Is this intended to replace the original?

Judging by what Vurt has done previously, he's more looking to give people 'options'; he has two tree packs for each of the various areas now except Bitter Coast and each of them are equally high quality, just distinctly different in flavor.

vurt you are hero to team!

Can't wait to see what these look like, especially if anyone can ever get a proper vertex animation shader going on the leaves.

Yes and no. I make these new variations because i'm not happy with the older ones, but ofcourse anyone is free to use the older mod if they for some strange reason prefer it


tombofsoldier; yeah would be great.. would be nice to have MGE's animation working for the leaves, so that they react to weather just like the grass. I'm gonna do some further experiments with it and ask Hrnchamd if it would be possible to fix the problems i run into.


Edit: oh, and i've decided to make the mod .esp based.. i'm making some unique trees for the region + the trunks doesnt need to be like the originals now.

Hmm... This idea remind me a video made by Vality7 a long time ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0FYtpB6IYI), presenting weather-based animated leaves.
In his video, we can see that the wind, especially during a storm, have a very noticeable (or maybe a bit too much...) visual impact on the leaves, anyway, his trees mods used billboards techniques, in 2D... It is -theoretically- possible to make something similar with your modelling technique? :woot:

Good luck for this new project! : )

It is, but it has problems, like leaves arent visible when you look up from under water, some other bugs as well. I did try this with my Solstheim trees, made a video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLSf8pnBC3w

That's very cool - as I said, I love what you did with Grazelands: I was just strolling in the area (I think somewhere between the shore and Zainab camp) and suddenly saw in the distance a huge, majestic tree, perched on a small hillock, dominating the whole area around it. Without checking the CS, it was so obvious a part of the "unique trees" you added that made me wish/hope you'd do that for every tree replacer you made... It makes the game feel more like the old forests from Europe, like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_Forest in Poland, for instance, where there is about a dozen named oaks, or like the Sequoia NP in California, where the "generals" are...

Thanks again, your work is much appreciated!
PKR.

Hrm, well...I'll leave my opinion on this to myself as I'm sure no one is interested in hearing it. Still looking forward to seeing the finished product though, even if I probably won't be using it now.

and yet you write this, which makes your opinion very clear

anyway, i'd be interested in the argument against .esp?
the advantages are clear enough i think: no more paying attention to original object sizes and landshaping how you (the modder) like(s) it.

i'm also really looking forward to this mod, which certainly kills the last remaining vality trees from my morrowind installation

Have to say that I'm with Syrcanus on this one - I strongly dislike using esps for mods that don't really need them, such as graphical replacers. They increase load times (not by much, but still), take up an esp slot that could be better used for something else, and increase the chance of conflicts/instabilities - not to mention having to faff around with updating savegames every time a new version is released. That said, these trees look so amazing that for once I'd consider using the mod even with an esp.

Then the easiest thing to do is to leave the esp unchecked... I believe the "normal" trees will replace their correspondent trees anyway in your game, the Esp will only add the unique ones (again, see the Grazelands Esp solution).

I would, but that way the tree trunks might clip with the mushrooms attached to them (which is why changing the trunks is an issue in the first place).

If I am not mistaken, the discussion was always about *unique* trees - just read a few posts up. Those trees would be placed via Esp in selected places and have nothing to do with the normal trees (or the attached mushrooms). See for instance the Baobab Tree in the Grazelands II, added by the Esp: with the Esp - you have it, without it - you don't. The other non-unique trees are the same with or without the Esp (just take a look in the Meshes\f folder)...

It will require the .esp for the tree fungus to fit. I really dislike how the trees look with the gigantic trunks, it looks really off to me. The stems has to be gigantic too then, and that's not how those trees are suppoed to look, like Rattfink333 says.

I might do an .esp-less version too or do some kind of mix with the previous mod, we'll see.

I'd definitely prefer an esp-less version, but as I said, I'll probably end up using it anyway. One question: do you think the esp would conflict with the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=1038 mod, which also affects some of the mushrooms?

I tested it really quick, it seems to work just fine. I dont think it changes the tre fungi, it just adds glowmaps to the other shrooms on the ground. Not sure what the .esp does, maybe it adds some lights too.



I'll try to upload the mod later tonite or tomorrow morning (it's 20:15 here now), got caugt up in another mod so i just havent gotten around packing / sorting out textures yet for this mod.

Glad to see things are at that stage! Can't wait for the release, I've been stoked since you posted in the wip thread. :3

i have no problem with an esp to fix the fungus. since it will mean more realistic trees. i can merge the esp with all my other landscape esp. i would just suggest refraining from adjusting any ground to avoid landscape seams with other mods since the esp will affect a whole region. and on the other note http://s757.photobucket.com/albums/xx219/Rattfink333/resources/ are the pics i promised. since it is spring there are no leaves on any trees except pines, magnolias, and live oaks. but i put in a couple of pics from last summer to show foliage density.

Thanks rattfink! The leafless cypress was really good (i need leafless branches + it's interesting to see the structure - my branch wasnt as off as i thought i was) i might have use for some of the other photos there as well

Wow, just seen the screenies you posted yesterday - amazing, man, especially the 2 widescreen shots look terrifyingly real! Can't wait to have them in my game - I know what I'm going to do this weekend: just walk in the BC area, just along for the ride, no quests, no nothing...

Thanks man!
PKR.

http://piclair.com/data/3f1ox.jpg

Some last in-game shots:

http://piclair.com/26dpw
http://piclair.com/wxaxz
http://piclair.com/aobva


Edit.
I've uploaded to http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=9044, too lazy to upload to TESNexus too atm, i'll make a proper release thread when it's up..

Great news! Can't wait to try these in-game. Excellent work as always. :twirl:

Ditto! The link on PES is still pending...

Thank you, Vurt!
PKR.

Should've said no one would be interested in hearing the reasons behind my opinion (I'm a pessimistic person at heart I guess...), but my brain must have still been half asleep after getting practically no sleep that night. Helena saved me the trouble by covering my reasons in post #35 anyway, lucky me. Only reason I don't see mentioned is that if new trees are placed all over the place in addition to the vanilla placed trees just getting fungi placement updates - in addition to the new looks obviously - there will end up being numerous mod conflicts. Sort of how grass mod user's will open the mods in the CS to remove grass that looks goofy with other mod added locations, for example. But this won't be an issue if new trees aren't being placed all over the Bitter Coast randomly. Even if they are I'd still use this mod anyway. These trees are a huge improvement over the vanilla trees...huge.

There's http://piclair.com/data/drk9o.jpg, most of the time i've just switched out a previous tree for a new one, so it occupies the same spot. The exception would be a few trees that are placed in the water.