Height map Editor and world space help

[CRAZYDEW]

I've had a mod idea in my head for quite awhile that I would like to casually devote my time to. I've done a fair amount of research into the functions of the Geck and have a basic understanding of it. however the heightmap editor has halted me from trying anything because of how infuriating it is to use. I have watched many tutorials and read several articles but some things seem to be left unexplained, and other things don't function the same way they are explained. I have realized that the height map editor is highly unstable creating black "tears" and other bugs.

I followed the instructions by "madmongo" in this post: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3075619-making-a-new-land-in-geck/

but now with my generated world space I have a mysterious black box in my render window. I believe it's a "tear"?

 

My worldspace land height is default set to -2048 and i set the water height to -2100, if i move the land height at all I get a black screen and can't find the land. (when experimenting i set it to 0,100,300,-2000,-1000, and i cant find it now matter how much i scroll or adjust the water height, so i use the default) my world space has the "small world" setting unchecked because i would like to have a large world.

 

I've attempted to use the smooth tool all across the surface of the heightmap in an attempt to get rid of these black boxes, but it either does nothing after saving in the editor or just causes more "tears". It seems like as much as I try to move forward the Geck takes 2 steps back. I've been working at this for several days now, almost a week in time spent on just trying to figure out the heightmap editor. watching and reading up on multiple tutorials and videos. lots of experimentation and trial and errors, and mostly errors. So as a last resort, i made a forums account and have come here for help. Any amount of help will be dearly appreciated. The more in depth and detailed explanations would help a ton.

 

With how large the mod community is and the numerous mods that have custom "Grande" sized maps, i'm surprised there aren't more tutorials on how the heightmap fully functions. (or my google skills might be weak). Thanks in advance.

[madmongo]

Welcome to the buggiest parts of the GECK. It is extremely frustrating at times. Been there, done that.

 

This has been a bit of a learning process for me as well. It's not well documented. Some day, if I get some time, I'll try to write down everything that I have learned. It's been a lot of trial and error. One thing that I have learned since writing in that other thread is that you can end up with floating trees in your LOD if the landscape height is under 14000. If you aren't using trees, a height of 6000 works fine.

 

I can't see exactly what you are looking at in your render window. I know that the GECK won't render landscape properly until it has at least one object to render. What I typically do is create the heightmap, then go to the coordinates where I want to start my world building, place a static object there, then go to some other cell in the GECK (typically the first interior cell), then go back to my exterior worldspace to the cell I just named. As long as the GECK has a static object to render, the rest of the render window usually works.

 

Another black box issue is that when you start to edit your landscape in the render window, areas just outside of where you are editing will often turn black. This is just a display bug. It's not actually changing the cell textures to black. You can try pressing F5 to get it to redraw, or go to another cell like an interior cell then come back to the worldspace. Just moving to nearby cells using the arrow keys won't fix it.

 

If these don't help, post exactly what you have done to get to this point in as much detail as possible.

 

You can leave the default land height to -2048. I typically set the water to height to approximately the lowest part of the landscape, so I can make lakes and rivers and such. If I don't have any lakes or rivers in the worldspace, I'll set the water height to 0. I doubt that this is your problem, but that's how I do it.

 

ETA: If you truly do have landscape tears, scrap it and start over. I have never been able to recover from landscape tears. Be gentle with the heightmap editor.

Edited March 26, 2019 by madmongo

[Mktavish]

I would suggest to start with the landscape editor rather than height map editor. Then open the height map editor to see what you did looks like there.

Count on lots of trial and error if you really have a large map in mind for your vision. Think of it as learning to play the blues before you can play classical music.

The height map editor is a powerful tool with many intricacies , not to be taken lightly.

 

True dat about placing static objects , but even then some times it still won't render when starting out with very little changes.

So you have to double click on the object from the cell view window which will bring that object up then render the landscape.

 

I myself usually building smaller world cells ... turn the grid on , then place stuff like radio towers to mark the center and boundaries I want to work in.

So don't be shy about placing stuff to get your bearings you will just delete later , they really help :wink:

 

And remember you can go back and forth between landscape editing and height map editing.

Just follow the creating / saving procedures / save often ... make back ups before attempting radical changes to stuff you know you want.

[CRAZYDEW]

ok, i've encountered a new problem i'm just attempting to build a simple mountain and there is not any sharp changes in inclination theres relatively smooth rise, (its more like a hill) but i keep getting world tears, i always run the smoothing tool over the entire work area before i save the heightmap and load it into the render window. i've heard that the heightmap editor can be used for small precision details aswell, but this is starting to sound like a myth. Could i get some tips on how to avoid getting world tears? i feel like i"m being gentle with the software.

 

secondly, is the noise tool a viable tool for getting terrain? i will literally click it once and get dramatic results, with world tears 9/10 times. should i play with the intensity settings, i leave the settings at default for intensity.

[madmongo]

Can you post a picture of these lanscape tears? If you are being gentle with the heightmap editor you shouldn't be getting them.

 

Here is how I edit terrain. This isn't the only way to do it, but it works for me.

 

First, I go into the heightmap editor and create a random terrain with very little randomness, but I have the offset set to 14000. The point of this step is to create an essentially flat terrain that has the minimum height up above where you run into the floating tree LOD bug.

 

Mktavish likes to start small and then go big. I go the opposite way. I start big and then go small. Either way works.

 

I start by using the raise/lower tool to sculpt out mountains for borders (I don't like invisible walls for borders). I don't recall the tool settings off the top of my head, but you want it set so that you make fairly small edits with every pass of the mouse. It should take maybe 8 or 10 passes with the mouse to get the height of the mountain up to something that looks like a mountain in-game. If you have it set so that you can create a tall mountain in a single pass of the mouse, then you have the tool set too aggressively and that is going to result in landscape tears.

 

Often I'll do a random pass, with the size set so that it makes fairly large areas raise and lower, and the height of the randomness set to about 1000 or so. Nothing too dramatic. This is just to prevent completely flat landscapes which look unrealistic. After this is done I'll go back and continue to edit mountains and depressions for lakes and rivers and such.

 

Save often. This is by far the buggiest part of the GECK.

 

At this point, I have mountains and valleys and depressions for lakes and rivers. But if you look at the landscape, it is very flat and unrealistic. You can use some randomness to fix this. You want small height adjustments, again no more than 500 or 1000. Get too aggressive with it and you'll get landscape tears. You also want this to be very small scale so that it raises and lowers the landscape several times within each cell. You'll have to play with it to see what you prefer. Go too small with too much height variance and your landscape will look like an unrealistic weird alien-like surface that you can't even walk on because it's too jagged. Go to large without enough height variance and your landscape will still look too smooth to be realistic.

 

So yes, the random/noise tool is very useful, but you have to be careful how you use it. Don't use it to make mountains. Use the regular raise/lower tool for that. If you play with it for a bit you'll start to get a feel for how much you can have it vary the landscape before it starts creating landscape tears.

 

Once I am done with that (and saved, again....) I'll go into the worldspace and place an item there. I tend to use airplanes instead of radio towers. Really, you can put anything there, just so you give the GECK something to render. After that, I tend to start with roads, as that helps me lay everything out so that I can get the proportions for areas right. After I have some roads then I'll get rid of my floating plane since at that point the GECK will have something to render. I make sure to name a cell that has a road in it so that I can open that cell first in the GECK and avoid its rendering bug.

[CRAZYDEW]

I think i realized what my issue might be, my vision for the map considers completely fantastical landscapes, taking a'lot of influence from skyrim and a large mountain region that i hope to be semi reminiscent of the original dark souls. It would feature a'lot of jagged mountains and cliffs, i realize that they would need to be relatively smooth to prevent world tears. the point is that the map doesn't need to look very realistic in any means, and am in fact aiming for an alien landscape. I can cut corners any where necessary, like i've said, i'm just doing this casually as a hobby.

 

Do you have any idea how to get a relatively pointy mountain like the "throat of the world" in skyrim?

 

what are your masking settings? mine go by increments of 500, is this to0 severe?

[mindboggles]

I suggest if you're building a WS from scratch then use TESAnnwyn ( http://www.oceanlightwave.com/morrowind/TESAnnwyn.html ) and generate your world using a heightmap image. His readme is a little bit lacking and you can find extra info here ( https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?t=1055 ). Getting your heightmap right is difficult and often results in tearing, TrickyVein has a tutorial here ( https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/517230-tutorial-converting-a-dem-to-a-heightmap/ ). There are a couple of worldspace creation programs specifically designed for creating hightmaps for games and you could try searching for some, a word of warning but you want greater than 8 bit channel depth in the image or your generated map will look a little minecraft. I myself splurged and have been using the pro version of World Machine (it is expensive) to produce custom worlds exported in 32 bit real raw's that TESAnnwyn accepts. Other programs (cheaper / free) might provide adequate results that you're after.

I'm not often on Nexus much any more but you can find me on the TTW or Frontier discord regularly if you need more help.

[Mktavish]

Try placing the static cliff pieces to fill out your mountains. Turn them all sorts of ways , and size them different ... then bring the land up to meet their bases.

 

The land tools are really each to their own ... you'll find yours after enough time like the rest of us ;)

 

Thanks for the tips Mongo and Boggles :thumbsup:

You made me better just by reading them.