CK noob seeking help with interior cell edits

[Innitaris]

I'm a super noob to anything in CK that involves using the object window or editing cells, so I apologise in advance for the stupidity.

 

The original issue I made this thread for is all sorted now. Now I have another question for anyone willing to help out, regarding rendering issues inside edited cells. I've been playing around in a couple different mods. In one, Azura's Dawn, I've been editing its many various different cells into a single cell, because I dislike loading screens inside player homes. This has been going well so far, and I've had no issues I can't figure out on my own. I know I'll need to redo the navmesh and such at the end, but it's been fine. Goldenglow (player home variant from Goldenglow Is Yours), however, is another matter.

 

I more or less completely changed the layout of this cell, essentially transforming it into more of an estate/mansion, with a room plan that's designed as a living space rather than as a dungeon. I've only been working on floors and walls for the most part so far. It looks fine in CK, but in game, I'm having rendering issues alike what I'd expect if there were occlusion planes everywhere. Entire sections of the rooms will render or not render based on where I'm standing. i.e. the rest of the area will be unrendered, and then I take a step to the right and it's rendered. Or a whole section won't be rendered until I'm standing in it. There aren't any occlusion planes in the cell. I tried adding some and putting them behind the exterior walls, in case that would unconfuse something in the cell that may or may not have expected occlusion planes, but that didn't help either. I also tried using the console command MBC after a bit of googling to see if that helped, but nope, so probably not a multi-bound system issue either.

 

Is there some kind of expected internal structure/size to this cell that my rearrangement is running afoul of? Can I edit it, if so? Would appreciate advice.

 

 

Original problem text here, now resolved:

Spoiler

So I got sick of no house mods being exactly perfect for my needs, and decided to try to just. Attempt to modify Goldenglow Estate version from 'Goldenglow Is Yours' mod to make it prettier and more suitable. Figured I could just do simple stuff to start with and work my way up. I looked at some basic house mod making guides first, then opened up CK and loaded in relevant mods, and tried for a very simple first step: add a prettier square of floor from a different mod into a Goldenglow interior and see if it loads in game after saving my plugin. I've done that sort of thing in-game before using jaxon positioner so it didn't seem a stretch, but....didn't work. I think the problem is probably from not having the floor source plugin tagged as master, but I'd appreciate someone who knows what they're doing confirming/correcting that.

 

Some points:

- I'm launching CK through mod organizer

- this is for personal use so I'm not interested in doing it the time-consuming proper way, i.e. tracking down the mod resources and adding the meshes as objects in CK to use myself

- further to this, I wanted to just have some house mods with the resources I like installed and add their objects to Goldenglow to make it prettier. I loaded these in CK but not as active files

- I added in a square of floor from Mona Alta into the first goldenglow interior cell, positioned it perfectly just over a square of existing floor cell without removing the existing, and saved the new plugin to test

- the added floor square did not show up in game

- loaded up the saved plugin + other relevant mods in CK. The floor square I added is no longer there when looking at the cell in object window, either.

- Repeated this all a few times to confirm consistent.

 

Will it just not work unless the mods I'm pulling from are added as masters somehow? How do I do that, when CK doesn't like you having esp files as masters, and it doesn't seem to be correctly saving the floor object I've added anyway? There's tons of mods out there that require esps as masters, there has to be a way, surely? I'd rather not have to add every mod I'm pulling resources from as esms. Or is there a different way to just pull the static objects, furniture and lights I want from the house mods?

 

Would appreciate tips/guidance! All the newbie-oriented house modding guides have you just pulling whole preset chunks of house out, and nothing I googled seemed to immediately point me to issues with using resources across separate plugins in CK.

 

Edited October 27, 2024 by Innitaris

[Qviddhartha]

It is indeed the lack of "master" status on your source mods...

 

The easiest way around is to copy the objects from "Mona Alta" into your modified "Goldenglow Is Yours".  Just be sure to bring in all the ancillary forms, nifs and textures as well; well, this can get complicated if you are copying complex objects such as quests with dialogues, scenes or scripts, but if it's just statics and simple items you shouldn't have too much trouble.

 

You could also make the source mods masters.

 

You can also just turn on the "masters" bit in your source mods while making edits in the CK, then turn it back off.  It works (the game itself does care about masters), but I recommend against it.  You will eventually forget to "masterify" when making an edit and end up destroying a lot of your work when you save.

[Kastagir]

4 hours ago, Innitaris said:

Some points:

- I'm launching CK through mod organizer

- this is for personal use so I'm not interested in doing it the time-consuming proper way,

 

[Innitaris]

12 hours ago, pfB6cs said:

The easiest way around is to copy the objects from "Mona Alta" into your modified "Goldenglow Is Yours".  Just be sure to bring in all the ancillary forms, nifs and textures as well; well, this can get complicated if you are copying complex objects such as quests with dialogues, scenes or scripts, but if it's just statics and simple items you shouldn't have too much trouble.

By duplicating the objects in CK, so the dupes save into the new esp? I tried that, but it only lets you duplicate one thing at a time, and if there's any other simpler way I'd prefer to do that, given there's potentially hundreds of statics I might want to copy.

 

12 hours ago, pfB6cs said:

You could also make the source mods masters.

Assuming you mean the source resource mods used by the house mods in the first place, that's not really an option. A lot of these don't link, they just thank a bunch of usernames. And even in the cases they do link, I'm not interested in creating hundreds of statics from the nifs myself - that's explicitly what I want to avoid by using other mods as sources, since they've already done the work of turning those resources into objects CK can use.

 

12 hours ago, pfB6cs said:

You can also just turn on the "masters" bit in your source mods while making edits in the CK, then turn it back off.  It works (the game itself does care about masters), but I recommend against it.  You will eventually forget to "masterify" when making an edit and end up destroying a lot of your work when you save.

Would you be able to elaborate on the process for this, even if you wouldn't recommend it? i.e. the best way to masterify the source mods, how to make sure CK recognises these masters, etc. Would appreciate noob-oriented instructions for this if you have the time.

 

I think I could avoid risking destroying my work by specifically making additional 'masterified' versions of the house mods in question, enabling them in a new MO profile, and only launching CK from that profile. That way I could ensure I was never editing the mod without the proper masters present.

[Andy14]

14 hours ago, Innitaris said:

I'm a super noob to anything in CK that involves using the object window or editing cells, so I apologise in advance for the stupidity.

 

So I got sick of no house mods being exactly perfect for my needs, and decided to try to just. Attempt to modify Goldenglow Estate version from 'Goldenglow Is Yours' mod to make it prettier and more suitable. Figured I could just do simple stuff to start with and work my way up. I looked at some basic house mod making guides first, then opened up CK and loaded in relevant mods, and tried for a very simple first step: add a prettier square of floor from a different mod into a Goldenglow interior and see if it loads in game after saving my plugin. I've done that sort of thing in-game before using jaxon positioner so it didn't seem a stretch, but....didn't work. I think the problem is probably from not having the floor source plugin tagged as master, but I'd appreciate someone who knows what they're doing confirming/correcting that.

 

Some points:

- I'm launching CK through mod organizer

- this is for personal use so I'm not interested in doing it the time-consuming proper way, i.e. tracking down the mod resources and adding the meshes as objects in CK to use myself

- further to this, I wanted to just have some house mods with the resources I like installed and add their objects to Goldenglow to make it prettier. I loaded these in CK but not as active files

- I added in a square of floor from Mona Alta into the first goldenglow interior cell, positioned it perfectly just over a square of existing floor cell without removing the existing, and saved the new plugin to test

- the added floor square did not show up in game

- loaded up the saved plugin + other relevant mods in CK. The floor square I added is no longer there when looking at the cell in object window, either.

- Repeated this all a few times to confirm consistent.

 

Will it just not work unless the mods I'm pulling from are added as masters somehow? How do I do that, when CK doesn't like you having esp files as masters, and it doesn't seem to be correctly saving the floor object I've added anyway? There's tons of mods out there that require esps as masters, there has to be a way, surely? I'd rather not have to add every mod I'm pulling resources from as esms. Or is there a different way to just pull the static objects, furniture and lights I want from the house mods?

 

Would appreciate tips/guidance! All the newbie-oriented house modding guides have you just pulling whole preset chunks of house out, and nothing I googled seemed to immediately point me to issues with using resources across separate plugins in CK.

The safe way:
Make the house mod and the mod with the additional resources into ESM files.
Check both ESMs in the CK file menu and wait until all objects have been loaded. Changes to cells etc. are not saved in the ESM - CK asks you for a name for your new ESP when saving. This ESP then uses both ESMs as master and the changes are only saved in the ESP - the two ESMs remain unchanged.


How do you make an ESM from an ESP with CK?
It's relatively easy. In the file explorer, rename the file from xyz.esp to xyz.esm. It's still an ESP and CK notices that.
So open CK and activate this fake (xyz.esm).
When the contents are loaded in CK, switch to the file explorer and delete the file xyz.esm.
When you now save in CK, CK doesn't ask for an ESP name, but creates a real xyz.esm.

[Qviddhartha]

3 hours ago, Andy14 said:

How do you make an ESM from an ESP with CK?
It's relatively easy. In the file explorer, rename the file from xyz.esp to xyz.esm. It's still an ESP and CK notices that.
So open CK and activate this fake (xyz.esm).
When the contents are loaded in CK, switch to the file explorer and delete the file xyz.esm.
When you now save in CK, CK doesn't ask for an ESP name, but creates a real xyz.esm.

 

The "masterification" process is slightly different for SE and LE.  I have not used SE, so I'll stick to LE...

 

In LE, I just use WryeBash's "Add ESM Flag" menu entry (right click on the target mod).  With LE, that's the whole procedure; the filename doesn't matter.

 

The trouble with renaming plugins from .esp to .esm is that the CK and the game will consider them new and distinct from the original.  This will break all other mods' references to the esp.  Perhaps there aren't any, since they are only supposed to refer to masters, but there are ways around; you could run into difficulties, just be ready for it.

 

The "ways around" I just mentioned are: (1) turning on the ESM flag temporarily when editing in the CK allows your esp to refer to objects in other esps, and (2) using papyrus getFormFromFile allows you to refer dynamically to foreign objects.  The 1st is not commonly used, but the 2nd is not so rare.

 

Since you are doing this just for yourself, you might forego copying nifs, textures and scripts... relying instead on the original files you keep in your load order.  How much you need to copy varies... Minimally, you want to make copies of the objects you want to reference in your forms, conditions and properties, but if you copy for example an armor, you'll need to copy its addons as well, though not necessarily the nifs attached to the armor and addons.  It's still work... on that we are agreed.

[Innitaris]

3 hours ago, pfB6cs said:

 

The "masterification" process is slightly different for SE and LE.  I have not used SE, so I'll stick to LE...

 

In LE, I just use WryeBash's "Add ESM Flag" menu entry (right click on the target mod).  With LE, that's the whole procedure; the filename doesn't matter.

 

The trouble with renaming plugins from .esp to .esm is that the CK and the game will consider them new and distinct from the original.  This will break all other mods' references to the esp.  Perhaps there aren't any, since they are only supposed to refer to masters, but there are ways around; you could run into difficulties, just be ready for it.

 

The "ways around" I just mentioned are: (1) turning on the ESM flag temporarily when editing in the CK allows your esp to refer to objects in other esps, and (2) using papyrus getFormFromFile allows you to refer dynamically to foreign objects.  The 1st is not commonly used, but the 2nd is not so rare.

 

Since you are doing this just for yourself, you might forego copying nifs, textures and scripts... relying instead on the original files you keep in your load order.  How much you need to copy varies... Minimally, you want to make copies of the objects you want to reference in your forms, conditions and properties, but if you copy for example an armor, you'll need to copy its addons as well, though not necessarily the nifs attached to the armor and addons.  It's still work... on that we are agreed.

Thanks for this. So far I'm using WryeBash to just add the esm tag to the files I'm using resources from and it's working like a charm, and then my produced plugin works fine in-game on the other profile where those esps don't have the esm tag, so it seems they're pulled from correctly. This should work fine for me - I have zero issues producing a messy personal use mod with a dozen dependencies when I'd be using those dependencies in my load order anyway. I'll just make sure to keep to my CK profile for all edits.

[Qviddhartha]

Just remember which mods you touched for when you decide to upgrade them... you will want to upgrade some of them eventually.

[Andy14]

6 hours ago, pfB6cs said:

The "masterification" process is slightly different for SE and LE.  I have not used SE, so I'll stick to LE...

 

6 hours ago, pfB6cs said:

 

The "masterification" process is slightly different for SE and LE.  I have not used SE, so I'll stick to LE...

 

In LE, I just use WryeBash's "Add ESM Flag" menu entry (right click on the target mod).  With LE, that's the whole procedure; the filename doesn't matter.

 

The trouble with renaming plugins from .esp to .esm is that the CK and the game will consider them new and distinct from the original.  This will break all other mods' references to the esp.  Perhaps there aren't any, since they are only supposed to refer to masters, but there are ways around; you could run into difficulties, just be ready for it.

 

The "ways around" I just mentioned are: (1) turning on the ESM flag temporarily when editing in the CK allows your esp to refer to objects in other esps, and (2) using papyrus getFormFromFile allows you to refer dynamically to foreign objects.  The 1st is not commonly used, but the 2nd is not so rare.

 

Since you are doing this just for yourself, you might forego copying nifs, textures and scripts... relying instead on the original files you keep in your load order.  How much you need to copy varies... Minimally, you want to make copies of the objects you want to reference in your forms, conditions and properties, but if you copy for example an armor, you'll need to copy its addons as well, though not necessarily the nifs attached to the armor and addons.  It's still work... on that we are agreed.

 

What I wrote is for LE. I wrote that because almost nobody knows how to create a proper ESM.

Hence "How do you make an ESM from an ESP with CK?"

The simple masterfication can also be done with TES5Edit.

[Innitaris]

All file master related issues are now resolved for my purposes. I'm having a new issue regarding cell render issues that I've edited the first post in this thread to explain, but I'll paste the text here as well:

 

I've been playing around in a couple different mods. In one, Azura's Dawn, I've been collating its many various different cells into a single cell, because I dislike loading screens inside player homes. This has been going well so far, and I've had no issues I can't figure out on my own. I know I'll need to redo the navmesh and such at the end, but it's been fine. Goldenglow (player home variant from Goldenglow Is Yours), however, is another matter.

 

I more or less completely changed the layout of this cell, essentially transforming it into more of an estate/mansion, with a room plan that's designed as a living space rather than as a dungeon. I've only been working on floors and walls for the most part so far. It looks fine in CK, but in game, I'm having rendering issues alike what I'd expect if there were occlusion planes everywhere. Entire sections of the rooms will render or not render based on where I'm standing. i.e. the rest of the area will be unrendered, and then I take a step to the right and it's rendered. Or a whole section won't be rendered until I'm standing in it. There aren't any occlusion planes in the cell. I tried adding some and putting them behind the exterior walls, in case that would unconfuse something in the cell that may or may not have expected occlusion planes, but that didn't help either. I also tried using the console command MBC after a bit of googling to see if that helped, but nope, so probably not a multi-bound system issue either.

 

Is there some kind of expected internal structure/size to this cell that my rearrangement is running afoul of? Can I edit it, if so? Would appreciate advice.

[Andy14]

On 10/27/2024 at 2:26 PM, Innitaris said:

All file master related issues are now resolved for my purposes. I'm having a new issue regarding cell render issues that I've edited the first post in this thread to explain, but I'll paste the text here as well:

 

I've been playing around in a couple different mods. In one, Azura's Dawn, I've been collating its many various different cells into a single cell, because I dislike loading screens inside player homes. This has been going well so far, and I've had no issues I can't figure out on my own. I know I'll need to redo the navmesh and such at the end, but it's been fine. Goldenglow (player home variant from Goldenglow Is Yours), however, is another matter.

 

I more or less completely changed the layout of this cell, essentially transforming it into more of an estate/mansion, with a room plan that's designed as a living space rather than as a dungeon. I've only been working on floors and walls for the most part so far. It looks fine in CK, but in game, I'm having rendering issues alike what I'd expect if there were occlusion planes everywhere. Entire sections of the rooms will render or not render based on where I'm standing. i.e. the rest of the area will be unrendered, and then I take a step to the right and it's rendered. Or a whole section won't be rendered until I'm standing in it. There aren't any occlusion planes in the cell. I tried adding some and putting them behind the exterior walls, in case that would unconfuse something in the cell that may or may not have expected occlusion planes, but that didn't help either. I also tried using the console command MBC after a bit of googling to see if that helped, but nope, so probably not a multi-bound system issue either.

 

Is there some kind of expected internal structure/size to this cell that my rearrangement is running afoul of? Can I edit it, if so? Would appreciate advice.

 

Interior size can be really huge. I don't think you are anywhere near the size limit (if there is a limit, then perhaps the number of polygons).
In the past, when this rendering problem occurred, competing light sources were almost always the cause of the problem.