Could you sprinkle those plants throughout Vvardenfell? In particular, the 2nd and 3rd flowers would look great in the Bitter Coast and Ascadian Isles, respectively

A bit more... color correct, still only a bigger test which made me realize that optimizations need to be done.
http://i50.tinypic.com/530huu.jpg

Now if I only had those plants from AOF and some of the other land meshes from TDW, it'd be easy to put it together, a kin to above picture =)

Looking nice Mireneye!!! Have you considered that the ground of my landmesh isn't plain even overall? Maybe you should drag down the outer edges of your mesh, so that they will vanish into the ground!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

I'm pretty certain I can cope with that. To place meshes I'm using a particle system which makes it really easy to add vegetation etc to anything in a matter of minutes once it's setup. And since it's particles I can set it up to only emit from the top etc.

This screen is overkill, again thanks vurt, I borrow your textures still, if I may not, sorry I will change them eventually once I get a good texture base ready for the project. the screen is overkill since thers's shadows and mist, however the mist should not be impossible to make. At least something close to it:

http://i50.tinypic.com/2rh4w7r.jpg

You got to explain that particle system to me by time, is it a tool for Morrowind like mesh-generator or are you talking about something inside 3ds max? Screen looks great!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

It's pretty similar to the mesh generator for mw, but more versatile, a bit less buggy and you get to see the results in realtime but alas within 3ds max. I would not be surprised if Blender could do something similar.

Well.. I think among many things, particles seem to be what I' pretty good with haha. After one pro rain tutorial, really advanced stuff with raindrops splashing and dripping down objects and forming puddles etc.

Thanks.

This makes me wonder if morrowind would rather have us place things beforehand and export one big complex model or several smaller less complex ones.

Engine wise it does some kind of crude culling so I guess some detail done this way is ok, but not to much.

Oh, and Merry Christmas Pandoraish team!

Merry X-mas to ya'll!!!

Btw, if you're ggod at doing particles, can you make some new custom ones for us? Do you have old max vesrion 4-5???


TheDaywalker :rock:

For both collision and culling purposes, many small models is much better.
Morrowind's collision engine starts to lag horribly if the player is within a concave hull that completely surrounds them (someone found that out trying to do skyboxes).
It (and all Gamebryo-based games) have pretty good culling for backfaces and decent for off-screen objects, but it's still simpler for it to disable a complete object, rather than certain faces/polys, so many small objects is simpler.

In addition, if you were to make an extensive land-mass, you could generate low-detail distance meshes, and have a script to handle cell-changes (it would look like distant land, essentially, but have, say, 8 cells set in a cube shape, and a script transports you to the next one if you pass a certain distance from the cell center). Small meshes would let you have more space and detail, and having it split into multiple cells would speed things up even more (but be a little more complicated).

Sorry, that would take me far to long especially considering I haven't used the CS in years besides having a look at how my models and textures fit with the surroundings. When this is done everybody is welcome to use the models in whatever sort of mod they wish however.



@Mireneye

I was thinking (don't tell anybody some people might get the wrong idea)...... I am assuming the objects being scattered around are dependant upon the plain underneath. The idea i had was after you scatter the objects you could just delete the plain model underneath it essentially creating a somewhat randomized block of foliage.

As for different sorts of models, I think it might be good to make some mounds/small hills and scatter objects over that. I think individual mound models would be more useful then more or less flat plains for the direction we are going.

I can state what PK said!!! You often have problems with collision, when mesh gets too big. 3ds max does export large meshes best. I had some severe problems with my landmeshes from blender on my last project and wasn't able to fix it at all. Simple export of my meshes from max did fix all problems. The last landmesh I made for my mod "Grimchand" worked very well though, maybe nifscripts have been improved since then, can't say!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Right, i'll lay down my testing then.

It was never to really fill huge chunks anyways, it was more to create some kind of randomish ground surface that could be used. And as such has already served it's purpose. Is anyone working on what Fliggerty asked? Otherwise I might try to be of his assistance so to speak =)

@Mireneye: If you could help Fligg that would be nice, cause I still have a lot of work to do on the landmesh and the race!!!

@TEAM: Guys, got a new idea: Ever heared of mathematic fractals??? Those are images being calculated from special mathematic terms. Well, there is a free software on the net called "Apophysis", which can produce those fractals and they can be tweaked after your own fantasy. I normally used that programm for my 2D-artworks, but I wanna try something else with it now. What you think of having those colorful and abstract fractals as plants, moss and grass on the island. All that was needed would be making it an alpha texture.

Here's the link to the software and if you google you will find dozens of images to check out. Let me know what you think?!

http://www.apophysis.org/downloads.html


TheDaywalker :rock:

If you guys would ever need some quests being written in the future, I'd be happy to help

<3 sierpinski's triangle
I'm a fan of fractals.
and I could throw together some dialogues or whatever if you need, eventually.
just pm me, but I will be away for a week or so skiing
I might find an internet cafe around to check though, we'll see.

It is not planned for the moment to have any quests, but once the race is done, we can maybe think of installing some NPCs on the island to do services. We will see!!!

Here is the actual stage of the environment. It is UV-mapped, but textures and resolution still have to be tweaked. Once I'm done with that, I will take the mesh into the CS and adjust size and test ingame if collision works correct. If everything should work fine, we may begin with interior design in about some days.

About the island: I have chosen a texture where cracky rock is mixed with thick carpets of green moss. The areas where all is green (screen from above) are flat, so that we can plant on it. But there will be several ranks, treebranches and stuff comming out of the rocks to the sides as well. The large root, which will serve as pathway, will be covered with lots of moss, which will be hanging down on it's lower side. As I have seen AOF has already made some really nice flowers, I'd say we should have some of them as epiphytes on that root too.

The areas which are caved in will later have pools of water. I will make new water meshes and animate them. Water will be dripping down into the depth from all sides of the island.

http://pic.leech.it/i/98d47/e20bcd1envfinal01.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/ab127/782796fenvfinal02.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/067c5/f522bd15envfinal03.jpg

EDIT: Here is a screen from inside CS, showing main island and NPC on top. I'd personally say that this size is big enough and there's still plenty space left for adding further smaller isles.

http://pic.leech.it/i/4e575/d78779cenvcs.jpg


EDIT: @Team: Concerning the giant redwood like trees I have a suggestion to make. Too much of those giant trees would be too dominant compared to the island's stone shapes. Let's only have a few of those giant trees, but they should have a very narrow rootwork instead. I'm thinking of something like those mangroves roots, just a bit bigger, so that you get a real labyrinth above the ground, where the player can walk through root-tunnels, climb above roots, enter empty hollowed out roots and so on. I'd like the player to have a real adventure park, so that exploring never gets boring.

The space between those giant roots can be filled up with lots of smaller trees and other beautiful vegetation. What you think?

Here's what I'm working on:

http://pic.leech.it/pic.php?id=795ad6fftreestumps.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/23fd7/f04b515envcs02.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/11e73/5f94025envcs03.jpg

EDIT: First test inagame was a success, collision works flawless. Need to work on textures though, they're still a bit blurry. Guys, we may begin with working on the main island!!! :rock:

TheDaywalker :rock:

IMPORTANT!!!: I've got a little request for a script:


I made a plant which has a lightbulb inside its bloom. I set up that bulb as an activator, so it can carry a script. The lightbulb is actually off. Script should do following:


When day hour is at nighttime and player steps into a certain radius near that activator, the lightbulb_off shall be exchanged by another object, which is set up as a light lightbulb_on. If player steps outside that certain radius, lightbulb_on shall be exchanged again with lightbulb_off. This should only happen at nighttime!!!

Questinon: Is it possible that exchanged object gets the same scale like the original automaticly or does it all have to be the same scale to fit exactly inside the bloom?


Thx, TheDaywalker :rock:

So did you create the activator so that it actually is lit up? Or do you intend to use a light object? A light object cannot simply be disabled, it has to be moved away to a place where it cannot be seen. I await this info to determine how to proceed.

Would you mind sending me the resources so that I can tweak the script to get it just right?

It's easiest if everything is already the same scale, though I can adjust it via script if needs be.

Sorry for the double post, I decided to actually read something other than the last post.


Please do. :goodjob:


Do it! I imagine this as being the way to possibly give the appearance of everything being interconnected, in the way the roots and such form sahaylu (I just spent an hour searching the web for an idea on how to spell that...with no luck!)

Hello, everyone.

I am aware it has been a particularly long time since I was last in the modding scene. I've been constantly amazed by how persistent modders are to keep this timeless game up to date.

I am happy to offer my assistance with this mod. I am located on the pacific coast of North America - specifically, close to the area in Washington where the reference photographs were taken.

I would be happy to locate and extensively photographing identical environments. Just tell me which textures are required.

As some of the authors of this mod already have me on MSN, please feel free to contact me on there.

-MDH

@Fligg: The Plant is a single static object and the lightbulb is a a seperate activator, which gets placed inside the bloom in CS. The light_off bulb is just an activator showing a normal sphere mesh. The light_on bulb is a glow mapped sphere covered by particles and set up as light in the CS.

I didn't know one can't disable light. I thought when the object that does emit it is disabled light would be gone too???


PS: I will load up the meshes and PM you the download link. I'll try here and if message box is full, I'll try at GHF!!!


@MDH_Modder: Welcome to the team then!!! Good textures are always needed, especilally plants and leafs and moss. Textures should be high resolution best!!! .)


Thx, TheDaywalker!!! :rock:

Hey people. Watched the movie the other day, I thought the colors were crazy.

Anyway, I can contribute. I have permission to use Vality7's trees, I could ask him if he'd let me use them for this mod if you want? Also have permission from StarWarsGuy to use his Grazelands trees (well, I was the one who requested them in the 1st place).

Also have jdooby's high trees I edited to be somewhat bigger and have no leaves, so I could add other billboarded ones to it.

Also, I could do some landscaping work, add trees and plants and rocks etc. to the "exterior".

And if you want some wooden architecture I have my own resource based on retextured parts of Fidel's palace.

Anything from my side needed?

Yall should make a plant replacer for regular morrowind with those meshes. It would make ajira's first quests pretty great.

@Chaka ZG: Hi mate, glad you wanna help!!! Concerning landscaping it is a bit difficult this time having many people working on just one landmesh. Things could easily get kinda complicated, you know? If you really want to do landscaping, I could make you a smaller isle of your own and you can decorate it in another interiorcell and when the mod is nearly done, we could merge those cells together. That would be the easiest way I think. Anyway. we'll have to wait for what the others say.

But there'll be a lot of other work to do soon, like doing retextures, collecting ressources and so on and if you want to, you can give me a helping hand on that!!!

blake.: I don't think it would be a good idea to spread those unique meshes all over Vvardenfell. Sure it would look great, but if you have those plants everywhere anyway, why should you visit our new environment?!

Made some tests for new race, not quite satisfied yet:

http://pic.leech.it/i/6e8da/a3c706bnew1.jpg
http://pic.leech.it/i/6a591/4ffd75anew2.jpg


TheDaywalker :rock:

Well, you might not be quite satisfied yet, but I think it looks great! I haven't seen the movie yet, though, so...

Hi daywalker,

my MSN contact is pyro_kid_CA@hotmail.com (Yes - It's ancient. I made it when I was nine.)

You can also contact mhdeighton@shaw.ca which is my normal email.

What is the team focused on primarily right now?

I can get the photographs you requested - is there a specific place you'd prefer them to be uploaded?