It's alive

I just resided these screenshots from Wamster33 and Rosedale on the nexus mod site. They are making a mod in the Hoddminir world, and it looks really nice. I just had to share this:)
It's a very nice feeling to see someone improve on the work you have done. It's not at all what I had imagined for that part of the coast, but that's the beauty of it. All of the sudden, the world has a life on its own. I hope to see more people using this world or part of it for there mods.

This mod is located in cells around 131,-20. Wamster33 suggested that people should be able to reserve cells they are working on in the Hoddminir worldspace. I think this is a great idea, and I'll see if I can set up a page for that.

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New green grasses

Today I when for a walk and took photos of grasses. The idea is to re-texture the Skyrim grass with some new variants. I'm going do some different color variants of each type.
The first one is done and there is more to come :)

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New groun textures of Moss

So far I made 19 moss and lichen textures, with some different colors. Two of the textures even has lingon berry bushes in them :)

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New ground textures with grass

Grasses are coming along nicely. There is 18 different ones so far, both green and brown. There will possible be some more with other plants as well, we'll see what more I can find to photograph that would look good.

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New ground textures with Leaves

I now feel more or less done with ground textures with leaves and there is 20 different variations. All photos are taken during spring, so no autumn colored leaves jet, that will have to wait until autumn is here. There are textures with leaves of oak, willow, aspen, maple, beech and birch.

 

I thought that I would have been done by now with this texture package, but I have to many projects running at the same time. I realize now that this texture pack will be huge, and will take some more time to finish. Still to do is grass, dirt, stone, moss and gravel. Next I'll work on ground textures with grass and other plants.

Just a sneak preview of a green and nice grass :)
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Making a 16bit height map without Photoshop

I have been asked many times how to make a height map for Skyrim without using Photoshop. Unfortionally Gimp 2.8 do not support 16 bit images that are needed to make a height map and I have been trying to find some other program to do this with, and also make raw files that TesAnnwyn can read.
A solution it seams is a good but ugly program I used to work with called ImageJ. It is a Java program developed for scientific image analysis, and I used to measure root growth of mutant Arabidopsis with it. But it can also do what I need for Skyrim world creation, and it is free :)

Work flow

First make the height map in Gimp, save as 8 bit Tiff (see previous post for some guidelines)
Download ImageJ.
Open in ImageJ, change to 16 bit under Image -> Type, save as RAW.

Import the RAW image of the height map in GeoControl, under Generatio -> Terrain Import -> "Raw (16bit) from Carrara".

 

After you run the filters and have a terrain you like, export as a 16 bit RAW file.

To make the esp run TESAnnwyn, and because the image is to bright you have to use the scaling function. Exactly what scaling factor to use depends on how bright/high your world is, try what works for your world.
TESAnnwyn command line:
TESAnnwyn.exe -i Skyrim -p 1 -b 16 -d 4096x4096 -s 0.2 -x -64 -y -64  -h -22192 -w NameOfWorldspace YourImage.raw
 -i sets the game, -p RAW format, -b 16 bit image, -d size in pixels, -s scales the height range of the image, -x and -y cell offset in x and y directions. (See original post on -h values and the effect on sea levels.)

If anyone have found a better program or solution let me know.
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Undergrowth

I have been working with Ztree to make new undergrowth plants (there is a thread on the Bethesda forum). Ztree has made some really nice new models :)
My favorites so fare is the fern and crane models, I can see that they could be very useful.
So far I have only made high resolution textures of woodland cranes and anemones, but I will keep working.

Update:
I made a braken fern texture on two different models, an unknown plant on a fern model, Meadow sweet (without flowers) and Lady's Mantel.

Update: 2012-09-11
ZTree just released his trees and with them among other things the undergrowth plants.
I have made some more textures (the pictures above) that you can download from here:
1k resolution and 2k resolution.

I really recommend this resource, there are some nice trees, rocks and plants. I'll be using them a lot :)

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