Hi, a portion of my mod does some mid-scale improvement,creation and expansion of the in-game Orc strongholds as well as adding in a few new locations. I want my content to fit into the world as best as possible but I don't have the skill or time to reskin,edit, create new meshes and I find myself having difficulty creating a cohesive,unique, and interesting area. Not to mention that I don't want something that is meant to be an Orc hold look like it could be a Nordic ruin.

I just want to know some tips and tricks about how I can get my locations looking like they truely belong in the beautiful world of Skyrim. Dealing with limitations, populating an area with interesting architecture, flora and features, blending in new structures to make them one with the world around. Anything you can give me I will take, I just want to improve my skill in this area of modding.

It's the same - for me - with making dungeons. Either I end up with a dungeon that looks like every other vanilla dungeon, or I end up with something so unbelieveable even I don't believe its a dungeon.

What you are supposed to do is imagine the area you are doing is real life. So why would a tower be placed, in a stronghold, at a particular gate or in a particular wall. What's it defending against, high ground, a road, a way in by river ... ?

... Same with everything else ... Does the fort need a handcart? Or a horse? If so, does it need a stable? If it needs a stable, where is the best place for that stable, easy access to internal roads/gates ... better outside the walls? Flowers right next to a well worn track ... unlikely, they would have been trampled, in real life ... better to place them a little bit further away.

It is one enormous big waste of time ... Or, very probably, the most fantastic thing you can be doing ... depending on your point of view

(so, as they say, have fun!)


The most convincing areas are those which would make sense in the real world.

I've been considering doing a 'tutorial' on world design that's just a bunch of tips.

I'm not sure how to go about doing it, so if I just recorded me working in my worldspace for like 20 minutes explaining things as I go along, would that help? My worldspace is looking pretty awesome (I'm like you, no new meshes or textures, just vanilla) and I like to think that I do a good job editing the exterior, but explaining all my tips and tricks in text would take forever...

Sounds good to me I know I would be an avid supporter of that.

building exteriors is something of the most fun you can have with Elder Scrolls modding. I consider it one of my favourite areas of modding.

With Skyrim it has actually become a greater challenge to build stuff from the vanilla meshes. Some of the sixiest things we get with the game are in one piece. Like the excellent Fort Dour in Solitude and the Blue Palace too. I was a bit disappointed when I noted that I couldn't just take away a tower from Fort Dour and use it as standalone, but got the entire castle along. You will have to do creative solutions in those cases. You can combine things to make stuff look totally different though. I usually put together several types of static houses and walls to create a larger castle or whatever. It's fun and it's challenging and a real artistic undertaking. For Orc forts, I'd probably make lots of use of the palisades and the excellent wall pieces we get with the Imperial forts. Those are both types of statics that are really easy to work with and it always ends up looking good. Those hot Orc Longhouses can be combined with other statics too to create something entirely new.

As for inspiration and how to make things look natural, I suggest using real life source material. I recently took the city of Paris as inspiration when creating a small fishing village. It ended up looking nothing like Paris, but having Paris in mind during the creation process, ended up making the entire town look really unique in design and layout. I did it all with vanilla meshes also, since I wanted that part of my land to actually look entirely vanilla. You can easily use Google Pictures to check for whatever you want to be inspired by or the type of stuff want to create. I built a military camp once on my continent, and used actual Roman military fortifications and camp layouts as inspiration. I consider that camp something of the best I've done in modding this game.

And yes, have fun, because it is and because that's why we're doing this.

Excellent! Thanks for the helpful advice. Not only are real-world locations good source material, but even in game locations could serve as way to note how they make use of meshes to make a cohesive area.

You're right. Just playing the game and taking note of how Bethesda set up the world is excellent inspiration! It can also be great inspiration to play the previous Elder Scrolls games as well.