Claim Mesa

Hmmm

That's not quite the interesting title, or is it? Welcome back to the grotto. Today we shall have a look at my latest Skyrim - Home of the Nords claim, which I have apparently worked on for a few months.
The area is on top of a mesa, which you can probably gain from the title of this post. Its style is similar to some other parts of The Reach with a lot of grass and some dirt in between. Same here, actually. The area itself shows the old scars of the war between Redguard and Reachmen long ago. That said, I have placed quite some badass ruins and stuff around as well as bandit caves and I also hid some treasure chests. Ha!
Actually, I am not in the mood to write terribly long posts here now, so you shall have a look at these screenshots.

Amber Guard Interior Fixing 01+02 feat. Lestat & Muspila

Hi! Yet another post!

Got a collaboration thing here. I have worked together with Lestat de LionCourt, the Mighty Vampire, and Muspila the Nutcracker.
Actually Lestat gave me the claim with 01 being at 60% and 02 being finished, however, when I posted screens on the Internet Relay Chat, Muspila wanted to have something look differently ending in a huge epic blast battle versus Dirnae the Sarcasm and Praedator the Cluttermonkey, at the end I sent Muspila the file and he made some epic stuff.

Abecean Sea Region

Hello!

Damn, today I finally finished my seafloor claim for Province: Cyrodiil. It's an incredibly huge amount of cells and each of them has more than 2000 objects in it.

GEEZUS!

Anyway, it has kelp, rocks, signs of volcanic action and stuff. Also has a huuuge canyon thing with an Ayleid Ruin in it! Hell yeah.
So, you should probably know that I had a little, little nasty bug with this file. In a certain cell range, I could neither select nor move any object. Not only was that very weird, rather strange, but it was also quite disgusting because I could not finish my unfinished seafloor. Oh my. What now? I decided to just place a few rocks in the areas left (which was a hard job, 20 rocks took me 2 hours) and added some shading, done.
The whole thing turned out pretty cool; I have added several points of interest for the player, and there is nearly a full set of glass armor to find there, plus some glass weapons. The seafloor is worth exploring!
To show the player where to find sunk ships and the like, I added remainings of them such as planks or open crates on the water surface.
I imagine there could be some cool quests as well.
A known Morrowind (and Oblivion) bug shows large parts of underwater areas without blur or anything, which is a good thing. I took some screens of that for you to get an idea of how much work this all was ^^ Now enjoy it!

Skyrim: Claim Cave 02 (02)

Hi!

Weird title here, had to make it different by adding an additional 02 in brackets because it's actually the second 02 cave I am making.
Anyway, this is a Skyrim cave! OH my. You would not have thought that, I think, and thus you should know what it's all about.
See, this cave is probably one of the largest and most dangerous places in The whole Reach. It contains the central administration point of the local bandit hordes and isn't far away from Amber Guard. That's why they also have some amber in baskets and such!
However, the cave was tough to make. Not only is it one of my rocky caves, but it's also a quite large cave, I might say. The first cell got over 6000 objects in it (Yes, the cell had to be split but it's still that many!)
I did not intend it to have that many objects though. I wanted to beat Praedator though, who is said to be the cluttermonkey, so it had to go this way.

Enjoy teeh screens!

Hiatus!

Yo guys,

I am off for a week. Vacation and stuff. I will think about you when I am basking in the sun. Good luck with whatever you are doing.

Amber Guard Interior Fixing 05+11

YAY,

yet another one. Today I have been fixing #05 and #11. (Obviously, duh)

Well, actually I have done #11 yesterday, and today I did #05. Whatever.
So, the first one is just a normal house, yet it has some awesome altar in it for whatever reason, I left it there because it was cool, I think it has a purpose as well.
The second interior is the home of a hunter. It didn't have that purpose before, somehow it was just an almost bare shell with some crates and baskets in it, and then I read somewhere on the forums it should be an inn, and luckily I asked in the thread only to be informed about the fact that Amber Guard should not even have an inn. Nice.
So I made it a home of a hunter instead, not sure if I mentioned that, and now it is the home of a hunter (did you know that??)
Other than that, I chose slightly darker light settings this time because as you might have noticed, my other interiors, or let's say the other interiors that I took screens of didn't feel cozy enough. Too bright. Stuff. Yes.
What's pretty funny is that I found two bad floaters neither in the Construction Set nor in the actual game while playtesting, I found them afterwards when I was looking at the screens. And that not even at first glance either. Let's see if you can find them!

5-19-Red

Yep,

I did not finish this claim. Actually, I wanted to make a cool claim with a spiffy castle and pine forests. But they didn't let me. So I made pine forests, and here we go.
Dropping.
This is definitely the first claim I have ever dropped; And I swear, it's the last one. This might have consequences.
Apart from an empty island on the middle of the lake, there is a cool bridge, a ruined Imperial Outpost, a small camp, a small dock, a cave and a dead man somewhere in the mountains. Did I forget anything?
Anyway, enjoy the screens: Might be the last Tamriel Rebuilt ones I have ever taken.

Amber Guard Interior Fixing 09+10

Yo,

today I fixed two interiors!
Those are located in Amber Guard, which you can find in The Reach, and it's part of our very first release. Of course I am talking about Skyrim - Home of the Nords.
These interiors have been made quite a long time ago, and weren't really up to our new standards, so they had to be fixed. Not much else to say here, look at screens instead.

New promotion

Hi there,

recently, our dear Head of Interior at Skyrim - Home of the Nords, also called SamirA the Mighty, stepped down due to RL boundaries and cakes.
Now, if you put two and two together, you will figure out that the new Head of Interior is me.

So, my new position requires me to work hard and ensure that the quality of interiors at Skyrim - Home of the Nords stays consistent! I am glad to have received this job and I wish SamirA the best luck in whatever he does. He still stays Head of Interiors at Province: Cyrodiil though, no worries.

Oh my, it's the fern!

Hi!

You all expected it! Admit it.

Finally I want to show my fern.
Surprisingly, it has 1032 faces. Geezus. That makes using it in Morrowind kind of senseless. It's nice for just looking at though. Enjoy!

Stirk is finished

...almost.

Hi!

Like it says: Stirk is finished. Let's say almost finished. Basically it's finished.
However, the chapel is still missing. Other than that, nothing should be left. I don't count interiors nor do I count NPCs and dialogue, that's not my job. Or maybe some of the ints, but this post is all about the exterior of the island.
Anyway! I finally got the doors after the bBC (big BSA Crisis) and finished Stirk. Also got the claim map finished, so there is like, nothing preventing us from starting with the next steps. I also took new screens as I made new stuff. That is:

The Ayleid ruin; It's pretty cool considering the fact it's made out of the very few available pieces I had. the interior of the ruin will be connected to a large cavern, which has another entrance in a grotto lying beneath the ruin. The exterior grotto is quite cool, I also took some screens of that for you. The outlying "harbour" of the pirates is also finished. It has a cool camp nearby as well.

New Stirk screenshots!

Yo,

I was bored so I took some screens of Stirk. Enjoy.

Skyrim: Claim Mountain

Lol,

what a rediculous name for the blog post. But that's what it was called when I got the files from Lestat, the mighty Skyrim-maker and project leader. He gave me a file with some terrain in it and I had to apply textures and finish the whole terrain layout. I gave the stuff back to him, and he generated the grass, and then he sent it over to me again. And I started to work on it... after, like, eh, 3 or 4 weeks. Damned vacation.
Anyway, it's a mountain on the border between The Reach and Haafinheim. It's considered a Reach claim, however, the region style of the landscape is mostly Haafinheim Forest and small bits of the Snowhawk County. I tried to make a good transition in the south-western part of the claim.
What does the claim contain? It has 2 or 3 caves (can't quite remember the exact number), a Reman Ruin ( I think you know these from Oblivion, however, the mesh was missing when I took the screens due to my stupidity and thus you can't see it here. Furthermore, I included a Nordic barrow.
Then, an interesting idea has come up on the forums: We are going to have beacons on our peaks of the mountains. YAY. The idea is to make a tribute to the Lord of the Rings. Well, not really, but we want to kinda steal the idea of the Skyrim kings using the beacons to easier communicate with each other. Nearby is a hut.

Tamriel Rebuilt : Baan Malur

Yo,

you have all waited for it! ...blog post time! No seriously, in this post I am finally going to showcase Baan Malur, the former capital of House Redoran. I finished this some days ago, but actually I forgot to make a blog post about it because I am damn lazy and didn't move my ass because I knew it'd have to be a long post... not.
So, this is the former location of the Redoran Council, and while the council has been moved to Ald'ruhn (which we all know), the actual Council Hall in Baan Malur is still present. It's located in the center of the city, and you can see it from everywhere. Unfortunately, windows and doors are still missing (see screenshots).
Anyway, what else can you find in this magnificent city? Yes! An arena. I personally hope we make some kind of faction or questline for it as I really tried to make a good arena, out of Redoran architecture. Yes, the Narsis arena is lame! Lame.
The city itself is surrounded by large, pointy rocks (which may look a tiny bit creepy and unstable). It is opened to the entrance of the bay where ships can enter and be unloaded at the docks. The other entrance of what used to be a collapsed cave is locked by a great wall, which you can even walk on!
Discover the great secrets that lie beyond the gates of Baan Malur! Talk to over 1000 NPCs, enter misterious dungeons and interiors, and be happy and kill all the guards! Everything for JUST $99,99. Now at Scampstore.
The truth is, it's free for download if you find it on the Tamriel Rebuilt forums.
Other than that, let me tell you about the size of the city: It shall be 4 cells. Also, it contains 86 interiors. Quite a lot, aren't it?
The temple entrance was voted #2 of the best Velothi Temple entrances. #1 is, I can reveal, the Kogotel temple. (rating by arvisrend)
Now come the screenshots, I don't want to write anything else.

New Stirk Screenshots

Hey there,

new screenshots! Make sure to check them all, there are a few ones that you won't find anywhere else.

Stirk Update

Damn,

long time no blog post... I have been taking a few screenshots recently, so I might show them here.

Stirk is an island which lies between Hammerfell and Cyrodiil, and this is obviously part of Province:Cyrodiil. Being the Head of Exteriors, I have taken the pleasure to make it; including the Ayleid Ruin and the city on it. An entirely new exterior set has been modelled for this; Especially the lighthouse is considered one of the greatest models ever made for Morrowind.
The city itself has about 40 interiors; With that, it's about medium sized for our standards. Our main cities in Cyrodiil will be of a much greater size (about 80 interiors or w/e), and this is the smallest.
We are going to release Stirk as a file "showcasing" our mod to the public. A lot of progress on Cyrodiil has been made in the past and many people are eager to see what we will come up with; However, with ZackG losing all of his stuff we had to start over and take a new direction.
Back on topic: The lighthouse area is finished, and progress on the city is underway. It will also have a graveyard, which is only a placeholder for now.
Enough text; Here are some selected screenshots.

Tamriel Rebuilt: i3-689

Yo,

blog post time! This is probably the last blog post I write before I go on vacation! YAY
It is, what a surprise, a Llama's Thirr (also known as Almas Thirr) interior, which I have made plenty of already. But this is something new! It's not a poor fisherman's house, not an inn: no! It's a lighthouse!
Not a very special lighthouse, I might say. I didn't really know what to throw in there so I just went with a storage (of course!) and some misc rooms and the lighthouse keeper's quarters. I am happy to say I have more than 300 objects in this interior cell! ...which isn't really that much regarding the fact the building has 4 stories.
Now, I heard that another lighthouse-maker, TheNotSoGreatNess of Silliness, has thrown in boats and ship equipment! I don't have that here... I hope that is not bad.
Well, I can't say much about the keeper. He is probably an average guy, Dunmer or something, not as sloppy as some other persons living in some of my other ints! Especially shacks. I should probably make another shack...
Kthxbai though, see you in a few weeks when I come back and fnish something again!

Tamriel Rebuilt: i3-701

Hey,

post time! This is a Dunmer tavern in Almas Thirr, the central trading thing on the Thirr River! It's a Velothi town with a canton in the middle, and I think I have a few decent screenshots of it in the Map3 Detailing - A2 blog post.
At first, I was a bit worried about the size of my interior; But who cares about that nowadays? The shell perfectly fits its exterior shell.
Now, the whole interior has 601 objects in it (no wait...592.), and I even put ivy in! YAY ivy
Well, just the standard inn stuff. Nothing special.

Skyrim: Orc Tent 1

YAY for the first Skyrim - Home of the Nords blog post.

This is obviously a tent. A tent, inhabitated by an Orc. The tent itself is located in the only Orc camp we will have in our first release. It's not really big (the tent, I mean).
The Orc is a typical warrior, a lot of weapons can be found here and there in the tent. he also has food and the usual stuff in there that he needs to survive in the lands of Skyrim.

I really put a lot of effort into making this small interior. It's well cluttered and feels lived-in. Probably my screenshots will help you a bit further here.

Tamriel Rebuilt: i3-696-Ind

Hi,

new blog post! Another Tamriel Rebuilt interior. Claimed this a few days ago, (might have been yesterday as well) and today I started working on it. Obviously, I also finished it today. YAY

This is the house of a fisherman. Not a poor fisherman, just a regular fisherman. Ex_de_common_fisherman it is, and we all love fishermen! Don't we? Okay.
He has a lot of stuff flying around in this 3x2 room. Even though it's not a big interior, I managed to squash 171 objects in there. That is a lot for an interior with this size! However, I don't feel like making up a super-awesome story about this man, he just lives here and his house is not exactly tidy. Well, have you ever seen me making a tidy house? Probably not!
Some dried fish is hanging here, he also has a fair amount of drinks around. Just like a fisherman.
Finally, I want to show you some screens. Enjoy and stuff.

Tamriel Rebuilt: 5-23

Hi!

Now, you probably ask yourself countless questions about the title of this post. Before I start talking about the claim I have finished, I will tell you something you might perhaps know.
I am not only a modder of Tamriel Rebuilt, I also work for the province mods called Skyrim - Home of the Nords and Province : Cyrodiil.
Thus, I will from now on include the mod names in the titel so that you know what I am talking about. Thanks.

Hi!

This is the last Ash Swamp claim by me. It also has some niceish Velothi Mountain parts in it. Actually, this is another claim on the border between The Southern Velothi Mountains and the Northern Velothi Mountains. Just now it also has a small amount of Ash Swamps in it. Ew.
However, I tried to include some nice points that catch the player's eye. For example a spooky cave entrance with a hanging skeleton and spiderwebs! YES!
Also, it has like, 2 or three caves and a few bandit camps scattered around.

...

Well, you already know everything about the Ash Swamp, so I'm not sure what else to write here. However, I have a lot of screenshots today.

5-27

Yesh!

This is a magnificent claim. Some of you might already know that there is going to be an entirely new region in the Velothis release. And what would that be?

The Ash Swamp! Yes! It's a quite magnificent region, actually. People have already stated that on the Bethesda Softworks Forums, and I can only agree! It has new parasols, puffshrooms and fungus hanging from stuff! What a shame we can't release it anytime soon.
Regarding the fact the claim consists of 16 cells (which is a lot), I finished it in quite a short time. That might be because of the fact that the Ash Swamp is soo much fun to make; The set is really cool and you can add a lot of variety by placing fungus and little shrooms. The contrast between his region and the Bittercoast could hardly be greater; A must for vanilla players!
Just a little note: I'll finish another exterior claim consisting at least partially of the Ash Swamp this week. Stay tuned!

i4-453

Hey,

long time no see. I finished another interior claim now.
This, apparently, is a manor. The owner is the son of a successful Redoran warrior, probably even a councilor. His father built this manor long ago, and the family used to be quite rich.
Then, everything changed. The father died away, and the son took over the whole place including the rank. He's incompetent though, so soon, CHAOS. He married a rich wife to get out of his situation. Unfortunately, his wife's family lost everything right after the marriage. He was left with a dilemma.
Now he owes other people a lot of money, and they want him to pay. So the last resort is the player... Who might even have the choice to kick him out and take over the manor. Lots of possiblities. Great!

i3-266

Oh my! It's an interior claim!

This one's in Old Ebonheart, the central imperial city in Morrowind. Additional information: This is the house of an armorer. He makes nice stuff! Selling weapons, armor, repair items and all that kind of stuff, he's not a poor person. Quite the contrary, he is actually one of the richer persons in this city. The armorer is also married and lives together with his wife in the second and third floor of the 3-storey house. It's quite cosy, really. A nice fireplace and fitting chairs can be found in the third floor, as well as a lot of books, a collection of some weapons he seems to like and of course the double-bed, which is awesome and has red pillows.
Unfortunately, I did not decide what race this armorer is supposed to be, however it does not matter much at this stage. Hope I detailed it well enough, 335 objects is not what I call bare though. (However, I deleted some objects later so it might be less, like 330)

5-13

Hello,

Today, it's time for yet another snowy exterior claim! My last one for a (probably rather short) while, I'm getting tired of placing the same meshes over and over again so I might want to try out some Ash Swamp claim, that is the brandnew region!
YAY
However, I digress. It's my duty to tell you about this claim. It includes two rather cool places: A small Redoran hamlet along the road (on a spiffy hill) and a literally cool (GET IT) border pass fort in Dunmer-Stronghold-Style! People are saying is looks pretty good, so I shall trust their estimations. It has a pretty bridge leading to a gate and then I added two firepits with exterior stools and guarcarts! Also, it will have seperate shops and stuff for travellers to pass by, and a main entrance, and a storage, probably. The rest of the pass leading to Skyrim, is,  as always, not accessible (yet).
The village is nothing special.
Other than that, I threw some custom skeletons in and stuck glass arrows into one of them. Lots of snow in this claim, very much fun.

Now, screenshots.->>>

5-25

Heyyyy


New claim! A mountainous claim, of course. What a surprise...
This is in central map5 and a really magnificent claim, as many people think. It includes a large crevice/canyon with a hidden Nordic Barrow in it, totally! And it's not hidden at all... damn it.
However, it makes sense that this claim is nice because it has large parts of the road leading to a pass leading to Skyrim. Also, it has nice waterfalls.
Uhm... that was it already? NO! It also has an ice cave, just like 5-15. The higher parts of the claim follow Nemon's concept with the sinkholes and flat, snowy areas. Great! Map5 is truly the best map evar...

i2-450

Oh hey, a Necrom claim!

Hai!
After such a long time, I finally managed to finish another interior claim. This is, like most Necrom claims, a quite important claim. It is the Hall of Pallbearers and Sweeps, located in the Old City.
Now, you will probably ask yourself who those people are. Well, let's begin with the sweeps. Those are cleaners. (WHAT) I mean, that was pretty clear, but the point is that they clean the Necrom catacombs every day. That said, I put a lot of brooms, cloth pieces and brushes in this interior so that it looks appropriate.
The Pallbearers are those transporting the bodies of dead people. They have some stuff in here as well.
Apart from these particular areas there also is a basement that kinda includes two rooms for the general use. A little storage with even more brooms and a spiffy spiderweb, and of course the room where they all eat food and sleep in bunks.
Okay, now there is not much left to say that might be worth listening to (or reading, wtf), so I shall show you some screenshots as always to keep this post all nice and spiffy.

Map 3 Detailing A2

And yet another post!

...

I know you guys remember A4West, the unspiffy detailing claim with Seyda Vano in it. At that time, I would never have thought I would make another detailing claim consisting of the Thirr River Valley Region... especially not the bordering A2 claim... Which was apparently obviously dropped by the Aevenling due to lack of awesomeness and such. 0.o I mean, I claimed it because I had a clean plate without silly Sacred East areas to do and so I decided to give it a go but I wanted to get this done a lot faster than I expected then because I feel like making some mountains in map5 again :D
This claim contains three cities.... (that's a lot):
The first city is probably Dondril, a shack town. Regarding the fact that it is what it is, a shack town, it is quite interesting. Kinda crossroadish, there's one road leading to Old Ebonheart, the Imperial capital in Morrowind, one road leading to A4West and one road...leading to the other two cities.
That said, those are Roa Dyr and Almas Thirr. Roa Dyr is also known as the Tamriel Rebuilt venice. It has nice canals and lanterns, as well as gondolas. Those are fun, as is the whole city. It was done by the Aeven though, I added some crates and urns.
Almas Thirr is the bridge of Thirr, I say. It's actually the only way to cross the Thirr River without taking a boat or getting wet. It's a customized canton with nice lighthouses, I also added some stuff to it, the rest is aevenished.

Oh, and the claim also has a nice daedric ruin called Hadrumnibibi, just to mention it.

Yeah, screenshots...

Map 2 - Necrom

Heyyy,

I have not posted anything for a long time 0.o
That's probably because I was busy with this area here. It's basically the whole landscape west of Necrom, and thus the only area in Sacred East that wasn't done exterior-wise. It's quite large, and was actually part of map2, but we are going to include it in our next release, together with Necrom and some unimportant stuff to the south.
Now, I had to deal with a lot of kebraish errors (YAY insider words) and that was definitely not amusing. NOT. I'm not going to go into detail here, however it wasn't only detailing work but also a lot of error-fixing.
Part of this area is, along with some simple mountainous stuff, the Dragon Nest Inn, the city of Akamora, Ayemar (a smallish Indoril fortress across from Azura's Shrine) and... dunno. Probably some misc stuff like Dun Akafell, the spiffy Old Mournhold - style ruin. In general this consists mostly the Mephalain Mountains, but also some nice GL parts and stuff, yeah, stupid daedric ruin somewhere and missing interiors, I shall think. No, wait, stupid interiors, no missing ones D:
This has far too many screenshots to post them all here, I'll give you a nice link to the huge gallery. Have fun!

http://img814.imageshack.us/g/mgescreenshot95.jpg/

i3-684

Shackyshackshackyshack.....what, I'm already writing? k...


Hai!

Seyda Vano again, this time it is a shacky shack, as you might already know, somehow. This is one of the two shacks being supposed to be already there before the player gets his stronghold, and they will last forever.

Also, screenshot.

i3-682

Seyda Vano time! You know, the player's Indoril stronghold. This interior is the guard tower of awesomeness there, has several beds in the basement and other stuff upstairs, Captain's quarters are on the top floor. I tried to make it spiffy, we'll see how it turns out.
Rather small post here, can't be bothered to write more about such a small interior and thus the screens are coming right here at this place.

5-15

Yo,

The first finished map5 claim! YAY

This is the southwestern edge of Velothis, and it features some nice stuff. For example Silgrod Pass and its fort. Furthermore, I added a spiffy imperial outpost being very much ruined and having been overrun by Scamps. The silly imperial people built their outpost not knowing what was beneath their floors, that is a daedric ruin merged with ice stuff, and one day they came and took the imperials... just kidding.
However, this claim also has a nice ice tunnel somewhere in the northern bits. That's exactly the place where an important thing is going on; Southern Velothi Mountains pass into Northern Velothi Mountains, which is very BMish.
Dunno what else to tell about the claim, so I'll finish this little speech and upload some screenshots.