I'm glad I found this thread, I prepared a mesh for testing this before the game was released.

http://pixelspaceman.com/the-ancients/

Unfortunately without the Destruction Kit I have no way of trying.

[img]http://pixelspaceman.com/storage/projects/the-ancients/Texture4.png?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1318857124397[/img]

Its brilliant that people are getting stuck into doing something about the tree issue so soon. Just need the CK now.

I agree... as soon as I saw screenshots of SKYRIM, I knew I had to model some "unique" trees for the game.

Hopefully the CK is out before December 3rd as rumored.

Woah, that's a stunning model. Are you planning to create several unique and old trees for Skyrim then?

Thanks Darkstorne! I am indeed, all themed around certain vices and virtues seen throughout the series. Placed appropriately of course after some in-game research and feedback from the community.

I would like to do a video time-lapse tutorial for the construction of one of the trees, perhaps you guys could vote on which one. Some ideas on themes and placement would be highly appreciated as well. I really want to do a giant Nord inspired ancient redwood or something, with runic carvings covering the trunk.

Are you intending to do some general trees, oak, elm, yew and the like? If so you would have a huge interest from Tamriel extended, Mesogea, MERP etc

I'm hoping I can, although I will need to play around with the Creation Kit first and see if I can actually replace general tree meshes. I chose to stick with unique trees initially because I can import them as regular assets as a last result.

Animation is going to be interesting, simply because I have never animated anything for an elder scrolls game. Although from what I've heard they just use Skin and Bones for trees, with a little bit of vertex coloring, so hopefully the kit will be able to import that data.

Very nice looking model, i like the idea of unique old trees.

Glad to see more tree modellers here!

Cheers Vurt! Means a lot from a veteran modder such as yourself. I look forward to seeing what you can do with the SKYRIM Creation Kit.

They didn't allow much tree modding in Oblivion because they were using someone else's software, SpeedTree for them. Thery're not using SpeedTree anymore.

The LOD creation was the problem, it wasnt like we were forced to use speedtree for Oblivion or FO..

The highest ugridstoload i've been able to use in Skyrim is 9, so it's seems like it's not as stable as FO3 and FO:NV where i could use 11 and play for quite a long time.. Might be some other setting that needs to be tweaked, uGridDistantCount also played a role in the stability for this setting, but from what i've read they've removed this for Skyrim? Might try adding that and see if it improves anything.

NiFskope render of some http://static.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/images/141-1-1322405201.jpg that i might include.

Actually I did see birch trees in Vilemyr. Birch is a northern tree, very populous in tundra regions like Skyrim. I would expect more deciduous northern trees like maple further south near the border though. Conifers get more common the further north you go. Or at least, realistically, they should; I havent been up to Solitude and those areas yet...

...aspen you mean, quite similar to birch though.

Nice trees Vurt & Pixelspaceman!
I must admit, after seeing first Skyrim pics, I immediately thought of Vurt and his trees.

Hopefully, you'll manage to fit into new system.

Destruction? haha, that actually makes more sense. CK=mods=CTDs..

Awesome tree collection Vurt, the land of Skyrim would be a lot more colorful with those added.


Thanks Washington! Fingers crossed that the new system is intuitive.


Hehe, I most certainly plan to do both.

Very nice, I would love to use them in the Old Forest / Fangorn in MERP!


This feels like Christmas already

That's good enough for me. My area has aspen and a number of various pine varieties so it's just like home! Well, it has juniper too, I guess... Like the 1000 and 1500 year old juniper trees in my front yard.

But still... I guess I'm all for variety. Somebody, make it so!

Hey guys,
I just wanted to ask if there are any news on the trees. I have just managed to implement them as static architecture (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/513/13695365.jpg/) but when I try to overwrite a tree nif from beth or try to copy the shape data into a tree nif, problems arise: part of the tree is not visible or it doesn`t work at all. Now, with the static implementation, there are other problems: No leave animation and no Shadows on or from the alpha mapped leaves .
Any ideas for making trees work?

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=141

Yep, I already have Vurt`s fantastic overhaul installed.
What I meant to say was, how do I implement custom tree 3D models into Skyrim (more precisely nifskope)?
Was anyone succesful with that?

Have you tried PM'ing Vurt?

Ok, just sent him a PM. Hopefully, he knows more.
By the way, does anyone have an idea why alpha mapped planes (leaves) don`t interact with shadows or if there is a way to make that happen?

Vurt said that there aren`t any exporters for blender yet to make custom trees for Skyrim possible (Max 3ds, too I guess?). As I recognised, his flora overhaul is all retexture of vanilla at the moment (but still unbelievably awesome none the less).
So a possible workaround for custom trees might be to implement a tree model as a static. Like I said earlier, the downside to this solution is that there are no animations (for the leaves) and no shadows on the ground for the leaves (looks weird in game: just a pefectly fine shadow of the trunk but no leaves whatsoever.. this is because the alpha mapped planes (leaves) are not interacting with the shadows as a static..)

So some questions to me are:
- Is is possible to make some sort of "fake" animations for the movements of the leaves that looks similar to the animations of the real trees?
- Is it possible to make alpha mapped planes interact with shadows (maybe just some secret button of flag in nifskope?) as static?

well If you wanna fake the shadows for the static tree you could bake a shadow map out in your 3d app. Basically how I would try to approach this is to make up my tree. Then place a plane on the ground select the plane and set up the shadow map properties and bake em out. I would then take the image into Photoshop and make an alpha map and possible add in some opacity to lighten the shadow up. This should work, the only issue I see with it is the ground would need to be flat for the shadow to look right. If you could figure out how to match the shadow to ground it would be a temp fix. Hmm just a thought but maybe set the shadow with alpha as a ground texture and paint it on the ground under the tree? Idk haven't really played with Ck in the manner.