Hello Trey. Thank you for submitting your showcase file! Always nice to see a new face around here.
Now, I'm going to post my review of your showcase. It's long, but don't be put off, as hopefully you'll learn some stuff along the way that will tide you on for future interiors!
Clean: Yes
Northmarker: Yes
Gridsnap: Yes
Lighting: Set,
but sunlight is too light. Look at other Hlaalu set interiors and copy a light setting that looks good with your interior. In addition, fog should never be 0 0 0 black.
Illegal to sleep checked:
No (This should always be ticked in house interiors)
In the top part:
misc_de_cloth11 not resting properly
misc_com_wood_spoon_01_UNI1 not resting properly
furn_de_p_table_05 floating
common_pants_01 floating
common_shirt_01 floating
furn_de_rug_01 floating
furn_de_p_chair_01 bleeding into rug (x4)
light_com_candle_01_off floating
light_com_candle_02 not resting properly
ingred_boar_leather not resting properly (solstheim ingredient, would be wary of putting it in regular interiors)
ingred_bc_coda_flower not resting properly
ingred_bonemeal_01 not resting properly
PC_TreyShowcase_TrapTop and PC_TreyShowcase_TrapBot: It is not necessary to create separate new references for doors or trapdoors (imagine how huge the list would be if every door in the game was a separate object).
Also, not sure how suitable having a trap door in the hlaalu set is. I would rather you made a conventional second floor using the stair pieces. Trap doors work, but do have a habit of looking 'moddy'.
The whole basement. Given that MW is full of daedric ruins anyway I don't think it's a good fit, especially dragging daedric ruins bits back to your basement when you could just traffick with the Daedra lords at the ruins with other likeminded cultists. There are several issues:
Wayyy too much loot (Master alchemy set and a daedric dagger) that you shouldn't find in a townhouse.
There are too many skillbooks.
bk_Boethiah's Glory_unique is a 1 of item and shouldn't be used in a random interior.
sc_hellfire bleeds.
PC_TreyShowcase_Chandelier is an Imperial chandelier and shouldn't be used in a Dunmer interior. Nor should it be a new reference.
BookSkill_Alteration1 not resting properly.
Some other ingredients on the altar float.
Looks like a lot of criticism! But please don't take it the wrong way, there are several bits of your interior that I like and you made a creative go of balancing the books in that basement. In addition you didn't fall into the cookie-cutter trap so I was pleased to see you didn't copyandpaste items from other interiors.
I've taken some pictures here to illustrate a few other hints I can give you:
Lights are super awkward to place as they don't 'F' nicely. Try adjusting your movement settings to a lower value (I like 0.1 for finickier objects) which will make them move much slower when dragging them around. Also, candles should only go vertically upright and never off to an angle, because the MW engine doesn't change the flame angle it looks very odd!
I like this pottery display but note, all the jars are at the same angle! Put some rotation on a few of them. In addition, you can even scale them a little using S+drag to add extra variety. You rotated the cups nearby nicely though.
Lights. There are a lot of lights in this interior. If you hit the L key, the light radius of all your lights show up. A good rule of thumb is to not have any of the light-spheres intersect one another. When you get loads like this, the lighting engine goes overboard and it will look super-strange in-game.
Don't be disheartened, once you get used to the Construction Set you can knock out house interiors in a matter of hours and not days, and all these things I point out will become second nature. For an early attempt at using the CS for interiors, a great effort! I would recommend starting a new in_hlaalu house that uses the stair models to have two full floors, and to make it themed around someone who does something a little more ordinary than being a cultist. You've shown in this interior you can theme things like that. For example, the table with the tall candle has a knife, some meat and some hide, it's little touches like that that hint to the trade of a person and if you can think of interesting item arrangements to show things like that, you're doing it right.
Don't hesitate to ask any questions you have on using the CS here, or come pester us on the Discord.