You can make it however you like. TF is simply pointing out a bit of lore that might be nice to follow. Different modders like to follow lore to differing degrees. If you think its not important then its not important.

Just stating it for your benefit.

Gentlemen... this plane is a dragon, a sphere, and a flat plane... all at once. You don't need to know how Red Mountain is the highest, just know that it is. Somebody probably asked a creator which peak was the tallest. Either that or someone with some authority said so.

Ha, im not saying that i don't want to follow lore, I want the landscape of all things to be as close to lore as possible

I removed a bunch of sniping posts about the fake relative height of fake mountains. Off topic and thread derailing.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled mod discussion.

How did you raise 20,000 cells of land? I assume you used the flatten terrain tool on a very large size? Also, how are you creating gross aspects of the gameworld, mountains and such?

That's where heightmaps come in. With a large heightmap and importer, you can paint (or fractally or randomly generate) terrain, then just let it build/import overnight. Some importers even have limited texturing and vertex coloring.

That reminds me a bit of creating maps for Total War games. You import outlines and then fill. So all this is being done at a macro level?

Yeah its relatively easy. As peachykeen said, height maps is the way im doing it. Basically a grey scale image, where the black is the ocean bed, and white is the highest point, but these can be set however you want. And as far as texturing goes, so far, ive managed to automatically texture the whole landmass in 1 texture. I've been trying to work out how to create a kind of texture map, based on height, and angle, but so far I haven't been successful

Procedural texturing like that is usually done either with shaders or a Photoshop-like filter based on the image. Theoretically, you could process your heighmap (it has all the height and angle info necessary) and spit out something TesAnnwyn could interpret as a texture-index map. I'm not familiar with the process though, so you'd have to check with the author or someone who's played with it more (it would certainly speed things up, especially since you just run your heightmap through a filter and then reimport it).

You'll probably have to texture by hand to make it look natural. Textures don't follow any pattern that could really be reproduced automatically I think.

Does the landmass have to be further modified after you create a heightmap for it? In other words, will you need to change it on the micro level rather than just making global changes on the macro level like smoothing, etc. ?

Without a doubt, autmatic texturing will never look as good as hand texturing. But if you would place atleast say 4 base textures for the whole region such as, sand mud grass, rock and snow, i beleive it would save alot of time and you could add whatever details you liked afterwards

And yeah, again, creating heightmaps with images will never create the perfect landscape you would hope for, meshs smoothing and minor details for cities and caves or whatever can always be added without too much effort.

Basically, when i get 1 region working how i want, its just a matter of generating the rest with different textures.

How do you denote regions, do you paint texture on or is it generated arithmetically? Also, I always build textures around how I want to place statics, will your statics then be placed mainly based on how the texture and terrain falls?

Well, it's possible to import the whole of tamriel and then cut it up by hand into each seperate region, but that is a hell of alot of work. The best way in my opinion is to import each map seperatly.

Not exactly sure that was the answer you were looking for

I distinctly doubt it, as if there are textures generated on the land they will not stay the way they are generated, nor do I expect them to even stay as them same textures. The point of initial textures is to give a very vague conceptual appearance to the land so it isn't a single brown mass that is hard to pick things out on (denote mountains, low lands, coasts, and the such). I suspect each project will then go into refining these cell by cell as the project is developed.

I personally don't care anymore about the lore given limitaions about the mountain height :snoring: If a game height under 20000 should be the "highest Mountain in Tamriel", than it sounds like a [censored] joke to me.

I thought about a mod last night which brings the Red Mountain to a proper height of 32000, but it's not worth the effort for me at the moment, cause you have to recreate a larger circle around the ghostgate too. Also it will cause confilicts with loads of mods in that area.


I have doubts that anybody who is wandering in High Rock will really realize that the mountains in that area are much higher than the good old volcano on Vvardenfell...(if yes, just lower your MGE distant land value from 3000 cells to 20 cells )

If anybody feels so much annoyed about the game height, I can't help, sorry :shrug:

Rockin! :rock:

THANK YOU!!

I'm all for lore, but I totally agree that the limit we are given is bogus, I want actual mountains in Tamriel, not just tiny hills that are smaller than Red Mountain. Speaking of Red mountain though, I'm thinking of making it higher for MADW anyways, and I'll probably end up making some compatibility patches to make it work with some of the major mods for that region, so in due time, we won't be staring at hills in our game anymore.

Agreed, as much as i want this to be lore friendly, red mountain is barely a mountain atall, and plus, its on a separate island. And only if your view distance is huge will you see it

:P I think i feel a poll coming on, ha ha

For a conceptual step that sounds cool. I usually use a piece of white drawing paper and a pencil (colored pencils if I'm feeling particularly daring) to get an idea of where things will be. There's always maps and ms paint too

I think what I'm trying to see is how you intend to texture and detail such a large landmass. 20,000ish cells, textured and detailed by hand, will take a very long time to complete. Since you seem to be trying to find ways into automatically or grossly filling exteriors I was curious as to the limitations of such methods.

Even if I sound like an [censored], but I don't care any poll about the mountain height. Fact is: I'm annoyed of the typical Vvardenfell Hills after playing Gothic 3 and Oblivion...and I'm not willing to make Skyrim a "hills only" landscape, no matter what other people think. It's not worth the effort to build a provience if you don't want to explore it by yourself cause it pisses you off the whole time ...in that case it's better to collect stamps or something :brokencomputer:

I agree, go with the actual mountains, I was always disappointed with the lack of verticality in Morrowind. No poll necessary IMO.

I see Thrignar's point about lore, and he's right, it is a clash with lore, but it's kind of unfair to expect projects to stick to the limits set in Morrowind.
So yeah, I agree with Lestat.

Other projects should build the mountains as high as they want, if Red Mountain becomes such a large problem, then we'll just have to change that as well.
Definitely don't stick to Morrowind's Red "Mountain" height, that'd look [censored]. Especially in mountaineous areas.

AGREED!

And speaking of mountains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QRosyluqTA

Not perfect yet, but it's getting there

Lack of vertical height in vvardenfel =/= Red mountain isn't tall. The entire thing is a gradual slope up. Still have doubts? The grazelands are largely flat until you hit red mountain. Go to the unnamed foyoda to the west of the Zainab camp and look to west. While it may not be as steep as you might like, I at least find the change in altitude impressive. Also notice how high you are already, and keep in mind that what you are seeing isn't the peak, but one of the lower sections of the ghostfence. Impressive vertical height can be achieved without going past the limits of red mountain, and while red mountain may not be as steep as people might like, things like meshes made for cliffs, not present in the vanilla game, make it possible to make impressive mountains without gratuitous height.

To summarize, you'd be surprised how tall red mountain actually is if you've only ever approached it via foyoda mamea and/or the path near buckmoth. Anyway, unless you actively try for incredibly huge mountains, I think you'll find that your impressive mountains will still be shorter than red mountain. (and this is a good thing!)

The impressive mountains that have already been made in Skyrim are actually taller than red mountain.

You may think thats pretty poor due it not being in keeping with lore but it looks pretty darn good if you ask me