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You'll probably want to read
the tutorial on World Building first. Landscaping is one of
the key ways you can use in the Construction Set to give an
area a unique look.
- Load your plugin file.
You'll want to load your plugin first, "MyPlugin.esp"
(see the World Building tutorial). When you load it, select
it to be the "active" plugin. You can run the
Construction Set with many plugins loaded, so you must set
one to active. The active plugin is the one to which all
of your changes will be saved.
- Find an area to build in.
Landscape is infinite in Morrowind. It goes on forever,
although most of it is underwater (an infinite ocean surrounds
the game area). You can add your own islands and continents
there, or modify the landscape on the existing map. If you
wish to edit the landscape that is already there, you'll
probably want to find a place that isn't too close to any
existing towns. For our demo, we'll start with an area off
the existing continent that is just water.
- Shape the landscape.
The landscape is a "height map" made up of vertices.
You can pull these vertices up and down to shape the landscape.
You can only move them up and down because this keeps the
massive amount of landscape data to a reasonable level for
storage.
Click the landscape button on the toolbar to enter landscape
editing mode. Your clicks in the render window will now
move and select the landscape points, instead of world
objects.
A red circle shows how big of an area you will be pulling
up and down. By changing the Radius and Falloff %, you choose
how the vertices move as you select and move the mouse up
and down. Start pulling the landscape up so it's over the
water.
By moving large sections of landscape up and then others
down, you can sculpt the mesh like clay. Also try using
the "smoothing" checkbox. This will allow you
to smooth out areas to get rid of unwanted jaggedness that
can occur from rapid height changes.
It is best to edit the heights in wireframe mode, but
switch often to textured mode so you can see where the
ocean height is hitting your area.
- Texture the landscape.
Once you have a shape you like, you'll want to texture it.
Right clicking on the landscape paints it with your currently
selected texture. Try to follow the shapes you have built.
The landscape textures will automatically smooth into one
another. If you get more than 2 textures hitting the same
area, you'll want to move some things around and try to
get the texture match on the corner, as only 2 textures
look perfect hitting the same spot. A landscape texture
covers 4 landscape vertices, so you may also want to adjust
the shape of the landscape when you see where the textures
fall.
- Place landscape foliage.
Dress your landscape up with trees, rocks, bushes and anything
else you can think of. Leave landscape editing and drag
objects in from the object window. The larger trees and
rocks are under the "static" tab and the plants
and bushes are under "containers" since they contain
ingredients such as berries. Once you get a bunch in you
like, use the copy and paste functions to move groups around
quickly.
- Vertex Coloring.
The finishing touch on landscape is vertex coloring. Go
back into landscape editing mode and select "Edit colors".
Your mouse now becomes a paintbrush. You can select a color
for right clicking and one for left clicking. Vertex painting
can really enhance your area by adding darkened areas under
trees and weathered areas around rocks.
- Place dungeon entrance and link it.
Now add an entrance into your dungeon we created in the
World Building Tutorial. Drag in a door object from the
object window. Double click the door and select the "Teleport"
option and choose the Cell you want the door to go to, "My
Cave of Death and Adventure" in this case. Do the same
to the door in the dungeon, linking it to the outside. After
you choose the Cell you want to go to, you'll get to place
a DoorMarker that shows the exact location the door goes
to.
- Save and test.
Now go to your new area in the game. Make sure the doors
work correctly. You'll probably see some areas in your landscape
that need smoothing, or places where you could have used
the texture placement better. You can also adjust some of
the hills so they are too steep for the player to walk over.
You should also think about vertex coloring a path to the
dungeon entrance, or some kind of landmarks. You don't want
the player to miss your excellent creation.
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