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

[sheson]

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

I might look into it at some point.

[Dave0523]

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.

What's annoying is that I DO have the shader turned off. That's why the "local" snow is white, instead of matching the lod grey. I just decided to give up on the terrain generation, and just use the objects.

[sheson]

What's annoying is that I DO have the shader turned off. That's why the "local" snow is white, instead of matching the lod grey. I just decided to give up on the terrain generation, and just use the objects.

 

So if the textures in the loaded cells match the object LOD textures already with "improved" snow shader turned off, all that is left to do is to adjust the noise texture as explained in the first post.

Then terrain LOD texture  matches the object LOD texture as well without any brightness/contrast/gamma changes, as can be seen from picture #3 forward.

Edited March 25, 2018 by sheson

[LoD7995]

Thanks so much for this tool! Would never have thought it's possible to create something like this.

 

Would it be possible to create a plugin that fixes the green squares in the worldspace of Blackreach and if so how would one do that? In vanilla it's impossible to notice it, because your not able to open the world map, but as soon as you use https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14976 (picture 6 shows it, but around the shown area there are a lot more green cells) or something similar it becomes very noticable.

 

Same for the Forgotten Vale, adding "empty" cells around the main land would make the transitions a lot smoother.

Edited March 26, 2018 by LoD7995

[sheson]

Thanks so much for this tool! Would never have thought it's possible to create something like this.

 

Would it be possible to create a plugin that fixes the green squares in the worldspace of Blackreach and if so how would one do that? In vanilla it's impossible to notice it, because your not able to open the world map, but as soon as you use https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14976 (picture 6 shows it, but around the shown area there are a lot more green cells) or something similar it becomes very noticable.

 

Same for the Forgotten Vale, adding "empty" cells around the main land would make the transitions a lot smoother.

 

If those visual artifacts are caused by missing cell data, it is possible that xLODGen already fixes it because of the defaults settings it uses for undefined cells. Otherwise add terrain to the missing cells with CK.

Edited March 26, 2018 by sheson

[El_Rizzo]

I have a comprehension question regarding the normal map resolutions for terrain LOD in Fallout 4, why does the native resolution increase with higher LOD levels? Since higher LOD levels are farther away, shouldn't the normal map texture resolution decrease? I'm currently using the settings alt3rn1ty posted on page 3, which do decrease normal map resolution with higher LOD levels, but I'm curious why the native ones do the opposite and for what reason.

[sheson]

I have a comprehension question regarding the normal map resolutions for terrain LOD in Fallout 4, why does the native resolution increase with higher LOD levels? Since higher LOD levels are farther away, shouldn't the normal map texture resolution decrease? I'm currently using the settings alt3rn1ty posted on page 3, which do decrease normal map resolution with higher LOD levels, but I'm curious why the native ones do the opposite and for what reason.

The existing world normal data for each cell is 33x33 pixels which one pixel shared with the next cell, so it is 32x32 effective. So for 4x4 cells the native resolution is 128x128, for 8x8 cells it is 256 and so on.

 

It so happens that it is internally easier to work with a 64x64 resolution for each cell, which results in 256x256 for 4x4 cells, 512x512 for 8x8 cells and so on.

 

Increasing the resolution beyond those values is not really improving the (uncompressed) detail anymore.

 

When baking terrain texture normalmaps onto the world normals, this changes however, as there are 12 textures per cell in Fallout 4 (16 for FO3, FNV and 24 for the Skyrim)

 

Typically Fallout 4 terrain textures are 2048x2048, so the native normalmap resolution per cell would be 24576. So when baking normal-maps increasing the normal resolution beyond the native values makes sense, since there is more detail then.

Edited April 7, 2018 by sheson

[El_Rizzo]

Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly, instead of decreasing the resolution with growing LOD level, it should actually be increased since it needs to cover more cells at once, correct? Assuming I understood this correctly, this also applies to diffuse maps as well, right? Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm not really familiar with how LOD works, only what it does, but I'm always happy to learn more about it :)

Edited April 7, 2018 by El_Rizzo

[sheson]

Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly, instead of decreasing the resolution with growing LOD level, it should actually be increased since it needs to cover more cells at once, correct? Assuming I understood this correctly, this also applies to diffuse maps as well, right? Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm not really familiar with how LOD works, only what it does, but I'm always happy to learn more about it :)

You do not really need to increase or decrease the resolution for the different LOD levels, because the textures are further away from player. At some point it will just use higher mipmaps.

 

The point of "native" world normal resolution per cell is that there is no need to use any higher resolution for the textures, unless normal-maps are baked.

 

Generally it would probably be better to use lower resolution but less/no compression. However, the compression can actually add noise to terrain that could look "better".

 

To find best/sane values one would have to test different resolutions and compare screenshots and note VRAM usage.... per different game and per different terrain LOD distances.

[El_Rizzo]

Okay, I guess I'll play around with the settings a bit and see what looks best without murdering my Vram usage.

[alt3rn1ty]

Recommended Optionals

 

TES5-Terrain-Tamriel.esm, SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm

Put in game data folder obviously. Adds back terrain for Skyrim (Tamriel worldspace) at the outer edges so there is no missing terrain meshes/textures when generating terrain LOD for Skyrim.

Only required to be loaded when generating terrain LOD. No harm done when loaded in-game but typically the player can not get close to these areas, so it is rather useless.

My Bold - Do those include the square hole you can see in the Sea East of Winterhold, when looking ENE from Azuras Statue ?

 

https://srmap.uesp.net/?locx=111395&locy=77770&zoom=13&search=shrine%20of%20azura

 

I haven't tried the game leaving these plugins installed, and I do still see that square hole from that vantage point (after previously having had the plugin installed to generate xLODGen Terrain). Middle of the screenshot ..

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by alt3rn1ty

[sheson]

My Bold - Do those include the square hole you can see in the Sea East of Winterhold, when looking ENE from Azuras Statue ?

Nope. Those are caused by overzealous TVDT occlusion data of the CELL the player is in.

 

The optional plugins adds data to make sure the BTR meshes for all LOD levels have height and texture data for all their cells. No more terrain LOD gabs at the outer the edges.

[alt3rn1ty]

Thanks Sheson :).

 

I just did a search on "TVDT occlusion data" and found one of the Unofficial Patch Team, Nico, has a mod for the same issue :

 

For Skyrim LE https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/78241/

For Skyrim SE https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6314

[sheson]

Thanks Sheson :).

 

I just did a search on "TVDT occlusion data" and found one of the Unofficial Patch Team, Nico, has a mod for the same issue :

 

For Skyrim LE https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/78241/

For Skyrim SE https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6314

Yes, but it is a really bad idea to remove all occlusion data from all cells. That will destroy FPS looking in specific directions easily. If anything just remove it from the cells from which those holes are really obvious.

 

Also, changing the LOD distances can sometimes help in case other LOD Levels at the exact same location are not flagged for removal.

 

I know how the data works, but I have yet to find the time and motivation to work on it and see if I can generate it. Maybe some day.

Edited April 9, 2018 by sheson

[icecreamassassin]

So I have run xLODGen using the initial settings suggested and this is the result I get: My custom sand textures are not showing up on the LOD (the sand should be continuing up around the shore) and the general LOD seems to not be using the actual cell textures properly (the grass/dirt patches always LOD as a darker mossy patched green grass) The only things that seem to be showing properly are DirtPath01 as my road base and the ocean floor textures. They seem to be rendering just fine in most places. As things load into view the LOD fades out and the texture blending just seems odd to me. Are there specific sizes or compression settings that have to be put on the custom textures to make them show up? And what about the vanilla textures that just seem to be off, any suggestions?

I will say this program has been amazing to use. It is so much faster than the CK or Oscape, and despite the hiccups I'm having (probably something I'm missing) the quality is nice.

Edited April 15, 2018 by icecreamassassin