Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General Unable to Place Walls/Buildings w/ Tutorial Video

I've been attempting to make my own adventure mode map by following the tutorial video by Larian studio as my first foray into modding.

My first area started off creating a bridge similar to the one in the tutorial video with water. Everything up to the point of the video where the bridge is being pieced together has run smoothly, and now I am unable to put items on the map (buildings or walls/bridges) no matter how many times I have rewatched the video to spot my issue.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Also, since this wasn't mentioned in the video, how would someone fix smooth terrain colors instead of looking so oddly jaggy/disjointed? I have tried to both erase the paint and use the smooth terrain tool to no avail. Would the slopes' tool be able to fix it?

Timestamp of video: https://youtu.be/zHf_wNTDNIo?t=971

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317162246398803968/365208390726582272/unknown.png (My map thus far. You can see how the edges of the stream are not smoothed out.)

Hmm. I remember I had difficulty placing objects initially, but it was because I was attempting to place items from the left pane in the Root Template rather than the right one.

In regard to the terrain, why do you have so many terrain layers?

The reason your paint is jagged has to do with the interaction between the base layer texture and the added layer. When you paint a texture onto the base layer, this jagged effect will happen wherever the boundaries are. I've found that it's a good practice to paint the entire base layer with one texture before putting other ones on.

For you, this would mean that you paint the entire map with whatever texture you used for your base layer. It'll look like nothing's happening, but when you paint the sand on top, it'll be a much more smooth transition.

Someone told me I had to use the Root Manager not the Resource Manager for placing items, though for some reason I could have sworn the dev used the latter.

Also, the reason I used so many layers together was that I was staying with the 1x1 terrain suggestion as I get a sense of scale. Not going to use the entire map; however, it helps me see how it will all come together.

I stuck with the same grass (base) texture all throughout the map, and I added the sand layer on top. I'm a little confused on your instructions. Are you talking about making a giant map instead and then painting over it rather than how I made 1x1 pieces? Or are you saying that I paint it with the same texture and then paint it with the new one? The latter would be easier to work with as I can delete the layer and then color it back in.

Those 1x1 pieces are going to make things very tedious for you. Just do a single terrain piece of the size you need. Then paint the whole thing your base color. After you've done that, you can start adding paint layers on top of that, and they won't look so jagged.

You should notice that each of those terrain pieces have their own paint layers. That means that you have to redo the work for each one, which is annoying and suboptimal.

Also, the order of the paint layers matter. When you get to adding more, layers will cover those beneath them. So just make your base paint that bottom layer, and you can forget about it. For example, in a map I'm working on now, my paint layers for terrain are something like this:

1. Rubble
2. Slate Rocks
3. Wet Sand
4. Smooth Sand
5. Dry Soil
6. Slate Base

Does that make more sense? It's hard to explain it in text without making an image or a video explanation.

That makes enough sense for me. I'm familiar with layers from Photoshop, and I had tried another run at making the same river channel here:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/169758353663197185/365322347496079360/unknown.png

I found it was easier to paint the layers first and then the area I wanted to alter as a straight line, then terraform it and smooth out the edges. It turned out much better than my initial try.

For now, I'll probably stick with just sand and grass, then dabble with water when I get to that part before I dabble with the multiple layers as I would prefer to watch it or see it done myself before I open that can of worms.

Thanks again for the previous posts!

No problem! I'm just getting into level creation as well, so your problems are ones I've encountered first hand this week, haha. Feel free to keep in touch so that we can share things that we're learning.

Also think about your layers and what would look more natural. I think you mentioned you had a grass layer and then a sand layer over that -- it might work/look better with sand as the base layer and grass over that. Depends on the textures used as well - sometimes you just have to try it a couple different ways and see how they interact.

Seriously, until you really know better. Delete all terrains but one and work with that. That's a mess.

I recommend even if you want to stick just with sand and grass, get more paint textures (more sand and grass options) and mess around, cover the margins, where are meeting 2 different textures, with rubble (i like the TR_rock_slate_rubble_B a lot because its partly transparent / with alpha) and or later of course with instance painter (which does a great job and covers up all kind of texture paint ugliness).

After layouting the Terrain paint, i recommend:

paint with the smallest size brush
make use of right click delete (see it as a paint function for the texture down aswell)

some examples (also see the amount to textures):

All right. Thanks for the suggestion.

I decided after a day of the editor acting up to focus more so on my script for quests/journals, and I went back to the editor in a fresh frame of mind. This time I started off making my river and island in a 3x3 terrain for one like this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317162246398803968/366003400418263050/unknown.png

So the question that had not occurred to me was how to actually add water to a level. I see there is an AI Brush tool to add surfaces of water. However, I am not seeing a way to simply add a water level (if that's what it's called). I assumed it there was some surface like lava in the tutorial video.

Look in Root Templates>Nature>Water