Working on an underwater mod for Morrowind, first timer pls hlp

[Geraldinegoonsk]

Hi,

Super new here, I'Ve been playing mods since forever and never made one on my own. Decided 2022 is the time to do it.
Argonians seem super cool as a race but still they don't seem to fit anywhere concretely.

So I decided to do models of flora for the seas of Morrowind. Gives you a reason to explore and one day might have quests and crafting of items
So far I made about 50 models, and about 8 of them are textured.

Managed to make a .nif with a .dds texture today
Not sure where to continue from here

Is anyone ok with me bothering them a bit for guidance?

Thank you

Examples;

There's a few more here; https://imgur.com/a/NwwXffa

[FIMzzZzz]

hey, to add a mesh just have a look at the /data files/meshes and /textures folders and take a look at the existing statics in the construction set this could clear things up and if not maybe those links are enough to get you started.

 

https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/tr-modders-guide

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind_Mod:Tutorials_and_Guides

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind_Mod:Construction_Set

 

hint, if you want just statics they will be just statics in the construction set, if you want plants you can harvest they will be containers.

 

your models look quite high poly, and i'm quite a poly guzzler myself, and i'm just going to say this as someone that made models and later came to the conclusion, aww s#*! i ended up with to many polys again, a lot of the time you really don't need that many polys for the mesh to look good in game.

 

cheers

[Geraldinegoonsk]

Hi. thank you so much for the reply! I will try it out asap.

The previews here are high poly but the original is super low poly so I can tweak it to an optimal level. What in your experience is approximately an ok amount of triangles per human sized plant?
For now I just want statics but eventually it would be crazy good to implement harvestable objects so more of this can be iimplemented into quests and crafting etc

Thank you again for the awesome advice!

[Geraldinegoonsk]

Hey @FIMzzZzz I actually loaded a model in by drag and dropping it into the construction set. I got it into the game and I'm so happy! The texture is missing tho even tho i put the DDS into the textures of Morrowind. Not sure why its not finding it. I even had it in textures when i exported it from Blender.

I call today a great success. And it runs it well. So happy!!!!! THANKYOUU

[FIMzzZzz]

i don't think i'm qualified to approximate an ok amount of polys on any models, this would be like if i told you to only drink one bottle of Jagerminx S'more flavored Schnapps while drinking 10 myself... xD

 

don't forget to use vertex painting, which i assume is possible in blender too...

 

not using blender so i'm not sure how it exports nif files. if you're sure your texture is in "/data files/textures" you can check your model with nifskope, the texture path should be either just "filename.dds" or "textures/filename.dds" and not an absolute path like "c:/whatever/path/filename.dds"

 

cheers

[Geraldinegoonsk]

Got! Great. Will attempt this now.

I want this mod to be compatible and smooth, and run on kind of older hardware so I will do my best to optimize. I just have zero reference points I guess. Ill use vanilla for reference.

Not sure what vertex painting is but will google it.

THANK YOU GOOD SIR may your path be lined with ebony ore

[Geraldinegoonsk]

When I make it an absolute path it works in NIFscope but not when I make it an unabsolute path. I tried it with all combinations. Resolution is 1024x1024 .DDS
Will continue trying to figure it out.

[Geraldinegoonsk]

fIGURED it out!

it was the compression. it has to be BC1 / DXT 1 otherwise it wont work

and absolute path is changed into dynamic by just deleting everytihng before /textures in the NIFscope path inside NIFscope itself when the object is opened

Thank you!!

[Dragon32]

There maybe some nuggets of wisdom on Tamriel Rebuilt's site:

https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/tr-modders-guide