0 of 0
About this mod
Provides effect nifs for 16 autumnal trees available in the CS. These nifs provide an effect of leaves falling from the tree, providing extra atmosphere, beauty, and hopefully realism.
- Permissions and credits
VaPER - Vacuity's Particle Effects Resources - Falling Leaves
v2
A modders' resource for particle effects.
+++++++++
List of contents:
+++++++++
1 - Installation/deinstallation
2 - Support
i) General support info
ii) Advice for faster/friendlier/more helpful support
3 - Work completed
4 - Description
i) Preamble
ii)Future
iii) Notes on filenames, effect levels and so forth - worth reading[b]
5 - Changelist
6 - Credits
7 - Legal info [b]- worth reading[b]
+++++++++
[b]1 - Installation 1)
+++++++++
This is a modders' resource. There is no esp provided. You'll need to add them to the game as statics in your own mod. Please note that there is no collision on these meshes.
+++++++++
2 - Support
+++++++++
i) Support is only available through the Bethesda Softworks boards at http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/25-oblivion-mods/ where the current thread for VaPER should be located.
ii) If you believe you have found a bug please post in the official thread. Please provide a thorough description of the problem. Failure to provide this will likely cause you to be ignored. I reserve the right to ignore you anyway should I feel like it.
iii) If you like the resource, but wish it were a little different in some way (and there are many ways these can be tweaked) then contact me on the VaPER release thread or by PM on the Bethsoft forums and explain very clearly and very, very politely what you would like changed. Or make the changes you want yourself. If you are unable to be polite, this is your only practical option. If you don't want to use the Bethsoft boards, good luck doing it yourself as well.
+++++++++
3 - Work completed
+++++++++
Currently there are:
292 released meshes.
These cover [lots of] tree and shrub species, for a total of [lots of] Tree records found in the vanilla CS and some that aren't but could be made with retextures of the leaf textures.
17 leaf textures derived from free to use public sources not requiring attribution. Thank god. These were all heavily edited by myself.
27 leaf textures created by me at great cost of time until I got headaches and finger-cramps. God damn it. Roll on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and bifocals.
+++++++++
4 - Description
+++++++++
i) This is a modders' resource. You don't need to contact me before you use it, but you do need to credit me for use of the resource.
ii) The editor markers are only a rough guide to the area that leaves will spawn in. I set the editor markers to match the trees as they appear in the CS and then set the particle systems to match the trees as they appear in-game. As long as you centre the editor marker fairly closely to the tree you should achieve a good "fit".
iii) OK, so there's a lot of meshes, right? Let's break them down.
Meshes are named with the following system
VaPER - FallingLeaves[Species name][CS Identifier, i.e. MS14 or Sapling][SUmmer or green-leaved][Effect level].nif
Tree meshes:
Tree meshes have a pretty heavy effect: the lightest tree meshes are generally much heavier than the lightest shrub effects.
XHeavy (equivalent to the v1 heavy) are designed for rather unrealistic scenes: dreams, quests, magic, and for trees standing alone suffering from catastrophic disease.
Heavy: still pretty unrealistic. Use with caution.
Medium: good for isolated trees in regular environments.
Light: good for small groups of trees.
XLight: good for forests where there will be many emitters used.
Shrub meshes:
Shrub meshes: the heaviest shrub meshes are still pretty light, the lightest ones are pretty subtle, but they still add a nice touch of atmosphere.
Some shrubs have very dense foliage and sit very close to the ground, others are much more open and/or stand further from the ground. This causes significant differences in the visual effects of the meshes for different shrubs.
XHeavy: best used for autumnal/winter shrubs. Nowhere near as heavy as with the tree meshes.
Heavy: still best used for the brown-leaved shrubs.
Medium: a heavy effect for green-leaved shrubs, a bit unnecessarily light for brown-leaved ones.
Light: There are no Light or XLight emitters because of a bug in the particle system engine whereby if the float value governing particle emission rate is set too low (varies from system to system, but generally appears somewhere under 0.45) no particles get spawned whatsoever.
Pine and Conifer meshes:
After seemingly endless attempts to get decent looking effects, I gave up and admitted that pine and confier needles are just too thin to be able to make good (or sometimes merely visible) effects with. It's sad, and I wasted huge amounts of time on this, but it just didn't work. If you would like access to the resources anyway, contact me and I'lls ee what I can offer you. Just bear in mind that you probably won't see anything at all if you try to use them.
+++++++++
6 - Changelist:
+++++++++
v2.0 Fixed the issue with the systems not starting up immediately upon loading into the game. Thanks to SaidenStorm for identifying the issue and solution, and to trollf for providing me with a working solution. Improved the gravity settings a lot. Tweaked various things in the original meshes. Added tons of new meshes and textures to cover most of the Tree and Shrub records in the vanilla game. Go me. I hate texturing.
v1.1 Re-released with the japanese maple texture fixed (some users' systems would not display it correctly) and compressed the six textures in dxt3 format (previously they were uncompressed).
v1.0 Public release of 48 falling leaf effect nifs, covering sixteen CS tree types in three varieties.
+++++++++
7 - Credits in alphabetical order:
+++++++++
People:
Bethesda Softworks for creating Oblivion.
Koniption for providing me with an editor marker I could work with successfully. Thankyou!
Real life friends and family: who helped me stay (approximately) sane and put up with a lot of ranting and raving about particle systems. Thanks!
SaidenStorm for identifying the cause of the problem with delayed system starts.
Throttlekitty: who wrote many of the guides on the Construction Set Wiki that gave me a starter on the path to working with particle systems.
trollf for providing me with the curved plane used for the mesh particle, for providing me with a working solution for the delayed system starts, and for generally being a great person to work with. Thanks!
Tools:
The CS by Bethesda softworks.
The Gimp (all (or almost all) of the textures were generated using this).
NifSkope by the NifTools team.
TES4Files by MentalElf.
General:
Free texture sites! Thankyou to the people who run them and the people who provide images for others to use.
by Vacuity (Bernard Mitchell), with assistance from the above people.
+++++++++
8 - Legal info
+++++++++
Under the licensing agreement of the CS this mod belongs to Bethesda softworks.
All meshes and some textures are adapted from originals made by Bethesda softworks.
Additional textures were created by me specifically for use in this project.
If I pass on responsibility for further development of these files to a 3rd-party then they will become responsible for further development.
If I have been absent from the development scene for longer than 181 days, have not responded to all reasonable attempts to contact me including, but not limited to: PMs, e-mail (as some users know my e-mail address) and at the last resort a general plea for contact then I acknowledge that I am not developing the mod further and these files can be developed further as the community on Bethesda's modding boards sees fit.
All files distributed with VaPER are to be treated as a Modders' resource and are essentially open for anyone to modify and distribute themselves with appropriate credit and blame given to me (Vacuity) for making the custom files as long as usage does not break the terms of the CS license agreement and Oblivion's license agreement.
v2
A modders' resource for particle effects.
+++++++++
List of contents:
+++++++++
1 - Installation/deinstallation
2 - Support
i) General support info
ii) Advice for faster/friendlier/more helpful support
3 - Work completed
4 - Description
i) Preamble
ii)Future
iii) Notes on filenames, effect levels and so forth - worth reading[b]
5 - Changelist
6 - Credits
7 - Legal info [b]- worth reading[b]
+++++++++
[b]1 - Installation 1)
+++++++++
This is a modders' resource. There is no esp provided. You'll need to add them to the game as statics in your own mod. Please note that there is no collision on these meshes.
+++++++++
2 - Support
+++++++++
i) Support is only available through the Bethesda Softworks boards at http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/25-oblivion-mods/ where the current thread for VaPER should be located.
ii) If you believe you have found a bug please post in the official thread. Please provide a thorough description of the problem. Failure to provide this will likely cause you to be ignored. I reserve the right to ignore you anyway should I feel like it.
iii) If you like the resource, but wish it were a little different in some way (and there are many ways these can be tweaked) then contact me on the VaPER release thread or by PM on the Bethsoft forums and explain very clearly and very, very politely what you would like changed. Or make the changes you want yourself. If you are unable to be polite, this is your only practical option. If you don't want to use the Bethsoft boards, good luck doing it yourself as well.
+++++++++
3 - Work completed
+++++++++
Currently there are:
292 released meshes.
These cover [lots of] tree and shrub species, for a total of [lots of] Tree records found in the vanilla CS and some that aren't but could be made with retextures of the leaf textures.
17 leaf textures derived from free to use public sources not requiring attribution. Thank god. These were all heavily edited by myself.
27 leaf textures created by me at great cost of time until I got headaches and finger-cramps. God damn it. Roll on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and bifocals.
+++++++++
4 - Description
+++++++++
i) This is a modders' resource. You don't need to contact me before you use it, but you do need to credit me for use of the resource.
ii) The editor markers are only a rough guide to the area that leaves will spawn in. I set the editor markers to match the trees as they appear in the CS and then set the particle systems to match the trees as they appear in-game. As long as you centre the editor marker fairly closely to the tree you should achieve a good "fit".
iii) OK, so there's a lot of meshes, right? Let's break them down.
Meshes are named with the following system
VaPER - FallingLeaves[Species name][CS Identifier, i.e. MS14 or Sapling][SUmmer or green-leaved][Effect level].nif
Tree meshes:
Tree meshes have a pretty heavy effect: the lightest tree meshes are generally much heavier than the lightest shrub effects.
XHeavy (equivalent to the v1 heavy) are designed for rather unrealistic scenes: dreams, quests, magic, and for trees standing alone suffering from catastrophic disease.
Heavy: still pretty unrealistic. Use with caution.
Medium: good for isolated trees in regular environments.
Light: good for small groups of trees.
XLight: good for forests where there will be many emitters used.
Shrub meshes:
Shrub meshes: the heaviest shrub meshes are still pretty light, the lightest ones are pretty subtle, but they still add a nice touch of atmosphere.
Some shrubs have very dense foliage and sit very close to the ground, others are much more open and/or stand further from the ground. This causes significant differences in the visual effects of the meshes for different shrubs.
XHeavy: best used for autumnal/winter shrubs. Nowhere near as heavy as with the tree meshes.
Heavy: still best used for the brown-leaved shrubs.
Medium: a heavy effect for green-leaved shrubs, a bit unnecessarily light for brown-leaved ones.
Light: There are no Light or XLight emitters because of a bug in the particle system engine whereby if the float value governing particle emission rate is set too low (varies from system to system, but generally appears somewhere under 0.45) no particles get spawned whatsoever.
Pine and Conifer meshes:
After seemingly endless attempts to get decent looking effects, I gave up and admitted that pine and confier needles are just too thin to be able to make good (or sometimes merely visible) effects with. It's sad, and I wasted huge amounts of time on this, but it just didn't work. If you would like access to the resources anyway, contact me and I'lls ee what I can offer you. Just bear in mind that you probably won't see anything at all if you try to use them.
+++++++++
6 - Changelist:
+++++++++
v2.0 Fixed the issue with the systems not starting up immediately upon loading into the game. Thanks to SaidenStorm for identifying the issue and solution, and to trollf for providing me with a working solution. Improved the gravity settings a lot. Tweaked various things in the original meshes. Added tons of new meshes and textures to cover most of the Tree and Shrub records in the vanilla game. Go me. I hate texturing.
v1.1 Re-released with the japanese maple texture fixed (some users' systems would not display it correctly) and compressed the six textures in dxt3 format (previously they were uncompressed).
v1.0 Public release of 48 falling leaf effect nifs, covering sixteen CS tree types in three varieties.
+++++++++
7 - Credits in alphabetical order:
+++++++++
People:
Bethesda Softworks for creating Oblivion.
Koniption for providing me with an editor marker I could work with successfully. Thankyou!
Real life friends and family: who helped me stay (approximately) sane and put up with a lot of ranting and raving about particle systems. Thanks!
SaidenStorm for identifying the cause of the problem with delayed system starts.
Throttlekitty: who wrote many of the guides on the Construction Set Wiki that gave me a starter on the path to working with particle systems.
trollf for providing me with the curved plane used for the mesh particle, for providing me with a working solution for the delayed system starts, and for generally being a great person to work with. Thanks!
Tools:
The CS by Bethesda softworks.
The Gimp (all (or almost all) of the textures were generated using this).
NifSkope by the NifTools team.
TES4Files by MentalElf.
General:
Free texture sites! Thankyou to the people who run them and the people who provide images for others to use.
by Vacuity (Bernard Mitchell), with assistance from the above people.
+++++++++
8 - Legal info
+++++++++
Under the licensing agreement of the CS this mod belongs to Bethesda softworks.
All meshes and some textures are adapted from originals made by Bethesda softworks.
Additional textures were created by me specifically for use in this project.
If I pass on responsibility for further development of these files to a 3rd-party then they will become responsible for further development.
If I have been absent from the development scene for longer than 181 days, have not responded to all reasonable attempts to contact me including, but not limited to: PMs, e-mail (as some users know my e-mail address) and at the last resort a general plea for contact then I acknowledge that I am not developing the mod further and these files can be developed further as the community on Bethesda's modding boards sees fit.
All files distributed with VaPER are to be treated as a Modders' resource and are essentially open for anyone to modify and distribute themselves with appropriate credit and blame given to me (Vacuity) for making the custom files as long as usage does not break the terms of the CS license agreement and Oblivion's license agreement.