Workflow for new worldspaces?

[kyago8]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently creating a new worldspace and landscape within the GECK (with version control enabled). I have already set up the worldspace within the "World" drop down menu.

Because this worldspace will have trees and water, I first used the heightmap's noise generator to displace the entire map by 14000 to avoid the TreeLOD bug and then made a basic heightmap with low detail (I intend to do some fine tuning within the heightmap editor and then use the landscape editor for finer details), to carve out mountains and rivers. I did this first because I think I remember seeing something about changing the water height via slider within the GECK which I would use to make sure my water height is correct for the rivers, but now that I am searching I can't seem to find the tool. 

Is this still a feature, and where would I find it?

[madmongo]

Once I create my heightmap I generally place some object where I want a river to be, then I check to see what Z value the object ends up at. Then I use that to go back into the worldspace settings and set my default water height accordingly.

For a map that I am currently working on, I set the water height a bit below the ground and I am going cell by cell and editing the terrain to "carve" out the river. I like that it's giving me a realistic looking river, but I also have to say that it's painfully slow.

You can also edit the water height on a cell by cell basis. There's no slider that I am aware of, but if you center the cell that you want to change in the render window, then click on World -> Cells the GECK will bring up a cell editor where you can change the water type, water height, acoustic space, music type, and a few other bits. Just double check which cell you are actually editing since it's easy to have the wrong cell in focus when you bring up the editor. I always double check the cell X,Y values in the render window and check those against the cell that ends up selected when I bring up the cell editor to make sure I'm on the correct cell.

Edited February 19 by madmongo

[kyago8]

On 2/18/2025 at 5:31 PM, madmongo said:

For a map that I am currently working on, I set the water height a bit below the ground and I am going cell by cell and editing the terrain to "carve" out the river. I like that it's giving me a realistic looking river, but I also have to say that it's painfully slow.

Interesting... I wonder if this technique could be translated into the heightmap editor.

My biggest issue with relying on the landscape editor with creating larger parts of the landscape. Currently, I am crudely recreating the Rio Grande that is roughly 59 cells in length (it's curved and is present in a NW(-31,31)SE(31,-32) worldspace. At times, it will take up an entire cell+ in width. This is why I'd prefer to outline the entire landscape in the heightmap editor (with heavily altered mask settings). 

I suppose getting good and creative with the landscape editor was a hurdle I was going to have to face eventually.

[kyago8]

In terms of workflow, when should other concepts for the landscape be included? i.e. regions, objects, grass, painting the landscape, etc.

Is it a practice that you just go back and forth until you're satisfied or is there a specific order to make sure that the terrain is walkable and that formIDs don't surpass 16mb too quickly?

[madmongo]

I think everyone has to develop their own workflow.

For me, I start with the heightmap. If I were doing something like the Rio Grande, I would apply some minimal randomness with an offset of 14000 just to prevent LOD issues. From there, I would look at the elevation on google maps and modify the heightmap accordingly. Then I add some randomness (make sure to make it additive so it doesn't reset your height elevation) just to make the landscape look a bit more realistic.

I have made rivers using two different methods, and I'm not 100 percent satisfied with either one. The first is to lower a bit of the heightmap and then use the heightmap tool to set that same elevation and use that to carve out the river. While that works, it always leaves me with river banks that are way too steep. What I have been doing lately is to set the water height just below the lowest elevation on the map, then I go cell by cell and carve the landscape down into the water level to make the river. This gives much more realistic river banks but it's very slow and tedious. If anyone has a better method I would be glad to see it.

You need to create a border of some sort around the edge of your map. Cliffs work well. To give the illusion of distance, a CL Fence Gate works well along with a road that snakes around in an S curve through the cliffs. That way you see the road disappear behind the cliffs and don't have to worry about what's viewable in the distance behind the gate.

From there, I start adding roads. I'll lay out towns just by placing roads at first, which I may move around later but I'm usually fairly satisfied with my initial layout. Once the roads are in place, then I lay out the actual buildings of the towns, or create the military base, cave, mine entrance, etc.

I don't tend to use regions much, though I will use them to place landscape objects like rocks and trees. You usually have to go through afterwards cell by cell and fix anything that the GECK places in a funny way.

Once all of the objects are in place, then I'll add the navmesh and do the lanscape painting. Grass and lanscape painting are the same thing in the GECK. I generally like to do the navmeshing and the lanscape painting at the same time. That way I can look at any section of the map and I can tell at a glance if that area is navmeshed or not. If I painted it, then I know I navmeshed it already. If I come across an area that I haven't painted, then I know I need to navmesh that area too.

Be fairly gentle with the heightmap editor. If you push things too far, you can create landscape tears, which the GECK can't repair. If the GECK ever tells you that there's a problem with the landscape height (usually the result of a tear) and offers to fix it, don't believe it. In my experience, while the GECK can detect these errors, it can't actually fix them, and letting it try doesn't do anything useful. Go back to an earlier version of your mod before the GECK screwed up the heightmap.

As long as you are reasonably gentle with the heightmap, most areas will end up being walkable. You can use cliffs and rocks to border areas where you don't want the player and NPCs/creatures to end up going.

I tend to check things in to Version Control relatively often. This prevents anything from getting lost and also makes sure that I never get anywhere near the 16MB boundary with my esp.

This is what works for me. I don't tend to do too much back and forth. Once the heightmap is done, I usually don't go back to it. I just edit the local cells in the render window. I always do landscape painting and navmeshing last.