New World Space and Region borders drawing

Overview

This article demonstrates a method for drawing region borders for a new worldspace using the Region Editor. The first time you see the region map in the Region Editor it can be a little intimidating. It can be very difficult to determine exactly where to start. This article briefly covers the steps used to create region borders as well as every step in between. If your world is ready to go in the Heightmap editor you can skip directly to the parts that apply to your current situation.

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this article it is recommended you read and understand the following articles:

Basic Landscaping Tutorial
World Space Tutorial
Heightmap Editing

You also should be aware of „LOD for a new world” problems:
Landscape LOD Tutorial
A final and simple solution to all those LOD load order problems., I think ... ;)

In this article we will create new worldspace that looks a lot like a pizza.

Create a new world space

As for now we don't need any data from „Oblivion.esm” master file, so just start up the Construction Set, go to [World] -> [World Spaces...], right click on a list to create new EditorID for an exterior world space, and name it whatever you want – mine is the „PizzaWorld”. We don't need any parent worldspace (Parent Worldspace -> NONE), our world shall be Small and player Can't Fast Travel From Here to any other world spaces.

Image01: Adding a new world space

When a new world is created, go to the Cell View window, choose 'PizzaWorld' as a World Space, and double click on 'Wilderness' cell to activate it – now we should have some new cells added to a PizzaWorld.

Generate a Heightmap

To create a landmass we can use the Heightmap Editor – go to menu [World] -> [Heightmap Editing...] and choose our 'PizzaWorld' to load. We will build an island – from Toolbar choose the Lasso and draw a world shape. I have also toggled the Grid to show you the scale of my Pizza World.

Image02: World shape drawing

Noise Parameters and Erosion Settings

To create the heightmap we will use automatic Generators. My island will be almost totally flat, with no lakes or rivers, so I set the following noise parameters:

• Frequency = 400
• Amplitude = 2000
• Base Offset = 4110 (just above water level, which is 4096)
• Additive flag is checked (we will only rise the terrain) and other settings are default or not set.

Image03: Spaces that need correction

If everything is ready, we can push twice the Generate button (twice, because we want to get a land just over the water level) and heightmap will be created automatically. Some of areas probably will require a correction.

To compare your view of created heightmap, these are parameters for the Color Masking in my settings:

   1 mask – level 0 – black color;
   2 mask – level 4000 – dark blue;
   3 mask – level 4096 – light blue;
   4 mask – level 4097 – dark green;
   5 mask – level 8726 – light green;
   6 mask – level 17637 – yellow;
   7 mask – level 25435 – red;
   8 mask – level 41772 – purple;
   9 mask – level 50497 – light grey;
   10 mask – level 65535 – white.

Now we need to smooth the heightmap – to do this, we can use the Erosion Generator with the following settings:

• Iterations = 95
• Erosion Rate = 0
• Sedimentation = 0
• Land Smoothing = 95

Push the Erode button 4 or 5 times to get completely smooth land. We can also check how our world looks in a 3D view – on a Toolbar click on a picture with camera to open the Preview Window and examine the world surface if there aren't any steep dodges.

Image04: 3D Preview

Now we can create the actual worldmass – press the Save button, close the Heightmap Editor and save the plugin. There may occur some errors related to the generated heightmap – we must correct them immediately with Landscape Toolbox and Soften Vertices brush.

We have created a world in main 4 quads – if you activate for example a 'Wilderness (-32, -32)' cell, you will see that on the edge of a quad there is a gap, that should be eliminated (with Landscape Toolbox and Flatten Vertices tool).

Image05: Gaps between land surfaces

Region borders drawing

Open the Regions Window – go to menu [World] -> [Regions...] and activate 'PizzaWorld'. On a region map probably you will see only a big space with white cells, a form that doesn't look in no way like a world we have just built. First let's add a new region to the Pizza World – I named it the 'PizzaMainShape'.

To draw a region shape for main terrain of island, we must know exact coordinates of each cell that lies on a border of island. Do not close Regions Window and once again open the Heightmap Editor for 'PizzaWorld'.

Image06: Light points on a heightmap

From the toolbar choose the Eyedropper and capture some bright color. Then choose the Paintbrush and draw on a heightmap some points, that will help you to quick determine the cell coordinates of island border.

Now place a cursor over one of these bright points, on a status bar read the cells coordinates and remember them. Go the Region Window, search for that cell – on a bottom status bar there are displayed coordinates for a cell pointed by a cursor as well. When you find the cell with equivalent coordinates, left click to draw the first point of region border.

Image07: Region drawing - first point

Use the same method to draw the rest of points.

Image08: Region drawing - all points

At the end close a region shape – right click on a region map and select Done – and you may close the Heightmap Editor without saving the changes (otherwise you add those bright points to a heightmap of 'PizzaWorld').

Now you have a main region shape. Its borders are more or less in the same position as the border of island and using this region as a basis allows you to add some more regions. 'PizzaWorld' is an island so it is wise to build a Border Region – the border of this region should be two or three cells outside from the 'PizzaMainShape'.

Remember that we haven't loaded data from „Oblivion.esm” file – so if you want to build now some Object Regions, you should reload Construction Set and choose both files: the plugin file we have just created and „Oblivon.esm” (or any other master file, or make your own master file and merge it with plugin) - after this operation your plugin will be „Oblivion.esm” dependant.

I wrote this short tutorial as an answer to the Forum question - link here.
--Tom Brightblade 05:05, 13 May 2007 (EDT)