I need your help again guys, I'm starting a new worldspace but I have this doubts:

-NavMesh BEFORE or AFTER filling the space?

-In NavMesh->Auto Generate WorldSpace->NavMesh Auto Generation, what are the best options?

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?30462za45t1rl48

I think its:

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?w4f9tg7678dq739

But advise would be welcome, thanks.

You'd want to NavMesh last, after placing all the clutter so AI would know where to walk and where not to. Also, I'd not auto-generate and just NavMesh it by hand. The results will be a lot better and, with practice, not too time consumptive.

I understand the navmesh by hand part, but in a huge EXTERIOR worldspace with all that cells and borders, isn't the best option auto-generate?

It's certainly less time consumptive, but at the expense of accuracy.

I see, thanks.

But regarding my second question, what's the best configuration?

I've found doing a recast auto-gen works great with the 'factory' settings. It comes out a bit on the conservative side though, in that some tight areas you may actually be able to go, it won't place navMesh. You ALWAYS have to go back through and tweak by hand (unless you have a VERY plain area).

I would avoid auto-gen in any Vanilla area (exterior or interior)... it always ends horribly, as in it breaks AI, quests, etc if everything isn't reproduced near-exact. But if you have a custom worldSpace, and it's large enough that doing it by hand would take until TES6... by all means give it a whirl; just keep backups of your data before each change (which you should be doing anyways...). Also, don't keep the CK open too long... the garbage-collection routines are buggy, as well as navMesh-specific bugs that WILL cause corruption when doing things a certain way.

So I would recommend doing a couple cells, then saving it, exit CK, reload, continue. I recommend that for ALL modding with ANY app... keep your sessions short and to the point, don't save numerous times in a single session, and don't switch/load too many different cells in the renderWindow before exit/reload.

Thanks, tell me something, by factory setting you mean "Havok-Based"?

nope.. recast. That's the only one I've actually tried, and I didn't have reason to go further. You'd have to experiment with the other stuff or ask someone else... sorry! By factory settings I meant the screen that pops up with a bunch of tweaks you can play with. Since I liked what I got as-is, I never tinkered with any of those settings. So try doing the plain one (factory), if it looks like tweaking could be done, then tweak away.

Just remember that the longer you keep the CK open, and the more you edit and finalize/etc navMesh - the greater the chances of some kind of session-related bug causing drama (I've proven this to be the case in the NavMesh Bug threads). I would recommend using a copy of your ESP, play with it all you want until you find what you need... then exit and reload ANOTHER backup copy (a fresh one), make the changes you KNOW you want, save then exit the CK (deleting your 'test' ESP).

The reason I was asking is because factory settings is "havok-based" and in all honesty I don't think thats a good option.

My testing as proven that object-based is the best option. I will continue my testing and report back, if anyone knows more please tell something, thanks.

Funny, if I leave the CK open for more than a few hours, it just crashes all by itself. I save often and restart the CK after every 5 to 10 saves. And make a backup of the file after every section is done. Been many a time i have pushed it just a little too far and it crashed leaving me wondering what I just lost. Don't start something complex like navmesh or room boundaries without making a backup and then make another after it is done. I know it sounds tedious, but not having good backups has cost me hours and hours of work. Especially when the CK can do things like just delete the navmesh without warning or suddenly extend room boundaries and shoot portals out to here and gone. Talk about buggy programs. But it's all fun.

True, I'm always saving.

Regarding the question?

I navmesh last thing. Reference the comment about the CK deleting my navmesh. That's a bugger and it isn't necessary until you add the NPCs. I also do not like the auto generated mesh, but navmeshing on landscape is a special treat. I'm sure they auto generated the cells for the game by the way they look. I tried each method on an interior with lots of posts once and they were all different versions of nasty. I doubt that has a negative affect on the function though because the vanilla cells work fine. If you want to auto generate, use a backup and try the different methods to see which one needs the least cleanup. I suspect they each have advantages under certain situations. I'm getting close to navmeshing some huge interior levels. Maybe I will do some more extensive testing and have some more productive comments for you.

This is entirely unnecessary.

While it *IS* prudent advice to save often, there's no evidence whatsoever that leaving the CK open for extended periods of time causes any damage at all. If that were actually true, folks with thousands of hours racked up (yes, they exist) would have reported massive amounts of problems by now.

As far as when to navmesh, generally last, because up until that point you're probably tweaking placements on things and adding little details here and there. For a large area, using the recast method with defaults is good enough. Just make sure you sweep through everything so you can cut out the triangles the CK will lay down on top of and inside of your buildings.

And rejoice in knowing that 1.6 has fixed the issue with the navmeshes suddenly being broken and no longer useful in the game.

Now this depends on the terrain. If you have a rocky mountain side cliff pathway, you probably want to do it by hand. But if you have relatively flat smooth forest terrain, you can generate and it does it VERY well. Takes like 30 seconds to clean up and you're done, and it's very accurate.

Thanks all, regarding the other options?

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?30462za45t1rl48

For example should one choose "Faster generation"?

Many thanks again.

Checking what you meant by 'recast is havok-based'.... I'm not sure what you mean by that; though I suspect you meant 'static-based'. For a recast autogen, if nothing is selected it will autogen the entire cell - taking into consideration all the collision-bearing statics/objects. If you do a recast while something (or several) things are selected, it will only autogen some areas (in interiors); or 'cut out' the objects selected (while placing navMesh under all the rest). I could be mistaken, as I haven't really tested this extensively or in exteriors.

But I did see something that may be preventing it from working as it does on mine. I use the recast in interiors, not exteriors (as I said above, I never autogen Vanilla worldSpace, and haven't gone back to fix my preCK mods with custom worldSpaces yet). So try the recast, but check the box that says 'include landscape'. That should do it for ya.

Thanks for the feedback, if more people have experience with this please say something.