A few images of Skyrim with actual transparent windows
About this image
Notice
This user's image description contains 6 images. Some authors like to showcase more of their work in their image descriptions or use the image description to provide a storyboard for the image provided.
You will need to be logged in before you can see this user's image description.
6 comments
Would you mind sharing some tips, or possibly even the files to reference? So far I've just been digging in the Immersive Interiors mod to figure out what he was doing.
What I've been doing so far is copying the mesh/asset from the cities world space, then pasting it in the interior cells and lining things up the best I can.
It's very tedious to do and I haven't really made much progress with the landscaping..
Thanks in advance, and all good if you dont want to share the files :)
Yeah I must say Riften is easy for making the windows transparent since they're intended for it, being see through on the outside to show that room texture. On the downside the outside vista pieces are so large that recreating them from within can be tricky. I've barely worked on Riften myself but I tend to work by just getting it 'roughly' right with the pieces available. I may switch to making basic low poly models of per-location exteriors for better performance and easier placement but it'd be at the cost of modelling. I noticed in the abandoned Skyrim 2011 mod that they cut terrain out for Whiterun locations, while that's a great solution it also seems tedious which may be why the author stopped and uploaded what they had.
I definitely can't give you too many great tips as my way is janky, as to reiterate I just build the outside from existing assets, and it's mostly Windhelm that's done right now. No real 'landscaping' to speak of and where I have used the terrain model pieces in say Whiterun mod compatibility isn't great as they intersect with building changes.
I'll think about hosting the files I have right now, I'm actually pro free use and modders helping each other out but the progress is scattered, there's not that much to see, I'd have to pack everything I've got scattered for it to make sense and a few of my custom modelled windows actually crash my game currently so I shouldn't subject others to those right now.
It does sound like we have a similar approach. I thought Riften would be one of the easier ones so that's why i was starting here :P
At this stage I'm not too worried about making the placement perfect, I just want to make something that's semi believable and adds a bit of extra depth to the interiors. If some cells end up being way too hard to do I may even just exclude them and come back to them when I'm happy with the "easier" bits.
I truly believe that the right group of people could definitely accomplish this to some degree, and I don't really get why more people haven't had a crack at it (atleast that I know of). We already have proof with what SomeWelshGuy did in Whiterun, which is quite impressive, though I feel he did go a bit overboard with some cells.
When I say landscaping I was referring to placing the assets (floors, buildings), sorry my word choice probably could have been better lmfao.
I'm also pro free use and love open source projects :) If I ever make any recognizable progress I'll definitely upload my work and keep the permissions fully open. I'm really just hoping that the right people see the concept at the very least and attempt to build off it or make something better.
I'll be honest, I'm incredibly new to the creation kit, and figuring out how to make the windows transparent was my first time ever working with models/meshes (In NifSkope). I've learned heaps over the past 2 days and I've really been enjoying it, and I got all the time in the world to keep learning more!
I'm keen to see your work if you ever do get around to uploading it :) Don't worry too much if it's too much of a hassle to put together
Also ditto, I've been surprised nobody has done this to further completion. Like I recently looked over ELFX Shadows and it's full of partitioned (cut up) meshes and opacity changes, it doesn't have the same cell edits we're doing but shows how many edits people will do for window immersion.
I'll come back if I think of further insightful commentary.
It can work upstairs to make sky visible but everything else doesn't sound like it can work with Skyim own mechanics. And I'm not even talking about mods that need to add stuff behind windows or just cells where it'll make parts of that cell visible etc.
I don't think you can bypass any conversion when using Blender, you'll have to convert your meshes from SE to LE and back each time.
(I'll add a little more info here than I need to, to explain better and in case anyone reading has unspoken questions.)
In some ways Skyrim is a hard game to make this for, as the buildings have "Tardis syndrome" really bad, and at least in Oblivion (which got a finished and very good Immersive Interiors mod) the buildings had shape consistency, but in some Skyrim holds buildings are a whole other height with entire rooms added and removed inside vs outside.
On the one more negative hand those are issues I ran into with large cells - roombounds and occlusion planes in say, to specifically name the first one that comes to mind, Dragonsreach, killed a lot of my enthusiasm for a year.
However, on the more optimistic hand it's often not as bad as you describe. There are factors that make this more possible than many might think, and I remain confused why nobody made this mod in like, 2015.
- In Windhelm the outside just looks foggy and I can also put snow on the window to save time and hide uglies.
- Pretty much all small to medium cells have no roombounds, occlusion e.t.c.
- A lot of cells have no mod compatibility concern, like who's gonna remodel Brunwulf Free-Winter's living room?
- Simply enabling the sky does a lot, obviously upstairs windows like you say, but in general conveys time of day a lot better, if you can just have something covering the grey-green horizon below the map.
Strongest case: Windhelm, weakest case: Whiterun.
I will err on the side of not relighting the outside, which is a good and bad thing. Won't be as pretty, but I ask the player to just accept that some cities look a bit Silent Hill outside, it's the non-negotiable price to pay since I refuse to massively impact compatibility and performance by relighting outside, a valid concern of yours.
I'm going to make windows more opaque and more refractive, if the player can just vaguely see the sky and silhouettes outside it's kind of a win-win.
Noted about the blender thing. I got recommended the Blender nif plugin I'm using, not sure why if it doesn't even work directly. I'll just force through.