Jump to content

DOWNLOAD MODS

Are you looking for something shiny for your load order? We have many exclusive mods and resources you won't find anywhere else. Start your search now...

LEARN MODDING

Ready to try your hand at making your own mod creations? Visit the Enclave, the original ES/FO modding school, and learn the tricks of the trade from veteran modders...

JOIN THE ALLIANCE

Membership is free and registering unlocks image galleries, project hosting, live chat, unlimited downloads, & more...

[SKY] Changing Tamriel Landscape and regenerating LODs


aragorn58
 Share

Recommended Posts

I'm attempting to generate LOD for a mod that alters a small area of Tamriel. The area is just northwest of Whiterun and only affects three cells, all in the same quad, -8,0. I have tried Oscape, Tes5LodGen, the CK itself and DynDoLod, with no results. Not sure what I'm missing. I have done LODs for custom worlds dozens of times without issues but this has me stumped.

 

When I load up the mod in Oscape, I tick Skyrim.esm and the mods esp (there is no worldspace other than Tamriel in the Mod). I select Tamriel  tick Feature map and Surface map then extract. When the preview of the height field comes up, all is good but the area where the changes to the landscape are made is empty (black). I don't know why. All the changes made are really minor. The land is raised slightly and the snow is removed from the mountain in the area and replaced with a vanilla grass texture, that's it. When all is done and the new files are in place, from a distance the snow is still present on the mountain, and there are holes in the landscape where the land has been raised. But as you approach the area and the lod fades and the actual textures appear, all is how it should look.

 

I tried importing the Tamriel worldspace into the mod but all that did was crash the CK (which was kind of expected, I even went as far as trying to rename Tamriel worldspace to match the mod, but again crash). Regenerating the Tamriel LODs in the CK took almost 17 hrs with the same results. The mods author said someone had done something similar for one of their other mods but that person hasn't been on the forums for a while (didn't mention who it was).

 

I would like to be able to help him as I have seen a preview of the mod and it is very well done and running through it quickly has put a lot of time and effort into it. The only problem is the LOD.

 

If anyone has any suggestions or a solution any help would be appreciated. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Did you do that for another mod before? Did it work? It seems to me that we cannot modify the landscape LOD for Tamriel.

I have not, but the mods author said it was done for him before in another mod, and he just added the new BTO & BTR files for thearea he changed to the mod and it worked. I was given suggestions from Zilav(TES5LodGen), and TambO. But still can't get it to work. I even tried DynDoLod with no changes either. Not completely sure if the problem is with any of those programs or with the mod itself pointing to the correct textures and meshes although they are vanilla nothing custom. I have a couple other ideas I want to try when I get the free time. But I'm still looking for suggestions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/25/2016 at 11:46 AM, ladyonthemoon said:

So, it should work then?

Another question, is it really weird if you do not modify the landscape LOD? I didn't modify it for my Whitewater Farm mod and things don't look that weird; the farm and its surroundings pop up when the player comes close but it doesn't look weird to my eyes.

I have a personal use player home just outside of Whiterun that I did not do anything to also and it pops in also but the location is kind of blocked from LOD so it doesn't look weird either. I guess it all relies on where you make your changes and what additional content is added. The mod I'm trying to do this for has made some changes to the landscape west of the Western Watchtower and does effect the LOD in that the changes made are to a mountain, and if the LOD doesn't match, it ruins the feel. 

I received some more info on how to change the LODs for a specfic area of Tamriel today and I will attempt it this weekend. Just pulled a 19 hr day and ready for bed!!! I will let you know how it works out. and if it does I will ask the person who helped if I can post it here.

Edited by aragorn58
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/26/2016 at 4:23 PM, ladyonthemoon said:

I'm looking forward to reading you! :)

Generating LODs for a specific area of Tamriel

These instructions were originally given to me by Tamb0 on the Bethesda Forms. I edited them slightly to be used for any area in Tamriel.

I'm by no means an expert but this worked for me. So I thought I would pass it along.

 

 

 

 

Use a copy of your esp just in case. When done with LOD discard the copy and place your original esp back in your Data folder.

 

Make sure all the LOD source files and textures are setup correctly for LOD generation.

 

1.    Make your Windows screen resolution as high as you can.

2.    Load the esp as the active file in the CK.

3.    **Important** - Make the render window as big as you can, leaving just enough of the menus showing so you can access them.

4.    Select the menu World > World LOD

5.    Select Tamriel as the worldspace and put a tick next to Build Specific Chunk in the Debug box.

6.    Put a tick in the Generate Normal Textures box and select Source and compressed textures

7.    If for example the area you want to generate for is in cells -8,0 & -8,1 & -9,1 in the Tamriel worldspace (see Map I suggest saving the images to your computer to make zooming in on the areas much clearer)

8.    It seems the more adjoining areas you generate for, the further out the LOD changes will take effect.

9.    For this example you would generate for the following areas:

The normals you need to generate are    

X: -12 Y: 0 Dimension: 4 (Near LOD)     

X: -12 Y: 0 D: 8 (Medium LOD)     

X: -8   Y: 0 D: 4 (Near LOD)     

X: -8   Y: 0 D: 8 (Medium LOD)     

X: -12 Y: -4 D: 4 (Near LOD)     

X: -12 Y: -4 D: 8 (Medium LOD)     

X: -8 Y: -4 D: 4 (Near LOD)     

X: -8 Y: -4 D: 4 (Medium LOD)     

X: -32 Y: 0 D: 32 (Worldmap - optional)     

10.  Put -12 in the X box, 0 in the Y box and 4 in the Dimension box

11.  Click the Generate button

12.  Look at the normal texture in the Source\DDSTextures\Terrain\Tamriel folder. If it is just a plain green color, or green with blue and pink lines, (this is correct for landscapes see attached photo below) then your Render window is not big enough. Exit the CK and save your SkyrimEditorPrefs.ini to another location (backup). Open the SkyrimEditorPrefs.ini in the Skyrim folder and scroll down until you see the Render Window Settings. Edit the width, height and position to match the dimensions below and save.

Render Window H=990
Render Window W=1280
Render Window Y=32
Render Window X=0

Delete the file Tamriel.4.-12.0_n.DDS in the Source folder. Start again from step 2 and check the normal texture. This time it should have generated correctly.

Now un=tick the Generate Normal Textures and tick the Generate Diffuse Textures box.

Repeat using the dimensions above.

If you require the LOD meshes to be rebuilt, then repeat for Distant Terrain / Water. And for statics.

Don't forget to copy the textures over from the Source folder to your Skyrim\Data\Textures\Terrain\Tamriel folder.

**Important** always exit the CK immediately when finished generating the LOD Textures and Meshes.

Copy the backup file SkyrimEditorPrefs.ini back to the Skyrim folder.

 

DDSTextures_zpsifzm6grv.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by aragorn58
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Thank you! I need to try this for my Whitewater Farm mod. :D

Let me know how it works out. Feel free to post it in the tutorial section. If some things are difficult to understand or you think need clarification let me know and I will make the changes.

 

John 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Thank you. I'll try it and if it works, I'll add a chapter to my lod tutorial. I'll need to quote my source though. :)

Did it work for you?

Yes. and after I figured out what I had to generate it took less than 30 minutes. I generated at 4,8,and 16  dimensions. The LOD took effect quite a ways out. The area is behind Fort GrayMoor and from the bridge over the White River looking towards Whiterun, the original Tamriel LOD was still there, but as I got closer to the area the new LOD took. I really don't think the original can be over ridden unless all of the lod for Tamriel is redone. When I tried it, all kinds of weird things like floating buildings and landscape levels out of wack occurred. And it took over 17 hrs to accomplish using the CK. Oscape and Tes5LodGen would not recognize the changes made by the esp. I have had a lot of success using those two programs doing custom worlds in the past but would not work for this. DynDoLOD may work but that is load order dependent so would not work for distribution in a mod.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 01/04/2016 at 5:43 PM, aragorn58 said:

Yes. and after I figured out what I had to generate it took less than 30 minutes. ...

I did it for my Whitewater Farm but it changes nothing; the farm buildings still don't have distant lod and pop up when the player comes close to them. I had generated the objects, trees etc. alongside the textures. I suppose I should have made lod nifs for the buildings and installed them. Well, I won't bother. Do you really see a difference before/after in this mod?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

I did it for my Whitewater Farm but it changes nothing; the farm buildings still don't have distant lod and pop up when the player comes close to them. I had generated the objects, trees etc. alongside the textures. I suppose I should have made lod nifs for the buildings and installed them. Well, I won't bother. Do you really see a difference before/after in this mod?

yes, when I get a minute, I will post some before and after photos. One way to keep your buildings from popping in is to make a copy of them, give them a new editor name and mark them as Never Fades. It does not seem to effect performance enough to be noticeable.  I had to do that for my Forgotten Island mod because it is a rather flat small area without much blocking the buildings.

Edited by aragorn58
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, aragorn58 said:

yes, when I get a minute, I will post some before and after photos. One way to keep your buildings from popping in is to make a copy of them, give them a new editor name and mark them as Never Fades. ...

What about marking the originals as "never fades", instead of adding copies?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

What about marking the originals as "never fades", instead of adding copies?

Anyway, "never fades" is only for lights . I remember trying "is full lod" but it didn't give good results.

Oops, found "never fades"... in the base object, not in the reference. :)

Edit: and setting them "never fades" doesn't seem to work... I give up on that for now.

By the way, when I generated the lod yesterday, I noticed that there was a dragon on the lod file:

Tamriel.4.8.-3.jpg.86698c1077628d895c85b

and, always use a copy of the esp to generate them because that's what remained of my cell afterwards:

Spoiler

Capture02.thumb.JPG.34c5c208be3591fe99ea

Things are different with bigger uGridsToLoad settings, which is normal:

Spoiler

At uGridsToLoad=5, the farm (it's the one on the right) becomes visible when the player reaches that place in the image:

ugrids5.thumb.jpg.680633c711a64550861765

At uGridsToLoad=7, the farm becomes visible when the player reach that place in the image:

ugrids7.thumb.jpg.64b3c223f0ce0bc1cda37a

At uGridsToLoad=9, the farm becomes visible when the player reach that place in the image:

ugrids9.thumb.jpg.144739ac24bcfbb5d6fac5

I wonder if there is a way to simulate a uGridsToLoad=9 setting without having to actually modify it in the ini.

Edited by ladyonthemoon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/3/2016 at 2:59 AM, ladyonthemoon said:

Anyway, "never fades" is only for lights . I remember trying "is full lod" but it didn't give good results.

Oops, found "never fades"... in the base object, not in the reference. :)

 

Hidden Content

Things are different with bigger uGridsToLoad settings, which is normal:

Hidden Content

I wonder if there is a way to simulate a uGridsToLoad=9 setting without having to actually modify it in the ini.

I believe thats how DynDoLod works, but as I said it will work for you, but not good for distribution of a mod. It is load order specific.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, aragorn58 said:

I believe thats how DynDoLod works, but as I said it will work for you, but not good for distribution of a mod. It is load order specific.

I've regenerated the lod for Whitewater Farm, just in case; I made the "meshes" generation as described in my tutorial. I still don't see in what regenerating the lod for Tamriel is useful since distant lod is not generated for the buildings and they keep up popping up when the player comes quite close to them...

Edit: the only way I can think about how to have the buildings be visible in the distance is add lod meshes for these buildings. Problem is that the farm has one but the mill doesn't and I don't know how to make one... All right, maybe I should create my own thread about that.

Thanks for bearing with me! :)

Edited by ladyonthemoon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

I've regenerated the lod for Whitewater Farm, just in case; I made the "meshes" generation as described in my tutorial. I still don't see in what regenerating the lod for Tamriel is useful since distant lod is not generated for the buildings and they keep up popping up when the player comes quite close to them...

Edit: the only way I can think about how to have the buildings be visible in the distance is add lod meshes for these buildings. Problem is that the farm has one but the mill doesn't and I don't know how to make one... All right, maybe I should create my own thread about that.

Thanks for bearing with me! :)

Have you tried setting them as never fade.  Sorry I see you have. I don't understand why it will not work. in the photos I sent you in a pm, the tower has been set to never fade because they do not have distant LOD meshes, and they are visible from a long way off even with ugrids set at the default (5).

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, aragorn58 said:

..., the tower has been set to never fade because they do not have distant LOD meshes, ...

My buildings have disant lod meshes, maybe that's why setting them "never fades" doesn't work. Okay, maybe I should recreate them and set them "never fades" after removing their default lod meshes?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, ladyonthemoon said:

My buildings have disant lod meshes, maybe that's why setting them "never fades" doesn't work. Okay, maybe I should recreate them and set them "never fades" after removing their default lod meshes?

Well that may not be true. The buildings in my Forgotten Island mod afaik have distant LOD (it's been a while since I checked, but will do so later today when I can get in to the CK). They are copies of vanilla farm houses. I just gave them a different name and marked the base objects as never fade. Reason being as stated before, they are visible from a far way off, and would break immersion if they popped in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...