I couldn't fit my whole question in the title.

Two unrelated mods: Skyrim Romance (not "the romance mod") and Dawnguard Overhaul, both add new rooms to existing interior cells. The problem is, there's nothing visible until I cross the threshold of the connecting doorways. I'm just seeing a few light sources against a grey background until I go into the added rooms. In Dawngaurd Overhaul, the problem is more extensive; the new statics added as time passes, blink.

These mods have been in this playthrough's load order from the start. Please tell me I can fix this with xEdit somehow?

EDIT: You know, this question might be better for the CK forum.

The problem is roombounds and clearly there is a lack of a portal between the two areas. You could try looking for them with xEdit but its something can only really be fixed properly with the CK

I agree, if you go in the CK, bring up the cells and then click view, tick portals and rooms as well as markers(should already be ticked) and if your newly added areas are outside of any big blue squares, than that is your problem. You can create new room bounds and portals to allow the things in the new areas to be seen.

http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Bethesda_Tutorial_Optimization

Thank you, both. I'll have a look and see if I can fix them.

EDIT: Okay, thanks to the link you provided, johng58, I've see what i need to do. Are these room bounds boxes something that might have been there in the mod and lost through cleaning or just something not all modders know about? I looked at Skyrim Romance and there was no box at all for the Bannered Mare. I guess I don't understand the magic of the CK, because all of the original building was visible, but the new room wasn't.

Are the portals totally necessary? I'm not really grasping their use unless I only want the objects on the other side rendered when the door is opened. If there is no door, it shouldn't matter, should it?

EDIT2: Answered my own question just by checking on this in-game. CK logic eludes me at times, but I see it eventually.

Something isn't working. I had to rebuild an entire room that wasn't built with snap to grid and when I finished followeing the instructions, parts of two rooms were invisible. What happens if a cell has no room bounds at all? Specifically, the Bannered Mare. By default, it has no room bounds and no portals, yet you can see through all the doorways. Now there's an added room and it's invisible until you get through the doorway. Is there a boundary setting somewhere or are the separate spaces linked in a way I can just add the new rooms?

I'm not worried about optimization at this point, just being able to see through that blasted doorway.

If a cell has no room bounds, everything in the cell will will be loaded when you enter the cell. This is ok for small cells such as the Bannered Mare. But as you build larger cells such as a very large dungeon, room bounds and portals become much more important in regards to performance. When everything loads in a large cell at the same time, the resources used by your machine may become taxed to the point that FPS suffers, and if you are running a lot of scripts in the cell also, say you are running a quest where a lot of things are happening, you could have script lag and things don't occur as fast as they should. The speed at which scripts fire is related to FPS.



Back to your missing walls, are you testing on a save that has never seen your changes before? If testing on an existing save the info in your save will take priority over your changes. The best way to check to see if your changes are taking effect is to open the console and coc into your cell from the main menu. That way you will start with the default character as if you are starting a new game and your saves will have nothing to do with it.

I can see how it will definitely make a difference with the Fort Dawnguard mod, as it is a pretty cluttered cell, but I started with the Bannered Mare because I thought it would be simpler (silly me). I am testing on a save in which I've already been to The Bannered Mare, but I've used resetinterior to clear it. I know this isn't sure-fire, but what I've done so far has shown up in game.

Here's what happened:

I decided to make three rooms. The main one, with the loft and the small room in the back included, then a second one off where the cooking spit is and a third, the mod-added room, which is next door to the one where the cooking spit is. By "next door" I mean these two rooms share a long wall.

After I made the rooms and before I made the portals, the interiors of both of the smaller rooms were invisible from the main room. After I made the portals, I could see into the room with the spit, but not the mod-added room. Unfortunately, much of the shared walls between the rooms was also invisible.

I'm thinking these shared interior walls are being counted as inside the mod-added space and, therefore, not visible with or without the portal.

I then cleared everything and started over, thinking I didn't create the rooms correctly and/or forgot to link the portals. Same effect. I then tried just creating a room bound for the mod-added space. Of course, there was nothing to link the portal to, so the entire second room was still invisible; however, this confirmed my suspicion about the shared walls, since they became invisible again.

The only thing I can think of is that somehow everything in the default Bannered Mare space is already considered one room, but everything added is not marked as part of that room, for some reason. Is there a setting somewhere that I can use to just select everything in the cell and have it be considered one room? I'll go back to the room bounds and portals when I start on Fort Dawnguard (when I've got the courage, that is).

Again did you try coc into your new cell. Not sure resetinterior will work. I can take a look at it if you upload it somewhere like Google Drive. Just PM me with the link.

Oh, no, I misread your post about COC. I'll try that, next. I'm thinking I may need larger portals, though. If I can't get it to work tonight, I'll upload somewhere and let you have a look.

Well, I figured it out, sort of. It seems a convoluted way of doing it, but with rooms that share an interior-type wall, the entire wall has to be included in the portal or it won't be visible from whichever room-bound the wall isn't in. The only way I could figure out to do it is to make two rooms along the long wall and make the portal the entire length and breadth of it.

Still, i think there must be a better way, since the vanilla Bannered Mare had no room bounds at all and the entire building is visible from all angles. I'm thinking there must be a setting to include everything in a cell in the same room and the mod-added space just wasn't included.

I can see where room bounds and portals come in handy with linear dungeons and spaces that don't share interior walls, but it's kinda pointless for a single house or building.

BTW, Though i can see where it is good practice, in this case it didn't matter whether I COC'd into the cell or walked in from the front door. It was the size of the portal which caused parts of the space to not show.

Glad you got it working. I just don't understand why when you first made your changes they did not show. If there are no Room Bounds, everything should have loaded.

I'm pretty sure my changed were being reflected, they just weren't what I wanted. When I made the initial room bounds, without the portals, what was in one couldn't be seen from within another.

The weird thing to me is that without any room bounds or portals at all, the mod-added room is not visible. As if there is a setting somewhere not marked for the new items to include them. Makes no sense to me at all.