xLODGen - Terrain LOD beta 127 for FNV, FO3, FO4, FO4VR, TES5, SSE, TES5VR, ENDERAL, ENDERALSE

[alt3rn1ty]

Sheson where does xLODGen save its settings ?

I have been looking for some form of config file but cant find one anywhere.

 

I want to delete it and revert to defaults again, and then re-setup, just to be sure I am not wildly swinging away from the recommended default texture sizes (which, by now I have completely forgotten what they were to start with)

I have still no idea what the default xLODGen Diffuse Texture sizes are for SSE, maybe a hint if I am missing something obvious?.

 

You give tooltips and readme tips for the Normals, but not for Diffuse. Hence why I was looking for a setting file to delete so that xLODGen would revert to what it started with on my machine, before all my settings and changes became sticky.

 

 

Edit : PS Reference your report on Bethesda Forums to Bethesda for the LOD issues you found, recently Arthmoor pointed out a link that I did not know was available https://help.bethesda.net/app/incident?product=373

 

Its the official reporting method direct to devs apparently. So I quoted your OP and the link you gave on mega, and also linked the topic. I have made quite a few over the last week and thought I would give them yet another poke on the subject .. With all these CC mods spawning little extra fixes for SSE I thought it worth giving another shot.

 

Its not very intuitive, you have to click big graphics as part of the submission process which feels a bit strange .. But thats Bethesda's new forums for you.

Edited May 8, 2018 by alt3rn1ty

[icecreamassassin]

So having another issue I can't quite figure out. I have made several custom trees and built their billboards and they all come out looking fine. I however have this one tree which is a harvestable apple tree which uses the same base mesh as another tree I made custom billboards for (which work), but when I copy those files, rename them to match the proper form ID for the apple tree and edit the text file so it points to the correct mesh for the tree, I cannot get it to generate LOD on it at all. It is a TREE base form, but I keep getting this error:

<Note: OD1TreeApple01 "Apple Tree" [TREE:05DB8A22] LOD not found Textures\Terrain\LODGen\OdysseyAct1.esm\AppleTree01_00DB8A22.dds>

 

I have this is the text file in the LODGen folder:
 

 

[LOD]
Width=723.942505
Height=995.064819
Model=Odyssey\OD1\Balfiera\Trees\AppleTree01.nif

 

Model size settings are exactly the same as the original tree, just added the harvestable apples nodes to the mesh. Any ideas?

[sheson]

I have still no idea what the default xLODGen Diffuse Texture sizes are for SSE, maybe a hint if I am missing something obvious?.

 

You give tooltips and readme tips for the Normals, but not for Diffuse. Hence why I was looking for a setting file to delete so that xLODGen would revert to what it started with on my machine, before all my settings and changes became sticky.

 

 

Edit : PS Reference your report on Bethesda Forums to Bethesda for the LOD issues you found, recently Arthmoor pointed out a link that I did not know was available https://help.bethesda.net/app/incident?product=373

 

Its the official reporting method direct to devs apparently. So I quoted your OP and the link you gave on mega, and also linked the topic. I have made quite a few over the last week and thought I would give them yet another poke on the subject .. With all these CC mods spawning little extra fixes for SSE I thought it worth giving another shot.

 

Its not very intuitive, you have to click big graphics as part of the submission process which feels a bit strange .. But thats Bethesda's new forums for you.

The vanilla normal sizes are 256x256 for all LOD levels. If you do not bake normal-maps yo can leave the size for normals at 256 as for LOD4. Consider using no compression and compare with screenshots. Though the noise added by compression may actually be beneficial. If you bake normal-maps it is probably a good idea to use 512 or higher even for LOD4 to keep more of the extra detail. The higher LOD levels are probably always OK with 256x256 for now, but consider tesing 512x512 and compare with screenshots.

 

I actually saw that post/link to the bug report too. Lets see if anything happens from your reports. In case you ever get a reaction to any at let me know, as it might  motivate me to submit things myself.

So having another issue I can't quite figure out. I have made several custom trees and built their billboards and they all come out looking fine. I however have this one tree which is a harvestable apple tree which uses the same base mesh as another tree I made custom billboards for (which work), but when I copy those files, rename them to match the proper form ID for the apple tree and edit the text file so it points to the correct mesh for the tree, I cannot get it to generate LOD on it at all. It is a TREE base form, but I keep getting this error:

 

 

I have this is the text file in the LODGen folder:

 

 

 

Model size settings are exactly the same as the original tree, just added the harvestable apples nodes to the mesh. Any ideas?

You need to create the billboard texture Textures\Terrain\LODGen\OdysseyAct1.esm\AppleTree01_00DB8A22.dds

 

See Tree LOD Billboard Creation : Start to Finish

[icecreamassassin]

Sorry if I wasn't specific, but I do have that texture in place (and the matching text file I listed the contents from)

 

So even if the content of the texture file and the text file are identical in every regard, they can't simply be copied and renamed, the billboard would have to be re-generated off the copy of the mesh?

Edited May 8, 2018 by icecreamassassin

[alt3rn1ty]

The vanilla normal sizes are 256x256 for all LOD levels. If you do not bake normal-maps yo can leave the size for normals at 256 as for LOD4. Consider using no compression and compare with screenshots. Though the noise added by compression may actually be beneficial. If you bake normal-maps it is probably a good idea to use 512 or higher even for LOD4 to keep more of the extra detail. The higher LOD levels are probably always OK with 256x256 for now, but consider tesing 512x512 and compare with screenshots.

 

I actually saw that post/link to the bug report too. Lets see if anything happens from your reports. In case you ever get a reaction to any at let me know, as it might  motivate me to submit things myself.

 

OK thats the Normals Maps which are well documented and also on the tooltips

 

But my question is about the default sizes xLODGen has for the Diffuse textures for each LOD level ..

 

 

--------------------------------

 

The bug report to Bethesda ends with words to the effect of "You will not be contacted or responded to with this support issue", so its just a case as always of waiting to see if they actually do anything .. for another 6 years or so as usual :).

[sheson]

Sorry if I wasn't specific, but I do have that texture in place (and the matching text file I listed the contents from)

 

So even if the content of the texture file and the text file are identical in every regard, they can't simply be copied and renamed, the billboard would have to be re-generated off the copy of the mesh?

It checks if a resource exists at Game data path + Textures\Terrain\LODGen\OdysseyAct1.esm\AppleTree01_00DB8A22.dds in the load order (BSA or loose).

 

The contents of the texture *.dds file has to be a valid texture that can be read by the internal imaging program (up to BC3/ DXT5) or by the external tool Texconv.exe, which pretty much should be supporting any current format including BC7.

 

So if the file exists, but it still says LOD not found, then the texture format is not valid. Use dds format with DXT5 or maybe uncompressed 888 for the billboard *.dds texture.

[icecreamassassin]

Yeah sorry, disregard I did a dumb and didn't notice that the file had an extra .DDS in the name (The folder had extensions hidden and I didn't notice until just now). It's running fine now, Thanks.

[alt3rn1ty]

Yeah sorry, disregard I did a dumb and didn't notice that the file had an extra .DDS in the name (The folder had extensions hidden and I didn't notice until just now). It's running fine now, Thanks.

Dont blame yourself, Windows updates I think can switch that back to default of not showing the file extensions, I think I have seen mention the spring update of Win 10 did that.

[sheson]

OK thats the Normals Maps which are well documented and also on the tooltips

 

But my question is about the default sizes xLODGen has for the Diffuse textures for each LOD level ..

 

 

Sorry I am getting old, I misread that.

 

Personally for diffuse I go with 512 or 1024 right now for LOD4 and 512 for the rest. 256 is what the both Skyrim versions use and that is for sure too blurry for LOD4.

Fallout4 uses 512x512 for all LOD levels, so that seems to be a more suitable size for Skyrim SE.

 

The bug report to Bethesda ends with words to the effect of "You will not be contacted or responded to with this support issue", so its just a case as always of waiting to see if they actually do anything .. for another 6 years or so as usual :).

Based on that it seems Bethesda has still not realized what it means to have a micro payment platform that requires constant updates, care and communicating/working with the community for years to come. Well at least we can turn off/disable most of the "new and improved" non working crap that was added to Skyrim SE to make it somewhat usable again.

Yeah sorry, disregard I did a dumb and didn't notice that the file had an extra .DDS in the name (The folder had extensions hidden and I didn't notice until just now). It's running fine now, Thanks.

No worries.

Edited May 8, 2018 by sheson

[alt3rn1ty]

Top Banana, thank you :), I now have a basis to not deviate too far from.

My next round of generation will be messing with quality 4/6/8/10, or maybe 3/5/7/9, I know they will be bigger meshes but this game can throw a few thousand more around comfortably.

[sheson]

Top Banana, thank you :), I now have a basis to not deviate too far from.

My next round of generation will be messing with quality 4/6/8/10, or maybe 3/5/7/9, I know they will be bigger meshes but this game can throw a few thousand more around comfortably.

You can always use the max vertices to limit max file size in case there are unusually large outliers.

[icecreamassassin]

so I encountered an odd hiccup I think. the object LOD process seems to have messed up on setting up the LOD textures on one specific surface. These two towers in the water are the same NIF, same form ID item and as you can see from the pic, the model has textures properly, but the LOD of the one on the left (which is just outside of normal render range) has a missing texture on the top. It's only that surface even though the rest of the model has parts that have the same texture which show up just fine. I also had one occurrence where a rock slope mesh had the LOD atlas image loading on the surface of it. Couple those two odd ball things with the occasional rock textures jumping when you change perspective or the weird scrolling textures and I am starting to suspect there maybe is a hiccup in how the LOD for objects is processing? These things don't happen all the time though and usually when I re-run it, it goes away and works fine, but every so often one of these peculiarities seems to occur randomly.

 

[sheson]

Check the bto in nifskope or better yet, just upload the bto, the LOD nif (looks like a custom model) for the tower and all its non vanilla textures. Send link in discord if you like.

Edited May 10, 2018 by sheson

[icecreamassassin]

thanks, DM'd you the file and screen shot. Thanks for looking at it.

[LoD7995]

Got an odd issue with the terrain meshes for DLC1HunterHQWorld and the DLC01FalmerValley, but the comment will only refer to the former. LOD water will show up in conjunction with the fully loaded water even when being very close, causing flickering. I don't think that is related to slowly loading terrain, as the terrain textures are correctly disappearing. 

 

I tried recreating the meshes with various options (optimize unseen on/off, protect borders on/off, quality settings from 0 to 10 for all LOD levels), but couldn't prevent the issue. There is only a very small spot with water in the DLC1HunterHQWorld (corresponding terrain mesh is dlc1hunterhqworld.4.-1.-5.btr). The issue is reproducable, i. e. the flickering will disappear when the created terrain meshes aren't present and vice versa.