[Manuel rivera]

I also get brown textures still...

Ah right, not just me then. In that case I'd recommend having a go at the workaround I posted above. Just duplicate all the textures you want to use in the CK and also duplicate the .dds file references, point the copies at each other, paint the landscape with them and boom, you have a .esp that links to the same textures as skyrim.esm. Just make sure you have a prefix before your new texture references so you can easily tell them apart - using the original referenced texture in skyrim.esm will still result in brown.

because I referenced "The Mod That Shall Not Be Named"

haha I remember you doing that and thinking "stop naming the mod that shall not be named!!11" it's a shame such references are banned when you were really only referring to scripts that could very legitmately help the community but hey, I guess we don't make the rules.

[cosmo valerga]

I am well aware of that thread, I have a number of posts in it. Perhaps you should look next time? (a smiley face does not make a comment not snarky by the way)

The point of making a separate thread was to focus on that possible solution. There was another reason as well, and if you actually read that thread, you'll see that one of my posts was edited by a moderator... because I referenced "The Mod That Shall Not Be Named" and a scripting solution that handled moving between world spaces fairly cleanly.

So.. new thread, because of new thoughts based on other that and other threads with other thoughts all leading to trying to get a solution to the issue.

[snark]I hope that meets with your approval. [/snark]

I just dont see how separating solutions to a single problem into multiple threads is a good idea or how it helps keep things organized whatsoever, that's all. By the way, looking for a thread and reading every single post in it are entirely different.

Back on topic; I'm still getting brown textures when generating from my ESM's worldspace. Though I totally forgot to check water height, but I assume that's functioning. I'll go look soon.

Ah right, not just me then. In that case I'd recommend having a go at the workaround I posted above. Just duplicate all the textures you want to use in the CK and also duplicate the .dds file references, point the copies at each other, paint the landscape with them and boom, you have a .esp that links to the same textures as skyrim.esm. Just make sure you have a prefix before your new texture references so you can easily tell them apart - using the original referenced texture in skyrim.esm will still result in brown.

Except that my land is already fully painted and I cannot repaint it. Not feasible at this stage, I'm too far in...

[Scared humanity]

Ah yeah, based on the amount of time it takes me to just arbitrarily splash a bunch of textures onto the world over maybe 20 cells square I can see that would be a problem..

Wait! The only solution I can think off the top of my head would be to duplicate all the textures using my method, then delete all the original skyrim textures, THEN rename all the texture IDs back to the original ones. I'm not sure whether that would delete references to where you painted them in the worldspace but I can't see why it wouldn't. Unless there's a straightup 'replace' option. The idea being you simple 'refresh' the texture references so they're exactly the same but now being controlled by the .esp.

[Keeley Stevens]

I donno. I think Ethatron is onto a fix though, as he got it working for him so we just need him to chime in here.

Also I can confirm that default-level water now functions! Yaay! No more making lower quality meshes with the CK. (And wasting 27 minutes doing it )

[Raymond J. Ramirez]

So if I go in to Photoshop and create a new .RAW file to work on, what size (in pixels) should I have it if I want my world space to be the maximum size the engine can safely (ignoring the 64 cell/havok bug) handle?

[Lady Shocka]

I donno. I think Ethatron is onto a fix though, as he got it working for him so we just need him to chime in here.

Also I can confirm that default-level water now functions! Yaay! No more making lower quality meshes with the CK. (And wasting 27 minutes doing it )

What do you mean? I coudl generate wate rlods fine b4 just lowering the level of water to -14000 ... you mean I do not have anymore need to do like so ?

[jessica sonny]

4096x4096 will work out at 128x128 cells I believe which is just within the playable game limit. You might wanna make it bigger mind just for the LOD water issue mentioned before and have the playable area centrered within a 4096x4096 area.

What do you mean? I coudl generate wate rlods fine b4 just lowering the level of water to -14000 ... you mean I do not have anymore need to do like so ?

..and no, you can have any water height your little heart desires now and Oscape will get it right

[Quick Draw]

Well I can tell that my landscape had two textures so far: the default thing and a very large area of snow in the mountains which showed up correctly. And waterheight also seems not to make any more problems. But I'll try and paint a little more land to see how that works.

So if I go in to Photoshop and create a new .RAW file to work on, what size (in pixels) should I have it if I want my world space to be the maximum size the engine can safely (ignoring the 64 cell/havok bug) handle?

4096x4096 if you make an esp with Tesannwyn or if you get the CK thing to work (which I didn't) that would be four times 2048x2048 I would guess.

[Syaza Ramali]

What do you mean? I coudl generate wate rlods fine b4 just lowering the level of water to -14000 ... you mean I do not have anymore need to do like so ?

But I cant just lower my worldspaces water... I have my heightmap and everything done, I'm making an island with a shoreline, so I can't really just move the entire sea level lower or it would be far below my land. Now it generates it at the proper height.

Now we just need to work out the texture thing, which I'm so confused over! He said it was working, yet it wont for me? Though he used a texture replacer so maybe the BSA's are preventing Oscape from working or something? (Which doesnt make sense, because then how would they get the default texture it uses?)

[Alina loves Alexandra]

But I cant just lower my worldspaces water... I have my heightmap and everything done, I'm making an island with a shoreline, so I can't really just move the entire sea level lower or it would be far below my land. Now it generates it at the proper height.

Now we just need to work out the texture thing, which I'm so confused over! He said it was working, yet it wont for me? Though he used a texture replacer so maybe the BSA's are preventing Oscape from working or something? (Which doesnt make sense, because then how would they get the default texture it uses?)

You woudl have just need to esport with tesannwyn and reimport with a - h level desired height ... based on calculating the -14000 sea level and the offset of the land shoreline ... btw some pics? ...

[Nikki Hype]

I woudl liek to repropose this possible feature ... for automatic texturing of a large landscape , that would really speedup and probably woudl just need to be coded with a lookup table and a further tab with ID entries for textures and color RGB code , once that could be done then with a generate button the tool coudl generate autotexturing with a certain % falloff this woudl be really great ....


It would be nice to be able to load a vertex color map as well in oscape so ... As well as a pixel color map with a lookup table to give at each ID of thexture the correspondent pixel color this would allow use if external landscape texturing tools that would allow a massive speed up in texturing the geology of a terrain with precision ... I would really be glad to test this feature if could be implemented like :


1 liad the esp and get the geoligy info of the rerrain

2 liad a vertex color map to texture the color tones and brightness variations ov landscape vertex coloring

3 load a pixel color map coded with a lookup table making a cirrispondence of texture ID to RGB or hex code so to allow insta texture positioning

[jadie kell]

You woudl have just need to esport with tesannwyn and reimport with a - h level desired height ... based on calculating the -14000 sea level and the offset of the land shoreline ... btw some pics? ...

I tried the -h thing and it didn't work out. It just ended up horrifically distorting my land. And pics of what? The issue? I just have solid brown colors like before. :F

[Ross Zombie]

Well it's not the .bsa files, as my previous attempt that actually worked (albeit with oddly dark results) referenced textures within the .bsa file. Basically I think Oscape is asking the .esp where the textures are, instead of pointing at the .bsa which oscape can understand, either it's pointing at the .esm file, or more likely it's not pointing at anything at all because the references to what textures it's using don't exist within the .esp - obviously this confuses oscape and it defaults to brown.

The problem we've potentially got is that this is a limitation of the .esp as opposed to oscape. The only workaround from Ethatron's side I could suggest would be to have some way to select an additional master file in which textures were stored and point at both of them.

[sarah simon-rogaume]

Guys, why don't you make it simple and attempt deleting all the old temporary files? Alex's preview has been done with the version you all downloaded, and instead of thinking it is some special version I made that with and only uploaded the other one to mess with you, you should step through your workflow. Maybe you forgot to re-export the surface-map? You are still using the map from last month, use the preview to check what's in that map. Maybe the timestamps are a mess (final files which exist and are newer than the monolothic maps are skipped) and you haven't tried the "overwrite" option? You are still using the map from last month, use Irfanview to verify that the textures in the subfolder reflect your map.
If the former is the reason I'm probably going to make the checkboxes in the extractor autocheck once those files exist.
While I don't want to exclude the possibility that only my machine can generate correct files, I'm not much convinced of it.

[John N]

My machine makes them as well. I have painted some more textures and their lod shows up as well after generated with oscape.

Oh, and I'm not paid by Ethatron for writing this

[Vivien]

haha I remember you doing that and thinking "stop naming the mod that shall not be named!!11" it's a shame such references are banned when you were really only referring to scripts that could very legitmately help the community but hey, I guess we don't make the rules.

Aye it is a shame, and personally I think the wording of the edit could have been better... or at least drop me a PM and ask me to edit/clarify/remove the specific references *shrug* it is what it is.

I just dont see how separating solutions to a single problem into multiple threads is a good idea or how it helps keep things organized whatsoever, that's all. By the way, looking for a thread and reading every single post in it are entirely different.

1. Just because _you_ don't see it, does not give you the right to jump on me about creating such a thread. You are not Bethesda, you are not a Forum moderator. Even if you were a forum moderator, I don't recall seeing any moderator saying anything like "You can't make that thread because there's already another one mostly like it or another one that mentions X like yours."

2. Yes, they are, which is why before you tell someone else to read a thread, you should have read it yourself to see if the person you are admonishing wasn't already participating in it.

I am looking at every possible way to work around/solve the problem(s ) at hand, in whatever means (if) they can be solved/worked around. Just as you are doing in here with the LOD issues... And there have been multiple threads about the LOD issue and possible work arounds...

So please try to keep that in mind in the future.

[Alexxxxxx]

Hm right well I didn't doubt you'd given us the right version haha! First I'll check off what I've done, see if you can think of anything I've missed - I DO have a method that definitely works but I'll go into that shortly as it involves some editing in the CK - Alexander J. Velicky take note, I may have saved you an awful lot of time

I installed the new Oscape beta in a seperate folder, I also realised it was indeed generating files to the old folder so I changed that information. I deleted any reference to the old stuff (in fact I completely deleted the old oscape folder - and all temp files were being generated directly to it insofar as I'm aware), as well as all files within my worldspace's texture and meshes folders under the data files directory. I was going to use the overwrite function but decided straight up deleting all the textures and meshes was the foolproof option, so I've generated completely new textures and meshes based on the correct worldspace. I also checked the newly-generated textures in both .dds and .png format for the correct areas of my map - still came out brown.

I'm wondering if you guys are using custom textures or something? Custom textures have always worked in Oscape, just not the default ones from Skyrim.esm (unless, of course, you're generating using Skyrim.esm itself). Anyway, my easy (ish) method to work around the issue, which also allows Alexander to not have to retexture his whole mod for the time being -

• Open the CK, load up your plugin as the active one and also Skyrim.esm
  
• Go to Miscellaneous>TextureSet. This shows all the game textures used - since it shows everything type in "*landscape" into the filter field - this should isolate all the landscape texture references.
  
• Go down the list of landscape texture references and duplicate each one. It'll come up with the same name with "COPY0000" appended to the end. Don't bother renaming them it'll take forever, plus the default copy ID leaves it next to the original texture which is handy for the next bit -
  
• Now go to Miscellaneous>LandTexture - this is where the actual details of the texture's application are stored that the game itself references, additional stuff like grass etc. is in here, although you don't need to touch that right now.
  
• Open up each LandTexture and you'll get it's info, go to the dropdown box where it says "TextureSet" and select your copied alternate version of the texture (the one with COPY0000 at the end). It should be the texture directly below the default one. There's a huge preview of it below anyway so you'll know if you've got it right.
  
• Once everything's pointed at the right references everything should have a * next to it, indicating it's been edited. This should ensure the information is now contained within the .esp file directly.
  
• SAVE!
  
• Open up Oscape, point it at your plugin and generate the textures. If you need meshes, generate those while you're at it. I just generated DirectX colour/normals at the highest res it would let me (for some reason I can't tick 4096x4096 colour maps, is this just normal?)

NOTES - Lscrub01 has no texture apparently (although you can always assign one if you fancy).

LSnowCobble01 references a texture without the prefix 'landscape', just go back to texturesets and find "snowrock01" and duplicate it.

This straight away generated everything spot-on in oscape. It should also leave the references in-place for skyrim itself since you leave the editorIDs that skyrim uses intact while merely pointing them at duplicate textures - here's some shots of it -

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/51/screenshot15ny.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/641/screenshot16wp.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/687/screenshot17jl.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/35/screenshot18p.jpg/

[Jah Allen]

Have you checked "surface map" in outputs before you extracted the map?
There are no custom textures in my data directory at this time, only the HiRes-update is activated. My plugin momentarily depends on two masters, don't know if that's of any importance, I don't think so(?). The Wrye Bash installation on my PC should also be of no importance for that matter, but you never know so I mention it...

[roxanna matoorah]

Hm well I've got wrye bash too so shouldn't think so, although I've done very little with the actual program. And yeah I checked "surface map" and "feature map" boxes in Oscape. Maybe the hires update has something to do with it, I was wondering that. If you go into the CK in your plugins and check Miscellaneous>Landtextures, do the entries (or at least the names of textures you've used) have * little asterisks next to them? I'm thinking you just need to have altered the textures in some way and they just work. Maybe using the highres textures instead creates an entry in your .esp whereas the vanilla skyrim ones don't.

[Cathrin Hummel]

Hm right well I didn't doubt you'd given us the right version haha! First I'll check off what I've done, see if you can think of anything I've missed - I DO have a method that definitely works but I'll go into that shortly as it involves some editing in the CK - Alexander J. Velicky take note, I may have saved you an awful lot of time

I installed the new Oscape beta in a seperate folder, I also realised it was indeed generating files to the old folder so I changed that information. I deleted any reference to the old stuff (in fact I completely deleted the old oscape folder - and all temp files were being generated directly to it insofar as I'm aware), as well as all files within my worldspace's texture and meshes folders under the data files directory. I was going to use the overwrite function but decided straight up deleting all the textures and meshes was the foolproof option, so I've generated completely new textures and meshes based on the correct worldspace. I also checked the newly-generated textures in both .dds and .png format for the correct areas of my map - still came out brown.

I'm wondering if you guys are using custom textures or something? Custom textures have always worked in Oscape, just not the default ones from Skyrim.esm (unless, of course, you're generating using Skyrim.esm itself). Anyway, my easy (ish) method to work around the issue, which also allows Alexander to not have to retexture his whole mod for the time being -

• Open the CK, load up your plugin as the active one and also Skyrim.esm
  
• Go to Miscellaneous>TextureSet. This shows all the game textures used - since it shows everything type in "*landscape" into the filter field - this should isolate all the landscape texture references.
  
• Go down the list of landscape texture references and duplicate each one. It'll come up with the same name with "COPY0000" appended to the end. Don't bother renaming them it'll take forever, plus the default copy ID leaves it next to the original texture which is handy for the next bit -
  
• Now go to Miscellaneous>LandTexture - this is where the actual details of the texture's application are stored that the game itself references, additional stuff like grass etc. is in here, although you don't need to touch that right now.
  
• Open up each LandTexture and you'll get it's info, go to the dropdown box where it says "TextureSet" and select your copied alternate version of the texture (the one with COPY0000 at the end). It should be the texture directly below the default one. There's a huge preview of it below anyway so you'll know if you've got it right.
  
• Once everything's pointed at the right references everything should have a * next to it, indicating it's been edited. This should ensure the information is now contained within the .esp file directly.
  
• SAVE!
  
• Open up Oscape, point it at your plugin and generate the textures. If you need meshes, generate those while you're at it. I just generated DirectX colour/normals at the highest res it would let me (for some reason I can't tick 4096x4096 colour maps, is this just normal?)

NOTES - Lscrub01 has no texture apparently (although you can always assign one if you fancy).

LSnowCobble01 references a texture without the prefix 'landscape', just go back to texturesets and find "snowrock01" and duplicate it.

This straight away generated everything spot-on in oscape. It should also leave the references in-place for skyrim itself since you leave the editorIDs that skyrim uses intact while merely pointing them at duplicate textures - here's some shots of it -

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/51/screenshot15ny.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/641/screenshot16wp.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/687/screenshot17jl.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/35/screenshot18p.jpg/

Worked perfectly.

[Floor Punch]

Ha, cool. Well I think now someone mentioned the high res textures that could be the difference. I'm going to test it now with a new worldspace..

.. nope. Made an ESP, loaded up the high res texture .esps along with it, no difference when generating LOD textures, still brown.

..wait! This wouldn't be specific to worldspace .esp's generated with TESannwyn would it?

[Quick Draw III]

Well now hold on. If custom textures work, why is that? Those are just new texture files with the same name as the default vanilla ones, placed in the directory to override, right? If so, shouldn't simply extracting them from the BSA fix this issue? Or are the custom textures also applied using texture sets? (This would take FOREVER to do, so I doubt that's it)

EDIT: Either I extracted the wrong files, or I was wrong, as they are still brown. Does overriding with texture sets create any conflicts or anything? Or would we just have to edit these out before releasing our mods? (Hopefully with the Fo3edit equivalent for Skyrim?)

[Melanie Steinberg]

No I don't think so, because like I said, the method I used above references the exact same compressed textures within the .BSA as Skyrim.esm does. I didn't uncompress or extract anything to get it to work, I merely messed about with the existing textures in a way that meant they work identically, but the changes had to be saved in the .esp. It didn't take that long, at least when I realised you merely need to hit "duplicate" on a bunch of texture sets and point the other Landscape Texture containers at them. The bonus with that method as opposed to creating totally new textures is that all the stuff you've already applied remains completely unchanged - I tested it with a map already painted in skyrim's default textures and it stayed the same (although I guess if you suddenly decided a certain texture svcked you could seamlessly replace it via the same method - in fact I assume that's exactly what the high-res texture packs do).

I'm thinking it's like this - the references to textures in the .esm/.esp are merely signposts - bits of information telling the program - in this case Oscape - where to find the texture files it needs. Skyrim.esm or a custom textured worldspace.esm is pointing directly at the textures. Oscape sees those signposts and generates the textures. The problem with a worldspace.esp that uses vanilla, non-modified Skyrim.esm textures is it's not pointing directly at them - it's pointing at skyrim.esm, which THEN points to the files, and it's here I think the problem lies.

My question before about whether people getting brown textures are using TESAnnywn was another theory, that being that possibly generating landscape via the CK or other means meant the CK does that for you automatically, whereas TESannwyn creates a standalone, pre-made .esp file with only landscape data inside.

EDIT - sorry I should answer your question; no, overriding texture sets should be fine, although you're actually duplicating them with a slightly different name. The Landscape Texture references (meaning the bit where you select the texture set, grass, etc) remains identical, with the slight exception they're pointing at a duplicate texture set - this is the info skyrim looks for which is why you rename the textureset but not the landscape texture. The process is totally transparent, takes about 10-20 minutes, and quite literally just tricks your esp into holding the 'signpost' as it were. From what I can see it's totally compatible with-or-without the high res textures installed too.

[Phillip Hamilton]

No I don't think so, because like I said, the method I used above references the exact same compressed textures within the .BSA as Skyrim.esm does. I didn't uncompress or extract anything to get it to work, I merely messed about with the existing textures in a way that meant they work identically, but the changes had to be saved in the .esp. It didn't take that long, at least when I realised you merely need to hit "duplicate" on a bunch of texture sets and point the other Landscape Texture containers at them. The bonus with that method as opposed to creating totally new textures is that all the stuff you've already applied remains completely unchanged - I tested it with a map already painted in skyrim's default textures and it stayed the same (although I guess if you suddenly decided a certain texture svcked you could seamlessly replace it via the same method - in fact I assume that's exactly what the high-res texture packs do).

I'm thinking it's like this - the references to textures in the .esm/.esp are merely signposts - bits of information telling the program - in this case Oscape - where to find the texture files it needs. Skyrim.esm or a custom textured worldspace.esm is pointing directly at the textures. Oscape sees those signposts and generates the textures. The problem with a worldspace.esp that uses vanilla, non-modified Skyrim.esm textures is it's not pointing directly at them - it's pointing at skyrim.esm, which THEN points to the files, and it's here I think the problem lies.

My question before about whether people getting brown textures are using TESAnnywn was another theory, that being that possibly generating landscape via the CK or other means meant the CK does that for you automatically, whereas TESannwyn creates a standalone, pre-made .esp file with only landscape data inside.

EDIT - sorry I should answer your question; no, overriding texture sets should be fine, although you're actually duplicating them with a slightly different name. The Landscape Texture references (meaning the bit where you select the texture set, grass, etc) remains identical, with the slight exception they're pointing at a duplicate texture set - this is the info skyrim looks for which is why you rename the textureset but not the landscape texture. The process is totally transparent, takes about 10-20 minutes, and quite literally just tricks your esp into holding the 'signpost' as it were. From what I can see it's totally compatible with-or-without the high res textures installed too.

Alright. And with a tool like FNVEdit, we could remove these records when our mod is 100% ready for release, after making LOD of course. Then it's 'clean' and no longer has the 'pointless' landscape redirections. I think I'm comfortable doing this, and it certainly fixes the problem. (I have yet to try, getting some SERIOUS level design/cluttering done right now )

[Hayley O'Gara]

God_made_me_do_it, that solution worked perfectly for me. Really good find.

Would anyone be willing to give me a quick summary of how object LOD works? I feel like I'm missing something from the previous discussions in terms of where to find/generate the TGA textures.