I have plans for a mod for Skyrim set in the future. I would like to take the existing Tamriel/Skyrim worldspace as a base, but remove all objects from it (cities, dungeons, trees, NPCs).

The worldspace would then be a blank canvas to start work on. Is this actually possible?

I'm able to duplicate the worldspace in the CK, but I'm not sure how I can comprehensively delete everything from the landscape.

The safest way would be to extract all the terrain data for Tamriel, from the .bsa files.

If you know your way around the CK and terrain/lod structure in the data/meshes and data/textures folders, then it shouldn't be too hard. You'll also need file renaming software, unless you want to manually rename several thousand files.

Ok, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I'll need to investigate further about the terrain/lod structure as currently I'm clueless!

There are only LOD files in the BSA's, the actual heightmap data is Skyrim.esm, I am sure that the OP finds that more important than the LOD at this point.

If you want to truly start from scratch you could use TesAnnwyn to extract the heightmap data of Tamriel and then reimport it in a new worldspace. It won't have any colour textures or mountain meshes either, it will be completely blank. A lot of work to rebuild.

Thanks for the clarification. So my initial stab in the dark about duplicating the worldspace in the CK and deleting all objects from each cell would not work? I was hoping to remove all dungeons, cities, ruins and NPCs but keep the actual landscape (grass, trees, rocks) all in the place.

I don't think duplicating a worldspace in the CK makes a proper copy of it, although I haven't tried it. Even if it works, it's an awful amount of work to clear the entire worldspace of all objects. Although just clearing civilization shouldn't take THAT much time.

I may know another method though to extract the worldspace + terrain textures, and perhaps also to isolate Trees, Flora and landscape statics. Explaining would take longer than trying it myself, I'll try it later today. No guarantees though, it may not work at all.

Ok, thanks for your help. I'll attempt to duplicate and remove some of the larger items tonight as a test.

Duplicating any cell in the game can be risky. If it has quest objects in them, they will be duplicated also and could potentially screw up the quests they are for. This includes NPCs.

And simply deleting them doesn't solve the issue. this is why its not recommended to duplicate cells for actual mod use.


What kind of things are you going to be doing? maybe duplicating the worldspace isnt really necessary.

The mod would be set in a future version of Skyrim. The general idea was that the Imperials left/fled and the Thalmor have taken over. The mod was based around a Nord uprising/resistance. I wanted to take the current Skyrim worldspace, remove most of its current assets (NPCs, quests, towns) and start to build a version ruled by the Thalmor but set hundreds of years after the current campaign.

So, you're making a Total Conversion? Good luck with that, see you in 5 years (and that's not snarky, it's a fact).

Check out SureAI's Project 5. They've already stripped down and cleaned the Skyrim worldspace, you can build straight off it. No need to re-invent the wheel.

I'm not worried about how long it will take, I take much enjoyment and pleasure from landscape editing. That's my main reason for doing this.

Either way, thanks for the link, looks promising.

Update: The SureAI's Project 5 master file contains just a small island. As far as I can tell it doesn't retain any of the existing Skyrim worldspace.

Hi, sorry for hijacking this thread but since the topic seems to be that of TCs, thought I'd ask; is the Creation Engine capable of doing the following:

- Bullet weapons (instant hitscan attacks)
- Shotguns (like above; instant hitscans, but multiple hitscans fired in one shot)
- Explosive projectiles (rocket launchers)
- Grenades
- Body dismemberment (head, limbs, disentigrate entire body, etc)

I attempted this tonight with little luck. Duplicated the worldspace in the CK and went through deleting everything except landscape from each cell from 0,0 to 4,4 as a quick test. On load, the game just hands at the loading screen. No error message, no crash to desktop.