How do I make raised lakes in the main 'Tamriel' exterior?

[AlphaZerox]

Like the developers did for Shadeleaf Copse. I can't for the life of me figure out how to create independent sections of water. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edited April 8, 2014 by AlphaZerox

[DrakeTheDragon]

I'm not really an expert in landscaping, but for one they use the cell borders and the fact that waterlevel can be different in each cell to their advantage where possible, and for two there's so-called water-planes. I don't know even remotely as much as I'd like to about the latter or how it even works to begin with though.

[Carah]

I can only offer you an alternative because I'm not much of a landscaper when it comes to modding but I found Texian's Static Water Meshes to be very helpful, especially if you don't want to mess around with the water plane in the CS.

 

I searched for a tutorial and couldn't find anything that would be helpful, but I did find this post from an outdated thread here in Nexus that might work

In your cell view window, right click the name of the cell you're working on, then select edit. There will be a checkbox that says 'Has Water' and a box where you can type in the height of the water in the cell.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Carah

[Selene310187]

If you want to see the water in the distance as well, you can use Cell Sized VWD Water Plane

[mhahn123]

Drake and Carah had it right. If you want to have actual water you will need to raise the water level in a given cell as Carah described, and then landscape it in. Helps a lot if the vanilla terrain is already suited to having a lake or pond, but you can do a lot with rock placement as far as filling gaps. Keep in mind when you raise water level in a given cell it is going to fill in the lowest land levels first. It helps to plan out land height in adjoining cells as well so you get a nice pond shaped depression for water to fill in. Getting this right is a bit of an art form and just takes practice with the landscape editor.

 

Using static water planes will work in a pinch so long as you don't plan to swim or look under the surface. They are just as the name indicates a thin, two dimensional plane with a transparent water texture attached. No real water present so no splashing or swimming possible in game if you choose this alternative. And as Selene posted, if you want your new lake/pond to be visible in the distance you will need to place a Cell Sized Visible When Distant Water Plane on the cell you raised water height in. Without it, your new pond shows up on distant view as an empty "cavity" in the landscape. This is due to the game engine only being able to display water at one level by default, which is standard sea level in the game.

[Bess]

Besides all the above -- if you want water just for looks and atmosphere (no swimming or other water sports), but also want to see it rippling and moving realistically, there's Real Water Mesh by Da Mage and throttlekitty. The mod description includes a script by WillieSea to give it water sounds when you walk in it. Or if you just want to hear the water when you're near by, you can easily set an ambient water sound over it, which is what I usually do.

By the way, ducks are completely taken in by it and swim very nicely on the surface! :D

[mhahn123]

Besides all the above -- if you want water just for looks and atmosphere (no swimming or other water sports), but also want to see it rippling and moving realistically, there's Real Water Mesh by Da Mage and throttlekitty. The description includes a script by WillieSea to give it water sounds when you walk in it. Or you can just set an ambient water sound over it. Ducks are completely taken in by it! :D

That's great Bess! And thanks for that tip, will be checking into it now.

[Selene310187]

There's a solution for swimming (to some degree) in this fake water. QQuix made an interesting approach with Emulated Water which can be found here. He made three pools of "water": in the first one the player can only walk/run, in the second one the player is in a jump loop (looks like opening arms and legs underwater) and in the last one the player uses true swimming animations. But the problem is that after leaving the third pool the player can't move normally. So the first and second option's scripts come into question, unless somebody solves the problem with the third option.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Selene310187