Making a believable large cavern.

[Ghreandel]

This is a tie in post to a thread on the File Requests/Suggestions forum. I think this is a more appropriate place for the question though.

I am finding it impossible to create a believable large interior cave space. :wallbash: I've tried 2 seperate approaches:

 

Internal Cave tileset:

My problem is the ceilings: They are always waaaaay too low to create a cavern like feel. I have to scale the CavePit and CaveChasm tiles up about 3 or 4 times to create a good ceiling hight. But when the tiles are that large, the bump mapping and shaders get all pixilated and look like crap. I think the caves look great and would work well except for the low ceiling heights.

 

Exterior World:

The other way I tried was making an exterior world with very high cliff faces to simulate cavern walls ascending high out of sight. I got the walls going good, made the cavern layout, fixed all my terrain jaggies and mesh anomalies. I was well into texturing and shading when I noticed that the sky keeps rendering no matter what I do. Kinda hard for it to feel like a cave with clouds up there. Also the daylight cycles no matter what. I've played with the weather and climate settings for hours, putting pitch black textures on the sky and clouds, changing the sunlight color, everything I can think of. No matter what I have tried the daylight still brightens the landscape to a very un-cavernlike level and clouds blow across the cave ceiling. I'm thinking this is hard coded into the rendering engine and thus pretty much nixes this approach.

 

I'm leaning towards just going ahead and using the cave tilesets blown up 3 times, and using alot of clutter to hide some of the bad graphical effects. This way just feels sloppy to me though.

 

Any suggestions or better yet examples would be mucho apreciated. :thanks:

 

Ghreandel

[ninja_lord666]

Find a modeler; contract said modeler to make your cave meshes. Problem solved.

[wizardmirth]

So you can't stack wall pieces?

[ninja_lord666]

So you can't stack wall pieces?

Not unless you want multiple floors...The walls, floors, and ceilings are all connected in one mesh.

[Septim741]

Okay, here's how you fix your sky problem. It's rather easy, but there's several points you might get lost at. I'll do the best I can to explain it. You have to create a custom climate and weather.

 

1. Go into the Construction Set, load your data file, etc, and find the worldspace. Toggle the sky visibility, and position the camera so that you can see the sky.

 

2. Go to World > Weather and right click 'Fog' and duplicate it. Name it whatever you want, and then go to the next step.

 

3. In the box on the right, check 'Show In Render Window' and then input the following data in the space under it:

• (Day, Ambient), (Night, Ambient), (Sunrise, Ambient), (Sunset, Ambient):
  R-40
  G-40
  B-40
   
  
• (Day: Clouds-Lower, Clouds-Upper, Horizon, Sky-Upper, Sky-Lower, Stars, Sun, Sunlight)
  (Night: Clouds-Lower, Clouds-Upper, Horizon, Sky-Upper, Sky-Lower, Stars, Sun, Sunlight)
  (Sunrise: Clouds-Lower, Clouds-Upper, Horizon, Sky-Upper, Sky-Lower, Stars, Sun, Sunlight)
  (Sunset: Clouds-Lower, Clouds-Upper, Horizon, Sky-Upper, Sky-Lower, Stars, Sun, Sunlight):
  R-0
  G-0
  B-0
   
  
• (Day, Fog), (Night, Fog), (Sunrise, Fog), (Sunset, Fog):
  R-100
  G-100
  B-100
  

You might just want to use the copy and paste options a lot. Clicking in the Render Window will display the settings as you change them. When you're done, you can play around with something if you don't like it, but this is probably going to work alright for your needs.

 

4. Go to World > Climates and duplicate 'Obliviondefaultclimate'. Rename it to suit you, as long as it isn't the same name as the new weather one. Delete the three weather references on the right and add your new one, putting in a '100' in the chance box. Leave the other settings as they are.

 

5. Go to World > Worldspaces and find your worldspaces. Under the 'Climate' dropdown box, select your climate, apply, and you're done!

 

 

Simple as that, hehe!

[Ghreandel]

Thank you sooooo much Septim. I spent well over 4 hours just messing around with the weather and climate settings this morning, but I never thought I would have to set the render color for EVERY combination of conditions. After following your instructions it works like a charm. Only a small strip of stars renders on the horizon when the neighboring cells haven't loaded yet. I can live with that and get around it with terrain placement. I had already made a custom weather (UnderDarkWeath1) and a custom climate (UnderDarkClim1) before. Just hadn't set all the possible combinations to the same light level.

 

I did tweak the light settings from what you had. I found the constant fog annoying, and I think the player would too. I also changed the light from a uniform grey to a more blue/purple look. I think this feels more subterranean. Might just be me though. Wish all help was as specific and useful as yours' Septim. :thanks:

 

I should have a rough draft of the world cells by the end of this weekend.

 

Ghreandel

[Ghreandel]

Ok, guess I'll just save myself the frustration and ask first this time. How do I get my terrain to render at a distance like the default Tamriel terrain does? Is it the Small World checkbox on the World Spaces menu? I've been trying to find information on the Wiki, but so far it has not yielded what I need. I have used the Update Distant World Data tool in the World<World Testing menu. Seemed to do something, not sure what. Then saved mod and loaded it, but no distant terrain rendering.

 

I'll just sleep on it, maybe an idea will come to me tonight.

 

Ghreandel