Archived: General Questions

[zaxon]

Thanks for the reply, Dark. That seems to have fixed the issue, mostly. From playing around a bit, it seems some wonkiness with red lights and broken debug still pops up randomly, but toggling shadow rendering gets it acting normal again. Perhaps the kit just wants to remind me that pressing random buttons in a buggy piece of software is a bad idea~

Edited March 18, 2012 by zaxon

[DarkRider]

The kit is particularly snarky about having buttons pressed. If you hit the bug again, repeat the fix it should get you sorted.

[syscrusher]

In lesson 3 you mention (and I encountered in game) the bug where exterior meshes are sometimes invisible. Some people are posting online that one solution to this is to enable the forced LOD option for the house exterior, but I've seen others say that's a bad idea in the long term because of performance issues.

What are your comments on this option? Good idea? Good short-term idea if removed after the bug fix? Or bad idea all around?

[syscrusher]

Another question...As I did Lesson 3 I noticed that the trees were really in my way, so I thought to disable their rendering in the CK temporarily.

First I was just going to disable leaves, but the CK checkbox for that appears totally inoperative for me.

I *was* able to disable trees altogether, but that made selecting other objects very difficult. It was almost as if the selection-detect of the trees was still seeing them, even though they were invisible to the user. I would click my static objects, but no selection occurred. Turning the trees back on, then moving around them, fixed the problem.

Have you seen this before, and is there a workaround other than "always enable tree rendering"?

[DarkRider]

In lesson 3 you mention (and I encountered in game) the bug where exterior meshes are sometimes invisible. Some people are posting online that one solution to this is to enable the forced LOD option for the house exterior, but I've seen others say that's a bad idea in the long term because of performance issues.

What are your comments on this option? Good idea? Good short-term idea if removed after the bug fix? Or bad idea all around?

There's a lot of evidence to show that this bug is specific to the modder not the mod, in other words, something in your CK as the creator isn't loading or clearing right and this is the result. The good news is there's extensive evidence it doesn't carry over to the user end. You can use the LOD flag (should be noted that this flag doesn't always work, depends on the size of the static) to force it to render while developing but that flag should be unchecked before any release as on the user end it is NOT necessary and DOES cause performance issues. People using that flag and releasing are going to cause issues for users down the line; should be for your testing purposes only, shut it off before release.

Another question...As I did Lesson 3 I noticed that the trees were really in my way, so I thought to disable their rendering in the CK temporarily.

Trees can be a problem especially if you tend to edit wide, scrolling closer to what you're working on can negate the issue, but if you prefer working wide, I'd recommend selecting all the trees (in your cell only) and using the Z key to raise or lower them out of the way (most folks find putting them down under the landscape mesh easiest) then just move them back

[syscrusher]

Trees can be a problem especially if you tend to edit wide, scrolling closer to what you're working on can negate the issue, but if you prefer working wide, I'd recommend selecting all the trees (in your cell only) and using the Z key to raise or lower them out of the way (most folks find putting them down under the landscape mesh easiest) then just move them back

That's where I stashed that giant log and mushroom object that were in the way of my building. Rather than delete them, I sank them below ground so they are not reachable and don't show on the map. Interestingly, I found that Bethesda had done some of this in Oblivion, apparently because they needed to get rid of objects right before release.

Thanks also for the detailed response about the LOD issue. I have two systems here; it will be interesting to test my mod on another machine.

Edited April 14, 2012 by syscrusher

[DarkRider]

In Lesson 3 you should have read the instruction not to delete as a matter of common practice to prevent conflicts. Moving things below the landscape is okay for statics but not havocked items. If you do this you still need to set them as disabled, though "hidden" from the player the game still wastes resources on rendering them, so disable them.

[ResolveThatChord]

I, too, was annoyed by trees in the way. I found that by pressing 1 on the numpad, the selected object would toggle between see-through, invisible and normal. This helped a lot, but once I had toggled a tree to see-through, I couldn't find how to select it or change it back. Does anyone know how?

Edited May 18, 2012 by ResolveThatChord

[the-manta]

Okay, so I recently (finally) got back to the final exam project I have shamefully neglected for a ridiculous amount of time. I finally persuaded myself to do the exterior navmeshing, and it's almost done, but there is now one major problem. I hired a follower to help test the navmeshing, he works fine outdoors, but refuses to follow me inside. There is definitely a navmesh in there, and as far as I can tell, the door should be perfectly fine (no problems for me). I went back to the classwork mod, and he wouldn't follow me into the inn either. When I tried commanding him to "open" the door with the "I need you to do something" system, he told me it was not possible. I can't remember if I ever tested the inn interior with a follower, but I do know it's not working now. Is there anything that could reasonably be causing this?

[Vereta]

I'm having issues with Lesson #3. I ran into the problem of 'black' textures when using a new landscape texture in a quad. I attempted to replace one of the textures in the quad like the lesson said to but the texture remains black. Am I doing something wrong? How can I fix this?

By the way, I also get a warning message when I load up the exterior cell: "TEXTURE: Could not queue texture 0xbc62449e"

Edited June 2, 2012 by Vereta

[WillieSea]

I found that by pressing 1 on the numpad, the selected object would toggle between see-through, invisible and normal. This helped a lot, but once I had toggled a tree to see-through, I couldn't find how to select it or change it back. Does anyone know how?

You can press ALT + 1 to make stuff visible again.

Or you can press F5 to reload the cell, which sometimes you have to do if things don't all load like they should when you edit a cell.

I hired a follower to help test the navmeshing, he works fine outdoors, but refuses to follow me inside. There is definitely a navmesh in there, and as far as I can tell, the door should be perfectly fine (no problems for me).

Is there anything that could reasonably be causing this?

Did you finalize the navmesh, inside and outside, so threre is a green triangle under both the yellow door markers?

[Leonardo]

This may be a dumb question. How do I post pictures without linking to other sites including your gallery here?

[DarkRider]

Is there anything that could reasonably be causing this?

Sounds like you skipped the NavMesh finalizing, this section was added later in development to Lesson #4 so you may have missed it.

Am I doing something wrong? How can I fix this?

By the way, I also get a warning message when I load up the exterior cell: "TEXTURE: Could not queue texture 0xbc62449e"

That's a common error in the CK, doesn't mean anything, just say "Yes to All" to close the error dialog. Sounds like your editing the wrong quad, or you need to remove one or two of the bottom textures. In Skyrim, you can only have 6 textures even though there are more slots, so if you have too many you'll get that black texture. Remove a couple and see if that helps.

This may be a dumb question. How do I post pictures without linking to other sites including your gallery here?

Here's a tutorial on image embedding.

[Leonardo]

Here's a tutorial on image embedding. http://tesalliance.o...ages-in-a-post/

Thanks DarkRider.

I may be mistaken about this but I didn't notice the uploading a file feature when I posted my homework for CK Basics Lesson1.

[DarkRider]

The File Attachment? IS has that in his view because he's Scholar Staff It's not used for embedding images though.

[the-manta]

Ah yes I must have missed the finalisation. Thanks guys, all is well should be able to release soon!

[Leonardo]

The File Attachment? IS has that in his view because he's Scholar Staff It's not used for embedding images though.

Silly me.

I see now what I should do in the first place.

Okay. Now I've another problem and I don't know if anyone of you have notice it before, but I was just starting to place the navmesh nodes and I thought perhaps it's a good idea to save my progress.

Anyway when I did that the place nodes disappear and I had to go through the first phase of the navmesh procedure 2-3 times. Why is that?

I'm using the latest 1.6 beta patch with USKP and SKSE also the latest if that's important.

[DarkRider]

It just does that, don't save until you have a large swath finished, for some reason it glitches and deletes it, probably a bug.

[Leonardo]

It just does that, don't save until you have a large swath finished, for some reason it glitches and deletes it, probably a bug.

Yeah I did just that and now is everything I did gone, so I'll give up today and perhaps continue an other day because I'm too tired to concentrate.

I would like to know if there is a chance to have it back or do I need to do it again.

Edited June 2, 2012 by Leonardo

[DarkRider]

Doesn't seem to be a way to recover it once it deletes.

[WillieSea]

Did you 'Optimize' the navmesh?

That is the only time I have ever seen nodes get deleted. And they get deleted for being too sharp an incline, or too small for an NPC to navigate through.

[DarkRider]

I've had this bug too, it crops up when saving after only placing a few nodes. When you save, the whole mesh just disappears. It hasn't happened to me though since the CK was updated. Leo what version of the CK are you using?

[Leonardo]

Did you 'Optimize' the navmesh?

That is the only time I have ever seen nodes get deleted. And they get deleted for being too sharp an incline, or too small for an NPC to navigate through.

No I didn't and the only thing I can think of is that when you save while the NavMesh editor is active, meaning that you haven't click on the NavMesh button to open the NavMesh tool bar. Then the nodes disappeared. I don't think so because I was watching DarkRiders pictures of how his pathgrid looked like and trying to do the same.

I've had this bug too, it crops up when saving after only placing a few nodes. When you save, the whole mesh just disappears. It hasn't happened to me though since the CK was updated. Leo what version of the CK are you using?

Yes all nodes was erased. I'm using the latest CK (1.5.24.0), but when the nodes disappeared I was using the 1.6.87.0.6 patch which CK 1.5.24.0 doesn't work properly.

When I read about CK doesn't work with the 1.6 patch I switch back to the 1.5.26 patch just before I went to bed last night.

That seems to work because now I could save a completed interior with NavMesh.

[WillieSea]

when you save while the NavMesh editor is active,

So you tried to save with the navmesh tool 'open'?

If so, it 'may' not do a 'soft finalize' on the navmesh so it does not save them.

[Leonardo]

So you tried to save with the navmesh tool 'open'?

If so, it 'may' not do a 'soft finalize' on the navmesh so it does not save them.

Yes I did. I didn't know that about the soft finalization of the NavMesh editor and probably you're right.