Tamriel Rebuilt Conversion Update: full landscape from 16.03 complete

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EDIT2: I just successfully converted all the exterior lands with statics/buildings/NPCs/creatures for the TR_Mainland.esm. See pics in post below.

EDIT: It turns out my methodology converts the statics/NPCs just fine, so I may be close to being done with the project. Check out my screenshot of firewatch castle a post below.

Hi,

I just finished converting the heightmaps and landscape textures from the latest Tamriel Rebuilt release (16.03) to Morroblivion. I think I've come up with a solution to my previous problems with some regions not showing up. This is just a test conversion to figure out out the best method of a more complete conversion. There is no region data and no statics. I initially thought about converting statics separately and merging it with the landscapes, but I believe converting both at once will make it easier to keep all the IDs synced properly. My goal with this project is to convert all the TR lands, statics/buildings, interiors, NPCs, and creatures and to Morroblivion. I have no plans to try to do the dialog/quests or AI yet.

I haven't asked for permission to distribute a TR conversion yet, so no ESP for now. I'll try to post screenshots in a few minutes... edit: set them up as jpg attachments rather than images for easier reading.

BTW, the first and last screenshot are using my conversion of Vurt's Bitter Coast Tree Replacer II (LODs and collision meshes are still WIP).

Last edited by ponyrider0 on 26 Jul 2016 - 15:34.

If you have permission to

If you have permission to publish also the only territory, It would be something....Good luck and great idea [External image]

Another screenshot with

Another screenshot with scenic view from Bitter Coast:

(No subject)

ALrighty, immense progress

ALrighty, immense progress being made. I've now integrated the entire TR_Mainland.esm exteriors with statics/buildings/npcs/creatures to Morroblivion worldspace. Screenshots follow:

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And now the full landscape

And now the full landscape with statics/buildings of TR_Preview.esp is converted and integrated with the Morroblivion worldspace.

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How many things you have to

How many things you have to convert to an end?

superliuk wrote:

superliuk
How many things you have to convert to an end?

Currently, I have completed conversion of all landscape/statics/building data for the Tamriel Rebuilt 16.03. The conversion does have some errors: (1) there are a few missing meshes from where the NIF conversion crashed or produced bad data. (2) many of the collision meshes that were generated are off and need to be fixed, (3) the offsets on a few of the statics for windows, etc are converted incorrectly so they are floating in front of the buildings. While I have generated LOD for distant lands with tes4ll, there are no VWD files for any of the statics like buildings/trees/rocks. So pop-in is horrendous.

What is missing: there is no region data, so all the new lands are marked as "Morrowind" on the mini-map. The number of NPCs overloaded the ESP converter, so some of them were separated from the data files containing landscape/buildings and need to be converted and reintegrated separately. This ESP converter overload issue is also the reason why the Regions, Interiors, Books and Enchantments are incomplete. The ESP converter has trouble converting dialogs/scripts/quests -- much of this will have to be done by hand.

I'll try to make a post which discusses my methods so that others can reproduce my work and see if they have any ideas on how to improve the process.

That's some awesome work you

That's some awesome work you did there already. I can have a list of stuff you can do to circumvent a few of the converter's restrictions by the weekend, I'm kinda busy right now. But regarding the dialogue:

You can get past the non converted dialogues by changing all dialogue types to simple topic in the Enchanted Editor. To do this click on the topic, for example Greeting 1, rename the ID to something like xxxGreeting1 and change the type to 0. This will allow it to be converted. Now you still need to resave the mod using the Morrowind CS. After the conversion you can always move the dialogue responses to the actual standard Oblivion Greeting topic.

Another thing the converter struggles with is converting topics with quest data and non NPC data attached. You need to remove all references to quests and non NPC speakers, for example animals from the responses. Obviously you'll need to do a lot of manual work after that but it saves you the effort of recreating all dialogue topics from scratch.

Also, the converter can't handle meshes with internal texture files which sometimes exist for Morrowind mods. You'll need to export those textures and manually change the meshes to use external textures. Otherwise it skips the entire mesh and the object itself in the editor which means there's missing objects.

The problem with too many NPCs, objects and so on can be solved by first removing those records from the Morrowind, Bloodmoon and Tribunal esm files and saving them as copies to use only for conversion. To do this use the EnchantedEditor again. Let's say we do it by removing all original book records. Now the converter won't run into the "too many books" error, unless there's even too many books in the mod, in which case you'll have to split up the Morrowind mod and rejoin it later, which I can get to at another point. I'll call this file "file1"

However this still leaves you without the original Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon book references placed in the game world, NPCs and containers. To get around that you'll have to convert it again but this time remove the books from your Morrowind mod and convert it again using the real esm files. I'll call that file " file2" Now comes the somewhat tedious part of getting those files together.

Basically what you have to do is to use TES4Edit to strip the data that you dont' need from file2 and then rejoin them. All you want to be left with basically, is cell and worldspace data with only placed references of the objects you removed when first converting the mod. You can also leave NPCs and containers but this is a different kind of process that I'll get to at another point. The actual process of creating this kind dependent plugin files using Wrye Bash and reordering the FormIDs so your missing data can be readded to your other converted mod file is pretty hard to explain in my current tired state. If you have any interest in me further explaining this, just tell me and I'll write something up. Maybe even take some screenshots to explain it better.

I also found ways to convert all armor and clothing types, like amulets and shields, which would usually be disregarded by the converter, or even weapons like crossbows. Same goes for creatures. If you're interested in that.

What we'd really need is either a completely new version of the converter or some sort of reverse engineered and improved version of it without all the (seemingly unnecessary) limits. However I'm not even sure if that's something that's worth putting any effort into, considering how far Skywind is coming along.

Sorry if this wall of text is completely incoherent btw.

Just seeing those shots gives

Just seeing those shots gives me so much nostalgia! you have done a great work and please try to share it with us, I do not believe TR people should put obstacles on a release, just let us know your news and progress.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone for the

EDIT: Disregard these instructions -- I'm in the process of converting the full TR dataset (except for dialogs) by using Brainslasher's method of stripping data from the base Morrowind ESMs. More to come very soon. Some problems with new method, see posts below.

Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback! And thanks to Brainslasher for all the helpful ESP conversion tips!! I'll do a separate post discussing how best to incorporate those techniques in converter Tamriel Rebuilt. For now, this is PART 1 of the guide to make a Tamriel Rebuilt conversion of your own. These steps will likely be modified after discussion of Brainslasher's tips.

Many of these steps are based on thermador's process (https://tesrenewal.com/comment/12571#comment-12571) so I recommend you read that post for further reference.

Preparation/Requirements:
1. Tamriel Rebuilt 16.03 + Morrowind GOTY edition
2. Morrowind Construction Set Editor
3. Morrowind Enchanted Editor 0.91 beta
5. ESP Converter 0.98b
6. Working Morroblivion Installation
7. Separate Clean Oblivion Installation (to hold output of ESP converter)
8. Oblivion Construction Set Editor
9. TES4Edit version 3.1.2

1. Set up ESP Converter configuation files:
The main configuration file for the ESP Converter is the Morroblivion.ini in the ESP Converter's main diretory. Set your Morrowind path to the directory containing Tamriel Rebuilt, and set your Oblivion path to the separate clean Oblivion installation that you've set up just for the output of the ESP converter. **I don't recommend you use a working Oblivion directory, because the ESP converter will (1) over-write the Morrowind_ob.esm and (2) put all the converted Morrowind and TR meshes/textures into the Data directory, which will over-ride and may conflict with the files stored in the Morroblivion bsa files.**

When specifying the Master, BSA and Mod files, order is very important. The order will dictate how the IDs are generated. Tamriel Rebuilt makes use of several references to Tribunal and Bloodmoon resources. If you want to generate a TR plugin that will automatically use references from the Morroblivion ESM and BSAs, then the most straight forward way is to use a load order that is as close as possible to how Morroblivion was originally converted -- so that the generated IDs sync up as much as possible with your Morroblivion ESM. If you want to produce a TR plugin that also includes its own copy of the entire Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon dataset (possibly useful for debugging purposes) then you don't have to worry about syncing the load order with the original Morroblivion esm. This is the load order that I currently use:

Master 0=Morrowind.esm
Master 1=Tribunal.esm
Master 2=Bloodmoon.esm
Master 3=Siege at Firemoth.esp
Master 4=<<TR Data files to convert start here>>
Master 5=...
Archive 0=Morrowind.bsa
Archive 1=Tribunal.bsa
Archive 2=Bloodmoon.bsa
Archive 3=TR_Data.bsa

You probably don't need to include Siege at Firemoth.esp (an official Morrowind add-on), but I find it makes a nice marker for the end of the Morrowind base records and the start of the TR-specific records in the generated ESM file. Also helpful, are the .\OblivionReplace\*.ini files found with the ESP Converter. These files allow you to substitute an Oblivion record for the Morrowind record rather than converting with the ESP converter. Of note, is the statics.ini file which by default, specifies several replacements for the trees, terrain rocks and ice which will show up in multiple areas of the TR conversion. If you want the original TR versions, comment these lines out. Land texture substitutions are found in lands.ini.

2. Prepare Tamriel Rebuilt ESM/ESP files for conversion:
Currently, I am splitting up the records in the TR esm/esp files so that it does not overload the ESP Converter. If you see a message from the converter that is similar to "Too many ___!", then ALL of those resources (not just the ones that came after exceeding the maximum) will be left out of the conversion. To do this, I make a copy of the original TR data file and open it in Morrowind Enchanted Editor.

2.a Starting with TR_Data_export.esm/TR_Data_cut.esp (duplicate of TR_Data.esm):
- Open TR_Data_export.esm in the Morrowind Enchanted Editor.
- Check mark the the Books group (389 records). Then click the "Cut Marked" button to the right on the "Marked Entry Actions" toolbar. This moves all the records to the clipboard.
- Now click on the Clipboard tab at the bottom of the window. You should see the 398 book records here. Use File->SaveAs to save the clipboard as a file named "TR_Data_cut.esp". This filename should now appear as a new tab at the bottom of the screen.
- Go back to the TR_Data_export.esm tab and checkmark the following record groups: (1) Dialog, (2)Dialog Responses, (3) Enchantments, and (4) Regions. Click "Cut Marked". Then go to the "TR_Data_cut.esp" tab and select "Edit->Paste - Replace..." from the menu.
- Now go to "File->Change File Type" and change from "Master file" to "Plugin file". This will let you edit and save it in the Morrowind CS.
- Save both files and exit the editor.

2.b TR_Main_export.esm/TR_Main_cut.esp (duplicate of TR_Mainlaind.esm):
- Open TR_Main_export.esm in the Morrowind Enchanted Editor.
- Chekmark the Books group (291 records). Click "Cut Marked".
- Switch to the Clipboard tab and save as "TR_Main_cut.esp".
- Go back to the TR_Main_export.esm tab and checkmark: (1) Dialog, (2)Dialog Responses, (3) Enchantments, (4)Non Player Characters, and (5) Regions. Click "Cut Marked" and paste them into "TR_Data_cut.esp". This step takes a few minutes on my old Phenom X4 3Ghz.
- Now go to the ~File Header record group and select TES3. In the right window, find the subrecord with the Filename "TR_Data.esm" and change it to "TR_Data_export.esm".
- Change filetype to "Plugin file" by selecting "File->Change File Type".
- Save both files.

2.c Removing interior cells:
Now the first of several tedious parts: moving the interior cells to the TR_Main_cut.esp. Open the Cell record group. Now select the first subrecord. Let the right window load and then find the Cell grid coordinates. If it's two double digit numbers, then it's an exterior cell which we want to keep. If not, then it's an interior cell, so checkmark the record and press your keyboard down arrow key to move to the next cell. If it's an interior cell, just press spacebar and then the keyboard down arrow key. Repeat this process for the remaining cells. You may want to do this in small sets of 100 records. Now click "Cut Marked" and paste them to the TR_Main_cut. When done, you should have moved about ~890 interior cells.

2.d Updating the cell/region records:
Load the TR_Main_export.esm into the Morrowind Construction Set. Now save and exit. The CS will resolve and fix all the references to Regions which you deleted from the ESM. Those lands will now have no Region marker and show up in Oblivion as just "Morrowind" on the mini-map.

3. Run ESP Converter:
Modify your Morroblivion.ini configuration file from the ESP Converter with these changes:

Master 4=TR_Data_export.esm
Master 5=TR_Main_export.esm

You are now ready to run the ESP Converter to conver the first part of TR. You may get an error message about NIF Converter crashing on two NIF files, however, the ESP Converter itself should not crash. It should produce a Morrowind_ob.esm in your Oblivion output Data subdirectory. Now rename this file to something like TR_Main.esm and copy this file to your working Oblivion directory and load it in the Oblivion CS. Save and exit. This will fix any corrupted/invalid data that was produced by the ESP Converter.

4. Copy the converted NIFs/Textures:
Now that you have the TR_Main.esm copied over, let's copy the resource files. Check Data\Textures\morro\TR\* and Data\Meshes\morro\TR\* for the files from Tamriel Rebuilt. Copy those to the equivalent subdirectories in your working Oblivion installation. The other files in Data\Textures\morro\* and Data\Meshes\morro\* are converted from the base Morrowind dataset and will probably over-ride your Morroblivion BSAs if you copy them over. However, with that said, until you modify the TR_Main.esm to use Morrowind_ob.esm as it's master, you won't have access to the BSA's resources, which means that they'll show up as missing meshes and textures unless you copy these files over. Sort of a Catch-22, but I think it's probably best to hold off and deal with the missing meshes which would suddenly appear as the appropriate mesh when their references are appropriately linked to Morroblivion's Morrowind_ob.esm.

5. Test your conversion:
Now use Wrye Bash or whatever mod manager you like and add the converted TR_Main.esm to your mod list. Don't worry, it shouldn't over-ride anything in your Morroblivion setup (yet) because you haven't specified the real Morrowind_ob.esm as a master. It will create a separate duplicate Morrowind worldspace that exists alongside the regular Morroblivion version. Now start a new character (using an existing save game might work but I would not trust any save games created while this mod is loaded into the game). After choosing your race/name, open the console and type "coc firewatch00". If you're conversion is working, it should move you to the duplicate Morrowind worldspace where Firewatch exists. Try typing "player.setav speed 255" and "tcl" into the console and explore. I'll make another post about how to integrate this duplicate worldspace into the existing Morroblivion worldspace later.

You'll need to repeat similar steps to prepare the TR_Preview_export.esm that you used for TR_Main_export.esm. On my system, I convert the TR_Preview_export.esm separately because Oblivion CS has trouble loading the combined ESM without crashing.

To be continued...

PART 2:

Quick Summary:
1. Using WryeBash or similar: Convert TR_Main.esm to an esp (TR_Main.esp)
2. Add "Morrowind_ob.esm" as a master to TR_Main.esp
3. Using TES4Edit: Remove all records that over-ride the Morrowind_ob.esm (anything that does not start with "TR...") For Cell records: Apply Filter that flattens all sub-blocks and children, keep the ESP sorted by FormID, then delete from the start of the list all the way down to the last Firemoth record. For Worldspace records: flatten sub-blocks/children, open the TR_Main_export.esm in the Morrowind CS alongside your TES4Edit window, sort the Morrowind CS Cell View window by Grid. In TES4Edit: Now delete all the worldspace records from the TR_Main.esm that are not marked by an asterisk in the Morrowind CS.
4. Remove "Morrowind_ob.esm" from the TR_Main.esp master list
5. Renumber all records in TR_Main.esp so they do not conflict with any records in Morrowind_ob.esm
6. Add "Morrowind_ob.esm" back to TR_Main.esp as a master
7. Using TES4Edit, make sure that there are no conflicts with records from Morrowind_ob.esm. If there are, you need to renumber again using a different starting value.
8. Done

Note: once you add Morrowind_ob.esm as a master program to TR_Main.esp, do not use the Construction Set to open or save your converted ESP. There is an incompatibility that exists which will cause the CS to delete some cells after that action. Even if you remove Morrowind_ob.esm as a master, the CS will still delete some cells. If anyone can track down what exactly the issue is, please let me know.

Things to expect: Many steps take a very long time. I have a Phenom X4 overclocked to 3.8Ghz with 8gb of ram. It takes the Oblivion CS at least 10-20 minutes to open/save the converted ESM on my system. It takes TES4Edit at least 1 hour to renumber records.

Wow, what you managed to

Wow, what you managed to achieve here is very impressive. For years I thought that attempting to convert full TR was futile, but I'm glad to see I was wrong. Looking forward to the final result.

Also, Brainslasher, thanks for the info about converting dialogue - that's really helpful. Another mod I always wanted in Morroblivion is LGNPC.

I'm thinking of putting together a complete guide on mod conversion (not TR, but smaller mods, that don't require splitting them into parts).

A huge thanks to Brainslasher

A huge thanks to Brainslasher for his idea to strip the data from the base Morrowind ESMs. I am in the process of finalizing and testing a full conversion (except for dialog) of the TR dataset.... more to come very soon.

Well, lots of progress made but also lots of new issues to deal with: I was able to strip out the base Morrowind records causing overloads in the ESP Converter (NPCs, Books, Enchantments, Regions, Interiors, etc). In the process of doing so, I also realized that I could strip out all the worldspace information from the base Morrowind dataset so that the conversion only has Cell and Worldspace information from the converted Mod -- a huge time-saver. With these changes, I can convert TR_Mainlands.esm with very little modifications.

However, these changes to the base ESMs make the ESP Converter much more unstable, and the converted dataset is now much larger than it was previously (because I'm only leaving dialog out now). The ESP Converter appears to be hardcoded for certain things to exist in the base ESMs, and without them it'll crash. The wierdest thing I've found, is that you can remove all NPCs from all 3 base ESMs EXCEPT for Balynu Teran. Without that entry the converter crashes when trying to convert NPCs. Removing all Cells and Landscape data from the base ESMs appears possible, but it can cause instability in the ESP that I can't yet track down: sometimes the ESP Converter will crash when trying to "Parse Exterior Cells". I thought I was able to get by this issue by using "Cut Marked" instead of "Delete Marked" in the enchanted editor to remove Cells -- but now I can't reproduce that exact crash behavior anymore. The TR_Preview.esm has some additional peculiarities in that the ESP converter will now produce a conversion with no heightmaps/landscape data. I seem to be able to get around this problem by removing the Cell records from the TR_Preview which do not have any Region specified.

Once past the conversion stage, the integration stage is now trickier because there are so many more records to be integrated (not just landscape and statics). The renumbering procedure has been taking 3-4 hours now instead of the 1-2 hours. And it is harder for me to find a starting offset ID with a large enough space of unused IDs so that the output has no conflicts. If I use F10000 in TES4Edit, the last half of the ESM starts hitting IDs from dialog records. This morning, I thought of a new strategy -- to break up the converted data into separate ESPs and renumber them separately. The only catch there, is that TES4Edit or whatever program is used, must be able to update references across all the ESPs when it renumbers records in one ESP. I'll try to do more testing and get back to you. Right now, my computer is still trying to churn out another batch of renumbered records (on hour 3).

Well, it seems that,

Well, it seems that, eventually, we'll be able to overcome some of the obstacles related to overloaded records and ID conflicts that are in the way of a near-complete TR conversion to Morroblivion. However, there are some remaining unresolved issues...

1. Dialog Conversion: There are over 1100 Dialog topics and over 18000 lines of dialog in the TR dataset. I have not tested Brainslasher's dialog method yet, but I'm not sure if it's a feasible task to rename 1100 Dialog topics without some sort of script automation.

2. Mesh conversion bugs: Many of the converted NIFs have bad collision meshes. Also, some meshes, ex: trees, have their UV vertex orders reversed and so the leaves are ending up inside out.

3. Long-term Deal Breaker: The Oblivion CS will delete significant chunks of the cells/worldspace if you try to use open/save the converted ESM after it is linked to the Morrowind_ob.esm master. I can do some minor edits with TES4Edit, but I don't think anyone is going to want to do the kind of work to get the quests and dialogs working without access to the CS. If anyone is willing to reproduce my work and help work on a solution, I'd be very appreciative.

Currently, the issue regarding FormID conflicts and renumbering difficulties will probably corrupt your save games if you use them with this mod installed (it does for me). Once this can be resolved, maybe I would consider putting a mod package together that people can test. Until then, I think this will remain strictly DIY.

Not sure if I'm using an

Not sure if I'm using an older version of TES4Edit but when I select records whose FormIDs I want to renumber, and right click, I can select "Change FormID". This will let me select one of the loaded esp or esm files and then automatically chooses FormIDs without conflicting.

However I also wanted to share my techniques to make the converter not disregard certain armors, clothes, weapons, creatures and keys.

Creatures

This method won't convert custom creature meshes but it will convert the creature records and everything to do with it, like spawn placements, leveled lists, etc. If you ever converted a mod you might have noticed that some creatures do get converted, even mod added ones. Among them are mudcrabs and spider centurions. This is because the converter checks if a creature uses certain nif files and if it does it will convert it. So, to automatically convert creatures, change their nif file to "r/G_CenturionSpider.nif". All the converted creatures will obviously have Spider Centurion bodies and sound like them but changing a few base records is easier than to manually place hundreds of spawn points. Their name and stats won't be affected by this.

Keys

A neat feature of the converter is its ability to convert "misc object" Morrowind keys to Oblivion "key" objects and even attach them to doors. However it will only do this if the key's ID starts with "key_" . If it doesnt, you'll end up with a useless misc item. Unfortunately most mod creators use their own starting ID to easily track their items. So you'll have to manually change all the names of the mod added keys to start with "key_"

Clothes

The problem here isn't clothes per se but rather jewelry, like belts, rings and amulets not being converted. The converter will simply ignore those objects. However it converts shirts and pants just fine. So the solution is pretty easy. Make it think jewelry is actually clothing. To do this change their nif file to a clothing one and set up the Biped Object and Male and Female clothing tabs the same way clothes using this file are. All you have to do with the resulting converted piece of jewelry is change the nif file in the Oblivion CS, saving you the trouble of having to hand create and place hundreds of small rings and amulets.

Armor

The same applies here, but for shields. Just set them up like they're a cuirass in the CS and change them back to a shield in the Oblivion CS. You can do the same kind of thing to convert bows and crossbows to easily replace them with something else when they're converted.

Also, sometimes the converter crashes or stops when it reaches spells. This is because it can't handle spell effects that don't exist in Oblivion, like levitation or script based spells. Simply remove those spells.

Maybe I missed something but for everything the converter ignores, there's a way to circumvent it. In my experience the biggest problem is the data limit. Hope this helps you.

Edit: Check if the cells that disappear already exist in the Morroblivion.esm but with different FormIDs. I had the same problem once. You'll have to find the correct FormID and change it. Also I really really hope (and assume) that you're using the CS Extender, it can do and handle some things the Vanilla one can't.

Brainslasher wrote:

Brainslasher
Not sure if I'm using an older version of TES4Edit but when I select records whose FormIDs I want to renumber, and right click, I can select "Change FormID". This will let me select one of the loaded esp or esm files and then automatically chooses FormIDs without conflicting.

Yes! That still works. Unfortunately, I don't know how to select 1,000 records or an entire record group and do a batch "Change FormID". The converted TR_Mainland.esm from TR 16.03 has 483,123 records -- that's after I've removed all the records from the base Morrowind dataset. The TR_Preview.esm has roughly an equivalent number. TES4Edit 3.1.2 has a handy "Renumber FormIDs From..." Unfortunately, this operation renumbers FormIDs for the entire ESM/ESP and it only seems to work after I've removed any Masters other than Oblivion.esm. Which means I have to unlink my masters (and thus my ability to check for conflicts), do the renumber operation which takes roughly 4-5 hours, relink to the master and then analyze to see if there are any FormID conflicts -- and then repeat the whole ordeal again when I do find conflicts.

Needless to say, this limits my ability to be very productive. As in my above post, I'm trying to figure out a strategy of splitting up the ESM and then renumbering in smaller batches -- the major issue is whether I can update references to the renumbered records and thus maintain integrity across multiple ESMs. If anyone has thoughts on a better way of doing this, it would really speed progress.

Regarding, the missing cells in the CS: I did initially have some FormID conflicts and was able to fix them with the renumbering operation above. But even after I correct them, there are some cells that still disappear. I thought that maybe it was due to some data corruption with the landscape data or the placed objects, but those cells load in and display fine PRIOR to linking with a master. But once linked, those cells are not displayed by the CS and after I save back out, TES4Edit verifies that they have been removed from the ESM. Even when I've tried linking to a master, then unlinking the master, verifying the cells still exist in TES4Edit and load the ESM into the CS, those cells still disappear. It's as if linking with the master permanently changes some aspect of the ESM which makes the CS incompatible with whatever is different about those cells. I'm hoping the new conversion technique with stripping the base Morrowind ESMs will solve whatever funkiness is going on, but haven't gotten far enough to test yet.

And, yes, I am using the CS Extender. The extra colorizing and sorting of edited/over-rided records really helps! The renumbering function it has turns out to be rather limited in scope though (you can't specify an offset at which to start the renumbering).

Thanks, that's very useful

Thanks, that's very useful info. I'd also like to add to what Brainslasher said:

Magic Items (aka potions/enchantments/spells)

Converter will skip magic items with effects that don't have an Oblivion equivalent (levitation, sanctuary, mark/recall etc.). To circumvent this use Morrowind CS to switch problematic effect to something that can be converted over (e.g. make potion of levitation into potion of shield with same base stats). When conversion is over simply use Oblivion CS to switch magic effect to something suitable.

Another useful note is that if you're converting esm file you don't necessary have to make the above changes directly into it, but instead can create a dependant esp (call it "conversion helper.esp" or something) and include it in ESPConverter's ini as an additional mod. Since during conversion everything is merged together, the result would be the same.

Unfortunately, I don't know

Unfortunately, I don't know how to select 1,000 records or an entire record group and do a batch "Change FormID".

Um, hold "shift"?

Also if you click on + to expand record group with subgroups (Cell, Dialogue, Worldspace) while holding Alt, it will expand it with all subgroups.

Regarding, the missing cells in the CS: I did initially have some FormID conflicts and was able to fix them with the renumbering operation above. But even after I correct them, there are some cells that still disappear.

I think Brainslasher was talking not about FormID conflict, but a conflict by cell coordinates - like, if there already is a cell with coordinates "60, 75" and certain FormID in Morrowind_ob.esm and your TR.esm has a cell with the same coordinates, but different FormID it gets discarded.

AWESOME, it works! I think I

AWESOME, it works! I think I was right-clicking on the Record Groups and not actual records... THANK YOU!

Some more ESP Converter

Some more ESP Converter tricks:

1. If you want to offset the generated FormIDs in a specific Record Group by a specific number, make a Filler.esm file to be loaded prior to Morrowind.esm or whatever mod you want to offset the numbering. For example, in order to sync up the Static FormIDs between Morroblivion and my TR conversion, I create 5 dummy record entries and load this prior to Morrowind.esm. For the Door records to sync up, I need to create one dummy record, and also pull out the ex_redoran_hut_01_a record from the morrowind.esm and put it in the filler.esm file. After that, my FormIDs sync up and all the references to statics inside the TR mod will work when linked to Morroblivion with little additional fuss. One side effect is that the ESM produced by the converter will now by Filler_ob.esm instead of Morrowind_ob.esm.

2. As a corollary to #1, you can make another Filler.esm to be loaded between ESM/ESPs if there are gaps in number you'd like to sink up.

3. You can place the esm/esp that you've made specifically for ESP Converter in a subdirectory like "Data Files\for_export" and then add "for_export\" to your esm's filename in the Converter's Morroblivion.ini. You will also need to add an equivalent subdirectory in your Oblivion directory, because ESP Converter won't automatically make it for you. I put the Filler.esm from #1 and #2 in addition to my custom Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon ESMs in my "for_export" subdirectory.

Yes, qwerty explained what I

Yes, qwerty explained what I meant. There's a whole bunch of empty cells in the Morroblivion esm that aren't in the original converted file. They will always have different FormIDs from what the converter assigns them. For me it's easiest to work with worldspaces in Tes4Edit to apply a filter with "flatten blocks/sublocks" ticked and then order them by name. Makes it a lot easier to find the cell you need and switch back and forth.

FYI, I've been waiting for

FYI, I've been waiting for permission to distribute a TR conversion which is in discussion here: http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/forum/conversion-tamriel-rebuilt-1603-morroblivion.

I've made progress on streamlining the conversion steps - it still takes a while to process, but the tedious parts are reduced. I still haven't figured out a solution for the disappearing cells in the CS but at least they work correctly in-game (as long as I don't use the CS). I'll hopefully have updated directions ready to post tomorrow.

Good News: I've found the

Good News: I've found the source of the disappearing cells in the CS. I don't know why it wasn't immediately obvious, but the CS differs from how the Oblivion game loads exterior cell data. The game is fine with allowing cell records to over-ride existing records that occupy the same grid coordinates even if their formIDs don't match. However, the CS will throw out any new cell record which tries to over-ride an existing cell using the same grid coordinate but a new FormID.

Unfortunately, this adds yet another step of tedious work: cross-referencing all the overlapping cells of master and plugin and resetting the plugin record to have the same formID as the master record. I think there may be about 100-200 cells in Morrowind game that overlap which translates to 400-800 cell records in the converted output to edit.

Update: I'm averaging about 5-6 cells per minute which would only take me a little over 2 hours if my estimates are right...

I'm looking into the TES4Edit

I'm looking into the TES4Edit's scripting system to see if it can automate all the tedious processes of matching gird coordinates and FormIDs. If it works, I'll try to write another script to match up cells with the same EditorID names and change their formIDs to match as well.

I found an program called

I found an program called Merge Plugin on nexus http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69905/?tab=2&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D69905&pUp=1 which can merge plugins and renumber IDs of any conflicts. I don't know if it'll work with TR's case of having some over-rides and some conflicts. Investigating as we speak...

Unfortunately, I think it can either over-ride or renumber but not both in a single merge. What it is missing, I think, is the ability to compare sub-records to identify which records are over-rides and which ones are just conflicts. So back to making my own TES4Edit script...

I'm looking into the TES4Edit

I'm looking into the TES4Edit's scripting system to see if it can automate all the tedious processes of matching gird coordinates and FormIDs.

You can try contacting zilav about TESEdit scripts if you need help.

Update: my first test

Update: my first test/analysis script seems to be working and found 1650 cells in the converted TR_Mainland.esp which overlap with existing cells from Morrowind_ob.esm. So looks like deciding to automate the process was the right decision. One interesting behavior I see is that the performance is pretty good as long as there is no filter applied, otherwise there is an extremely long pause which I assume is TES4Edit re-applying the previous filter.

If all goes well, eventually I hope to post a script which will automate all the steps of preparing the converted ESM to be installed as a plugin.

I finished my automated

I finished my automated script which now works on the ESP Converter output (after open/saving it with TES4 CS) to synchronize all records. It will do 500,000 records in about 5 minutes. I posted the script at https://tesrenewal.com/forums/morroblivion-development/morroblivion-mod-synchronization-script. I will make another post with an updated guide on how to make the Tamriel Rebuilt mod for Morroblivion. Total estimated time to convert the mod is no longer measured in hours and days but in minutes!

Edit: The new tutorial is posted here (https://tesrenewal.com/forums/morroblivion-development/tutorial-converting-tamriel-rebuilt-to-morroblivion). I timed each step on my Phenom X4 3Ghz and it takes about 111-125 minutes total. It would really go a long way towards producing a distributable ESM/ESP file if a few people can follow these instructions and let me know if it works for them. I will wait for feedback/confirmation that it works before requesting official permission to distribute at a Tamriel Rebuilt development meeting. NOTE: from prior discussion on the TR forums, it appears unlikely that a distributable BSA containing converted meshes/textures will ever be possible due to copyright issues. So we'll probably have to rely on people following the automated conversion process to produce their own converted meshes/textures.