Level Design - Skywind #1

This is a big call out for all those that have any Level Design experience. Anybody that has played around with the landscapes, town or interiors in the Creation Kit is going to be of much help.

Our problem is that we have an environment that was created with an automated converter tool. Although it has set up the game world with the original models, the translation has not faired well with both the land texture tiling and also the general look of the sparse object placements. A huge percentage of the Morrowind world is the height map with little in the way to break it up.

Please download the latest release 0.6.0 that has dirt-cliffs, mountains and rocks taken from Skyrim but altered with appropriate textures for every given area (region).

This will be the base models in which all landscape level design will be done from.
I have also added ztrees rock resources, which has 13 new rocks.

You will be able to find all these new models under "static\morrowind\landscape\dirtcliffs", "static\morrowind\landscape\mountains" and "static\morrowind\landscape\rocks". Each is prefixed according to area; 0AI, 0AL, 0AC, 0BC, 0GL, 0RM, 0WG.

The spreadsheet below is used to record what cells are being edited and if a person wants to book a number of cells so that they can work on them. These are the grayed cells. Light grayed cells are blanket changed cells; meaning they are open to further editing. Darker grey cells are areas that are being specifically edited by a person or team. Please post on this thread which area you are likely to work on.

CLAIMS ON AREAS WORKED ON - BE IN QUICK!!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alvwmz6hbHGPdGZib2ZTLXh1S195WWRSaE1XZUtfTGc#gid=0

Also specify if you are going to do blanket type changes, that are open for other people to come and add more detail to, or you would rather just do the entire start to finish of level design. For example somebody might do lots of rocks changes to areas, but leave flora, clutter, animals open for somebody else add.

So far the team for Level Design includes:

Anthelius : selected cells in Bitter Coast/Ascadian Isles and Grazelands/Red Mountain

Eloth : Balmora, (shulk egg mine and up to caldera), moving up the southern end of West Gash

Mireneye : Sadrith Mora, Wolverine Hall (not been present for a while)

SqallyDaBeanz : Moglar Amur

Sheo : Khuul

JDT001 : Gnisis

Happychappy: Seyda Neen to Vivec

Brent333: Southeastern Azura Coast

Ravanna : Environment Artist and Moddler

Veltoss : Pelegraid (not been present for a while)

Because of the vast vista differences of Morrowind it would be better to talk about improvements also for regions:
Ascadian Isles — A fertile agricultural region of islands and peninsulas in southernmost Vvardenfell.
Ashlands — A forsaken ash desert in the areas surrounding Red Mountain.
Azura's Coast — A mostly uninhabited region of rocky islands and peninsulas on Vvardenfell's eastern coast.
Bitter Coast — A swampy and poor region along Vvardenfell's west coast.
Grazelands — The pastures in northeastern Vvardenfell.
Molag Amur — A region of volcanic rock and lava pools in the southeastern interior of Vvardenfell.
Red Mountain — The volcanic mountain dominating central Vvardenfell which is encircled by the Ghostfence.
Sheogorad — A wild region of islands and peninsulas surrounding Sheogorad Island off Vvardenfell's northern coast.
West Gash — A rocky, highland region in western Vvardenfell that is rich in minerals.

Last edited by grumpycat on 15 Mar 2014 - 04:03.

If think we also need land

If think we also need land textures like this for skywind:

[External image]

Now the rocky land textures are the same as the rock meshes, In vanilla skyrim it blends much better.

Molag Amur Region

Hey guys! I've been working on the Molag Amur region, but there's still a lot to improve on. You guys should check it out and message me or post here any feedback, it'd be appreciated. Also, be sure to see it with and without the ash storm weather.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByQVbq7PZPW5S0RTOU1VbEF6bjQ/edit?usp=drive_web

cow wlrdmorrowind 18, -9 to view the area I'm working on.

Thanks!

I will have a looksie

I will have a looksie tomorrow ^^

Hey guys! I've been working

Hey guys! I've been working on the Molag Amur region, but there's still a lot to improve on.

Wow the transformation is incredible! You've really outdone yourself. It may be too interesting now - lol.

Having pockets of geothermal activity is certainly something interesting, new and welcome.

I honestly spent an hour looking at it, there is a lot to like :) I understand that some of the stuff is experimental, so there was the occasional place that is a bit of a mixture of too many different elements. But this stuff can be fine tuned later. Mainly stuff at ground level. But for an alpha and experimentation absolutely nailed it with the main concept.

Its scary how much work needs to be done, Mogar Amur, Red Mountain and Ashlands are basically all the same. I think you're going to need help eventually. But just keep doing the broad changes, and others can help with clipping problems and possible fine tuning.

Don't forget there are also

Don't forget there are also great basalt cliffs from dragonborn to use (it would make more sense in molag amur than in solstheim).

Wouldn't it be cool...

Wouldn't it be cool if we could make sections of landscape that move as you walk close to it or just pepetually move about on it's own? Like cracks that form and then let go and also "landscape" that float about on lava-ish.

I'm trying to paint a picture here but I feel I'm doing an awful job.. I hope you get what I mean!

Fantastic work Squally! very

Fantastic work Squally! very faithful to the original and yeah, almost to perfect!

Molar Amur Update

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I am continuing to add detail, fix clipping, and smooth out some rough spots. Any more feedback of design, meshes, and other ideas are very welcome. Be sure to check out the screenshots in the gallery that I am uploading as well!

On a side note to editors,

On a side note to editors, I've noticed that a lot of Bethesda original work in the Construction Set has been to upscale a lot of the rock assets to make the mountainous areas. The results are that the quality is not so great.

I guess while we are editing the world that any of the original objects can be replaced. This is not so much for the individual rocks the stick out by themselves, there are thousands of those :-P Again this is for when you can tell that they have tried to use a rock as the side of a mountain ridge or cliff to make the surface.

Sounds wise!

Additionally when I was walking around I found the the or "a" flag waving in the wind on one of the mountain tops. That was a really, really cool moment, seeing red mountain rise in the distance of that flag.

I felt the sense of exploration that I had when I first visited Morrowind so many years ago. Thanks for evoking that feeling!

hmm some of the meshes look

hmm some of the meshes look slightly stretched

Land textures and Grass

Land Textures and Grass

I've been experimenting with grasses and specifically using small rocks as type of grass layer for land textures.

Original Morrowind :)

[External image]

Skywind currently

[External image]

Using background dirt texture and using grass layers and grass rock layer. I've gone over board with the rocks, but i wanted to make sure it showed up on the screen shots as these things are hard to see unless you are in game.

[External image]

The idea is that you can imagine any type of small model, not just reserved for grass and rocks. With a bit more experimentation we should be able to get some nice variations of layers to help with breaking up our land texture tiling :)

Hmm, i think stones on rock

Hmm, i think stones on rock layer must be smaller for ground) but anyway looks great)

For level designers,

For level designers, currently; Veltoss, Eloth, Mireneye, SquallyDaBeanz and Anthelius, I've been thinking about how to make it easier to know what things are supposed to be as far as land textures and what they represent.

Anything that is a rock texture currently actually needs to be Rock models instead. Anthelius has done an amazing job for a number of places and SquallyDaBeanz has been hard at work making Mogar Amur the rocky area it should be. I'd estimate that 70% of Morrowinds land mass is some kind of rock surface. Theres is a lot to be done.

I also pointed out that not all the textures are immediately obvious what they should be and only after loading up the TES3 game that you can instantly tell whether it is dirt, rocks, grass, or a mix. I personally after a full day, feel like I know if something is supposed to be a rock or not by looking at the texture, but I have been caught out a few times with the mixed stuff.

So I've actually been thinking about a paint by numbers system, where we have a developers set of textures which actually have written what it is. There will be some guide lines on what to do for each type. Looks ugly, but no ambiguity.

This means that at the moment I don't want level designer to work on the actual land textures, and mainly for the reason above and also below.

If you don't know already you can only have a maximum of 6 land textures per 1 cell quad. I'm not actually completely sure how that translates, I read something like 16x16 cells to a quad. But if somebody could enlighten me, much appreciated.

Once we have our rocks in, its entirely possible that we will get at least 1 or maybe even 2 textures freed up per quad, because there is no exposed height map for the previous rock surfaces. This will be invaluable to providing another texture to either fix our limit problem for some quads, and also in other cases the additional texture to break the tiling with slightly alternative stuff.

At the moment...

At the moment, to be able to progress my work I will be editing texture placement just a bit and once we get a base to work from I will update my work according to that.

I think, the way I work is a lot like a painter and I have to get a sense of completion before I can move on to a new part.

Waiting for said base would get in the way. And I personally don't find a problem with updating later.

If you are terribly against this approach I will still abide by the team decision and stop editing texture placement.

This picture (ignoring the

This picture (ignoring the sheep) has very clumpy looking grass. There may also be a small bit of erosion underneath the grass, it's hard to tell if it's just clumpy or eroded a bit. I think an object similar to this would be great to add clumpy looking areas in grassy areas, adding variety while still keeping it mostly grassy.

This picture is a perfect example of the types of objects that would be nice for flatter areas, though the rocks aren't necessary as part of the object (we can add rocks separately). The main thing is having grass objects like this to break up the dull rolling grassy hills while not adding tons of rocks, trees, and erosion just to make it look more detailed.

This picture is a good example of dirt erosion on a grassy area and might be useful as 'concept art'. Something I never much liked about Skyrim dirt cliffs is that they almost all have rounded edges and dig back a bit, showing tons of roots. I'd personally like to see some erosion objects that look more like dirt erosion and don't have a bunch of roots, especially for rolling grassy hills.

Other than those, I couldn't find much of use, but maybe I just suck with google images. As far as clutter goes, I would like to request some variants of Barrels (at least one more type, or retexture even).

Also I was thinking it'd be amazing if there were a placeable grass object so that we can add grass to the top of dirt cliffs. As it is now, any kind of dirt cliffs or erosion we have will probably have flat tops and the only way to make it more natural is to add a bunch of plants and rocks. It'd be nice to just be able to add some grass as well.

PS: Originally sent to Happychappy, so there may be a part/parts written as if to a specific person and not to a thread.

In response to the rock

In response to the rock grass, I think it's definitely needed. It really helps blend rocky and grass areas in Skyrim and breaks up the tiles, as well as just feeling more real. However, I think we need at least one or two textures that have just rock and no grass, as there are plenty of areas that will probably look best as just loose rock, without grass growing through it. But on a small hilltop like that, I think grass growing along with the rock looks great.

Not happy :/

I can't for my life get this to look like I want.. Will have to make a proper uvmap as well right now there's a placeholder.

Nice way to ease into modelling again.

I think, the way I work is a

I think, the way I work is a lot like a painter and I have to get a sense of completion before I can move on to a new part.

A little know fact is that Vince Van Gough "Starry Night" was in fact a paint by numbers that his good friend Paul Gauguin whipped up for him for a birthday present.

I understand, carry on with what ever your doing, but I wanted to make it clear that land textures will probably change and with various techniques plus a large amount of rock replacements that it will change dramatically from what you are working on. I just want to make sure that you don't waste extra time on stuff that might change.

Thanks for posting that

Thanks for posting that Veltoss. Certainly we could do with some dirt and grass erosion, more like Ravanna embankment but smaller and more modular to fit in with the small hills. The below picture is at 90 degree drop off and most of ours will be more like 30-45 degrees.

[External image]

Also I was thinking it'd be amazing if there were a placeable grass object so that we can add grass to the top of dirt cliffs.

We need to pick a number of grass variations for various areas. Its not so important that we choose anything at the moment, we can experiment with various modders resources for ideas. But if we can get at least placeholder grass models so that you can drag and drop them into the world then great idea. I'll look at doing 2 models per region. They will be placeholder as I say so don't worry about the actually style of the model, just to know that its added to the world.

[External image]

Would be easy enough to get a couple of meshes that looked like above to break up the grassy hills a bit more. Just small and rounder to fit with our slopes. I might actually give it a go myself!

vurt gave his authorization

vurt gave his authorization about using his work, and he made plenty of grass models for morrowind (the problem is that after conversion they have the same sliding problem than the skyblivion grass, but we can still use his ressources from skyrim flora overhall if we can't find a way to fix it).

But if you want to add placeable grass it's very simple, just create a new static and choose a grass mesh in landscape/grass.

Great to see the progress

Great to see the progress here so far!

As I posted on Supremes wall 2 months ago, ive been unavailible due to both a move and loss of internet connection. Morroblivion.com doesn't like phones connecting to forums it seems, capcha never worked on my android phone.

Might do a little in the background and release it if i've seen no one else do it by the time i'm done. But since skyblivions release, those jerall mountains look unusually appealing :-p

Best wishes and great progress! -Greg

I want to reinforce that I'm

I want to reinforce that I'm very much still here and keeping an eye on the project!

I just have not had time to work on it lately. Lots of things going on.

Hope everyone is doing fine! (Sorry if this is only vaugly related to the thread).

Trust me it makes a

Trust me it makes a difference if people just let us know if you are still wanting to help. It just as fine if people leave a message saying that they can't work on it anymore or are taking a break. It just when we hear nothing that it becomes a pain.

Just made some progress on

Just made some progress on Sadrith Mora. I might upload a hidden video to my gaming channel later tonight =)

Aaaw, come on! Please make

Aaaw, come on! Please make it public!

For various reasons I can't

For various reasons I can't ^^ people on these forums will be able to see tho.

Landscapes, probably.

Hello. I'm new to forums. Never joined a forum before, so I'll get straight to point.

How's this?

I have more, should anyone want to see it.

Attachments

Thermocrius that looks good.

Thermocrius that looks good. We will need get you an area to work on. If you have played Morrowind before then you might have a place that you want to do. There is a spreadsheet of claims at the beginning of this thread, but I can talk to you through PM or on chat to get you sorted.

Eloth has convinced me to get

Eloth has convinced me to get to work. I would like to start work on some of the mines. Perhaps the glass mines. I'll start with Dissapla mine, and then work my way through the others if they are unclaimed.

Hi mycorn,I am not sure if

Hi mycorn,I am not sure if the spreadsheet is up to date,but happychappy might know more.

Hey guys, it's been really

Hey guys, it's been really quiet in this section of Skywind development. Currently, I have no idea who else is working on level design and I'd love to see some updates. Screen shots or even your own thread on the area your working on would be awesome to see! I really want to see your guys work!

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[External image]

Well good call on its been

Well good call on its been quiet with landscape level design, because it has :(

Eloth has done some work around Balmora to Caledera. Tan has done a bit around Seyda Neen. Shoe around Khuul and another user around Gnisis.

But we don't have anybody really working large sections of the map at the moment. Still need lots of people to step up and do this. It really is an amazing opportunity to have some fun and put your mark onto this project in a very visual way. And there are lots of opportunities for creativity and ideas, as can be seen in SquallyDaBeanz Mogar Amur thread.

I'll re-iterate that we have lots assets to fill up the world and are adding to that all the time. Think 10 years of Elder Scroll models and textures that we have converted for this project. If you can think of something that you want to place into the world, chances are we have it :) You'll need to PM if you want to start working with these extra assets, it a large download size, so we don't want to make it downloadable by the public yet.

the distant LOD looks so much

the distant LOD looks so much better than mine, has that one been released yet? mine fades out to brown and not blue...

@eloth That looks awesome!

@eloth That looks awesome! Love your work on morroblivion. Keep up the good work!

I've already done the seyda

I've already done the seyda neen region, make sure there are no conflicts (at least for rocks).

anthelius: I have merged your

anthelius:

I have merged your plugin to the master, only sheer luck made it so that we didnt conflict, you stopped exactly where i began hehe, without me knowing what you had done :)