How much clutter is too much?

[Tyrion10]

I know this is a very simple question for some of you more experienced modders so I appreciate any help.

 

I am working on my first house mod. I like a place to feel lived in so I started filling it with clutter items like win bottles, plates, pitchers, candles etc. I noticed that my mod size started to go up significantly. Also I noticed a lot of popular mods use minimal clutter. Is there a significant performance hit for using clutter and what are some best practices for decorating, yet keeping the mod size small?

 

Thanks again for any help.

[mrpdean]

The amount of clutter shouldn't have a huge impact on the size of a mod. When you say it's started to go up significantly, how big is it?

 

It can have a big impact on performance as you said, and that's when optimization become important. Room bounds and occlusion planes etc.

 

I personally don't like too much clutter in my player homes but that's just personal preference.

[ArtMurder]

Personally, clutter is one of the number one reasons I will avoid a house mod. One of the first things I usually do is go through a house and clean up all the clutter and shove it in some random barrel. Sometimes it can look good, but if it cuts down on the FPS at all then it's way to much. You have to remember people are going to stash tons of their own stuff into the house and are going to want to decorate it, at least to some extent on their own, and if it lags before they even put anything in there, then by the time they have it loaded full of loot, will be a nightmare to go in and out of their house...

 

Generally, a good idea is to go by the vanilla skyrim house clutter. if it has as much clutter as one of those, then it's enough already, some vanilla skyrim houses have to much clutter already in my opinion, lol!