an Interior or an exterior Cell? and just because of the SEa lod should I create a heightmap too and generate the lods or I can use something else?

there shouln't be any land ....

I'd stick with using an exterior cell. If it were me I'd go along and create a heightmap for the ocean floor as well, if you want your sea to be fully explorable. A typical ocean bottom has its own mountains, pits, caves, and so on.

The hard part, though, would be in creating all the necessary sea life.

Definitely exterior with land far below sea. If you can't go very high on the ship, you wouldn't even need LOD.

Just make sure to either not let the player jump off, or to handle it if they do so they can't just swim off.

I did something simalar in Oblivion as my mod opening scene, it absolutely worked better as an exterior with a fully animated bloated float with animated waves. Skyrim has some nice new systems that would make the overall effect superior such as the ability to animate distant waves, something i could not do in Oblivion. Among a few other distant lod systems that are far superior to previous games.

how to do animated waves? or you mean just the simple effect of the normal mapped loops on the flat panels that is the sea?

I have tried adding some particles aroudn the ship but they are from waterfalls and too strong for the real effects so it seems like a motor ship instead than a sail one ... a front and up rolling is also missing and woudl have been cool to have a more animated sea ...

any other further sugestions?

to have a more distant horizon so I need to use a heightmap?

No, I used a complete scene the boat the wave water and all of the sails and flags were all 1 animated activator that way I could sync everything from the boat tilting with the waves to the particles splashing off the bow.

My animated wave water was 100 units below below the true water surface that way you could not see it from on the boat until I wanted it to be seen -> the actual animation was with 18 morphs there were 6 per wave height (no longer possible for Skyrim as the game no longer supports the NiGeomMorphController, it can be done with bones though its going to be far more difficult to look right).


I didn't for Oblivion but in my mod jumping into the water was basically instant death from the creatures in the water, depending on your circumstances it might be a good idea or not.

Yes I ws thinking about using a sequence of morphed meshes to simulate in quads sea animation , but I guess now is not possible as u say ... uff ...