Editing A beginner's guide, lesson 3 - The external world

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==Preamble==

This is the third in a proposed series of Tutorial Lessons aimed at teaching how to mod TES IV: Oblivion aimed at beginners. It will build up into a Complete Modding Course. Don't worry, there are no exams, though there is some homework. It is not intended to aid the transfer of modders from Morrowind nor is it intended for experienced modders. Although as the series develops, you may find something of interest in them.

==Introduction==

This is the final lesson in the buildings and structures beginners’ course. I hope that by now you can navigate the CS with some level of comfort and have learned to safely place and customise the objects that fill up interior spaces. 
In this lesson, we will look at placing and building structures for the exterior world and linking them to our interiors to create a complete building.

Preparation

Before we start to build what will be our first full building mod we are going to change two ini files to make our life a little easier.
Both Are found in the My Documents/My Games/Oblivion folder.

(a) First, let’s change the oblivion.ini file.

Open up the ini file with a suitable text editor like Notepad or Wordpad. Search for a line that reads

 bAllowScreenShot=0
 
 and change it to:
 
 bAllowScreenShot=1

The effect of this change is to allow you to press the PrintScreen button on your keyboard to take a screenshot of your game. The image is stored as a bitmap in your oblivion folder (not the save game, but the actual game folder) in the form screenshotxxx.bmp Where xxx is an automatically generated number.

This is ideal to produce screenshots to illustrate your mod. It’s also handy as a way of creating visual reminders when you spot something in game you’d like to investigate more.

Now let’s change the Construction set INI file

Here we are going to look for a line 

 bAllowMultipleEditors=0
 
 And alter this to
 
 bAllowMultipleEditors=1 

This is a cool little change. It allows us to open up more than one version of the construction set at the same time. 

I use this to open one version with just the oblivion file. I call this SAFE MODE. If I make any accidental changes here I don't save them. This means I can poke about with impunity and know I am not in danger of dirtying up my own mod.
I then open a second CS with my mod activated. If I want to poke about, I use the SAFE MODE version and then use MY MOD version to carry out changes. You unfortunately cannot cut and paste between versions.

Where shall we go today?

As before, we will take a little in-game tour to see the sites, before launching ourselves in to the CS. 

In this tutorial, I’m going to use the site for my own first release called Verona House. It’s available from TES Database. Why this mod? It’s certainly not because it’s perfect. It’s far from that, which is good. I can happily talk about specific mistakes in the mod without having to criticise someone else’s work. Of course, like anything in these tutorials, I’m using Verona House as an illustration of techniques and ideas. You are free to look at other areas if you like. It just happens to be a site I know well.

We will start without the mod loaded.

Let’s begin by visiting our favourite little village, Weye. We looked at this in lesson one. Have a look at the small farmhouse located to the left as you leave the Imperial City. This is the building we are going to replicate. 

Now let’s go for a walk. Head due West out of Weye and follow the road North as if you were heading for Chorrol/Bruma. 
Soon you come to a place where the road turns left (West) close to some ruins, heading for Chorrol. 
Continue North towards Bruma. Soon the road climbs a small hill. You don’t have to go too far. You will find yourself in a sparsely woody area close to the lakeside with a nice view of the Imperial City. 
Now this seems a likely spot for a home. 
Initially we will build a small farm here. Later we will look at larger houses.

==Locations==

The biggest problem in placing any structure is: location. 

I have found the Prima Guide invaluable for this since it gives the location of all the dungeons, buildings, ruins, forts, and wilderness chests. However, without doubt the best resource of all is the CS itself.

Load it up now, select Oblivion.esm from the Data option and wait for it to load.

In the Cell View window click on the top drop-down menu (entitled World Space) that is currently marked as Interiors. A long list of worlds appears. Many refer to the spaces located inside Cities. Others refer to the Oblivion worlds. We are interested in the big picture. This is listed under Tamriel. 
Click on this and the cell view list will update. 
The list consists of the name of the space and its cell reference.

==Wilderness: not empty cell==

Almost all the spaces listed here are called Wilderness. Great, so they have nothing in them, I can plonk a castle just about anywhere. But hold on! Just because it’s called wilderness doesn’t mean it’s empty. 

Try this little test for yourself. Randomly select any wilderness cells. In the Cells, objects list sort by type and look for any door objects. We already know doors lead somewhere. 

Cells with doors most certainly are not empty. Try to see how many cells you need to look at before you find five wilderness locations with doors. In my trials, I found it took 7-15 goes. 

In other words, the wilderness is full of important stuff. You should be cautious about where you place a mod. I know of one mod that has been placed directly over a source of nirnroot. The plant is still there, it just has a house on top of it. Needless to say, this is not a mod that I use.

Because the world is so full, space is at a premium. It is inevitable that mods will clash. I know of at least three mods which use the same space close to Anvil, and two which use the little island in Cheydinhaal.

==The more important locations have names==

You can locate your mod anywhere, but try to reduce its impact on the game. If you change something important let other people know. Of course, if your mod is for your own use none of this matters.

==Cell Co-ordinates==

The world of Cyrodiil is divided into a large number of cells. If you click on the cell location button at the top of the cell list, you can sort by cell coordinates. 

These follow the standard (x, y) co-ordinate form we all remember so unhappily from school math lessons. The origin cell (0,0) is a bit of wilderness due South of Weye, Weye lies on the Y-axis. All cells to the East of Weye have a + x (positive x) coordinate, all cells to the West have a – x (negative x) co-ordinate. 
The grid is not symmetrical. If you draw out the grid on graph paper, and I’m sad enough to have done this, you find that the Western half of Tamriel is shorter than the Eastern half, this allows for the fact that Leyawiin is much further South than say Anvil.

The actual playable map only occupies about 2/3 of the listed cells. This means about 1/3 of the cells in the list are actually outside the borders of the game and consequently unavailable to use without altering ini files further. I suspect this is part of the design to allow room for expansion add-ons. 

As a reference, these are the co-ordinates of the main cities

 Anvil (-46,-9)
 Bravil (14,-9)
 Bruma (6,35)
 Cheydinhaal (29,22)
 Chorrol (-17,23)
 Imperial City (7,15)
 Kvatch (-35,-4)
 Leyawiin (21-35)
 Skingard (-17,0)

In each case it refers to the cell that contains the Cathedral for that city (except IC, which refers to the central tower).

[If you have a copy of the map that came with game, you could draw a line East to West through Skingard Cathedral and North to South through Weye. You will notice these cross quite along way South close to the Elsweyr Border.]


To locate a cell in the wilderness, search for a named cell close to your desired location. Note its x,y (e.g. Weye is (0,15). To move North add number to the y co-ord, so (0,16) is a little North of Weye. To head South, subtract from the y coordinate. 

 East is +1 on X 
 West is -1 from X. 

The cell we want is at (-2,19).

Look around here. It is a wilderness cell with no doors or significant feature. It has one instance of a levelled wilderness creature. With a little care we can make a nice little cottage on the hill with a great view.

==Selecting Exteriors==

In the object window select World Objects/Statics/Architecture

The window list will fill up with a huge list of building objects. 
Some are interiors, often denoted by the inclusion of the letters INT in the object name, but not always.
Some are exteriors often denoted by EXT but not always.
Dungeon tiles are denoted by DUNG
Castles as CASTLE, etc.

Experience will teach you what’s what. 
You can always use the text search to help find objects. 
Another technique is to build up those Test Library files we talked about in previous tutorials. 

In this case we are going to use the Farmhouse01 object. 
Find it in the list.
Drag and drop it into the render window. 
Move it to a likely spot using top view (T) then let it fall (F). 
Don’t worry too much about the rocks and plants for now. 
I must admit I spent a lot of time deleting objects to get a clear footprint. Then I spent an age trying to put them back in. It probably best in hindsight to remove object only when you have to.
Zoom in and look closely at the building. The door is not at ground level. 
The building comes with a ‘foundation’. This is a deliberate move by the designers. It allows you to sink the building deep into the ground so that it settles, rather than trying to disguise the bottom of the building with landscaping. Use the Z key and mouse to push the building into the ground, so that the door is at the correct level. 
You can do all the things to the building object that you did to objects in the interior world. Rotate, Raise, move and resize. 
Turn the building so that the door faces where you want it. 
Again ignore other objects for now.

Now edit the name of the cell from Wilderness to something useful like MyCharactersCottage. 
Finally make a note of the doors orientation so we can adjust the interior North marker to match.

When it’s done, save your mod.

We will return to tidy up, landscape etc, once we have an interior cell to link.

In the cell view select interiors from the drop down window.

==Matching Interiors==

We want to select an interior that works with the farmhouse. 
Again the choice is yours but the designers have created an object called FarmHouseInterior01 to match our selection. Find this in the object window in our safe mode CS editor. 
If we want to have a look at how this is used in the game we can right click on the object.
In the menu select Use Info and a window pops up showing all the instances that FarmHouseInterior01 has been used in the game. Click on any one and the cell view window updates to show the interior cell. You can cycle through all the instances to see the various uses made.

There are two approaches when selecting and building interiors

(1) Edit Existing

This method involves copying an existing similar interior and redecorating it to personalise it.

(2) Start from Scratch 

This method involves selecting a cell like the abandoned mine, copying it and then clearing out all the objects from it to obtain a blank cell. We can then drop in all the objects from scratch. 

Each method has its advantages and pitfalls. 
We will use both methods in this tutorial.

Let’s use the first method first as it were.

Find using the USE INFO list '''Shardrock'''. I’ve chosen Shardrock for no better reason than I like the name and the layout. Choose any that appeals to you. 

Copy this cell using right click and duplicate it.
In the edit menu, change the ownership to none or player.
Change the lighting to 41, 45,and 50. 
This is the light used by the game in the original Shardrock cell.
Finally change the Cell name to an appropriate name like "MyCharacterCottageInt".

All the hard work has been done for you. 
The House is furnished and has all the lighting and fires in place. 
We just have to change a few bits and we are good to go:

- The NPC Thorley Aethelred is included in the cell. Select and delete him.

- The containers are labelled as belonging to None. Edit these to suit.

- The containers are generic base objects set to respawn. If you want to change this you are going to have to edit the base and give each container a custom name. You can then empty or fill them safely to meet your requirements. 

- The door is currently linked to an exterior cell and owned by Aethelred. Open the teleport tab and deselect the name. Change the ownership.

- The Northmarker will need to be adjusted to match our exterior orientation. We will make the door functional in the section marked 'Linking'.

We now have a serviceable location that belongs to us. 
We can now go to town customising the layout to meet our taste. 
New carpets and wall hangings, moving tables chairs and beds. 
We are free to do as we like. 
However, we must be careful. If the house is purely intended as a solo living space for a player, there is no problem, but if you want to include an NPC or companion, even a pet you need to look at PATHGRIDS.

==Path Grids (simple)==

Select the pathgrid icon or choose World/ Edit cell pathgrid

We will notice a series of red diamonds linked by yellow lines. These are the path grids for this small interior space. Why do we need pathgrids at all?

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) for NPCs are determined by a number of function-oriented packages. One set of packages determine how NPCs move around the world. All NPCs use a simple set of criteria to move. 

The diamonds represent points, called nodes. You can think of these as waypoints. The yellow lines represent the path between any two waypoints. Suppose the NPC wants to move from the far side of the room near the original bed position if you’ve already altered the furniture position in your cell look in the safe mode version. 

The program will workout which nodes give the shortest route to the door. Generally they choose any safe route. The colour of the diamonds mark the priority.

The diamonds are safe places on which an actor can stand. The lines are valid paths to travel between these points.

Blue Points: The preferred travel path. When determining the path to travel, actors prefer to use blue points. 
Red Points: Normal points, hand placed. 
Orange Points: Automatically generated points. They act just like red points. 

If two or more NPCs or the player occupy the cell, the NPCs have a problem. They need to move from the bed to the door, but they can’t walk through another NPC. The game checks the intended move from node to node and if it conflicts with an NPC, it will look for an alternate route. The more choices available the easier it is for the NPC to move. If you’ve ever come across NPCs who are following you but seem to lag behind and stop at random moments it’s usually because the pathing it needs to use is blocked by either other NPCs or your character.

So far so good. However NPCs are dumb. They don’t recognise walls, etc. until the collision detection tells them it's there. They can even clip through walls as they move. We need to make sure that the path we set down does not go through objects. This means editing the pathgrid to suit our house. The Path nodes can be dragged just like any object. We can also delete nodes by selecting it. A yellow band appears around the node and then press Delete.

To add a grid point, right click on the location in the render window. The point will appear at that point. Pathgrid points are always placed on surface. They are never placed floating. 

To move a grid point, select it with the left mouse button and drag it. You can then use the "F" key to make it "fall" to the ground if necessary. 

To set a priority Point (blue) Hold the ALT key and right click.

To add or remove a link, select a point with the left mouse button. 
While holding down the Ctrl key, select another grid point. A link is made.
If a link already exists, it is removed. 

Grid points can also be added with a link automatically placed with the previous grid point by holding the Ctrl key and right clicking on the point where the grid point should appear. 

Carefully change the pathing. Try to set up at least two alternative routes around the room to link key spaces like chests chairs and bed. 
Make sure you have at least three ways to approach door nodes.

Switch off the pathing grid.

Finally make a note of the type of door in your cottage. 
In this case the Farmhousedoor01.

We are now ready to return to the exterior world and link our spaces.

==Linking==

Open up our cottage cell (-2,19), select the farmhouse and zoom in. 
We can see the doorway and it has a similar door in it. 
However, this is not a door object, it’s just a bit of the farmhouse artwork. It allows you to set up dummy buildings as window dressing in scenes. 
We will need to select the DOORS in the object window and drag the farmhousedoor01 object into the render window. We can then position it in the doorway just in front of the artist’s dummy door. 

Double click on the door object, select the Teleport and link it to the interior cell we have just created. Don’t forget to move the teleport markers out of the doors and to position them correctly.

Job done. 

We now need to tidy up the exterior a little before we do some landscaping.

First let’s look at the exterior objects that we ignored earlier.

If we press W we can switch to wire frame mode and use this to look inside the building at rocks and plants that we have swallowed up. Delete or move these. Generally I delete rocks, and move plants. It’s up to you.

Before we move on lets also tidy up the pathgrid around our house. Select pathgrid mode and wire frame. Delete all path nodes that are inside our houses footprint. Then delete any paths linking nodes that cut through the walls of the house. We can return later to lay down new paths to our door once we have landscaped a bit.

==Landscaping==

Let’s start by looking at the world heightmap editor. 

Now let’s stop looking at the heightmap editor.

Seriously the world editor is designed to make major adjustments to the landscape, i.e. add an entire mountain range or create a completely new world. It is principally for use in total conversions and is far too coarse an editor for our purposes.

Select the landscaping toolbox using World/ landscape editor, the icon or H hotkey. 

The first thing we are going to do is change the ‘brush size’.

It is the box in the top left of the toolset which default initially at 100. 
Those who have read these tutorials are used to me explaining away strange defaults as making sense once you use the tools. 
This one does not. 
Change it now to 1. 
In all the landscaping I have done I have never used this setting at higher than 5 and that was only once. 
Almost all our landscaping will be done at settings 3, 2 or 1. 
When you ever use a setting of 100 is beyond me, it's 5 or 6 times bigger than an individual cell.

As we use the toolset we will look at what each bit does.
The toolset divides into three distinct functions:
* Height Editor
* Terrain painter
* Terrain shader

==The Height Editor==

The exterior world is described by a Height Map. What is this? 
When we look around the world of Tamriel it looks solid enough. 
Mountains soar and valleys dip. You look at a mountain and it appears to be a solid impenetrable object. In fact it’s just a skin or shell, there is no mountain inside it. The effect of a natural landscape has been achieved by altering the shape of this thin veneer or skin. 
Without any height changes the world would be totally flat, and made up a structured collection of nodes and connecting vertices. 
Imagine a grid of squares each with an extra point in the middle of each square. If you make the central point higher than the four points it connects to, you will get a pyramid like structure forming a hill. 
Make the central point lower and you get a pyramid like valley. 
Do this across the world and you get landscaping. 

What you do when you edit the heightmap is to raise or lower one or more of the nodes to alter the shape of the skin.

This is done by holding the left mouse button while moving the mouse up or down. The brush size determines the size of the red editor circle that appears on the screen. The move raises/lowers all the nodes inside the circle. The larger the circle the greater the number of nodes you can move.

Practice using safe mode, raising and lowering land. Alter the circle size and look at the effects. The trick is to be gentle, check often and take your time. 
The CTRL Z key will undo moves but it has a limited memory and even small acts by you can change the position of a large number of modes. I use a 5-click rule. 
By this I mean I make a few small changes (5 clicks) . I then review the changes carefully from a number of angles. If I don’t like it I can then CTRL Z them away. If I want to keep it, I save, and move onto another five clicks.

In the case of our farmhouse we needn't do too much. Keep the brush size small like 1 or 2. Work along the edge of the house to take away some of the harsher lines that suggest this has just been plonked on to the land.

==Joining to the road==

We will now landscape the connection that joins our farmhouse to the road. Use the tool at its 2 setting. Begin at the roadside and lower the grassland until it is at the same height as the road. Generally roads seem to either be raised above the land with a camber from middle to edge, or sunk down with the camber running from edge to middle. In this case it is likely you will need to create a shallow valley from the road to the front of your house. This definitely one for the artists amongst you. You can then reduce the tool to 1 and adjust further.

When this is done go back along the path moving, replacing and deleting the rocks and trees. These objects are independent of the landscape and will not move as you lower, or raise the land. You will need to F key the object then sink them into the ground or they will float.

The height editor comes with two special setting selected by clicking on the appropriate selection box. These are Flatten Vertices and Smooth Vertices.

Take care with both of these tools. They do as they say. 

Flatten flattens the land to a constant value. I think this might be an average based on all the nodes selected. (It might use the centre most value, I’m not sure).

The effect is to create a flat chunk of land. If you move the mouse with this activated the tool will Iron the land smooth. These are big changes and usually are difficult to undo using the CTRL Z function. Again take your time, set the tool size low. Make small adjustments review and save.

The Smooth tool is equally powerful, this time averaging out values to create smooth banks. It’s useful for getting rid of hard edges.

==Covering your tracks==

The height map has limits. The gap between nodes corresponds to about 6 foot in game. It is impossible to get rid of some of the hard edges. So what do you do about them? The same as the Bethesda Developers did. Put a rock over it. Seriously many of the landscape objects have been put down to cover up harsh landscaping. 

Objects in the external window.

While you can of course continue to use all the objects that you used when set decorating the interiors, the three key objects for the external world are rocks, flora and trees.

Flora are the harvestable flowers that cover the world. 

Rocks and Trees. These are decorative static objects that make the game feel like the great outdoors. Again, use the existing trees and rocks as a guideline for the varieties to choose from the object window. Another tip is to sort the objects by size. This allows you to find the sort of object you want (Big, Medium, Small).

I found when planting tree I give a more natural feel to F key them onto the ground then use the height editor set at 1 to raise the ground slightly around the base.

==Terrain Editing==

The central area of the toolbox is the terrain-painting tool. 
The terrains you choose are purely visual in nature. 
The NPCs do not know the difference between road and grass, you will need to use pathing to help them out. 

The tool is activated by the Right Hand mouse button. 

 The window consist of three bits:
 Terrain Selection List
 Active Terrain Icon
 Opacity

Start by positioning the mouse over your house, click once.
(Don’t move the mouse when you do it). 
Now press I to bring up the Information box. 
This divides the current cell into four quarters, NW,NE,SW and SE respectively. 
In each box is a list of the terrains used and the percentage used. 
Notice that each cell only contains a limited number of terrains. There is a limit to how many terrains you can use. I’m not sure what this is to be honest, but it is not that many. How can you tell? Because the designers of the original Oblivion cells did not use that many. If they had had the freedom to do so they would have done so. 

The CS Wiki suggest you limit adding new terrains. In fact my experience has been that in all but a few occasions the cell is already at the limit before you start.
This means we are going to have to use the terrains already in the cell. This is in fact no bad thing. It ensures that our landscaping blends in with the surroundings.

We can scroll through the terrain list to find our terrain or use a neat little shortcut. Move the cursor over a likely type of terrain in the render window, press CTRL, right click and this selects that terrain so we can paint with it.

==The Eternal Grasslands==

How we love that oblivion grass. It slows our frame rate, and loses our items. What can you do? 

In fact most Grass terrains come in two varieties I.e.

 TerrainHDGrassSu
 TerrainHDGrassSuNoGrass

Both look almost identical in the CS render window, but in game the no grass version has no grass, while the standard does.
By the way, if you like me have reduced the grass draw distance in the game settings to allow better frame rates or are running one of the many mods that reduce this. Disable these while you test your own mod. 
I forgot during Verona House and spent ages having to retexture because huge grass stalks appeared along all my paths and pavements.

Let’s paint in the road. 

The road is in fact a blend of three textures. 
Set the brush size to 1. 
Use the CTRL - Right Click to select the central texture "Roadstone01".

Use this to paint from the centre of the road along the middle of your road valley up to your front door. (With opacity set at 90-100%)

Now reduce the opacity to 70-80% and select the outer road texture using CTRL - Right click.
("Roadstonesmall01")

By reducing the opacity you allow some of the underlying texture to poke through. Use this texture on either side of the road to act as a border.

Now select grass with an opacity of 50% or lower and paint along the edges of the small road stone texture. This reduces the amount of grass that will appear along the edges.

Remember to go in game from time to time to look at what is happening. Bump the draw graphic up as far as they will go without crashing your game. As this is a test you can put up with some stutter. This will make sure the game looks at its best for those who have decent graphic cards.

Use the no grass textures to clear around the house. The two grass texture appear very similar in the render window so go in game and check.

==Terrain Shader==

The final tool is selected by clicking the selection tool.

It is a specialist paint function. 
It is used to paint in shadows and shades to large objects. 
The game's graphics can handle shadows to an extent, but these add a bit of visual help that sells the idea that those trees, rocks and buildings are part of the world. The tool consists of two selectable colours. One activated by left clicking, the other one by right clicking. You can use any colours you like, but for the most part these are shades of grey. 
You can set up a palette of useful colours using the select colours/add custom colours options.

You will need:

Various Greys (rgb200,rgb150,rgb100 etc)
A few dark greens, 
A very dark purple.

Experiment by shading around the edges of your house.

The terrain underneath shows through the shadows. 
As you move out from house, reduce shade.

White acts as an eraser and removes any shading.

Remember to save.

The mod is now pretty much finished.

All you have to do is add or adjust the pathgrid to account for the new road and any moved trees etc.

Check for floating objects.

Done and dusted.
We have a building.
Go play and then return.

==Complex Interiors==

In this part of the tutorial we are going to look at larger building and more complex interiors.

As a guide we will use the "Skhouseupper01" and its interiors "Skhouseupperint01b" and "Skhouseupperint01t".

Again we will use the same exterior location and the same basic techniques to place the exterior in the correct place. Remove the objects and pathgrids. Try this yourself. You can either start a new mod or add this to the existing mod to make a little community. Position the house, sink it into the ground and make a note of the relevant direction for the North marker.

We will use the "start from scratch" technique to build the interior.
Select a cell, any will do, copy it, rename it, and set ownership and lighting.

Delete all the objects except the North marker.

Delete all the pathgrid. 
Sling a lasso (drag a box) around the entire pathgrid and press Delete key. It may take few seconds for them to go.

Now select the North marker object and double click on it. Set the x, y, z, co-ordinates to 0,0,and 0. You don’t need to do this, but it does help to set a baseline and in some case allows you to join objects together with the minimum of fuss.

The whole building consists of two interior spaces:

Skhouseupperint01b (bottom two floors)
Skhouseupperint01t (top floor)

These can be linked in two ways:

==Continuous link==

Both the objects are placed in the same cell. The two pieces are then joined to form a single cell. In this case the place to link them is at the top of the stairs in the lower floor plan and the open stairwell in the upper plan. 
Doing it this way we can add interior doors. Look for doors mark animated or INT. There is one called "Skdoormiddleint01", which is ideal for this set. You don’t link these doors. Instead they open for real to reveal the room inside. This is great because it maintains the illusion and avoids loadscreens. The big problem is it increases the number of objects in the cell. The game appears to try to remember the location of every object in a cell all at once, even if it's three stories above you and out of sight. The more objects it needs to remember, the slower the update, which can cause slow-down and stuttering.

However, these two pieces don't fit together well, in fact visibly so. I would recommend the second technique.

==Separate rooms==

This involves placing the two spaces in two separate cells. You then link them by a door. The disadvantage is that the loadscreen appears. However, you gain more object control.

The game designers tend to use the separate room method. It is up to you. If you plan a more minimalist décor then go for continuous. If you want to pack your rooms, make them separate.

Whatever method you choose, it is time to carry out the fun part.

-Decorate
-Add lights
-Add path grids to suit.

The designers also have one last trick up their sleeve.
This particular set was used in Summitmist Manor, which is part of the Dark Brotherhood Quest line. Have a look at the cell for the lower floors. It has three doorways. One leads outside, one links to the upper floor, and one goes to the basement. However, in the original building object there is no doorway set aside for a basement. The designers have just stuck a door against a blank bit of wall. They used the Skingard modular door that is great because it comes complete with a doorframe. A few of the doorways are like this. It means if you want to add a basement, you can, even if no real doorway exists. If you want to add a basement, go ahead.

Make a note door-references, in particular front door. This is the number in brackets next to the reference ID box. Also, make a note of the doorway type you have used.

Open up the external world, go to our cell, add a front door.
Link this to our new interior. Do not forget to move the door markers.

Things to try 

Landscape a road connection.
Build a wall or fence.
Add stable.

==Fast Travel Marker==

The final thing we need to do is add the [[Static|static object]] '''Map Marker''' to our house. Drag this into the render window, position it and F key it. It looks a red version of the door link markers. This is where you teleport to when you fast travel to this location. Remember people might fast travel on horseback, so be sensible. The large circle around the marker denotes the area you must enter for the location to show up on the map.

Finally.

You should now be in a position to start to get creative and build some impressive mods. Remember there is lots of housing out there. Look for gaps in the market by all means but most of all MOD FOR YOURSELVES.

This concludes the beginners guide to Buildings and Structures. 
In [[A beginner's guide, lesson 4 - Anatomy of a quest, part 1|Lesson 4]], we will examine NPC's, Quests, and Scripting.
I'm off to do my research. 
I hope these tutorials have been of benefit to you and as always

HAPPY MODDING
'''Tom Dawson''' (May 2006)


[[Category:A beginner's guide]]