Galadrielle's content converter

[Lightwave]

I only tried out Galadrielle's content converter last weekend and it's certainly very impressive. A number of meshes seem to be missing for me though (e.g. Stilt riders), but a great many items have been converted.

So out of curiousity I ran it through TES4Scale so that the exterior content is placed back on the scaled up landscape (this is the same program I used for scaling up the NPC positions) and have uploaded it here.

You have a choice of two files, one places the meshes at their original scales but in their correct positions on the enlarged landmass, which means spread out disconnected buildings, useful to see how much more space there is but it's also ugly.

The second alternative also scales up the meshes by 2x, so everything is in direct proportion to the landscape. This is much more impressive, trees and mushrooms look dramatic (but to me, the scale looks fine) and many buildings look greatly imposing (esp Imperial buildings and Dumner Forts). Some look a little too big obviously, but if you pretend Vvardenfellers have a penchant for building grand scale buildings, this doesn't necessarily look wrong, it's quite magnificent in places.

Obviously the meshes themselves can never be redistributed, so you'll have to run Galadrielle's content converter yourself (I just ran ESP Converter on Morrowind.esm, but had to copy my game folders to C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks - I never install games to C: drive because the performance is poor due to fragmentation).

Recently there has been some discussion behind the scenes regarding whether we should drop back to an original scale Vvardenfell, owing to the sheer volume of work required, which makes a lot of sense. But I have to admit the temptation of cutting corners on a dramatic style landscape this way for existing owners of Morrowind is significant, seeing huge Imperial and Dumner Forts situated dramatically across a vast landscape, and catching glimpses through the giant trees and mushrooms of small mountains to the southwest and the dominating Red Mountain and Shrine of the Incarnate to the centre, it does look quite impressive in places.

I've included the placed NPC ESP in the archive too, just to make it a bit more alive.

Have fun, curious of all your thoughts,

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

I'd like to try this, it would probably help us to decide with the choice of reverting back to the original scale land or sticking with the 2x scaled land. From what I've gathered it sounds like both options (of landmass sizes) will have their pros and cons, I think if we at least check out the converter, see how things look and get some screenshots, it would make it a lot easier to decide.

Lightwave, if possible, do you think you could post some screenshots of the converted meshes on the two worldspaces?

[Lightwave]

Sure. I only have a handful of VWD shots of the 2x from the south of Vvardenfell atm which I made just before going to bed last night, but I can get more (I made it an option in TES4qLOD to VWD all the placed objects, not just the ones tagged with VWD).

Vivec


Caldera (left) & the run up to Ghostgate (right).


Balmora

Ebonheart

Ebonheart, seen across the water near Seyda Neen

Part of Seyda Neen to the lower left.

Pelagiad (I think)

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

Wow... those look incredible... :eek:

Aside from the missing canton on the right and partially missing castle, the first screenshot looks beautiful.

How's the FPS with this btw? Is there any slowdown?

[Lightwave]

Lol, with VWD on everything, just a handful of FPS (and long, long loads when moving between cells). Great for screenshots only. This is because I made everything VWD rather than spend the time doing a handful, plus the distant meshes are copies of the close meshes, so they're full detail.

The missing bits are the game's mesh VWD load limit that has thwarted me so much with LOD2. Many things don't need to be VWD (such as small fauna) so they are wasteful, as are underwater items you cannot see VWD (such as rocks and marshes).

With time it could be made as slick as OB, the problem being we cannot redistribute meshes obviously.

I'll get some pics from other parts of the island later. Got Salsa classes starting shortly, gonna be late ...

[Lightwave]

Here are some pics of Vvardenfell on an original size landscape (1x), landscape texture converted using TESAnnwyn's TES4 texture defaults (i.e. the same ones as the 2x landscape, not the TES3 converted textures that Galadrielle's uses):

Red Mountain, Caldera on the left. Ghostgate up the right valley.


Dwemer ruin near Moonmoth Fort and Vivec in the background.


Balmora with the island of Firemoth in the distance.


More distant shot down at Balmora and Firemoth island.


Lots can be seen in this shot (if you zoom in).









Looking South from the north-east of Vvardenfell.

Vos, Tel Vos etc.

Red Mountain from the Grazelands.

Red Mountain from the Grazelands (sunset).

A Dumner Fort in the Grazelands.

The only real downers of a 1x landscape is that things are so much closer together; it doesn't take that long to pop from one end of Vvardenfell to the other (less than 10 mins on a horse). And Red Mountain doesn't dominate the surrounding countryside with a height of only 270m; the 2x scale "mountain" has 8x the volume. Also the LOD suffers more quirks because there's more variation of terrain in a smaller area that the approximation cannot cater for, so features like the fin-shaped Cavern of the Incarnate don't show up as well from a distance.

This has to be compared against the volume of work required for either scale obviously. If there is to be a revaluation of scale, from my point of view it is not a major chore to reproduce everything (textured landscape with LOD, placed NPCs and placed objects from Galadrielle's converted meshes) at any scale desired. With all the VWD objects on, the performance of the 1x landscape is actually a bit better (I don't know why, technically there are more meshes cramped in to a smaller area so it should be worse hrug: ).

But there is the potential for users who own Morrowind to use these scaled ESPs and run Galadrielle's mesh converter to get a Vvardenfell up and running in little time and without the legal implications of redistribution. And many mundane placement items such as rocks, fauna, swamps are already populated so the daunting task of placing everything from scratch is greatly reduced and there's nothing to stop modders from removing and replacing anything in their assigned area and replacing meshes with our own newer and more detailed versions (because neither the population density, vertices or texture detail is as great as Oblivion obviously, but it's still quite acceptable).

I should get some pics from the north, but it's not nearly so pretty up there, lots of gloomy ash and ruins.

Lightwave

[KuKulzA]

cramped but very cool....

[Richard]

Wow, MW's short view distance really made the place seem bigger =/

[DarkAsmodeous]

DA has serious reservations here.... I'm just saying, you've always been prepared to do the work to creat the best Vvardenfell you could, even if it meant more work. Just because there's a shortcut or placeholder available... Don't change your plans based on that.

[Mormacil]

Let's see this as a tool to speed things up but not anew way to do things. I say you keep the 2X map. With this tool you got great reverence. This should really speed things up