Hello,

I'm shortly putting some finishing touches to a small house mod I am making.

I plan on putting a navmesh in the house and possibly modifying the navmesh in the vanilla worldspace, where I intend to place the exterior of the house, to make the navmesh go around it.

I've been hearing about navmashes having issues in ESPs so wanted to confirm whether what I plan to do will create that issue.

Would navmeshing the interior only cause the issue? Would not touching the exterior navmesh create any serious pathing issues for companions?

And should I proceed as planned and just turn it into an ESM (and how would I do that?)

Thanks for reading.

My experience with nv as of right now is yes, you must make it be an .esm. The edited navmesh in The Strip that I had for New Vegas Open modders resource did not work until I made it be an .esm. ESPECIALLY if changing the exterior navmesh you will want to do this. There are some cases where you might get away with an interior-only new navmesh and maybe, maybe, it won't break.

Working with an .esm is a pain in the ass if you are new to modding. You set the .esm flag via the NVEdit software, and then, every time you want to edit it in the GECK, you have to put it back, because the GECK isn't willing to edit .esms.

Editing an exterior navmesh can get messy. Maybe you will want to use an existing house structure for your exterior? That way you don't have to touch the world navmesh.

The outside world already has a navmesh, so you wouldn't put anything around your house. If anything, you'd edit the outside world navmesh. I have no issues with navemeshes in .esps.

Thanks for the answers



I'd rather place a new exterior model personally as I think it will make the whole thing cleaner.



Yeah, I would need to edit the existing navmesh to basically make a hole where the house goes. That said, not sure how many people would bother to do that when making a mod of this type.

Given it's location I'd be almost inclined to not worry about except I believe the navmesh needs to be correct and finalised so that companions will follow through the door.

Some pointers on Navmesh I picked up over time:

1. Use the "W" key to quickly switch between NavMesh viewing modes, this is very important as you will see.

2. Use the "B" key outside to show the cell boundaries, which is critical for Navmeshing the cell boundaries correctly in exterior cells.

3. Try to make as large of triangles as you can, but in general (as Echonite points out), don't try to get elaborate as the GECK is going to re-write it when your done. Your key goal with NavMeshing should be to cover the areas where NPCs can go.

4. Do not make too-extreme of angles with the triangles, or the GECK will whine about it.

5. You cannot have more than 2,000 Navmeshes in any cell. More than this, and the GECK will error-out. Furthermore, Joystick Monkey says any more than 2,000 is bad for frame rate.

6. The cell boarders in exterior cells are Tricky. What you have to do is Navmesh each side of the boarder and line-up the edges as closely as possible. Each exterior cell has its Own mesh, and they don't physically connect to boardering cells. If you get the meshes at the boarders close-enough, a fat green line will appear at the boarder when you Finalize (see below step 9).

7. The "Tab" key is Huge. You will see this in the tutorial, it allows you to switch which two vertices from the last triangle that you have selected, so you can quickly "walk" your mesh across.

8. The "Test Cell Navmesh" is fabulous, you click it, then click a To and From spot on your mesh (click triangles), and the GECK will draw a fat line across the mesh where it Would send the NPC if it was trying to get from A to B. Its very effective in letting you know where the game would send your NPCs in specific game settings.

9. This takes time to do right, and I strongly recommend the tutorials from Bethesda. I started with them, and thanks to the short-cuts and methods they use I have since Meshed about 12,000-15,000 triangles. Their techniques and short-cuts REALLY make a big difference.

10. When your done with your mesh, do the following:

a. Save.
b. Click the, "Balance for Optimization" button. This will re-write the mesh in a more efficient form and you'll notice the number of triangles drops.
c. Check the mesh, as sometimes Balance can remove triangles if the space is too-narrow for NPCs or too angled. Fix any missing spots as necessary.
d. Click the, "Find Cover Edges" button, which finds the good corners that NPC's can use for cover while in combat.
e. Click the, "Finalize Cell Navmeshes" button, which will finish things up. If you have any errors, they will show up here.
f. Save Again.

Then to Test the Navmesh:

1. Open the Navmesh feature.

2. Select the Path Test button, which looks like a little path with 3 dots (in the middle).

3. Double Left-click two spots in your cell (give a second between the two spots), and you should see a big Green line showing you where the game will path the NPC. If it's not green, then the path was too-long to be efficient for the game engine.

4. Be very careful with this, as you can very easily crash the GECK if you hit Esc or try to do something else while Path Testing. When your done with a path-test, click the Path-testing button to turn off the feature safely.

I use this all the time with my cells to make sure my Navmesh is correct. This is also where you can really see the difference between Optimized and non-Optimized cells.

Luck,

Miax