Fog effects

[Thalassicus]

I've been having difficulty with fog effects. I'm trying to create either ambient or pseudo-volumetric fog to simulate mist in a room with some waterfalls. This is in an interior cell.

 

Out of the FXCloud Small, Thick, and Thin static objects, I first tried the Small version, but was disappointed the clouds for that one aren't dynamic - not particle effects or randomly spawning sprites. Then I tried FXCloudThick and Thin, but the effects have been unpredictable. On one map they don't appear at all; on another test map I tried them on, they didn't appear at first, then half a minute later as I was running around, suddenly all appeared and started working at once.

 

Are these objects just very buggy, or is there something I need to do to reliably use them somehow? Static objects don't have scripts to attach, obviously. ARTrapGasCloud reliably produces the random sprite-spawning effect I want, but it's the wrong color and damages the player, of course.

 

I also tried changing the cell's ambient fog Near and Far distances, but was disappointed those appear to only work in the editor, and don't have any effect ingame. Then I tried setting all graphics details to maximums for a while, just to see if that was the problem, but it had no change with any of this. I could always sit down and figure out how to create my own sprite-spawn volumetric fog, but there's already these in the game, if only there's some way to get them to work.

 

Another thing I tried was using DungeonWaterBrightFog as the cell's global water to see what it does, but I'm guessing it wasn't implemented, since it crashed the game.

[DavidBudreck]

If you can deal with the color, you could create a new Static Object using the .nif of the ARTrapGasCloud so that it won't damage the player, but still should produce the results you want since thoese are part of the .nif, not the object created with it.

 

Some things in Oblivion need more ambiant light to be visible, which does kind of defeat the purpose if you are trying for something creepy. For instance, when trying to use a waterfall in a room with 20x20x20 lighting, will be practically invisible. When using a waterfall indoors, I've had to crank up the lighting to at least 80x80x80.

 

I had the same experience when trying to use clouds other than fxCloudSmall or fxGroundMistEffect. So, whenever I want any type of fog I use one of thoes two. However, in game we know others work in other places because we can see them. I, like you, just can't figure out how.

 

Maybe they just need time. In a dungeon crawl, where most fog is located, there is plenty of time for fog to take it's effect before the player sees it.

 

Fog effect in a room does work; I have seen it, but is not what you are looking for. It has the same effect as the fog at the edge of the screen when looking at distant landscape, very unsatisfying. All it does is make things harder to see.

 

Another thing you might try is make a custom weather pattern that is always fog, then try applying that to the interior cell. However, this might also require more ambient light.