xLODGen - Terrain LOD beta 128 for FNV, FO3, FO4, FO4VR, TES5, SSE, TES5VR, ENDERAL, ENDERALSE

[sheson]

1 hour ago, DoubleYou said:

The atlas is being split in two. Would it be best to lower the max texture size from 1024 to 512 to make it fit on 1?

There is a fMipBias that defaults to 0 under [Display]. I could try adjusting it I suppose.

It would be better to raise the max atlas size to 8k x 8k. If it already is that size, I will add 16k  option for a test.

[DoubleYou]

26 minutes ago, sheson said:

It would be better to raise the max atlas size to 8k x 8k. If it already is that size, I will add 16k  option for a test.

It already is that size. I can test 16k.

[sheson]

51 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

It already is that size. I can test 16k.

https://mega.nz/file/kExX1SLZ#H5SIxtLy4ucXXPq0_AQPMy73OyCJDljhZKZf1jRyw18

Doublecheck the generated atlas is actually 16k in at least one dimension and not split anymore.

[DoubleYou]

55 minutes ago, sheson said:

https://mega.nz/file/kExX1SLZ#H5SIxtLy4ucXXPq0_AQPMy73OyCJDljhZKZf1jRyw18

Doublecheck the generated atlas is actually 16k in at least one dimension and not split anymore.

That fixed everything. Atlas size was 16384x8192. Packed into BA2 and there is no degradation with the mipmapped texture.

[Fluffbones]

Hello, I have an issue that I've already brought up at ACMOS mod page but narrowed down to xLODGen since then.

So the original issues were numerous but got fixed by simply discovering the fact that there's an Overwrite folder in MO2 and somehow "Meshes" and "Textures" from an older xLODGen run got conjured up there - and so I couldn't see any difference between before and after whenever I did another xLODGen run. Essentially - dumb me.

Deleting those folders from Overwrite made this mod and ACMOS Road Generator Tool work. But still the terrain is somehow bad, the textures are just ugly:

- nothing but A Clear Map Of Skyrim.esp loaded

- xLODGen on top of it (generated with temporary xLODGen and Cathedral Landscapes terrain recources)

- with my full LO

It also Z-fights pretty noticeably (the regular LOD's mostly not the map one).

Naturally I have reviewed the settings I use for all the tools, for the sake of troubleshooting I re-ran xLODGen a few times with STEP guide ones.

My left pane ends with: Synthesis -> two disabled xLODGen Resources (terrain and Cathedral Landscapes) -> ACMOS -> xLODGen Output -> DynDOLOD Output.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Fluffbones said:

Hello, I have an issue that I've already brought up at ACMOS mod page but narrowed down to xLODGen since then.

So the original issues were numerous but got fixed by simply discovering the fact that there's an Overwrite folder in MO2 and somehow "Meshes" and "Textures" from an older xLODGen run got conjured up there - and so I couldn't see any difference between before and after whenever I did another xLODGen run. Essentially - dumb me.

Deleting those folders from Overwrite made this mod and ACMOS Road Generator Tool work. But still the terrain is somehow bad, the textures are just ugly:

- nothing but A Clear Map Of Skyrim.esp loaded

- xLODGen on top of it (generated with temporary xLODGen and Cathedral Landscapes terrain recources)

- with my full LO

It also Z-fights pretty noticeably (the regular LOD's mostly not the map one).

Naturally I have reviewed the settings I use for all the tools, for the sake of troubleshooting I re-ran xLODGen a few times with STEP guide ones.

My left pane ends with: Synthesis -> two disabled xLODGen Resources (terrain and Cathedral Landscapes) -> ACMOS -> xLODGen Output -> DynDOLOD Output.

To get all of its benefits, ACMoS relies on DynDOLOD, so you have to enable Level32 in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini and set your '/' mesh rule to Level0 at LOD32. There are game INI settings to consider as well.

Use xLODGen to generate terrain LOD. There is no "xLODGen Resources". Instead, there is "DynDOLOD Resources" needed by DynDOLOD, which is used to generate object LOD.

Don't install xLODGen as a mod, and send it's output to a path inside the xLODGen install folder outside of your game folder (default behavior). Much is explained in the OP of this topic.

Also carefully read the ACMoS description ... scroll down to the xLODGen and DynDOLOD instructions, and we explain how to set all of this up in the Step guide as well:

Install xLODGen

Generate LOD

---

This is all fairly advanced and requires careful reading through documentation or guides and understanding of your mod manager (MO it seems).

[Fluffbones]

Thank you for the response.

I double-checked and I do have Level32=1 in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini but I did miss the instruction inside the .ini itself to set uLockedObjectMapLOD=32 in Skyrim.ini. I fixed that but "A Clear Map Of Skyrim.ini" already has that line and should already override the Skyrim.ini setting.

xLODGen is exactly the tool I used to generate terrain LOD. By xLODGen Resources I meant the temporary resources you enable for xLODGen available here and here. The guide does say that you need them on for xLODGen and off afterwards it even links them.

I'm confused here. I did not "install" it as a mod (as in dragging it into MO2 and then installing) but I do have it as a mod in my LO (by creating an empty mod and dragging the Textures/Meshes (which is all there is) folders from the specified in arguments xLODGen output folder (my arguments in MO2 are -SSE -o:"C:\Modding\xLODGen\xLODGen_Output) to the empty mod folder in C:\Modding\MO2 - SSE AE\mods").
Seems not to contradict OP and xLODGen Readmes and to be as per the guide. I did the same with TexGen and DynDOLOD outputs.

On the ACMOS page I triple-checked the description and the only thing I missed was to set Expert=1 in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini. That is fixed now.

Spoiler

My DynDOLOD settings from the last run (a few days ago, way before my last xLODGen run).

Settings from my last xLODGen run (re-ran it today, DynDOLOD was already generated). Used 512 for LOD4-8-16 and 4096 for LOD32 this time just to see if anything changes. Other boxes are unchecked (Trees/Object LOD, Occlusion, Specific chunk).

 

[sheson]

4 hours ago, Fluffbones said:

Hello, I have an issue that I've already brought up at ACMOS mod page but narrowed down to xLODGen since then.

So the original issues were numerous but got fixed by simply discovering the fact that there's an Overwrite folder in MO2 and somehow "Meshes" and "Textures" from an older xLODGen run got conjured up there - and so I couldn't see any difference between before and after whenever I did another xLODGen run. Essentially - dumb me.

Deleting those folders from Overwrite made this mod and ACMOS Road Generator Tool work. But still the terrain is somehow bad, the textures are just ugly:

- nothing but A Clear Map Of Skyrim.esp loaded

- xLODGen on top of it (generated with temporary xLODGen and Cathedral Landscapes terrain recources)

- with my full LO

It also Z-fights pretty noticeably (the regular LOD's mostly not the map one).

Naturally I have reviewed the settings I use for all the tools, for the sake of troubleshooting I re-ran xLODGen a few times with STEP guide ones.

My left pane ends with: Synthesis -> two disabled xLODGen Resources (terrain and Cathedral Landscapes) -> ACMOS -> xLODGen Output -> DynDOLOD Output.

I do not provide support for third party mods. This is the xLODGen support channel. xLODGen does not change how the engine works.

Read the first post and the Terrain-LOD-Readme.txt included in the download archive.

For questions, help regarding DynDOLOD 3 Alpha use https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/16796-dyndolod-3-alpha-95/

Terrain LOD textures are generated exactly as the full terrain but with lower resolution. For terrain LOD textures to have more detail, increase the resolutions, check bake normal-maps. Use BC7 Quick, so terrain LOD texture generation doesn't take as long. The visual differences to BC7 Max will be insignificant - if at all.
If you use a tool that edits terrain LOD textures after generation, compare its output to before to make sure it did not degrade resolution/quality.

For better terrain LOD meshes, set values for quality, check the protect cell border and the make use of the optimize unseen dropdown.

[DoubleYou]

6 hours ago, Fluffbones said:

Hello, I have an issue that I've already brought up at ACMOS mod page but narrowed down to xLODGen since then.

So the original issues were numerous but got fixed by simply discovering the fact that there's an Overwrite folder in MO2 and somehow "Meshes" and "Textures" from an older xLODGen run got conjured up there - and so I couldn't see any difference between before and after whenever I did another xLODGen run. Essentially - dumb me.

Deleting those folders from Overwrite made this mod and ACMOS Road Generator Tool work. But still the terrain is somehow bad, the textures are just ugly:

- nothing but A Clear Map Of Skyrim.esp loaded

- xLODGen on top of it (generated with temporary xLODGen and Cathedral Landscapes terrain recources)

- with my full LO

It also Z-fights pretty noticeably (the regular LOD's mostly not the map one).

Naturally I have reviewed the settings I use for all the tools, for the sake of troubleshooting I re-ran xLODGen a few times with STEP guide ones.

My left pane ends with: Synthesis -> two disabled xLODGen Resources (terrain and Cathedral Landscapes) -> ACMOS -> xLODGen Output -> DynDOLOD Output.

It's obvious from your screens that a mod is still overwriting your xLODGen output. 

[Fluffbones]

My apologies, It seems that I have in fact done everything right and xLODGen did it's job as expected. My issue was with a third party mod.

Specifically it was ACMOS, hiding it's .bsa in MO2 removed all the gritty textures over the lod.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Fluffbones said:

My apologies, It seems that I have in fact done everything right and xLODGen did it's job as expected. My issue was with a third party mod.

Specifically it was ACMOS, hiding it's .bsa in MO2 removed all the gritty textures over the lod.

The author of ACMoS posted just before this post. I'm not clear on this statement.

You shouldn't be hiding the ACMoS BSA but rather letting xLODGen Output 'mod' override ACMoS and all other mods (except for DynDOLOD Output 'mod'). ACMoS should be active (with unhidden BSA) when generating terrain LOD with xLODGen.

[Fluffbones]

I'll elaborate: I saw sheson's reasonable remark about third party mods and decided to test it in full-vanilla environment (so not even MO2 or SKSE). It turned out that xLODGen works flawlessly in that environment (I just manually launched it outside of MO2 to be sure and used default output to data folder). So I simply compared ACMOS on/off and Vanilla/xLODGen (4 variations total).

Turned out it was ACMOS doing something to the textures so not to clutter this thread I went back to that mod's page and asked about it - turned out there's "A Clear Map Of Skyrim - Textures.bsa" which contains worldmapoverray_n.dds and worldmapoverraysnow_n.dds that seem to add this gritty look to textures. DoubleYou recommended I simply delete those files. To quickly test it I hid the archive in MO2 and it worked so I replied here to make it clear that it was my bad. Seems like that was actually the intended look I just didn't like it and thought it was bugged.

And again I did read and follow every manual/instruction/guide and my xLODGen files DO override ACMOS as is required in said manuals/instructions/guides. I even posted the order in which my left pane ends just so this question does not arise. It's just that in ACMOS .bsa file those .dds textures are located directly inside the Textures folder while in xLODGen output folder that Texture folder only has subfolders. So xLODGen has nothing to override those files with.

TLDR it had nothing to do with xLODGen

[toggy_wonga]

Now that I'm here, what would you recommend be the value of optimize unseen? I''m gonna try 550 again on the LOD8, 16 and 32s, and post my results. 

[toggy_wonga]

https://imgur.com/a/6H7STTq This is with 550 unseen optimization (i have buildings turned off as per ACMOS's instructions). The islands look better but i'm still getting that floating ocean border thing. 

[toggy_wonga]

I got the islands down and it looks loads better but the ocean thing is still happening. https://imgur.com/a/5F8WTxk 

 

What am I doing wrong? Should i make the chunks generated be from a bigger value, like 100,100 to -99,-99?