SSE Navmesh for exterior cells?

[maxarturo]

"I put the collision box around it and found the L_NAVCUT in the primitives section. I never used it, so I dont know if its right."

The correct and functional way to use a NavCut is to create a collision box around 1 meter in height so that half a meter exceeds from each side (up and down), the reason for this is that some npcs will still be able to track the other side of the NavMesh (is in its AI), if the height of the collision is smaller than half a meter.

NavCut must cover all the mass of the NavMesh.

* Creating big NavCuts like the one you show in your pic makes no impact or difference.

"Should I mark "player activator"?"

NO.

"How the npcs will know where the hole starts? Because the collision cube is cutting the navmesh in the other side of the bridge, but that is the end part of the dungeon. The npcs will come from left to right in the screenshots above."

NavCut cuts the path tracking only from one direction, the direction from where the npc is coming.

In your case:

- npcs that comes from left won't be able to go to the right side of the collison.

- npcs that comes from right won't be able to go to the left side of the collison.

In order to make your hole detectable from all npcs you need to create NavCut collisions in both sides of the hole.

Or one big (in length) that covers all the NavMeshed hole part.

* If you don't disable the collisions at some point none of the npcs will be able to cross the bridge.

"Should I do the navmesh in the bridge, while it is raised?"

No.

"Do the navmesh moves with the bridge, when it is activated?"

No.

A little advice:

Try to use as few as possible NavMesh vertex/nodes when NavMeshing.

From your pic i can see that you have around 50+ vertex for a NavMesh part that it can easily be done with just 12 vertex.

The reason behind this is that although you can not see the NavMesh in game it does however uses system resources, the bigger the NavMesh the more system resources it will use.

NavMesh will not noticeable affect PC performance, but if you reach a NavMesh vertex count of 5000+ you will then realise that it does affect PC/game performance.

 

* The bigger your NavMesh triangles are the easiest is to edit the NavMesh and a void mistakes.

Edited February 9, 2020 by maxarturo

[cumbrianlad]

So many questions...

 

Thumbincubation, first (It's easiest and I'm lazy). No, never delete the vanilla navmesh. Just drag it way down, hide it and do your own navmesh in its place. The vanilla NPCs will use your new navmesh. I did a re-work of Severin Manor and found that the vanilla NPCs were totally screwed up when I deleted the original navmesh. Doing it this way they were fine.

Wolfstorm, your navmesh is fine. The collision cubes aren't.

As Maxarturo says, forget about 'player activation'. . I think it's best if I set out what I'd do...

With the navmesh over the bridge, as you've done, select the bridge and put the collision cube around it. Set the collision cube to L_Navcut. Re-size it, if necessary, but it should go in fine.

Next, the script. There is a vanilla script 'ToggleLinkedRefOnOpenClose'. This disables/enables the linked reference of the object that the script is on.

Select the bridge in the render window. Add the above script. With the bridge still selected, go to the linked reference tab and select the collision cube as the linked ref.

Now when the bridge is lowered or raised, the script will toggle on and off the collision cube. So when the bridge is up, the L_Navcut collision cube is enabled, when it's down it isn't.

Thinking about this, I'm pretty sure I've seen two versions of the bridge activator. One is 'No Collision'. If the drawbridge you're using has collision around the bridge in its raised position but no collision when it's lowered, then you may not need the script. Have you looked at the bridge in Nifskope?

 

Have you game-tested it?

[Wolfstorm]

I'm going to scrap the cave. Too many gaps, and for each gap I close, three more appears. Also, the follower is not following, because of dozens of dirty mounds and rocks in the ground, used to cover the gaps, and which made the terrain uneasy for her.

There is a issue with this cave kit, pieces wont snap at each other, no matter what I do.

 

I will need to remade the cave first. Then, I will use your tips.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Wolfstorm

[cumbrianlad]

The pieces of the cave kit should snap together.

 

Were you working at an angle, other than the default orientation that pieces are placed? If so, you'd need to press 'shift' and 'Q' simultaneously, then click on the first cave piece at an angle. That sets the grid to your new angle and the pieces will snap together correctly. Do the same and click in the void to revert to the default grid placement.

 

I've also found that CK does not like moving more than a handful of pieces simultaneously, without losing their snap to grid. This isn't noticeable for items like clutter but is noticeable with architecture or cave pieces. it will leave a whole ton of small gaps all around the dungeon. Normally, all you need to do to put these right is to enable 'snap to grid' and 'snap to angle', make sure to use 'shift' + 'Q' if you're working off-grid, then work your way logically around the cell, clicking on each piece to force them back to the grid.

 

Which cave kit is it? I've had endless trouble with one of the Falmer cave kits not behaving correctly. My workaround was to make the cave in a normal kit like CaveG, navmesh it, make sure i don't need to alter the cave structure again, then select each cave wall/floor piece and use 'ctrl' + 'F' to find a replacement. i then choose the Falmer equivalent that I want. I seem to recall that the issue was that the Falmer cave piece could not be selected once it was placed in the render window.

[Wolfstorm]

On a second thought, I'm going to only remove the rocks and mounds, then place then again and remade the navmesh. The follower just stuck around the rocks.

 

 

Were you working at an angle, other than the default orientation that pieces are placed? If so, you'd need to press 'shift' and 'Q' simultaneously, then click on the first cave piece at an angle. That sets the grid to your new angle and the pieces will snap together correctly. Do the same and click in the void to revert to the default grid placement.

 

 

At first, no. I only discovered this later, when I was finishing the cave. Right now I'm doing a dwemer ruin (which comes after the cave) and is all going smoothly, because now I'm using the shift+Q.

 

The problem with the cave kit is that it seems to not snap even when I use shift+Q. It always leave a gap open, which mades me put a rock over it, then another gap appears where the rock ends, forcing me to put another rock, and so on. I guess this messed up the navmesh.

Edited February 11, 2020 by Wolfstorm

[cumbrianlad]

That's really strange. Which cave kit is it?

[Wolfstorm]

Green Cave.

[cumbrianlad]

Something else is going on here then. There are no issues with the green cave kit. I've used it dozens of times an never had a problem.

 

I've just got no idea why it should be misbehaving.

 

The dirt mounds, rocks etcetera certainly explain why your navmesh is unworkable, though. I try to keep them to a minimum. NPCs get stuck on the most ridiculous little edges! Dirt mounds can be an issue for them, too.

 

For your new cave, if you have spiders in there, use a strategically placed DirtMound01 at any exits with raised lips, such as the exits from shafts. Place it and drag it down a little until there's a nice gradual ramp at the exit. Most NPCs go over these raised sections, but spiders tend to get stuck.

 

On another topic, i had a thought about your drawbridge issue, too. If the aim is to prevent NPCs including followers from crossing before the bridge is lowered, just be aware that if combat is initiated, followers will rather annoyingly use their 'blink' teleport to cross to engage the enemy, regardless of how well you combine your L_navcut collision and scripts!

 

I'm just saying this because I had to block followers from entering my current dungeon system, partly for this reason. As it happens, it suited me not to allow followers, anyway, but that's not always the case.

[Wolfstorm]

I noticed the green cave kit only connects when it is odd numbers or even numbers. For example, 01 only connects with 03, and 02 with 04. Anything different and it will leave gaps in the ground and in the roof.

I decided to leave the cave as it is, since, story-wise, this cave was opened by the dwarven drillers (one of Mihail's monsters, the cave have some of them), so it ought to be irregular.

 

The follower stuck because some navmeshes were too narrow, and others too steep, due to the rocks in the walls and the floor, respectively. I made the navmesh following these gap covers.

 

The bridge have worked, though. I used tcl in console to reach the other side, and the follower stopped at the platform, instead of jumping in the abyss. She even looked below:

 

 

Then I reloaded, ran to the lever and used it. Now the follower could walk over the bridge:

 

 

Worked like a charm. Thanks for the tip, cumbrianlad.

Edited February 11, 2020 by Wolfstorm

[cumbrianlad]

Ah!

 

Now I understand your problem after that last post.

 

I thought your issue was with the correct pieces not joining up. It's not. You're trying to join pieces that aren't meant to join up!

 

To make life simpler for yourself, and this goes for any kit that has Wall01, Wall02, CornerIn01, CornerOut01, etcetera, do this when starting the cell...

 

Insert a Wall01 part anywhere.

Insert a Wall02 part by dragging it onto the first bit, then move it to one side. (Draggging and dropping onto the other piece gets it at roughly the right height.) Don't rotate any of them!

Repeat for Wall03, Wall04.

 

Now you'll see that all four parts are rotated 90 degrees to each other... This is because the wall parts all have different undulations around their edges. They are only meant to go on one side of the cell. All wall01 parts will only join seamlessly to another Wall01 part or the correct corner pieces.

 

Now drag a floor piece in in the same manner. Again, don't rotate it. (If there's a mid02, that's always just a variation, such as a column in it. The mid parts all join up)

 

Do the same for each type of corner piece.

 

Now that they're all in, you'll see which corner pieces join up to which wall pieces. Move them and use them to suit.

 

The same goes for the doors. If it is a 'Door01' it must go on the same edge of the cave that uses the 'Wall01' pieces. After that the sub-types B01, LB01, are simply different shapes and sizes of exits to match the halls they lead out onto.

 

Hope that's clear enough?

 

Working off grid it's the same, but it's sometimes easier to put them all in using the standard grid and angle snaps, rotate the lot, use 'Shift@ + 'Q' to select one of the parts then click on every other piece to snap them together properly to avoid 'spider webs' (thin lines where you can see the void along the edges of the pieces.)