I just spent the last few days making an interior, and it's a rather giant cave. I know I have to keep it under 1000 objects, and so far I've done so. The issue now is I need to know how close I am to that limit. I have two options; if I'm only at like 700, then I can fill in parts of the cave with more detail and loot. But if I'm very close to 1000, I'll leave it be. (I think I'm at like 700-800, but I need to know for sure)

I know I could also just change the limit to higher than 1000, but it would be far more challenging if I have to keep the object count below 1000.

Is there any easy way to tell how many objects I'm at? I always thought it just told you a number in the Cell View but apparantly I'm remembering incorrectly.

I appreciate any suggestions,
AJV

http://www.creationkit.com/GetNumRefs_-_Cell or, with TES5Edit once available, multiselect all the CELL's children, "Remove", then note the number reported when verifying the removal and cancel.

Alright. I've added some detail and it has yet to crash, so I may implement a little trigger with that so I can see just how close I'm cutting it. Speaking of TES5Edit, do you know when it will be out? I seriously need it to clean this filthy filthy mod before release, so hopefully it's in the next few months.

Within a few months sounds about right for the public release, going by the last estimate I've read.

TESVGEcko might be closer. Latest beta version is supposed to be capable of cleaning but not merging. I think they posted it yesterday but I haven't had the chance to play with it yet.

However you go about 'cleaning', you'll want to *rebuild NAVI afterward if you remove any 'dirty' NAVMs.

*open as active and save in CK

Oh, cool! I'll go download that and mess around! (And backup my mod plenty first )
Ah, I'll make sure to do that, thanks!

Well, you can select all the items in the cell window to see the number of objects (you need to deselect and select an object in the render window afterwards though).

Now that we're at the topic, what exactly is the problem with having a lot of objects in a cell? I have a cell with 6500 objects or something... I know it's an overkill, but what are the effects of it?

I tried selecting them all but it was too long for the little bar thing, so I couldn't see the + X objects.

The game is supposed to limit you to 1000 objects so that your cell can't be too busy or complex. I assume a console limitation. I still think I must already be over 1000, but I havent' hit any issues, so I guess I wont worry about it...

how can you have more than 1000 items in a cell? U mean outside or interior?

Interiors have the limit. I imagine exteriors have the limit too, but a cell in an exterior is like 100x100 feet, so you'd REAAAALLLLY have to try to jam more than 1000 objects in that tiny area.

why not use occlusion boxes?

How do you know there is a 1000 object limit on interiors? Just curious, as that number is kind of arbitrary (as opposed to 1024). I also haven't found any data which may limit this - though that only applies to plugins, not the actual game-engine.

Anyways - you could use Snip to see how many records are in a cell instantly by selecting the grup of the cell you want to test (# of records contained in that group is what you're looking for).

Here's a version of Snip that has various issues fixed (such as the infamous Truncation Bug):
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/21202
(this link also has the latest XML file which has nearly the ENTIRE record structure decoded)

Because it was a limit set by Beth I thought. I've always heard people talking of it. There's even an INI setting you can change to make it higher or lower. And Beth said that while making Dawnguard keeping some cells within 1000 objects was a challenge.

So unless I've just horribly construed everything I've been hearing, I think there's a limit.

I don't think there is a published limit.

I think there is advice (I thought in the Bendo tutorial somewhere, though I cannot find the line now) that advices to keep items below 1000 in your dungeon/interior

(but with portals, Roombounds and the like, I think it is there more as an idiot-check than as a limit which must be adhered to?)

^Good call

See: http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Occlusion_Culling

Wait, do multibounds even exist in the CK anymore? I know there are roombounds. But are there multibounds? Does that also mean a lone occlusion plane with no nearby multibound is useless and servers no purpose?

The buttons are still there for multibound/occlusion stuff, so I'd imagine so. Admittedly, I've not used 'em for Skyrim yet.

Edit: Just tested an occlusion cube in game and it works.

This is false. Like I said, I have about 6500 objects in a single interior cell, and I haven't encountered any problems.

Well that looks like two things that I had somehow become horribly misinformed about. Yaaay! That makes modding a fair bit easier!

I don't know how many objects there are in my largest cell, but it is definitely way over 1000. I'm not having any issues but the plugin has to be in ESM format or the game crashes when I try to enter from a save game. I don't know if there is an actual object limit or not, but you can definitely hit the memory limit of 2gb I think. When you do, the game will crash. Your cell alone might not do it, but the player can add stuff to it and exceed the memory limit. My personal thought is that if you enter your fresh cell and the memory usage is much over 1 gb, you should might want to start thinking about breaking it up before you get much bigger.

The default for the LargeIntRefCount setting is/was set at a default of 1000.

However, this number caused a CTD or a visit to the void when your interior cell had that approx amount of objects and you exited the interior directly to any worldspace other than Tamriel. The Bethesda fix was to up the limit to to 999999 (or any number greater than 1000, but equal to or less than 999999).

This means that If you leave it set at 1000 and have 20000 objects in your interior, everything's fine if you exit your interior to Tamriel. However, if you exit your interior to a small worldspace, the CTD/void visit happened.

The other fix was an intermediate jump to an empty cell to 'flush' the memory.

It's believed (by myself and others) that this limitation was put in place for consoles, but should have been set higher for PCs

So then how are people making interiors with far more than 1000 refs and not getting these issues? (OR did Beth change the 1000 limit to 999999 for everyone in a patch?)

My interior definitely has over 1000 objects, and exiting into my custom worldspace causes no issues at all.

I don't think they changed it. I should also have stated that It doesn't seem to affect esms. Is yours an esm ?

I'm also not sure if it affects stand alone custom worldspaces, but it definitely affects small worldspaces that are parented to Tamriel.

It's possible that if your worldspace is a standalone (like Tamriel), then it would be treated the same as exiting to Tamriel (no CTD). The same situation that I mention in the post above.

Ah. Yes my worldspace is standalone, and yes I'm an ESM. It's great news that I don't have to worry about this, though! Thanks.