the right pieces, be creative. Try out different methods of acheiving what you're after. Don't give up.

Keep the prospective player in mind, but always use your own ideas and visions as your main guideline. Don't give up.

Don't give up.

Since you've gotten good at writing dialogue, creating interesting interiors should be no problem for you. You're probably just not approaching it the same way you approach writing dialogue. When you write dialogue, you are creating stories, defining personalities, all of which have different outcomes and can take course over a certain time.

When you make an interesting interior you're basically doing the same thing. You're defining the personality, you're characterizing events that may have transpired, and possibly even outcomes of the future.

The hardest part about creating interesting interiors is knowing what you're looking for. The construction set is made in such a way that you need to be quite familiar with the assets in order to find things quickly. So my advice to you is to play the game, find your favorite interiors, pick them apart in the construction set and consciously remember where they are located so you can put together something rich and detail but also interesting.

Good luck!

Late to the party, I would have said pretty much all that's already been said here. Dressing a scene is writing a story, just with objects instead of words. This is why I wish people would stop leaving journals lying around that bluntly retell the story already visually told--something Beth does so often I don't really blame any modder for following their example. Beth itself has done some pretty silly ones like that one in Skyrim with a miner obviously killed by a cave-in with a journal that basically says, "Man, digging this ore sure svcks. Hope something awful doesn't happen to me." :rolleyes: /rant

So yeah, never neglect the story you're telling with every object you place and they will automatically be more interesting than if you just plop them down with little thought because the NPC needs stuff. It also has the beneficial side effect of making decorating interiors fun.

For exteriors, what I do has again been well covered by other modders here, but instead of telling the NPC's story I'm imagining the stories the player will unfold as they explore--which is equally important, because that's where a lot of the fun in a game lies.

Start with a big concept e.g. Redoran noble, 6th house creepy etc. and try to nail that atmosphere. You might not 100% get it but it gives you a goal/guide line to work towards.

Be very mindful of the player's line of sight in game. What does the player see when first entering the cell, when turning around a corner in a hallway etc. This means firing up and testing in game a lot because you don't get that in the cs.

Look at other mods, or even vanilla cells that you particularly like and try to figure out what exactly it is that makes it work.

And last but not least, just do and don't be afraid to experiment or fail. It's the only way to get better at it. Gl and hf!

In other words, test it yourself.

I've always been fooled by how interiors seem bigger in the CS, from an isometric POV, than they really are ingame, in 1st person view.

Also, lighting is different ingame.