I dunno if is the same for others but I can't really do much in exterior cells , when I rez something and I pan around as it shoudl it doesnt work well , mos of the time the object disappears , even if I am over it , the camera gets upside down or inside terrain , cells get loaded and unloaded stuff appear and disappear is a true nightmere to work on exteriors with this editor ... Honestly it is making me pass the will do do anything at all on exteriors , there is no way to improve those damn controls?
make the message of error that appear every damn cell load disappear? make the controls of the pan around the object actually "work" instead of erratic movements and sudden disappearing of items?

great 3 hours , 0 modding , I spent most of the time trying to move the camera around , the camera acts weird really l sometimes is orbiting in non linear form around an unexisting center while holding shift and moving the mouse and others instead is moving the camera right , others is pansthrought cells , sometimes loads the stuff in the cell I am in other times doesnt load anything , loading just in the object list but not in the rendered , when I use opals most of the time it doesnt update the render and nothing appears until I rez the thrid object then all of three come out and I need delete the others , sometimes with a camera movement jumps me of 4 - 5 cells making me loose what I was doing ....


Complete waste of time to work on exteriors with this CK unless I am doing something wrong there is something totally wrong with the controls ... they work fine in interiors but not on exteriors where they result uncontrollable and the objects appear and disappear ....

These things happen when programmers are allowed to design

The camera will orbit around whatever is selected. You should select an object, or drag an object in before trying to move.

I'm not having the same problems, but it does get touchy with so many objects in an exterior cell. I've found the closer to the ground you are, the less likely to accidently click on other objects. For the camera, the selected object will be its pivot point. So if your camera gets wonky, select an object near the middle of your work and readjust it. I understand your frustration, but don't give up! Hope this helps.

It's called a learning curve. The controls for the CK are essentially the same as they have been for the Morrowind and Oblivion CS and GECK. If this is your first forray into modding a Bethesda game using this engine series, you are experiencing the same thing everyone else has.

Be patient. You'll get it.

If you press shift+F it centers the camera on your currently selected object. this way you can orbit uniformly instead of turning the camera away from where you're working.

You can adjust the Camera movement preferences. That made quite some difference for me.

The camera went really wacky for me a few times, but I fixed it by selecting an object and pressing Shift + F to focus it.

He said to the 4 star member that's been here for 8 years... He has modded plenty before.

I do agree with OP that the controls are very weird and different, but I also agree that we will get used to them. When I started with the GECK I couldn't move the camera at all, but now I'm used to it. With the CK, I'm sure it will be the same.

I meant no disrespect to the OP. But in all fairness, the controls for the Morrowind and Oblivion CS, and both versions the GECK, have all essentially been the same: a royal pain in the butt. Maybe Prometheus was hoping that they would have deviated from the norm this time and gone with something a little more user friendly. If you ask me, movement in the CK should be like movement in the game with TFC turned on. Maybe with some hotkey support thron in to pop around the map. Freecam should be default. Orbit cam should be a selectable mode.

That's how I would have done it had it been me. But every single version of the CS had had a learning curve to it, even if you are used to previous versions.

The CK camera controls are by no means the same... For the last 4 editors, yes, they have been. But here they are very different... And no, freecam should not be on by default. The main purpose of the render window is to level design, and it's a 1000x easier with an orbit cam. That's why you will never ever see an editor that has freecam by default...

Im sure this is common knowledge but Im going to say it anyway, incase someone like me thats new to all this is reading. When things disappear, just hit F5 and they'll come back.... as for the camera controls in exterior settings..... we're just hoze'd until some code monkey writes a "free camera mode" plugin

NO other game engines and editors are way better in controls , just try udk or cryengine as usual reference but even others are way more logical in movements ...

Yeah, as he mentioned, Unreal, Cryengine and also Unity. Probably the 3 most popular engines that exist. Orbit cams are for modelling, or working on a single object.

It would be better to switch the arrow keys to fly-through, replacing the arrow nudging. I doubt it would take 10 minutes for a programmer to do it.

I've used the editors with Morrowind, Oblivion, FO3 and NV and I'm finding the Creation Kit (although it has similar functions) is the hardest to move around with. Yes Shift F gets you back onto the item you have selected but if memory serves me well you could use the arrow keys for moving around the cell and not for moving the selected item? This had me totally muddled as when I held Shift then used the arrow keys the item (a wall BTW) started to move around?
The fine control of moving around the cell around the item you want to move or place it far more difficult, getting used to the changes but why they had to change a standard control function from all the previous is beyond me?


PS: Of course as I have only done some small tinkerring so far I may have missed some other means of fine controlling movement around selected items, so if anyone has some suggestions please feel free to post them.

Wasn't there an "experimental" mouse controlled flight mode in the Oblivion CS? I don't remember what the hotkey was, but I used that for most of my editing.

Weird. I've worked in Unity, Hammer, Geck, CS, and making maps in Farcry, and I remember every single one of those being orbital cameras...

Disable the 'Allow Render Window Cell Loads' option in the Preferences dialog to prevent exterior cells from being (un)loaded automatically while selecting or scrolling.

• 
  Well I've actually experiences alot of issues with exterior worlds and the camera, And I KNOW how to build land in the editor.. (at least from morrowind, did a little in oblivion. pretty much the same)
  http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/sinisterdeath/
  http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/sinisterdeath/WoTmap.JPG
  http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/sinisterdeath/WoTC_1.jpg
  http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/sinisterdeath/WoTC_0.jpg
  
  So yea, I know how to use the landscape tools in morrowind/oblivion.
  
  However, when 'landscaping' large areas, in the Creation Kit. I have actually found it very agrivating, as the tool... just becomes annoying.
  
  For example.
  I want to make an island in the middle of no where.
  so I go out, and raise the land above the water right?
  Then it SHOULD be as simple as 'flattening' it out to form it.. Correct?
  
  What if I told you, that doesn't work 100%? What If I told you, theres land you have to physically move 'up' before you can flatten it to that height?
  What if I told you, simply moving the camera, can cause the entire 'world' to go... well think of it like the camera is 'clipping' through the world terrign, only it Shouldn't be!
  (example being, say you zooom a camera into a box. inside ofit, you can still see parts of the box on the outside, but what the camera 'enters' is like a section plane.
  only for some reason, the editor is doing this FAR to early.
  And there is only two ways to fix it.
  1) go to a new cell, switch between top views, ect, and cahnge the cameras styles around, until it starts rendering correctly.
  Then you go back to where you were at.
  2) Save, Reload (might be faster...)

I agree and I am a programmer! Of course, what happens when you let designers write code is most of Skyrim's quests: broken. Working in teams is a good thing.

The controls in Bethesda's tools are strange to me. I've used lots of tools for other games (Doom, DN3D, Wolf3D, Quake, Half-Life, Red Alert, Generals, TA, etc.) and none of them had me as thoroughly confused about moving around and manipulating objects. I guess it means I need more practice.

Yes and this makes me think they released a version that is ot reallly actually the tool they use to make the landscape .... working on that and adding all thedetails we see in skyriim with that editor would turn the level designers that are able to into GoldenSaints

I remember that hoolding shift and moving the mouse in ob or morrowiind allowed me a free look around , then Icould use the directional arrows to move foward or strife on sides etc.... if I remember well coouse is a lot I do not use tem but honestly I never lamented much about those controls , yes teywhere akward but not that much annoying like in skkyriim ...

here wat annoyes me the most is the controls arent responding as shuld , if i rez an item I expect to see it ingame and not be iinvisible or appear erraticly when Imove my camera ... if I pan around an object I expect to pan around it and not that the camera starts acting a rotation on a very far offsetred ceter so that your pan around a small object becomes a trip among severall world cells....

Changing "Grids to Load" under Preferences/Misc from 5 to 9 helps a lot if your computer can take it. For some reason it's reset to 5 everytime I restart the CK. I'm still using F5 quite regularly. What vanishes for me is mainly the huge cliff faces that are 2 or 3 cells long.

honestly the lod system in skyrim is really awefull yesterday I was looking for a nice point to place a balcony and a dungeon entrance over a nice landscape view so I explored around in game couse in editor is a mess , the result is that the distant views unless foggy are relally crap especially on the coast where the coasts get shrinked to spikes and polygons , and the lods are so obviously lods that result in total uglyness .. I suspect that my settings aren't maxed on some ini preferences after the patch they may have been rewritten?
if so coudl I get a list of the stuff to edit to get to see some decent views?

I got some thigns under control earlier today with it, however I still have issues with the manually lower/rising/flattening the land.
For one thing, You know the 'circle' that shows you how big of an area you can edit?
Yea, that keeps resetting to 9 on me.
I change it to 5, go back.. its up to 9 again. Dunno why. (may have a hunch but its still wierd)
Another thing.. i seem to only be able to make that 'circle' a maximum size of around... 15? 20? any larger and it doesnt work... at all.

The color!
Light Green...
yay...
Yea its almost impossible to see half the time. Being able to make the circle 'thicker' or perhaps, a darker/lighter color to make it stand out in contract better would be hella more awesome.

As for the developers using that tool?
Nah they probably hired some really good map mapers using a very large photoshop picture. (like say 24,576x24,576 pixels) to get al those little details and then just one massive hieght map generation on it.

I Highly doubt, they did all the land.. by hand.
If anything, they used 'that' above method, toned down to fit the game, and then hand did stuf that need fixing/tweaking based on what they added.