“I have heard it said many times before that if you stuck and need help this is the place to go, I hope they were right.”^ ^

(About me – I am a Graphic Designer and I want to a Texture Artist (I think I already am?), so I have made a few seamless texture with bump/normal maps and want to add them into my new world I have created in WM2. I have some experience with NifSkope adding new textures onto models).

Okay so it has literally taken me forever to get my heightmap from WM2 into Skyrim, and what made it harder is I couldn't find any documentation on this process from WM2 to Skyrim and this is my first time making a “real mod” (everything before was basically just re-texturing).

So now I have now I have my world in Skyrim and am ready to start...

What is better to start off with an esm or esp? I started off with an esm but I can't save changes to it or any other new esp I create, I just have to to keep adding new ones :s (currently only have two and thought that perhaps it its possible to alternate between the two of them while saving – I haven't proceed with the the mod to test that thought out) – So what should I be doing about this, how am I going wrong? Should I be combining them into each other, how do you do that – what program should I use?

I want to make custom rocks, should I add them into the world and then manually change the rock models in game or make my new model assist first, and if I do, how do I get them into the game? I would think to take the models and textures and package them into a bsa, would the game just pick it up? Currently I am unsure of what I will use and plan on “winging it” as I design my world.

Also how best to get my custom land textures into Skyrim? Just add them to Skyrim\Data\Textures\Landscape and the game will pick it up or bsa them?

About LOD (I couldn't find out what it is exactly it is, only how to do it) when should I do, once done or once in awhile or from the start?

Also how best to check my world out in Skyrim? I tried “coc start” (what I named my 0,0 cell) but it didn't work, did I do something wrong? Should it be something like this “coc myworldname start”?


I plan to work on this project solo (but when it comes to quests and scripting - A quote from Benchwarmers "If you build it, nerds will come." I hope that proves true ) and I do believe I am going to create something that none you have seen before and hopefully will make me a legend but I don't to give to much away. Should I join a modding site like TES Alliance or Dark Creations to post progress of it or wait until I have something to show just post it on the Nexus once it is done?

I have a couple more questions that escape me for now and will post back here when I think of more. Thank you if take the time to reply.

Um.. not really sure about most of your questions as I only use vanilla assets and CK but I do know that for outside places it's cow instead of coc

Thanks for input.

cow worldspaceID x,y

About ESP/ESM, you should have one or a few ESM's, build new things in ESP's and whenever you are content with the ESP merge the changes into the ESM using Version Control. I wrote a tutorial about VC on the wiki: http://www.creationkit.com/Version_control

I advise to first make the models of custom rocks. It is possible to place vanilla rocks first and then mass-replace them with your own later on, but if the shape is different this is not recommended. If you are only retexturing rocks either method is valid.

Things like landtextures and rocks need entries in the Creation Kit. Such an entry (form) refers to the 3D data and determines the properties of the rock object. Usually these entries are called base objects or base forms. So taking rocks as an example, you first place the models and textures in the desired folders (under Data\meshes and Data\textures respectively), then in the Creation Kit you navigate to WorldObjects -> Static in the Object Window tree. Click the Static category, then in the list of all Static entries right click and in the menu choose "New". Now you get a popup window where you can specify the EditorID of your rock and can also direct it to the model of your rock, among other settings. When you're done click OK, now find your new base object in the list of statics and drag and drop it into the render window to place a reference of that object into the game world.


About LOD, it stands for "level of detail". The proper usage of the term should be "distant LOD". In Skyrim, only the nearest cells around the player are actively loaded, what you see in the far distance is a simplified representation to preserve system resources. If your new worldspace has no LOD, you'll find that your view distance is very short. You need to generate LOD files separately before distant land/objects appear, they are not created automatically in runtime.

When creating a new worldspace, in the beginning you only really need terrain LOD (meshes + textures). Object and Tree LOD only become relevant once you have detailed your world. I personally use Oscape to generate terrain LOD, I'm not sure if the CK LOD generator handles that without bugs.



There is a ton you need to know/learn when creating new worldspaces from scratch. I hope you have a lot of time and motivation, or else you'll find yourself burned out soon. Luckily there are a good number of people here who are doing the same, so they also can point you in the right directions.

Thanks Maegfaer, I have been searching for your posts here after reading this...
http://frontierskyrim.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/creating-worldspaces/

and happening upon this post here as well XD
http://www.bundysoft.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=514&p=9228&hilit=skyrim#p9228

(I booked marked these and it helped me out a lot to get my world into Skyrim). XD
Kinda creepy now that I think about it.

I happened across version control on this site...
http://www.sureai.de/development/tutorials/skyrim-creation-kit-version-control/
I will take a close look into it...

I was actually planing on re-texuring the default rocks and adding more into the game (that is what Skyrim did – same models used to make the rocks and caves just different dirt/snow/gravel textures used on them and I think it works well enough) but I can always make my own if I feel like.

Anyway thanks for the info, if you could give me any more info or point me to some more of your awesome post it would be highly appreciated.

And yeah I would say I am very motivated, I made it this far and it took me forever to get to this point.

Definitely read my tutorial on Version Control as well, the SureAI article mainly addresses how to set it up, not how to use it nor explains some of the more confusing features of VC. VC is a vital tool for a total conversion.

Also focus on getting terrain LOD working, you'll need it to be able to navigate effectively in your worldspace, or else recognizing where you are at gets very hard.

How big is your worldspace btw?

My world is 32 cells big/wide, not all of it will be used though so I don't have to worry about the size of it (filling it up) but will need LOD, heard I can use Skyrims LOD but haven't checked Skyrims size so I don't know if I can or what it is right now. If that is what you were thinking.

If you use Skyrim's LOD your distant view will represent Skyrim's world, I don't assume that's what you want.

So your world is exactly 1 quad, 1.87 * 1.87 kilometers? That's not very big, but since you're working alone that's for the best. What is your goal exactly? Do you want to create a completely new fantasy world, or does this match to the vanilla game?

It's hard to say really but I will let the cat out the bag, I plan to make an underground world (I don't think it has ever been done to the scale I am making it), think Journey to Centre of Earth meets Skyrim, like some kind of Underdark remix. That's what I am going for, so it has no sky or grass just cave rocks everywhere. So LOD isn't that important but there will be those wide open centre of the earth experiences that will need to be rendered with LOD.

Doing a cave system lets me do some-things that have never been done before or seen, so it is going to be epic and if I get it right make me a legend.

In the studio jam were they had those moving bridges, and dark caves, that kind of stuff would be perfect for what I am trying to do..

My Mod is called Forgotten Underground Kingdoms (FUK)
Well I made the map 2048x2048 and just checking now I think I may have accidentally put this in instead by mistake...
tesannwyn -i Skyrim -w FUK -p 1 -b 16 -d 4096x4096 -x -64 -y -64 FUK.raw instead of this...
tesannwyn -i Skyrim -w FUK -p 1 -b 16 -d 2048x2048 -x -32 -y -32 FUK.raw
Well either way I got my world in Skyrim and it is 32x32 now, and I am happy with the results in the CK.

I didn't use L3DT just World Machine 2 and saved it as a plan RAW and then opened it in Photoshop and set the Level scale to 60% black - 85% white (looked nearly completely gray) but thats the only way I could get it to work in Tesannwyn. Took me forever to figure that out...

I have this vid I was planing to use to make my LOD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB2rqH7Ytko&feature=youtu.be%3C/p%3E

My posts keep getting jumbled up... :s

Looks like a good tutorial, Alexander is around here fairly often and from what I've heard his project is going pretty well. That video will walk you through anything LOD related then.