SSE Creating interiors question

[ttabakova]

Hello lovely people!

 

I'm a newbie in mod creation. Have a very narrow experience, mostly with lighting in CK and patches in xEdit.

Recently I decided I want to give a try to a player house. So I took apart a couple of house mods I enjoy, watched a bunch of vidoes, looked for modders resources I can use. After all, I find I'm really lost at where I start.

 

So, if you don't mind, people who create interiors/exteriors, can you share some advice here? How precisely do you plan the layout? Do you select resources beforehand or go searching for them when in need? Do you follow any building sequence (well apart from building walls first, probably)? Like, do you fully decorate/link one corner, say, and then move to the next one, or do you put all the furnoture/static first, then go around linking/scripting/adding additional details?

 

Any advice appreciated.

[TheDungeonDweller]

Start off small, and look for something fairly small that beth has done. In my case, I was specifically looking for the very first dungeon/interior beth created during development, though I never found it, or any clues as to what it was(Riverwood was the first town created though), so instead I went with Greywinter Watch. I paid close attention to the shape, or "shell" and I came up with my own from there, as I continued blocking out my shape, I gained more ideas for rooms to add.

Lunds Hut(LundsHut01) is a small house you can look at. Yeah its the house with the dead guy and skeevers.

Simple-ish tavern/inn would be(IMO) the one in Riverwood. <-- That one was constructed with more pieces than Lund's Hut.

The point of this is 1. Help formulate your concept design and 2. Fimilarize yourself with the pieces available and where in the CK you can get them, as once you know where everything else, the houses you can build gets ridiculous.

Clutter(furniture, flora, etc) - this is the most time consuming process of building an interior. It's up to you how you want each room to look.

Edited May 16, 2017 by TheDungeonDweller

[sakora]

I've been trying my hand at this too, sadly I dearly lack the patience to complete even a small house... For me I am finding that as I work the interior I am frustrated by my lack of visibility due to walls etc. I've done many "lots" modding with the Sims over the years and find the CK very difficult at times.

 

I think everyone kind of finds what works best for them.

 

From my experience over the years playing Sims and being apart of a number of "lot" projects - things that helped me:

• The Vibe - what do you want the house to say, speak, or make you feel
• Visualize that vibe! are there any colours? glows? dark nooks? hidden secrets?
• Layout - what do you want in your home, and how do you want to arrange that? - Example I downloaded what looked like a beautiful home, author clearly spent many hours (that I do really appreciate) however... the children's bedroom / followers bedroom were right off of the kitchen... to me thats really odd placement.

Small can be beautiful, sometimes small and cramped spaces are the best like Feykro for Oldrim.

 

What I find lacking is that perfect mix between small/medium sized player homes, there are a ton of mansion and huge houses that will have you till endgame.

 

I want the goldie locks home... its not to big, its not to small, its just right! And sadly I dont have the patience to get it just right for myself.

[TheDungeonDweller]

For visibility(strange you say that, since I find visibility in the Render Window better than Fallout 4's). Use an "over head" perspective.

Also Rome wasn't built in a day. If you spend TOO much time on it, you'll lose patience/burn out. I'd do 2 hours worth of work, and then take a few hours off, or come back the following day.

Edited May 16, 2017 by TheDungeonDweller

[ttabakova]

I decided to start with overhauling an existing player house, then maybe I will have a bit more experience to create my own layout, or decide on the bulding set I want to use. Luckily, if I lack space, I can always expand it with some sort of a basement.

 

As for over head perspective, it gets tricky when you have multiple story houses. I have some experience in lights placing, and in a small two story farm visibility is a real problem. Considering you need an overview of the room for shadowcasters to see if they're producing visible artifacts. I usually just hide things I don't need to see/accidentally grab with "1". While working with clutter/furniture, I also hide markers most of thhe time.

 

Thank you for the responses!

Edited May 16, 2017 by ttabakova

[TheDungeonDweller]

Yeah sometimes I need to zoom all the way into the room I'm editing for multiple story interiors. I like doing that though, feels like I'm really in the room. :D

[thumbincubation]

If you're not already using it, when you want to mod the room, hide some of the walls, so you can look in from outside, without your vision being blocked or accidentally clicking on something you didn't mean to.

 

To do that, click on an object and press 1 twice. This will make it disappear. It is not gone, just hidden, and will reappear when you load the cell again, as well as in game. You can bring it back sooner by pressing ALT + 1, or pressing f5. If you press 1 a third time, while still selected, it will come right back. Pressing 1 only once makes it half hidden, which is good for precisely furnishing an area, but then you can't select it, so you'll need to hit f5 to make it reappear.

 

If you multi-select and press 1 twice, all the items will be hidden, and you can hide more just by selecting a new item or items and doing the same thing. Makes life much, much easier, for working inside smaller areas or when there are things like clouds and trees in the way. (Currently, ck seems to have a bit of an attitude about trees. They'll disappear but then come back as some kind of 8 bit looking frame in the CK. They're still trees in game, and after you f5, but they don't seem to want to stay invisible. On the up side, once they are like that, you still can't accidentally click on them.

[Tarshana]

I never duplicate cells, I make new ones and then go to the cell I want to copy from and only select the static items - this gives me a skeleton to work with and I can clean the file later in xEdit.

 

Create your own mesh folder at the very least, and start with a couple items you might want in your house. I personally change all nif texture file paths to their own folder as well, retaining the author name, or other factor, because packaging it makes it easier and less likely to get overwritten by loose files.

 

I like looking at http://built4ever.deviantart.com/ for inspiration on layouts - how people move through a house, etc, and then adapt them as such.

[sakora]

For visibility(strange you say that, since I find visibility in the Render Window better than Fallout 4's). Use an "over head" perspective.

 

Also Rome wasn't built in a day. If you spend TOO much time on it, you'll lose patience/burn out. I'd do 2 hours worth of work, and then take a few hours off, or come back the following day.

 

How on earth did i manage to miss that in all the reading and tutorials i have watched... that 1 will toggle hidden objects.... DUR...

 

I think life just got easier!!!

[thumbincubation]

I didn't know until someone mentioned it to me. I don't think I've ever seen it in a tutorial.