Immersive roads

[32cm]

I just released this mod http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/40245//? and would like to know if is posible to add more types of roads. For example whiterun and riverwood share same roads but i will like to use roads with red/orange moss in the zone of whiterun. Im a noob with CK but if is easy i will try it.

[LargeStyle]

It's possible, but it won't be a quick operation...

 

Firstly you'll need to extract the files from the Skyrim - Meshes.bsa. I personally use Fallout Mod Manager to extract files from .bsa archives, which can be found here...

 

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/36901/?

 

Next you'll need to install NifSkope (if you don't have it already)...

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/niftools/files/

 

Now open Creation Kit and select / double left click "Skyrim.esm" and click ok to load it. If you happen to get errors during the loading process then just "ignore to all". Once loaded use the "Cell View" box and in the drop-down box select "Tamriel", and when it's provided a list of available cells single-click on one of them (doesn't matter which) and type "wh" - this will quickly navigate to cell beginning with "wh". Scroll down the list of "wh" cells until you see "WhiterunExterior01" and double left click to load the cell. Once the cell has loaded, click on the window bar at the top of the render window and press "m" - this will remove markers so you can see what you're doing.

 

Now to adjust the roads obviously first you'll need to find which roads you want to replace. Each section of road is a mesh, and several road meshes exist to cover the different shapes / angles of each road type (straight road, curved road etc). To find which road mesh is in use within that cell you can either simply right click the road and select "Edit" in the pop-up window, or you can use the Cell View windows search box to search for "road" and it will list any road items within that cell. Once you've selected "Edit" on a mesh then a "Reference" window will appear which tells you what the "base object" is for that mesh. If you then click "Edit Base" a window entitled "Static" will appear which will tell you the exact file name and location for the mesh .nif file.

 

Here's a picture with all of this information present in CK...

 

http://img547.imageshack.us/img547/1516/17cg.jpg

 

In my understanding, you'll need to make new versions of these road meshes so as to be completely separate and independent from the original road meshes. So, you're going to need to find out which road meshes you want to adjust, navigate to your extracted meshes from earlier, find the meshes and make duplicates of these files.

 

Now to make these meshes use your own road texture files you'll need to assign your textures to each mesh that will use them, and this is what NifSkope is for. Open one of your meshes in NifSkope and in the "Block List" (top left area of the screen) click on the triangles as I have in the following picutre to open up details from the mesh...

 

http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/5498/wzb7.jpg

 

Select a "BSShaderTextureSet" and in the Block List window at the bottom of the screen use the arrow to expand the texture set - this will show you which textures have been assigned to that mesh. In the picture above there are two texture sets for the road, one for the road stones, and one for the dirt. You'll obviously want to be adjusting the road stones so to reassign a new texture simply double-click the texture file path shown and you can redirect it to your own texture - and do this twice - once for the image texture and once for the normal map texture. Once done, save the mesh and go back to Creation Kit.

 

As there have been no mesh shape adjustments ideally you'll just want to change CK to tell it to use the new mesh in direct replacement from the old mesh, but as you're adding a new mesh that replaces a mesh on a base level I don't think this is possible. So what I think needs to be done is to delete the original mesh and add the new mesh. The only downside to this is that you will have to manually place each mesh back into the exact same place as the original mesh was positioned, but this can be done...

 

Before you delete the original mesh, right click the mesh in the Cell View window and in the Reference window you'll see a 3D Data tab - this will tell you the coordinates that the mesh is positioned in. Personally I'd take a picture of these coordinates so you can refer to them quickly and easily. Once this is done delete the original mesh and find your replacement mesh in the object window (use the filter search box to find it easily) - then simply drag and drop the modded mesh into the render window (doesn't matter where). Now either right click the mesh in the render window or right click the mesh in the Cell View box, navigate to the 3D data tab and change all the values back to the original meshes values - and that's it!

 

Like I said, this won't be a quick operation, but if you're only changing a small part of whiterun then you may have at a guess 3 or 4 meshes to modify and a dozen or so mesh replacements to make - probably take 2-3 hours?

 

Hope that helps, and thanks for the road texture mod - going to try that plus your ENB out (saw it recently on ENBdev forums and I'm glad you've shared it with us as I wanted to have a look at it). :thumbsup:

 

EDIT: As you said you were a little unfamiliar with CK, here some basic navigation tips for the render window...

 

To look around hold down left shift and move the mouse around, use the mouse wheel to move backwards and forwards, and hold down the mouse wheel to move left / right / up / down.

 

Once you click on an item the camera will select and archor itself to that item - so if you then use shift + mouse to look around it will rotate around the item and not look around as before. To stop this from happening press "d" to deselect the item and then Control+F to de-anchor the camera - you'll be free to look around as before.

 

If you want to manually move an item in the Render Window, select it and "w" and "e" keys allow movement and rotation - a marker will appear on the item which you can use the mouse to move per coordinate by chosing the coordinate colour and move it around with the mouse, or click the central block of the marker to adjust all axis at the same time. Pressing "w" or "e" again will disable the adjustment mode.

Edited August 16, 2013 by LargeStyle

[32cm]

Man, i almost cried. Thanks for all the info. This weeked i will try all of this. I have litle experience with 3dmax, autocad and other mod tools (i started doing a long solo misión for half life and maps fot first Unreal tournament). So looks like it will not be dificult when i get it.

 

Thanks again, i really dint expect so long and explained answer :thumbsup: .

[LargeStyle]

You're welcome :smile:

[32cm]

First test, changing nif:

 

http://i.imgur.com/7yTdQmm.jpg

 

 

Yes, seems i will need to change roads 1 by 1 like you said, but when i get the nifs done (that is really easy) i will need only time.

[LargeStyle]

Looks good, a bit of variety is always a good thing. Didn't realise you were going as far as Fort Greymoor - that will take some time! :blink:

[32cm]

Im still testing. I think i found a fast way to replace roads. In static window i rename road adding -wh at end. For example for whiterun longroad01wh and then it creates a new object in object window. I replace the nif in this new object for a new one and seems by only drag/droping the new object in the vanilla road it fits perfect.

 

What is a really pain is move camara in render view with a 17" monitor.

 

 

Used same curve nif to test.

http://i.imgur.com/bBbFHvp.jpg

Edited August 16, 2013 by 32cm

[LargeStyle]

I thought that there may be a method along those lines, and it obviously sounds a much quicker process, I don't ever create / mod items / meshes etc so was using some "applied logic" for my theory. Guess you can easily finish it all off within an hour then :laugh:

Edited August 16, 2013 by LargeStyle