xLODGen - Terrain LOD beta 129 for FNV, FO3, FO4, FO4VR, TES5, SSE, TES5VR, ENDERAL, ENDERALSE

[zenayurvedic]

Ran this and completed successfully for all worlds in SSE, looks great in-game, thank you so much. Only problem I have is weird landscape in the far North/Sea of Ghosts: I was hoping the SSE-Terrain-ESM might help with this but after downloading the file from Mega MO2 won't see it in install from archive and 7zip can't extract it either. Am I being incredibly stupid or is there something wrong with the download?

[sheson]

The plugins are not compressed on mega. The browser should just save it as SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm which you just to put into the games data folder as is.

 

For MO you could manually create a new mod folder and move the file there. Or create an archive of the file yourself and then use the install from archive button.

[zenayurvedic]

So I am incredibly stupid, so used to downloading zips, apologies for wasting your valuable time.

[zenayurvedic]

 

Completely fixed the issue. Thank you for this technical wizardry.

[Vanders]

Oh my, so many options and combinations. It takes quite a while each time you run it. Any chance you could suggest a single set of settings for maximum effect?  

[sheson]

Oh my, so many options and combinations. It takes quite a while each time you run it. Any chance you could suggest a single set of settings for maximum effect?  

 

Use this tip from the first post to limit texture generation to a smaller area for testing different settings:

 

If you want to test larger texture sizes, use the chunk option to limit the number of textures that need to be generated. For example, check [x] Specific chunk, leave the drop down empty and set WS to the lower left cell coordinate of an 32x32 area, like 0, 0. It will then generate all textures up to 31,31. Not all worldspaces have their origin at 0,0 so you will have to check already generated meshes/texture filenames for their lower left coordinates.

 

You can also set the drop down to 4 to quickly generate a single LOD 4 texture for testing.

[dunc001]

I've just run this (Terrain LOD only, not Object/Tree LOD) for the first time on a full load order (230+ plugins and a lot of new worldspaces).  It took 7m31s.  It seems to have generated meshes for all worldspaces but only textures for two of them.  There were no errors in the logs but a lot of 'skipping this because they already exist'? Am I doing something wrong?  I went with the various test settings alt3rn1ty posted on page 3 of this thread with LOD4 and LOD8 textures set to 888, others to DXT1 if any of that makes a difference.

 

I ran it through MO2.  I have renamed the x64 exe to SSELODGenx64.exe.  Is it also supposed to generate an esm, because if so it hasn't.  The meshes and textures which were generated were placed in the MO2 overwrite directory.

 

LODGen_log.txt

 

Edit - Ignore the esm comment, I had missed the links in the OP for the optional esm!

Edited March 22, 2018 by dunc001

[sheson]

I've just run this (Terrain LOD only, not Object/Tree LOD) for the first time on a full load order (230+ plugins and a lot of new worldspaces).  It took 7m31s.  It seems to have generated meshes for all worldspaces but only textures for two of them.  There were no errors in the logs but a lot of 'skipping this because they already exist'? Am I doing something wrong?  I went with the various test settings alt3rn1ty posted on page 3 of this thread with LOD4 and LOD8 textures set to 888, others to DXT1 if any of that makes a difference.

 

I ran it through MO2.  I have renamed the x64 exe to SSELODGenx64.exe.  Is it also supposed to generate an esm, because if so it hasn't.  The meshes and textures which were generated were placed in the MO2 overwrite directory.

 

LODGen_log.txt

 

Edit - Ignore the esm comment, I had missed the links in the OP for the optional esm!

Yes, this just generates meshes and textures. After all this is "just" a CK replacement.

 

If you do not set dedicated output folder with -o it will write to the data folder.

 

Meshes will always overwrite existing older files.

 

The terrain texture generation will skip files that already exist in the output folder. So if it skipped files, it means there are already loose terrain textures with the same path/filename.dds in the output folder.

Edited March 22, 2018 by sheson

[dunc001]

So running it through MO2 doesn't automatically place everything into the 'virtual data folder' (aka overwrite)?  I checked in my actual data folder after running it and there are no new loose files at all, just the original bsa's. Like I said I'm pretty sure everything was output into overwrite but whereas I got this as mesh output:

 

 

I only got this as texture output:

 

 

I have some HD terrain LOD mods activated, and I have TexGen and DynDOLOD output enabled when I ran this.  So does that mean that only those two worldspaces were missing terrain LOD textures and the rest had as good if not better already than what would have been output by xLODGen?

Edited March 22, 2018 by dunc001

[David2408]

Hey Sheson, thank you for this tool! Has a lot of potential.

 

Just curious, as you were talking handmade LOD 32. Is there even a possible setting to achieve better shore lines for LOD 32 than with the handmade Vanilla meshes?

[sheson]

So running it through MO2 doesn't automatically place everything into the 'virtual data folder' (aka overwrite)?  I checked in my actual data folder after running it and there are no new loose files at all, just the original bsa's. Like I said I'm pretty sure everything was output into overwrite but whereas I got this as mesh output:

 

 

I only got this as texture output:

 

 

I have some HD terrain LOD mods activated, and I have TexGen and DynDOLOD output enabled when I ran this.  So does that mean that only those two worldspaces were missing terrain LOD textures and the rest had as good if not better already than what would have been output by xLODGen?

xLODGen checks if a terrain texture in outputfolder/path/to/file.dds exists. If the OS says the outputfolder/path/to/file.dds exists, it will be skipped.

 

In case of MO check the right pane Data tab to see what files already exist in the data folder.

 

I can only repeat myself: Use -o to set the outputfolder to a dedicated folder to avoid overwriting/skipping existing loose files.

 

Hey Sheson, thank you for this tool! Has a lot of potential.

 

Just curious, as you were talking handmade LOD 32. Is there even a possible setting to achieve better shore lines for LOD 32 than with the handmade Vanilla meshes?

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13175-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-tes5-sse/?p=216423

 

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13175-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-tes5-sse/?p=216953

Edited March 23, 2018 by sheson

[dunc001]

So I tried adding -o E:\Skyrim SE\xLODGen\xLODGen Output\ to the arguments line in the executables setup in MO2 (tried with and without parenthesis around the path) and the result is the same as posted above each time. What am I doing wrong?

[Dave0523]

Yes, that was a good recommendation :

 

I'm now using Bake normals,

 

LOD4 Diffuse 512, Normals 256, Protect Borders

 

LOD8 Diffuse 256, Normals 256, Optimize Unseen On

 

LOD16 Diffuse 256, Normals 128, Optimize Unseen On

 

LOD32 Diffuse 128, Normals 128, Optimise Unseen 500

These are the settings I'm using, and I'm having something weird going on with my snow lods. In the distance, they are an ugly grey color, but as I go closer, they turn the proper white color. Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

 

 

[sheson]

These are the settings I'm using, and I'm having something weird going on with my snow lods. In the distance, they are an ugly grey color, but as I go closer, they turn the proper white color. Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

You are being confused by the "improved" snow shader of Skyrim SE, which does things to the snow textures in the loaded cells, but Bethesda forgot that there is also snow in the LOD that would need to be adjusted as well. The same problem happens with vanilla LOD, despite Bethesda using an image program to change brightness/contrast of the terrain LOD texture to make things even worse. Different lighting conditions day/night etc. will continue to result in snow looking massively different in the loaded cells as long as the "improved" snow shader is active.

 

To make matter worse in Skyrim, the vanilla terrain noise textures also darkens the terrain LOD texture considerably, as explained in the first post. None of the Fallout games do this type of braindead nonsense.

 

With no contrast/brightness/gamma changes, the terrain LOD textures generated by xLODGen look exactly how the CK preview window shows the terrain with lighting off. This verifies that the problem is messed up / incomplete post processing in the game.

 

The options are either to turn off the "improved" snow shader through INI settings, adjust the noise texture so it does not artificially darken the terrain LOD textures beyond what is reasonable or use the brightness/contrast/gamma settings to make "wrong" but brighter terrain textures like Bethesda. However, keep in mind that snow LOD textures used by object LOD are also "darker" (e.g. correct) and in that case probably need to be brightened too (something the vanilla game does not do). However, there will never be constant lighting conditions, so there will be always a difference between snow in the loaded cells and LOD with the "improved" snow shader.

 

It is simply one of those many new features of Skyrim SE that just do not work right at all and are best turned off, IMHO.

Edited March 24, 2018 by sheson

[Diana_TES_GotH]

Would it be possible for you to add support for Oblivion?