Murkwood Development

[Ibsen's Ghost]

The subject of Rickious and the development of his models continues on this thread: Murkwood Concept art .

[Ibsen's Ghost]

I came across the MW Trama root which may help to inspire a modeller to help work on shrubs for us: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Trama_Root .

There are basically no original shrubs in the OB community. Good trees are quite rare too (as they are created with speedtree software and very few people both have it and are proficient with using it). Any original shrubs would be gratefully received especially if they're highly appropriate for the regions.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Alongside the Talu Swamp, I'm hoping to get Murkwood developed too. This will leave us with two border regions to complete for the beta and not much else to do for the whole WS regarding regions.

Murkwood has been in development for some time but now it feels like I'm getting close to finalising things. The goal is to achieve something like the last picture but, as we all know, OB is severely restrictive in terms of what we can do with it as it tends to make things pretty as opposed to menacing (due to the lighting system, mainly).

Anyway, I hope you'll agree that, barring some even more evil-looking flora, Murkwood is getting there at last.

I used Charred Oak trees (this uses a bark texture that I've completely deleted from my system and replaced with another - yet it's still there - ?( ), a Forgotten Forest tree and dead Black Gum from our ST brothers and our own Pine Forest and Cypress trees. I'm hoping that maybe the loblolly pines that I mentioned in the 'Talu Swamp Development' thread can be retextured a little darker to be used for the watery areas here or we could simply have a taller, thinner, darker mossy tree unique to the region, if Koniption becomes available.

The textures are free ones that I selected (the mud ones are the best but you can't see them here) but you'll also see Koniption's delicious pod tree. Sadly, I don't think I have a shot of the rare gagroot plant but it's in there anyhow. I deleted the night-time shots because they were too dark....which bodes well for Murkwood methinks.

Please let me know what you think and whether you think something doesn't work, should be added or so on.

[nick_op]

Have you ever seen the Dark Forest Unique Landscape mod by addiktive? He managed to achieve a very menacing appearance in that in my opinion, due to a combination of not being able to see the sky much and having desaturated and slightly unusual colours. If you haven't played it then I'd definitely recommend it, especially for inspiration for Murkwood.

It should be quite possible to change the overall mood of the place with a unified texture 'theme' that matches up all the various textures in terms of colour and saturation (mood, effectively). I'd be happy to give this a go if you think it sounds like a good idea, I'm confident that I could achieve the desired effect.

Also, one difference that strikes me between your screenshots and the reference photo is the amount of ground that it visible. It looks as if it should be covered in foliage to me - the thought of not knowing what you're stepping into makes taking that step a whole lot scarier!

[Ibsen's Ghost]

I'm not that great with foliage. I always aim for lots of it but I'm not sure how to set it up properly so that it comes through full and lush. It tends to end up in patches...bloody annoying! X(

I'm aware of addiktive's mod and I really liked it. I didn't know he'd done something different though other than carefully chosen his textures. I'd like to know how to do that with the textures if it's a skill I can use elsewhere....

I'd be happy for you to take a look at this. I'll need to send along the Murkwood textures and this esp for you to check it out. However, this test esp uses the previous esm (not the one that sandor has now uploaded) so if you use v2.33 then you'll get duplicate files. Nevertheless, the trees are already in the archive and I'd only need to send you the textures. Here they are: http://www.humyo.com/10031629/Murk.rar?a=ih_12NsSGQY .

To give you a rundown: I'm using patchy grass and the 'wetdarkmud' textures quite a lot. There's also 'verywetmud' for the underwater areas and 'lakebed' for the rocky sections and 'drylakebed' for the paths. I'm considering using 'mudpools' but not a lot as if you have a lot of it then it looks too patterned and unnatural. I'm also using bmapelcihmoss01 quite a lot which you should find in the Data>landscape folder of the archive. I had considered using 'dirtyswamp02' occasionally too.

P.S. I attached the esp too but you'll need the v2.32 version of the esm to run it without errors. You'll find my tester cells at around -2,-2.

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
I'm not that great with foliage. I always aim for lots of it but I'm not sure how to set it up properly so that it comes through full and lush. It tends to end up in patches...bloody annoying! X(

Part of it probably has to do with the setting in your Oblivion.ini that controls foliage density - this will vary from person to person. However, I was under the impression that the region gen tool could group objects together (i.e. foliage around trees and such). I've never used it though, so it's quite possible I'm wrong.

I'm aware of addiktive's mod and I really liked it. I didn't know he'd done something different though other than carefully chosen his textures. I'd like to know how to do that with the textures if it's a skill I can use elsewhere....

As far as I'm aware, addiktive used some custom assets - recoloured textures and the like to give a more sinister feel.

I'd be happy for you to take a look at this.

I've got your .esp and textures, however the older version of the .esm doesn't appear to be available any more, and filefront just gives me a blank page when I click the download button, so I haven't got any of the .bsa files. Any suggestions?

[Ibsen's Ghost]

You should be fine using the current esm to just check things out and take a look around. The only problem is that you'll get duplicate file errors which doesn't really affect things if you only mean to play around with the textures and have no intentions of doing anything within the CS. Even if you do do anything with the esp, it won't screw things up big-time. It would just mean that if we were thinking of merging the esp to the esm then we'd have to get rid of the duplicate files.

This means you can use the current esm if you wish but I could always re-upload the old esm if you think it's going to be a problem.

[nick_op]

Ok, I'm happy to use the latest .esm. However, since I'm unable to download the .bsa file I'm stuck with regards to assets, as I've only got the textures linked in the previous post.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Are you waiting for sandor to upload the bsa archive? He shouldn't be too long. He had some family issues to attend to so he was away for a while.

Nevertheless, it's possible to download the latest files here: Black Marsh Resources: Latest bsa . They're in the normal folder format though, as opposed to the all-in-one bsa.

I'm just hoping that archive is on the way soon...makes it easier for you guys...

[nick_op]

Ah, it seems I was looking at the wrong post for the assets. I'm going to hold off on downloading it for now since I'll likely not work on any mod related stuff this week - my band has two gigs coming up so I'm preparing for those. Perhaps by then the archive will be ready, but if not I'll download the files.