LOD updating in existing worldspace

[syscrusher]

I need to generate updated LOD data for my mod, which modifies a group of landscape cells in a contiguous region. I found the LOD tutorials on CS wiki (http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Landscape_LOD), but that seems to assume that you have created a new worldspace (which I have not) and want to generate or update LOD for the entire world.

My mod is in the Tamriel worldspace. What's the correct method for generating LOD only for the cells I've modified? Do I have to do the whole worldspace and then delete all the unwanted data? If so, that seems like something that could run for days. Ideally, what I'd like is a way to "generate LOD for the current cell."

Thanks for any advice.

[Hanaisse]

My opinion, but regenerating LOD for Tamriel space and including that in your mod is probably redundant. Most experienced mod users will generate LOD with TES4LODGen anyway when installing new mods. You could just tell people to do that.

[syscrusher]

Thanks, I'll do that, or perhaps do it on my own system and offer the LOD files only for my cells as an optional download.

[Lanceor]

I'm of the opposite camp - given the number of users who don't read installation instructions, I think requiring that they use TES4LodGen would result in PEBKAC tech support bombardment.

If it's a new worldspace, I'd supply all the DistantLOD files. If the mod take place in Tamriel, I'd supply DistantLOD files only for the cells that really need it. In either case, I'd still direct the user to run TES4LODGen anyway.

To generate DistantLOD object data for particular cells, the only way I know of is to use TES4LODGen and then delete the unneeded stuff.

[Tigersong]

Educate a poor fellow. What exactly is LOD?

[lilith]

LOD = Level of Detail

For landscape it's important for modders or mod users to update their LOD, otherwise things such as structures added by the mod are not seen from a distance in game.

[Tigersong]

Thanks.

[Lanceor]

Just keep in mind that there's two types of LOD... LOD Objects and LOD Land. LOD objects are things like trees and buildings and easy to generate with TES4LODGen. LOD land is the actual mountain scenery that you see in the background... messing with it opens up a big can of worms so read a tutorial or three before playing around with it.

This screenshot shows a LOD experiment that I conducted a while ago and you can see the difference between LOD objects and LOD land.

[syscrusher]

Thanks, folks. The distant land is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve. My mod resculpts the local terrain around a town, and so it now renders differently when you look toward the town from a nearby hilltop than when you approach it. Everything works okay for the player walking around, but it's cosmetically disorienting and displeasing, so I'd like to fix it. I'm less worried about the buildings than about huge chunks of hillside vanishing as you approach, and being replaced by a market street.

Lanceor, aside from the basic LOD tutorial on the wiki, can you recommend any other specifics I should read?

Edited April 6, 2012 by syscrusher

[Lanceor]

I'm in China ATM with only my iPhone so gotta keep it brief (and I can't look up my previous work right now). I recall generating lod land with the cs and fixing the textures with a python script. Each lod mesh represents one quad and I discarded the quads that were unchanged from vanilla Tamriel.

Will be back on Monday if you need more details.

[syscrusher]

I'm in China ATM with only my iPhone so gotta keep it brief (and I can't look up my previous work right now). I recall generating lod land with the cs and fixing the textures with a python script. Each lod mesh represents one quad and I discarded the quads that were unchanged from vanilla Tamriel.

Will be back on Monday if you need more details.

Ah, if all it takes is a file diff to eliminate the unchanged ones, that's trivially easy for me. My development environment is Windows 7 in VMware under Linux, and there are shared folders visible to both host and guest o.s. So for me, it's just a matter of copying the new LOD files over to Linux, and then I run a built-in command utility to do the comparison.

When you have to do one thing, graphical interfaces are fine. When you need to do the same thing a few thousand times, command shell is your best friend.

[syscrusher]

Dumb follow-up question: If they're in the proper directory, will LOD files load from my BSA file?

[Lanceor]

I'm back. Yes, landscape LOD files work fine inside a BSA (unlike object LOD files that seem to require being unpacked). If you're replacing parts of Tamriel, you'll need archived invalidation of course.

The tutorial that I followed previously was this one. I was hit with the dreaded black landscape bug and I had to download and use the python script to get the distant landscape to work.

[syscrusher]

TES4LODgen worked perfectly for me! For the first time, I can see our entire village in one panorama.

I know there is another utility that creates high-definition LODs. I may try that on my "real" gaming system (which is a different machine from my virtual modding environment).

Thanks, all!

[syscrusher]

By the way, I think I'm going to combine a couple of people's recommendations... I'll recommend people run TES4LODgen or equivalent for themselves, but provide the LOD files as part of my release package (only my changed cells) as an alternative.

[Lanceor]

One more tip - if you supply DistantLOD files for objects, don't flag them "read only" to protect them - they will crash TES4LODGen.

[syscrusher]

Thanks for the tip, Lanceor. I wouldn't do that, because as a sysadmin I consider it rather rude to mark files read-only when installed on someone else's machine.