Region Generation part III: Hoddminir’s regions

Original posted Mars 5 2015

 

In this third part of the region generation guides I will show you some of Hoddminir regions and the settings used to make them. You can download the spread sheet with all these settings from this Nexus page.

You can if you like use our region settings in your mods, but one important think to keep in mind when you make a region is to consider what the terrain looks like. The region settings for a relatively flat terrain looks very different from the settings for a terrain with a lot of slope and height variation.

As a standard, the regions that generate under water will add some sunken driftwood and rocks, not the most imaginative things but it adds some life to the sea bed. Here is a good description of how you fix the black terrain spots when you have too many Landscape textures in one cell. Some of these region settings can run into this issue.

Part I: Region generation of landscape textures.
Part II. Region generation of objects
Making a region from start to finish, an example where I set up a pine coast region.

Region: Conifer forest

Creator: Noir

This region was the first made by Noir for Hoddminir and is by far the most complicated region I have ever seen. I won’t go through the details of this one, I just wanted to show you what a master of region generation can do :).

The region spans from sea bed to mountain altitudes and work in all terrain I have used it in so far. The different zones are very different from each other and gives a varied and interesting environment.

The idea to make this region comes from the Scandinavian conifer forests that are thick with trees, and full of moss covered rocks. Apart from trees there are lots of clusters of rocks, large ferns and moss covered logs.

Issues:

* This region uses a total of 8 landscape textures, and can on occasion get black spots on the ground when there is more than 6 textures in that cell quad.

* Generates too many larger driftwood logs along the shore, I would recommend a lower density or higher radius for HodCoastDriftWoodLog05wy, HodCoastDriftWoodLog02wy and HodCoastDriftWoodLog04wy.

* I would recommend exchanging the ZtScottishPine06 for a shrub or bush. The large and low pine will clutter most of the view down slopes.

Region: Rowan coast

Creator: Elinen

A relatively open and airy region with rowan trees and some rocks and bushes. The region generates both under and over the water.

Region: Pine Coast

Creator: Elinen

This region is made for a rocky terrain on the coast with a few flat areas. Pines and sea buckthorn are the dominant flora with some additions of small rowan trees and bushes.

I go through the creation of this region in more detail here.

Region: Moor

Creator: Noir

The Moor region is an open landscape with lots of rocks and bushes, and a tree here and there. The region is designed to stop generating at the altitude that the Mountain region starts so they work well together.

Region: Mountain

Creator: Noir

This mountain region is connected to the conifer forest, with smaller and fewer trees the higher up you go, the trees give way to bushes and at a certain altitude the even the bushes disappear and snow covers the ground and the rocks.

Region: Aspen Forest

Creator: Noir and Elinen

This is a deciduous forest of aspen and some maple. The aspen trees cluster close together and there will be small meadows between the clusters. This forest is very thick with aspen trees, this is due to the low radius set on the trees, now most of them have a radius at 18 units and “is a tree” is not ticked. I have tried a slightly larger radius of 20 and then I get a grass land with small crops of trees instead. If you rather have a more even forest I would set the radius to around 20, maybe even 23, but have the “radius wrt parent” to 2048 instead of 1024.

Issues:

This region uses 7 landscape textures.

Region: Mixed Forest

Creator: Noir and Elinen

The Mixed forest has been used next to the Moor and the Conifer forest and combines them with elements of both mixed in with deciduous trees, in this case European aspen. The forest is semi open with cluster of trees and meadows in between. There are fewer rocks than in the conifer forest but more bushes.

Issues:

This region uses 7 landscape textures.

/Elinen