Xargoth's Showcase

[Xargoth]

Hey, This is Xargoth, and no, I have not given up! Although I never really finished a documentary, here is a house mod called, Jiirne Twinko's house, I made for this. The upstairs is fully finished, but the downstairs is not. I need to go to bed soon, but I thought I would upload this first. What needs to be improved besides the downstairs? Anyhow, the house is located by the Caldera mines.

[SamirA]

You will probably want to finish this before I review it as that will count against your 3 strikes with you knowing you can't pass yet. Finish this up and someone will review it.

[Xargoth]

Ok, Here is the finished version. Downstairs is all finished out, and a default, equip-able lute. The lute is really sorry looking when equiped, but it's the best I can do with default Morrowind stuff.

[Shapeshiftr]

Edit: Full review below.

TESAME: Morrowind plugins often edit random objects from the vanilla, unmodified game, even if you never touched the item properties. We call these modified items "dirty," and, as you could guess, are bad. You can use a program like TESAME or Morrowind Enchanted Editor to "clean" your file. I recommend the latter; I feel it's easier to use, and I've always used it, so I have a certain bias. So, this file is dirty.

Fits exterior: N/A

Northmarker set: Yes

Loading errors: No

Review:

The first thing I notice in your interior is a thing called style mixing. Basically, there are two main styles in Morrowind (although, there are many more, minor styles): Dunmer, and Common. Each piece of furniture's or item's style is represented by a tag at the front end of its ID: de_ for dunmer, and com_ or c_ for common/imperial. Now, it's a bad thing in the TES world to mix these styles without a reason: it's like putting modern furniture in a log cabin. For example, your house is made of c_ static room tiles, but your furniture is mostly de_. Pick a style: either make a Hlaalu (hla_) house with de_ furniture, or a Common/Imperial (c_ or com_) with com_ furniture. No worries, it's a common mistake by newcomers to the modding community.

Along these same lines, it's usually best to choose whether your tenant is rich or poor, and to reflect this in their furniture by either using high-grade, expensive furniture (_r_), or low-grade, cheaper furniture (_p_). Another mistake that really only is fixed by actually modding in a community (like us!).

Hm, this house looks a bit bare. Take a look at some vanilla houses. See how they have barrels and sacks everywhere, lamps and greenery, all that good clutter? Make your house looked lived it!

Oh, light. It seems that you've left the light settings at default. Go to World->Interior Cell... and tweak the ambient light to give your house a mood. If your lost or confused, check the light settings of some other vanilla houses.

By the way, why does he have a full bar in his house?

Okay, those are it for the stylistic errors. Although that looks like a lot, it's really only 4 things that you wouldn't really expect a newcomer to the modding community to know. Also, it's me rambling on a lot like I always do. So, no worries. What impresses me is the lack of bleeding and floating objects. I won't go into many details and give you an anal bleeder/floater review, but here are some of the more obvious ones I came across:

Bleeding basket upstairs, it's on the bookshelf near the stairs, and it's the left basket.

Floating dragonscale helmet. Tricky to align properly, but doable.

That whole table with the armor is bleeding so drastically into the ground that I think you did it on purpose. I would like it if I just didn't. You can re-size table, if you want, or use a desk. But, yeah. Four on the floor; it's creative, but still no.

Your use of Dwemer architecture for the fireplace is cool, and I want to keep it, but since it's Dwemer architecture, and therefore impossible for it to be there, I'm going to say no for that one.

Your bedside chest is bleeding into the wall behind it.

Same with your drawers.

6 physical errors, that's pretty good for a showcase interior, props.

Comments: You can make an interior, just revise according to the stylistic advice, which includes more clutter. Also, nice placement of the key.

[Xargoth]

Thanks for the review, I did clean the GMSTs out, but, I forgot to do cellview references. As unto the style mixing, I kinda meant to have it that way, he was a thief and a sugar\skooma addict, which I thought it would be interesting if I could mix rich, poor, dunmer, imperial, and other styles into one, but I will go ahead and fix the style error. As for the the bar in his house, I meant that to look more like a counter where he could have fixed his meals or other things, like drinks. I will try to fix everything else and get back soon.

Edit: The bedside chest does not have a backside, so, it has to be bleeding a bit, however, should I mount it to the wall instead and put a bedside table underneath?

[Shapeshiftr]

@Edit: Yeah, though you could probably actually get away with keeping it on the ground, and bleeding it into the wall. I was kind of seeing how that would work when I first reviewed the int, but the fact that it has no back reaffirms the legitimacy of the idea.

[Xargoth]

Ok, thanks, I went ahead and mounted it to a wall, and put a real bedside table right under it. I have just to replace the dwemer fireplace with a real one, and finish cluttering up the place real good

[Xargoth]

Ok, i got done with the atmosphere (clutter) and replaced the fireplace. Gmsts are cleaned out, but If I remember right, isn't their something else i need to clean it of? Like cell view refs or something? I used to know, but I have forgotten. Anyhow, here it is.

[PoisonUnagi]

Alright, I'll have a look around. Let's see...

-furn_de_p_chair_02 bleeds into the rug
-furn_com_r_bookshelf_01 bleeds into the ground and the rug, but they might be supposed to... it looks alright, but I dunno
-you've still got style mixing going on
-misc_com_broom_01 isn't leaning all the way to the corner
-furn_de_r_shelf_01 bleeds into the wall
-com_cupboard_01_pos bleeds into the wall
-potion_comberry_brandy_01 floats slightly (bold attempt there, having a wine rack)
-all the potion_local_brew_01s (except the highest one) either bleed or float
-oosh, that's a nice place to hide a key
-bk_BriefHistoryEmpire2 bleeds into bk_BiographyBerenziah1
-BookSkill_Block3 bleeds into BookSkill_Acrobatics2
-all the furn_de_p_shelf_02s in the book rack thingy bleed into the wall, but it looks fine
-misc_de_fishing_pole bleeds into the shelf
-the drum and the two green glassware items look out-of place in that arrangement, I'd put the glassware together
-there's a tiny slit-hole on the bottom floor
-Misc_SoulGem_Petty bleeds badly into the shelf
-the leaning potion_skooma_01 doesn't quite meet the misc_de_tankard it's leaning on
-the left pillow is higher than the right pillow
-alot of the arrows on the bottom floor bleed into each other


Well, you've got alot of bleeders, but you're definitely pretty good at interior modding. A few fixes and you've got my vote

Good luck!

[Xargoth]

Ok, I will try to fish them out... I will be back soon

[Xargoth]

Ok, I got all of the issues fixed that I can, I couldn't find any slit in the floor, and the petty soul gem is not bleeding for me, but I think Morrowind code patch changed the mesh of the soul gem, so I really cant fix that one. I also replaced the arrows with a chitten short sword, I left the bow, and one arrow however. About the style mixing, I really meant for the house to be like that, I in-vision that a thief like him would have a common house, filled with expensive dunmer articles, however, If a TR modder tells me to replace the walls with dunmer, that I will. Well, Here is the latest version, how bad is it? :p

[MSam]

Hey Xargoth,

Nice to see someone I know has made it over to TR. I'm not strictly an interior modder yet, but I can offer you a pretty indepth report and some tips on making your interior.

Cleaning Your File
To start off with, you need to clean your file. Not just of GMSTs, but you've edited items such as pillows, the Dragonscale helm, rugs, and books. This usually happens by accident when you rotate an item then press 'Save'. Instead of pressing save, just click on the cross. That way you don't need to worry about cleaning the file for those particular references after. You've also edited some cells (:P), so make sure you do a thorough clean before your next house - you should essentially only have one edit in your file; the interior of your house.

Also, when destroying evidence that you've copied and pasted items (:P) make sure you remove all the ownership. Cookie Cutting (mmm...I just made a quest on cookies) is not acceptable, but judging from the item you've just been too lazy to locate them in the list of items and copied them over. Make sure you avoid this in future, or at least when you copy ensure that you entirely redesign what you're placing (Hmmm what an oxymoron).

Exterior
North Markers need to be placed outside the interior area. This is because if it was featured inside the interior, depending on where you stand your compass will point to the north (did that make sense...). Anyway, just make sure it's outside your area.

You don't need to make an exterior of your house, just keep in mind an exterior that you imagine the house fits.

Style Mixing
There are two main styles in Morrowind, Common and Dunmer. Style mixing is ok with other mods (plenty of house mods manage to produce spectacular work combining them), but it's not to be used in Tamriel Rebuilt. You have used:

-A Poor Dunmer Table
-A Rich Dunmer Wallscreen
-A Rich Common Bookcase
-A Poor Common Stool
-Working Class Bar (:P)
-Telvanni Buglamp
-A colourful mixture of Imperial and Dunmer crockery.

While Tamriel Rebuilt was more lenient in the past, a showcase application standard is to produce a home with Poor Dunmer furniture to primarily assess rotational skills. You can tell if it's Poor Dunmer by the prefix of the object name 'de_p'. So, 'furn_de_p_chair_01' is ok to use, so is 'active_de_pr_bed_27', but 'furn_com_r_table_01' isn't since it's a rich common. It's a common mistake that pretty much everyone makes when they create their first interior.

Placing Objects
For almost any flat surface, you can use the wonder command 'f' (you'll be saying 'if only I knew about this sooner...'). By pressing 'f', the object will be drawn to the closest, and placed on it without bleeding or floating. You should always use this function when placing furniture on a floor (with the exception of some cave tilesets). You can use this on most items, with the acception of some lights. It generally works with all flat surfaces, but there will be inconsistencies if used on an uneven one.

Floaters and Bleeders are one of the most infuriating aspects of modding interiors! There is a very fine line between your objects bleeding and floating. On nice flat surfaces, the coloured object box needs to be dotted all around. If you have achieved this, then it is placed perfectly. On uneven surfaces you cannot always place it so that all lines are dotted, but if two opposite lines or corners are dotted, the item sits in a gap, and is placed fine.

If only one line/corner is dotted, then it means you have half a 'floater', meaning it is touching the surface on one side, and floats on the other. If a line or corner of an object cannot be seen, it is bleeding. The golden rule for uneven surfaces is if at least three lines are dotted, then the object is placed well.

To place the items well, you should rotate them so that the lines are dotted as above, rotate, raise and 'f' until the required lines are dotted. If this doesn't seem possible to accomplish, you can scale the item, use a smaller item, or just avoid placing stuff on their in particular. Make sure you don't place furniture half on/half off rugs, since that will make one side of the items fit perfectly on the floor, and will bleed into the rug (or vis-versa).

There are some exceptions to the dotted line business. When you rotate objects, sometimes they look clumsy when you use 'f'. You then need to use your razor sharp eyes and rotate the object so it makes contact with the surface, like with bottles, muck shovels, or weapons.

Any object with a circular bottom (such as baskets and bowls) should be bled a little, so they're not defying gravity by showing off their little points. This also applies for sacks in storage, pillows on beds, and clothes on certain areas, since having them bleed a little into each other makes them look more natural.

Don't include entire series of books, or extravagant items with enough value to match the player's accumulation of gold. In the game world, it's unlikely that mundane NPCs have such a large variety of rich goods.

Errors
Here's a list of some errors in your mod.
First Floor:
-furn_com_r_table_01 next to the entrance is bleeding
-Jiirne- Twinko's Diary is bleeding into the table, and the flowerpot.
-light_de_candle_08_64 is bleeding.
-Furn_de_rug_big_03 next to the fireplace is bleeding into the wall.
-dragonscale_towershield bleeds into the curiass.
-furn_de_p_table_02 in front of the fireplace bleeds.
-furn_de_p_chair_01 also.
-furn_fireplace10 is floating (use the trusty 'f' here!)
-The logs on the fire are all floating.
-Furn_De_rm_Winerack is bleeding
-Dance in the Fire series of books (do not include series, remember) are all bleeding into something.
-The bottom shelf is better but still bleeding.
-bk_BiographyBarenziah1 and Chances Folley are floating.
-misc_de_bowl_redware_01 needs to be bleeding to remove its spikey-ness.
-Furn_De_Bar_05 in the corner is floating
-furn_com_r_bookshelf_01 shouldn't be bleeding into the wall or rug.
-barrel_02_CheapFood5 in the middle floats, sack bleeds
-com_sack_03_chpfood5s: one floats, the others are pretty good but need to be lifted a little.
-I think that the furn_de_rug_big_04s being squares are ok and are nice and creative, but they bleed and you can see the seam in the middle where they overlap.

Second Floor:
-Misc_SoulGem_Petty on the bookcase is majorly bleeding.
-misc_com_metal_plate_05 below the pitcher is bleeding (you can see the plate)
-bk_easternprovincesimpartial is floating
-Com_Sack_02_Ingred needs to be bled to get rid of the spike.
-The furn_planter_02 in the room looks lovely, but all the flowers overlap and bleed in each other.
-Misc_Inkwell is bleeding into the table.
-chitin shortsword is floating a little, so is the arrow
-Furn_De_Bar_05 is floating
-active_de_pr_bed_27 is floating, so are the pillows
-light_de_candle_ivory_01_128 is bleeding
-potion_skooma_01 is placed REALLY well, but in reality (lol) it would roll off that tankard.
-You don't need to incorporate previous items you've made, like xar_lute_hold. For any goodies you should rely on the TR_Data File.

In Conclusion
I'm not an Interior Reviewer, but I suggest you start a new file. You have some good rotational skills and a good eye for clutter, which can obviously be utilised and eventually result in some fantastic interiors.

It may look like a pretty big list, but I've seen larger (a la, my showcase), and you can only improve as it goes along. I'd suggest next time, tackle a smaller house. Add more ambience and intimacy - with some fog, more tapestries, and a consistent selection of furniture. Use the de_p; it will help your modding skills enormously. You can do it!

Good luck!

[Xargoth]

Alright. I will start on a smaller design.

[Xargoth]

Bingo. It's all done. This adds a house to the outside of Firewatch. It is just a small common house, with and interior of 3x2 house sections. It's the home of a rich, yet discreet smuggler kind of fellow. He hires assassins to do a little of this and a little of that.

[The Greatness]

Sorry, but you need to use de_p furniture and not style mix. Why not have a look at some interior showcases that got promotion? I've made one recently, and on the first page I also found Psypherious' showcase.

The reason why you need to use de_p furniture is that the surface isn't even so you need to rotate items to rest on it properly. It's pretty anoying at first but you get used to it (apparently).

[Xargoth]

I'm not sure I understand. I made this entirely new house so that I could avoid style mixing..... The walls are in_c_plain_room_x and most of the furniture is com or com_rm. And what uneven surfaces are you referring to? I am sorry, but I have no idea as to what your message is referring to...

[OTRaw]

He means that int showcases should be made with de_p furniture, which have uneven surfaces.

Well most of the time, I think some reviewers will recommend someone without de_p but the chances are unlikely.

Goodluck.

[Shapeshiftr]

Most TR interiors are going to be de_p. The de_p furniture set has uneven surfaces, which requires knowledge of rotating objects to lie correctly on their surface. We want to know that you're able to do this in your interior showcase. However, good modding is good modding, and if we see that you are intuitive and have a good idea, this is applicable in any style. A com_ interior is perfectly acceptable for a showcase, albeit a bit harder tileset to get promoted with.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

I won't promote for interiors if I don't know you can deal with de_p furniture. If you want to make a com house, that is fine, but place a de_p bookshelf in the void and clutter it well.

[Xargoth]

Oh, I wish I had known that.... I am really sorry for being so dense and stupid throughout this whole thing. I will try again with a de house.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

don't beat yourself up about it. Anything you make is good practice, and if a claim opens up that matches your com house, you can always finish and submit that.

[Xargoth]

Here, this adds a house to suran, since suran and balmora are the only two hlaanu places, I figure everybody seems to like balmora better, so, I chose Suran. the House belongs to a Ork, I guess. Anyhow, It's primarily de_p with hlaanu walls.

[Xargoth]

bump

[Kiteflyer61]

Hi Xargoth,

First of all the file is dirty. You've accidentally edited a few vanilla references. Clean out anything you didn't edit intentionally.

That's unfortunately as far as I can go on this review due to an error while loading it in the CS. I'm not sure if the error is on my end or not. I did see however that the file is dependent on TR map 1 and 2. Your file should only be dependent on MW, TB, BM, and TR_data. The map 1 and 2 dependencies may very well be why I can't get it to load in the CS. To be honest, this is the first file I ever had crash the CS. Use Wrye Mash or the dependency toolkit to remove the map 1+2 dependencies and I'll take another look.

[Xargoth]

UGH. I Shall try, again. How would I go about removing the master files dependencies tr_map and trmap2?

[Kiteflyer61]

I personally use Wrye Mash, but you can use the TES dependency toolkit found in the utils section here in the main menu dropdown. If you have any trouble, PM me and I'll help as much as I can.

[Xargoth]

Ok, here it is, it's not "clean" because I still don't know what you mean by cleaning it. There are no gmst's and whenever i try to delete the misc items in enchanted editor, it deletes them out of the game. And I did not alter stats of anything..... I just opened them up to do detailed placeing...? Anyhow, there are now no loading errors, as far as i know. How is it?

[Kiteflyer61]

Cleaning a mod means not changing vanilla references unnecessarily. When you open the properties window to micro adjust items be sure to use the little "x" in the upper right corner to close it. If you hit save (or even cancel) it will create a "dirty" reference to that object. Even if you didn't change any settings it will change every instance of that object in the whole game. As you can imagine, that will cause major problems. Most of the modders here use Tesame to clean their mods, but I do it the old fashioned way. After you've finished your mod reload it but before you say ok to load click the details button. This brings up all the changes your mod makes. Go through the list and click on any items that you didn't intentionally edit. You can use control+click to select multiple items. once you have all the dirty references selected, hit the delete key. This will mark them as ignored. Then hit ok to load your plugin and save again. The dirty references will be gone. Don't mistake REFR entries for dirty references. Those are the things you placed. Dirty references are things like Door, Acti, Misc, etc., that you didn't intend to edit. You can edit statics if there aren't any vanilla or TR objects that do what you need them to, but you need to rename them (using TR naming conventions) to make them unique and you should rarely need to.

Also, if you are doing an interior showcase there is no need to link it to an exterior. You should always place a northmarker too.

I'll try to give you a complete review in the next day or two.

Edit: Ok, here you go.

Style mixing: You've used a com bed for this when there are perfectly good de beds to use. Naughty, naughty. I'm not positive, but the com cupboards are most likely considered style mixing as well. Replace them with a de wall shelf or two and place some clutter on them.

Light settings: your light setting are very bright. Check a vanilla int or two to get good settings to use. The CS makes things look darker than they will appear in-game. If you enter this cell in-game you'll see that it's blindingly bright.

Your rotational skills are definitely up to par. The only thing I would suggest is rotating the pots, urns, bottles, etc., on the "z" axis so that they don't look so much like the clones they are. The textures vary as you go around these objects, so rotating them will make them appear to be slightly different.

Another thing to watch for is stacking items on top of each other. If the player picks up the object on the bottom, the object above it will be floating in mid air. It's perfectly acceptable to stack things. just use it as sparingly as possible. The plates on the bottom shelf are floating (except for the bottom ones). On that note, the knives sticking out of the meat and bread look a little unnatural. The one in the meat especially looks weird. It looks as if it's in someones hand, and they're right in the middle of a cut. I'd suggest either laying it down beside the meat, or having it stuck in the cutting board.

The rug under the eating table bleeds severely into the wall. If you want to keep it, resize it down till it fits the area you want to use it. It would probably make more sense to use a smaller table with only one or two chairs as the int is rather small and I doubt there would be four people living here. You might want to add a cup or two to the table as well.

The second pillow on the bed doesn't look right. Either remove it or reposition it to look more natural.

The broom in the basket is placed and rotated perfectly except that it would look a lot better if it leaned toward the wall rather than sticking out into the room.

One of the bookends is pushed too far back on the shelf. while not technically an error, it looks a little odd. Nice touch on the slight rotation of the books. I looks very good. Just be sure not to do it when the surface is more level.


All in all it's a very nice int. I didn't find any bleeders or floaters other than the rug and the stacked plates. Fix up the things I mentioned and I'll happily recommend you.