WIPz: Museum of Nirn

[windclan]

I decided that even though it will never be released I could still create a thread about my current insane project, which I have dubbed the Museum of Nirn. It's history is yet to be written...

I have planned and designed it for the sole purpose of displaying and storing the wonders of Tamriel and the rest of the world, from arms and armor to books and even art, everything has a place within the walls of the Museum (If you've ever seen the Librarian movies, it's kind of like the Library in sheer size)

Currently the plans have 6 areas: The Main Hall, 2 Wings on the lower floor, 2 Wings on the upper floor and a room that is sitting extra for when I decide on it's use...likely to be either storage or a library at the moment but that could change. Unfortunately construction was halted while I worked out other issues and so only the Main Hall and 1 Lower Wing have been built and I have only furnished about half the existing Wing.

Included in that part of the building is a long room that will be used to display every variety of Guard Armor in Cyrodill, including the Ceremonial Armors. Other specific spaces are in the plans but not yet built, among them are Ayleid and Dwemer rooms.

The part that makes this project truly insane though is the collection. I plan to bring the countless dozens of great armor/weapon/etc mods out there together within the Museum. Everything will be carefully placed and certain items locked down with the Redecoration Mod created by Uberspeedo and info and stories about the more interesting and unique items added to the collection will be written in-game thanks to the Journal Mod created by Kyoma.

There is a method to my madness though, not just an insanity worthy of Sheogorath. My eventual playing of the game, hopefully the one that sees me to the completion of Oblivion will be a story, a chronicle of my adventures written for the benefit of a friend who only recently learned of TES but has nowhere near the time or resources to get into it herself but who has plenty of time to read a grand story.

This Museum will serve as the underlying goal throughout my game, the collection will grow with every adventure I embark on and every enemy that falls to my sword and bow and in the end I may have a great piece of fanfiction to give to the TES community...

[windclan]

Have to say I'm quite surprised there haven't been any comments yet

[DarkRider]

Well this is a community of modders, which means you sometimes have to wait for heads to pop up out of the CK, Blender, Photoshop and the like. Sounds like a cool idea, I've never heard of anything like it so hard to imagine what it will encompass, but I look forward to seeing how this develops.

[DsoS]

I'm actually interested in seeing how this could turn out. I like museums. So I'm hoping that you will release it even if it is for Oblivion.

Good luck and have fun

[HeyYou]

I could see releasing this as a mod..... A sort of undocumented quest to collect some of the various trappings from about cyrodiil. Armors, weapons, artifacts, etc. Could have a 'caretaker' copy items, so, you wouldn't be giving up your daedric artifacts and such.

Books. Definitely books.

[windclan]

I actually might end up releasing it...just put the project back to square one after I realized that the Museum was still connected to the ESPs of a trashed project...Have to rebuild now but could be worse, could have been a lot farther along before I realized that mistake.

I like the idea of a caretaker , I've actually had a few different ideas regarding NPC's but never even considered some way to let people copy items they want to have on display but also still be able to use...Not bad Might be out of my league though, but doesn't mean I couldn't experiment...

Since I'm going to have to rebuild now anyway I might as well ask: Any suggestions/interesting ideas? Or links to resources I could use to make the building nicer/more museum-like?

[HeyYou]

Check on Oblivion Real Estate. They have a collection of building resources that are rather cool.

Separate wings for different things. Armor, Weapons, Artifacts, Books, whatever eles. To prevent too much lag, just have the entry hall for the museum one cell, and the wings in separate cells. Keeping the number of objects/npc's down, will make it more accessible for those that don't have powerful computers, especially for armors and such.

Probably need some variety of mannequin mod as a requirement as well.. Reznods I think is the standard. I also remember seeing an armor stand mod...... but, its been a while, and don't remember where I saw it. (prolly nexus.) That might help a bit in the performance area, as I don't think the stands are actually NPC's. Of course, you can't pose them either......

[windclan]

Hmmm, wasn't originally planning to add the mannequins to the mod, but thinking about it, that would make sense, save people the trouble of placing the mannequins themselves...Ane would certainly add to the museumness

[HeyYou]

Don't include the mod, just make yours dependent on it.

I think there is a 'newer, update' version of reznods, that has flesh colored mannequins as well.... but, I think that would be completely optional.

[windclan]

...That was what I meant. Put the mannequins in the Museum and have the Mannequin Mod as a requirement...

[windclan]

Just opened up a gallery here to show images of the construction as well as get opinions on any interesting things I try

[DarkRider]

I THINK Meo made an armor dummy resource that would allow you to display armors without creating an unnecessary dependency on Reznods

[windclan]

He did, but they are pre armored dummies which is something I want to avoid. Doesn't really fit with my theme of having to collect the items for the Museum. And I doubt it would be that hard or that much more work to simply make 2 versions, one with the mannequin dependancy and one without.

[Arion]

I just was looking at your screenshots of the floor.... Just out of curiousity, what did you mean by putting it over the default floor? Is this supposed to be a rug or is it tile? If you are planning on just laying it on top of the existing floor and its tile or stone your best bet would be to take the floor mesh in NifScope and change the floor texture to your new one rather than laying something on top of the existing floor.

Here is an example of what I did with flooring in my house that that I'm building

That's rug under the table but you can see the tile alongside the rug ..Sorry I couldn't find a better pic offhand.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Arion

[windclan]

That's exactly what I want to do, I'm really, really sick of that default stone texture...For some silly reason I never considered pulling the Oblivion files for editing, Guess I know what I'm doing today

[Arion]

One trick here is not all but some of the wall pieces have floor and ceiling attached. You'll need to open the mesh and find the floor path and change it to your new texture. One set I'm working on has 1 piece for one side of the wall, another for the opposite side as well as one for the front and rear wall panels. Than then you have the center pieces which fortunately is just one that is pasted multiple times. So depending on the set you are using you are looking at 5 meshes to retexture. Each of those can be duplicated to fill in the rest of the cooresponding wall and the flooring.

Doing this gives you a lot more flexibility in that you can change a few pieces and see what it looks like or do a seperate texture for each wall and the floor so you get plenty of options and then its a matter of changing all the others to the one you like. I did that with 4 different textures until I settled on the one I chose.

Like your idea of a Museum .. Looking forward to seeing your work as it progresses.

[windclan]

Well just keep an eye here and on the gallery and you'll see plenty of the progress Nice to see so many people like the idea

[windclan]

Alrighty, got all my floors retextured, taking a bit to look into replacing the walls as well before I start switching out my new pieces for the originals

[HeyYou]

Don't forget the 'find and replace' function in the Edit menu.

[windclan]

The building has begun, with a large amount of help from Arion with finding the lovely marble, which was imported from the Ancient Towers and with making the stucco work.

[windclan]

Started building the first Wing, This one will feature the large room designed for the many different guard armors

[HeyYou]

We want screenshots.

[windclan]

Once I finish building the Wing rest assured there will be screenshots...Don't have anything except the first small room built yet

[windclan]

Gallery One is now built

And Hey, I know you want screenshots but it seems a little silly to keep doing screenshots of empty rooms so I will only be doing further screenshots of rooms once they are furnished and decorated...Do hope you can wait that long

[HeyYou]

I shall sit on my hands, and make the attempt to wait patiently. No promises though......