Tips 'N' Tricks 'N' You
Hotkeys
Before anything else, it's helpful to be familiar with the hotkeys available to you in the CK. Lots of helpful features in here, many of the most useful ones for landscaping are posted below.
Creation Kit Hotkeys
Hiding Objects
A common headache when working on an interior are things like banners, fog/mist/dust fx, or cobwebs getting in the way when you're trying to click something else. A useful trick is to select anything you want to temporarily hide or make intangible and hit the "1" key. Every time you hit "1" the objects you have selected will cycle through three states.
Normal - Visible and can be clicked on.
Intangible - Visible, but cannot be clicked on. Depending on the cell lighting the object may turn transluscent, but this can appear buggy.
Invisible - Both invisible and intangible, it is like the object has been removed, but it is still there.
To reset everything in the cell to a normal state, hit "Alt + 1" and everything, whether selected or not, will revert back to normal.
Fog objects selected but not hidden
Fog objects hidden (but not deleted!)
Batch Actions
At any point in the CK click the "-" key to open the Batch Actions window, an example of which can be seen to the right. Anything you have selected in the render window will appear in the white box, and whichever of the selections on the right side will be applied to all the objects selected.
This is useful when you need to do anything en masse, most commonly mass enable parent setting, but setting ownership, or activate refs are also common.
Once you have selected what you want done, just click the "Do" button.
Scroll to Replace Objects
With any object selected in the Render Window, scroll your mouse wheel while holding ALT to replace the object the previous or next object alphabetically (depending on the direction you scroll).
Wildcard Search
The search bar in the Object Window can accept wildcard characters (*) meaning it can stand in for unknown characters and are handy for locating multiple objects with similar, but not identical name. For example, below we searched for volc*rock and got back any objects with "volc" and "rock" in the name, specifically in that order. This can be done any number of times.
No search
Wildcard search
Search & Replace
Finally, there's the classic Search and Replace feature, similar to text documents.
Click CTRL+F in the Render Window to bring up the Search and Replace window. If you have an object selected when you hit CTRL+F it will automatically be entered in the "Search For" field. Set the "Replace With" field to whatever you would like to replace the old object with, and then select one of the three checkboxes at the bottom.
Current World Only - Replaces every instance of the given object in the worldspace. DO NOT USE THIS.
Current Cell Only - Will replace every instance of the searched object in the cell that is currently loaded in the Render Window. This can be dangerous, so be careful. Only use this if you are just completely replacing an object in a cell you are working on.
Selection Only - This is selected by default when the window opens and only replaces instances of the object that are currently selected in the Render Window. Anything not selected is left alone.
