Jump to content

DOWNLOAD MODS

Are you looking for something shiny for your load order? We have many exclusive mods and resources you won't find anywhere else. Start your search now...

LEARN MODDING

Ready to try your hand at making your own mod creations? Visit the Enclave, the original ES/FO modding school, and learn the tricks of the trade from veteran modders...

JOIN THE ALLIANCE

Membership is free and registering unlocks image galleries, project hosting, live chat, unlimited downloads, & more...

Worldbuilding: Lesson #2


DarkRider
 Share

Recommended Posts

 

 

Worldbuilding Lesson #2: Creating the Interior Worldspace

 

Worldbuilding101.png

 

 

 

Part I: The Child World

 

Welcome back student!

 

If you haven't yet completed Lesson #1, you're going to want to step back and head there now. It's important for you to do these classes in order otherwise you may miss vital information. If you have completed your first class assignments you are ready to move ahead into the creation of child worldspaces, so let's get started! :)

 

To begin, look to your main toolbar and click World>World Spaces

 

Image16.jpg

 

This will open the worldspace creation screen. The next image will show you all the primary parts of this screen as they relate to this lesson. We will discuss more of the features on this screen in Section 102.

 

Image17.jpg

 

Now we are ready to create our child worldspace. In the Editor ID list, right click> New and type the EDITOR ID for our child world: aaDRTutorialWorld and click OK to create it. Click on the new world in the Editor ID List to fill out the following info:

 

 

  • Name: This is the name of our City, you may name it whatever you like.
  • Parent Worldspace: In the drop down list choose Tamriel
  • Music: Choose Public
  • Uncheck the Flag 'No LOD Water'
  • Check the Flag 'Small World'

 

 

When that's done, click OK to set the data for our child world. Then SAVE!

 

Head to the Cell View window, it's time to leave Tamriel behind for a few minutes. In the World Space drop down list, look for our tutorial world. When you load the new world you will see only a single cell 0,0 which is the central cell for all worlds. Our world does contain all the cells that Tamriel contains, since Tamriel is the parent to our world. Remember the cell coordinates of our facade city? We need to get there in our child world too.

 

Image18.jpg

 

Double click on the only cell in our cell view window list to load it in the render window; once loaded the rest of the cells in our child world should appear in the list. Like before, click the location header to order the cells by their coordinates and scroll through to find -2,-2.

 

When the cell loads you will see what looks a lot like the facade we made in Tamriel! Rename this cell:

 

 

 

aaDRChildWorldInt01

 

 

Then name the other three cells to match our 4 cell grid in Tamriel:

 

Now you need to claim 3 more adjoining cells so we have a 4 cell grid.

 

  • -2, -1 becomes aaDRChildWorldInt02
  • -1, -2 becomes aaDRChildWorldInt03
  • -1, -1 becomes aaDRChildWorldInt04

 

 

Image19.jpg

 

Only trouble is, the cells in this child world are empty!

Now that the cell in our child space claimed, lets go back to Tamriel to our city facade. When the cells are loaded, select all the city walls, towers, and gates. When they are all selected, press ctrl+C to copy the objects, then head back to our child world and load our named cell there.

When the child world cell is loaded, press ctrl+v to paste the things you copied and move them into place using the shadows as a guideline.

 

Image20.jpg

 

:smarty:Smarty Says: Did you press ctrl+v and nothing pasted into the render window? Are you sure? Look in the list pane (right hand pane) of the cell view window. If list pane is empty, you may not have copied or pasted properly. If it's full, your objects are pasted above the camera! Shift your view up to find them and use the Z key to lower them!

 

Now that we have walls in place, we need to make another trip back to Tamriel. This time, our objective is to collect trees, rocks, houses, etc that are inside, or just outside the walls (excluding the stables). Go to our city facade and draw a selection rectangle around the city interior. Holding ctrl and clicking on an object and select or deselect anything you want to add or remove from your group of selected statics. Make sure you get everything that's inside the walls, even the stones for the river if you made that part of your interior.

 

Then like with the walls, once everything is selected, press ctrl+c to copy the selected objects, go to the child world and press ctrl+v to paste the group into the cell. Use the shadows, road, and walls to guide the positioning of this group.

 

Image21.jpg

 

Once you have everything in place, we need to adjust the water height in our two cells that have water.

 

In the cell view window, right click on aaDRChildWorldInt03 and choose Edit. When the cell edit screen opens, change the water height under 'Has Water' from 0.00 to 3000.00 and click Apply.

 

In the Editor ID list on the left, click on aaDRChildWorldInt04 to edit that cell. Change the water height from 0.00 to 3500.00 and click Apply.

 

Special Note: If (like in the example) you made an exit gate for the river to pass through you need to alter the water height for one more cell. In the list find Wilderness -1,-3 and edit it's water height from 0.00 to 3000.00 and click Apply. This is because players will be able to look out that water gate and we want them to see water there not empty space. You may want to copy/paste some rocks and trees for that cell too to complete the effect. If you have to do this, you should go ahead and rename cell -1,-3 to aaDRChildWorldInt05.

 

Once all three cells have water, close the cell edit screen and SAVE!

 

Part II: Defining the Interior

 

Now that we have made our child world and successfully transferred our static facade to the new world, it's time to better define the city interior. This is what players will see and interact with when they visit your new city, so you want to take care to make it look good and to give it all the personality a city should have.

 

To start, we need to replace the LOD houses with real houses from the Cheydinhal architecture set.

 

Before:

Image22.jpg

 

After:

Image23.jpg

 

As you replace each house, take the landscaping tool and adjust the landscape. Lower it in places where it climbs too high on the house model. Raise it if it sites too low on the house foundation. Once the landscape is right, add shadows around the foundation edge of the house. Do this for all the houses in the city.

 

When the houses are all replaced, it's time to focus on the chapel. Just like with the houses, adjust the landscape and add shadows around the chapel. Then using StoneWall01, StoneWallGate02 and a StoneWallPost create a small graveyard beside the chapel and add some gravestones (ICTomestone01 etc). Make sure you leave space between stones for coffins to be buried.

 

Image24.jpg

 

When you're finished you should have something that looks like this:

 

Image25.jpg

 

Once your cemetery is finished, continue adjusting the landscape around town to make sure it has a proper layout. Check for floating rocks and plants from the move, erase any shadows that remain where you deleted things, and paint shadows under anything you adjusted or changed.

 

Part III: City Standards

 

There are certain features that set cities apart from towns in vanilla Oblivion. One is the child worldspace itself, but in addition to that cities also have sidewalks, streetlamps, and more to create a living world in a small space. In this section we're going to explore adding these features and how things work.

 

Sidewalks:

 

In cities, sidewalks are used to border streets and give people a safe place to walk. They also lead to houses and should interconnect houses when possible. Sidewalks may seem optional, but in an urban setting, you need sidewalk grates to filter water away to the sewers for sanitation and to keep people safe from the muck and mire that collects in the streets!

 

To start we're going to turn on snap to grid and drag SidewalkEnder01 into the Render window followed by Sidewalk01. When you first drop the pieces in it will snap to grid. You want to move them together and build your line of sidewalk on grid low to the ground, but don't twist pieces off grid. If you have to turn a piece, double click on it and set the Z rotation to the proper angle (-90, 90, 180, 0, etc) Once you have a line of sidewalk, you can move the group into place along your road.

 

Repeat this process any where you have groupings of houses, or if you are adventurous you can add a corner to your group of sidewalks and connect groups of houses with one long sidewalk. Use SidewalkRamp01 if the landscape forces the sidewalk up or down hill. If you have a single house standing alone, you can either build a small walk, or skip it, either way would be acceptable.

 

Image26.jpg

 

Once you have the sidewalks in place you may need to tweak your houses and road so that everything look smooth and finished. Once you've done that find a couple places where your sidewalk is deep and do a search/replace on one of the Sidewalk01 pieces and replace it with Sidewalk02 which has a sewer grate.

 

:smarty:Smarty Says: By using Search/Replace you can swap in a similar piece without having to adjust it, even if you rotated your set off grid!

 

Once you have your sidewalk sewer added, you need to drag in a SidewalkGrate01

 

Image27.jpg

 

The SidewalkGrate01 should be positioned inside the bars of the sidewalk piece so that it makes a deep well for water to drain away into. Remember for realism sake the sewer grates should be at the bottom of slopes where water collects not at the top!

 

Image28.jpg

 

Streetlights

 

With sidewalks in place it's time to shed some illumination on the scene so we can make our way through the city (even a Mini City) at night without a torch. Cities generally use two types of outdoor lamps found under STATICS. IronOutdoorLampOFF which goes on castle or city gates and IronOutdoorLampPostOFF which goes around the town, usually on the sidewalks or beside them. You do not need to shed light in every shadow of the city; instead stick to street corners and shop fronts.

 

As you can see our light posts are empty, they don't give light yet but we're gonna fix that. Go to Light and find:

 

 

 

citystreetlight256

 

 

This particular light object has a streetlight script on it that turns it on at night and off during the day. Drag this into the render window and position it just below the lamp part of your post. Double click on the light to open its reference edit box and check the 'Persistent Reference' flag, then OK to close the box. This flag will make this one bulb the parent reference for all of our city streetlights.

 

Now under light, find CommonLIghtOrange256 and add one of these below the lamp part of all your other posts. We have light but now we need a cause for the light, so under statics look for FlameNode1. Add one of these to every lamp on every post.

Okay, now on every post we should have a flame and a light object. Remember our persistent streetlight object? It's time to finish up what we started. Double click on one of the other light objects to open its reference box and click on the Enable Parent Tab.

 

When you set and enable parent for an object that object become the child of that parent and whatever happens to the parent will happen to the child too. In this case, our parent (streetlight bulb) has a script on it that turns it on and off and so our child object (common light bulb) will turn on and off too.

 

Image29.jpg

 

In the Cell drop down box select the cell where you placed the streetlight bulb. Then in the Reference slot, you should find our streetlight parent, select it. Then click OK to close the edit box. Repeat this linking for every common bulb and every flame node in the city.

 

You can use one parent with one script to enable and/or disable many objects using only one script. The more scripts you have running in one area the more fps can be affected, so this way you have one script running but you get the effect of many lights going on and off.

 

Generic Clutter

 

Now it's time to add some generic clutter around the city. Crates, Barrels, and Chests are great for this as they are big, and you can create fuller groups without killing frame rates with crazy clutter numbers. Use more static clutter with a couple bits of misc clutter (tools, pots, etc) thrown in for character. When placing clutter use the S key to scale barrels and crates to create variety. Use rotation to make clutter look more disorganized.

 

Image30.jpg

 

Another good way to clutter a city is by using statues and gardens, but go easy on plant duplication, you want to remain mindful of fps especially when cluttering a full size city. Also utilize rotation and scaling with plants so you don't have perfect duplicated rows. Stagger plants to make them appear natural.

 

Mapmarkers

 

Map Markers for cities are just like everywhere else except cities in the vanilla game are always visible and the player can travel there without discovering the city. The reasoning may be that a city would be known, and mapped. Since that is the case with our city, go ahead and set your map markers this way. As a general rule, in a city you want one marker per gate, this may not be practical with small cities due to map clutter, in which case, just mark your main gate. Set your marker just inside the city gate so that when players arrive via fast travel they can take in that first vista of the city space!

 

You should now have an understanding of how to create a child world and how to develop it so that it properly mimics the LOD version in Tamriel. In Lesson #3 we will be working on creating city life with quick interior designs and shop creation. You will also be given your first Credit Challenge. Be sure you complete the homework for this lesson before moving on to the next.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Homework: Independent Development

 

1156887170.jpg

 

 

Part I: Finishing the Classwork

 

This Assignment is worth 15pts

 

For this assignment you will need to complete the city interior in the child world we started in class Take your time to hit each mark in the list and earn full points for your work. Post screenshots when you are finished.

 

 

Quote

Assignment

 

  • Finish class work
  • Add a static element not discussed in class
  • Add a lower class house HouseLower03
  • Make a beggar camp w/ bedroll
  • Add a sewer entry door
  • Link the main gate door of the child world to the main gate door in the parent world
  • Create pathgrids for the child world city interior. (Nothing outside the walls!)

 

 

 

When your homework has been graded, you are ready to move on to Lesson #3: City Life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...