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

[sheson]

1 hour ago, Kattmandu said:

SSELODGen 4.1.4b keeps aborting.

...
...
[03:58] f:\tools\xlodgen\xlodgen_output\textures\terrain\tamriel\tamriel.4.60.4.dds
Operation aborted

bugreport.txt 771.48 kB · 1 download

Use the latest version from first post instead of a 2 year old version.

Check the load order for errors with xEdit and fix errors before generating LOD.
If problem persists, post the entire SSELODGen_log.txt, new bugreport.txt.

[Kattmandu]

21 minutes ago, sheson said:

Use the latest version from first post instead of a 2 year old version.

Check the load order for errors with xEdit and fix errors before generating LOD.
If problem persists, post the entire SSELODGen_log.txt, new bugreport.txt.

LOL, didn't realize there was an update.  Is there a way to subscribe to update notifications?

 

EDIT:  Just added the xLODGen channel to my Discord.  Will check there periodically for build updates.

Edited September 26 by Kattmandu

[sheson]

16 minutes ago, Kattmandu said:

LOL, didn't realize there was an update.  Is there a way to subscribe to update notifications?

You could follow this topic (though I do not know if title changes whenever the version changes are included) or follow the discord channel linked in the first post for the changelog.

[nalathequeen2186]

Hello, I'm having a problem with xLODGen and my in-game map. My map in-game is extremely low quality and has jagged water instead of smooth shorelines. The first time this happened, I assumed it was some kind of issue with my map mod (A Quality World Map), so I swapped it out for a more up-to-date one (A Clear Map of Skyrim and Other Worlds). For a little while it worked fine, then the problem inexplicably appeared again after playing for a few more hours, and nothing I've done has been able to fix it.

I looked up help online, and every source I found of people having this same problem (x, x, x, x) traced it back to an issue with the xLODGen output. Every source said their issue was fixed either by regenerating the terrain LOD while following these instructions exactly (which I have done, but the problem still persists), or deleting all the meshes and textures for LOD level 32 in the xLODGen output folder (which just resulted in my entire map having no meshes or textures at all). I'm at a loss as to how to continue to try to troubleshoot this problem.

[sheson]

48 minutes ago, nalathequeen2186 said:

Hello, I'm having a problem with xLODGen and my in-game map. My map in-game is extremely low quality and has jagged water instead of smooth shorelines. The first time this happened, I assumed it was some kind of issue with my map mod (A Quality World Map), so I swapped it out for a more up-to-date one (A Clear Map of Skyrim and Other Worlds). For a little while it worked fine, then the problem inexplicably appeared again after playing for a few more hours, and nothing I've done has been able to fix it.

I looked up help online, and every source I found of people having this same problem (x, x, x, x) traced it back to an issue with the xLODGen output. Every source said their issue was fixed either by regenerating the terrain LOD while following these instructions exactly (which I have done, but the problem still persists), or deleting all the meshes and textures for LOD level 32 in the xLODGen output folder (which just resulted in my entire map having no meshes or textures at all). I'm at a loss as to how to continue to try to troubleshoot this problem.

Moved to the xLODGen thread. Upload the SSELODGen_log.txt when making posts.
If you follow third party instructions, you need to ask their author/their forum for help. It is rather pointless linking to third party forums and discussion.

See the first post:
Set Optimize Unseen to off for LOD4 for first generation. Start experimenting with a value of 550 with a quality setting of 10 or lower for LOD32 (used for map) and compare coastlines and file size to other settings.

https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Generating-Terrain-LOD-Meshes
Typically use a Quality of 0 to 10 for LOD32 and set Optimize Unseen to 550 to improve coastlines on the map.

These settings will generate terrain LOD meshes for LOD level 32 that will have greatly detailed coastlines.

See https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Maps-And-Map-Mods

Also pay attention to this in the first post:
Use -o:"c:\OutputPath\" command line parameter to change where files are generated to, default is the game folder. Then install output as a mod.
Do not generate into any game, any mod manager folders or special Windows folder like Program Files x86, Users, Desktop, Documents, Downloads etc.

Or in the Readme.txt
Always set -o:"c:\OutputPath\" command line argument to change where files are generated to. The default is the game folder which risks replacing existing files and is problematic with mod managers, especially if they use some kind of virtualization. Do not generate into any game or any mod manager folders that are part (direct or indirect) of the virtual file system. Do not generate into the Overwrite folder of MO2.

Or here: https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Installation
To start xLODGen in the desired game mode, it should be set as a command line argument in addition to setting a dedicated output folder with -o:"c:\OutputPath\" as explained in the Readme.txt included in the xLODGen download archive. For example: "C:\Modding\xLODGenx64.exe" -sse -o:"c:\Output\"
Do not generate into game or mod manager folders. Just as with TexGen or DynDOLOD, always set and generate into a dedicated output folder and once generation is dome, install the output as a mod.

Make sure you understand how the mod manager you are using works.
Make sure you know how to set the overwrite order of mods (their of assets) correctly so that the desired terrain LOD meshes for LOD level 32 win (are loaded last).

xLODGen is a tool to generate LOD meshes and textures which should be generated into a dedicated output folder and then installed as  a mod as explained.
Removing the mod with the meshes / textures means the game will load the vanilla terrain LOD meshes / textures from the vanilla BSA again. If not, the INIs are not default or a 3rd party mod might be changing things.

[nalathequeen2186]

25 minutes ago, sheson said:

Set Optimize Unseen to off for LOD4 for first generation. Start experimenting with a value of 550 with a quality setting of 10 or lower for LOD32 (used for map) and compare coastlines and file size to other settings.

https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Generating-Terrain-LOD-Meshes
Typically use a Quality of 0 to 10 for LOD32 and set Optimize Unseen to 550 to improve coastlines on the map.

These settings will generate terrain LOD meshes for LOD level 32 that will have greatly detailed coastlines.

See https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Maps-And-Map-Mods

Also pay attention to this in the first post:
Use -o:"c:\OutputPath\" command line parameter to change where files are generated to, default is the game folder. Then install output as a mod.
Do not generate into any game, any mod manager folders or special Windows folder like Program Files x86, Users, Desktop, Documents, Downloads etc.

Or in the Readme.txt
Always set -o:"c:\OutputPath\" command line argument to change where files are generated to. The default is the game folder which risks replacing existing files and is problematic with mod managers, especially if they use some kind of virtualization. Do not generate into any game or any mod manager folders that are part (direct or indirect) of the virtual file system. Do not generate into the Overwrite folder of MO2.

Or here: https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Installation
To start xLODGen in the desired game mode, it should be set as a command line argument in addition to setting a dedicated output folder with -o:"c:\OutputPath\" as explained in the Readme.txt included in the xLODGen download archive. For example: "C:\Modding\xLODGenx64.exe" -sse -o:"c:\Output\"
Do not generate into game or mod manager folders. Just as with TexGen or DynDOLOD, always set and generate into a dedicated output folder and once generation is dome, install the output as a mod

I did follow all of these instructions and my map is still messed up.

Quote

If you follow third party instructions, you need to ask their author/their forum for help. It is rather pointless linking to third party forums and discussion.

The only reason I linked the posts from Reddit and whatnot was to give examples of other people who had the same problem and got solutions suggested to them that didn't work for me, so people could see what I was talking about. The only other link I gave was a list of instructions from this very website, so if that was considered "third party," I didn't know, since I thought this was the official forum for these tools.

EDIT: I also forgot to specify that I had followed the specific instructions from here, sorry. I used the other link to just make sure I was generating correctly with Cathedral Landscapes.

Edited September 30 by nalathequeen2186
clarification

[sheson]

12 minutes ago, nalathequeen2186 said:

I did follow all of these instructions and my map is still messed up.

The only reason I linked the posts from Reddit and whatnot was to give examples of other people who had the same problem and got solutions suggested to them that didn't work for me, so people could see what I was talking about. The only other link I gave was a list of instructions from this very website, so if that was considered "third party," I didn't know, since I thought this was the official forum for these tools.

The requested log was not provided.

The explained settings will generate terrain LOD meshes for LOD level 32 with detailed coast lines.

If  you do not see that in the game, it is because the game does not load these LOD meshes.
The game not showing any LOD meshes or textures is a setup, INI, mod or mod manager issue.

[nalathequeen2186]

Sorry, please be patient with me, I'm very new to using this tool and I have had nothing but trouble with it from day 1. I can't ever seem to get it to work correctly and I really don't know what I'm doing even after reading and rereading instructions 1000000 times.

3 minutes ago, sheson said:

The explained settings will generate terrain LOD meshes for LOD level 32 with detailed coast lines.

If  you do not see that in the game, it is because the game does not load these LOD meshes.
The game not showing any LOD meshes or textures is a setup, INI, mod or mod manager issue.

To clarify, it's not that the map never shows up, it's that ONLY if I try deleting the LOD 32 files from xLODGen (as per some of the suggestions I saw) I get no map. If I leave the LOD 32 files from xLODGen there, I get a low quality map.

I found 3 files but 2 were too big for it to allow me to upload it here so I'm gonna hope that this is the correct one.

bugreport.txt

[sheson]

19 minutes ago, nalathequeen2186 said:

Sorry, please be patient with me, I'm very new to using this tool and I have had nothing but trouble with it from day 1. I can't ever seem to get it to work correctly and I really don't know what I'm doing even after reading and rereading instructions 1000000 times.

To clarify, it's not that the map never shows up, it's that ONLY if I try deleting the LOD 32 files from xLODGen (as per some of the suggestions I saw) I get no map. If I leave the LOD 32 files from xLODGen there, I get a low quality map.

I found 3 files but 2 were too big for it to allow me to upload it here so I'm gonna hope that this is the correct one.

bugreport.txt 89.95 kB · 1 download

The requested SSELODGen_log.txt was not provided.
Zip large files and use a file service as explained in my signature.

You uploaded a bugreport.txt, which means the tool stopped with an error at one point. The error is related to MO2 virtual filesystem.
The bugreport.txt shows that at one point no command arguments were provided and thus the dedicated output folder was not set as explained in the instructions. That means there might be LOD files in the MO2 overwrite folder and/or loose LOD files were replaced in their respective mod folders. Delete any LOD files in the MO2 overwrite folder. Reinstall any mod that contains loose LOD files.
The bugreport shows that you installed xLODGen into a DynDOLOD folder. Do not mix/merge xLODGen with DynDOLOD, keep them separate.
The bugreport.txt seems to indicated you are using an older version from February instead of the latest version.

As I already explained, if the loose terrain LOD meshes are deleted from the load order, then the game will automatically load the vanilla terrain LOD meshes form its vanilla BSA. If the game does not do this, it is because of INI settings, maybe another mod or the mod manager.

[nalathequeen2186]

1 minute ago, sheson said:

The bugreport.txt shows that at one point no command arguments were provided and thus the dedicated output folder was not set as explained in the instructions. That means there might be LOD files in the MO2 overwrite folder and/or loose LOD files were replaced in their respective mod folders. Delete any LOD files in the MO2 overwrite folder. Reinstall any mod that contains loose LOD files.

I don't know why the bug report would be indicating such a thing. There is nothing in my MO2 overwrite folder because I have xLODGen set up with the argument: -o:"C:\DynDOLOD\xLODGen\xLODGen Output". I may not know very well how to use these LOD tools but I'm very familiar with MO2. I generated it to a folder not within MO2, then installed it after the fact as a mod.

I can move xLODGen out of the DynDOLOD folder and run it again but it takes 3+ hours to generate everything each time, so I really do want to know FOR SURE the next time I run it that it's going to generate the map LOD properly and I'm not gonna be wasting 3 hours for nothing. Alternatively if there's a way to only regenerate the map LOD that would be ideal as everything else in the game looks fine, it's just my map that's messed up.

Here's the log, I hope it's the correct one this time (I didn't know which one to upload before so please, again, be patient with me) from when I regenerated it last night.

[sheson]

37 minutes ago, nalathequeen2186 said:

I don't know why the bug report would be indicating such a thing. There is nothing in my MO2 overwrite folder because I have xLODGen set up with the argument: -o:"C:\DynDOLOD\xLODGen\xLODGen Output". I may not know very well how to use these LOD tools but I'm very familiar with MO2. I generated it to a folder not within MO2, then installed it after the fact as a mod.

I can move xLODGen out of the DynDOLOD folder and run it again but it takes 3+ hours to generate everything each time, so I really do want to know FOR SURE the next time I run it that it's going to generate the map LOD properly and I'm not gonna be wasting 3 hours for nothing. Alternatively if there's a way to only regenerate the map LOD that would be ideal as everything else in the game looks fine, it's just my map that's messed up.

Here's the log, I hope it's the correct one this time (I didn't know which one to upload before so please, again, be patient with me) from when I regenerated it last night.

The provided SSELODGen_log.txt shows that an old version of xLODGen was started and then nothing else. There are no log messages showing any LOD generation.

The game is installed in Program Files x86. I suggest to follow a modding guide how to properly setup the game to avoid issues with the file access/permission, UAC, anti vir etc.

Install the latest version from the first post into a new and empty folder. Do not move any files from old installation.

Use sensible settings when generating LOD, especially for the terrain LOD textures resolution and compression so that the LOD generation does not take hours.
If the problem is with terrain LOD meshes, do not check to generate anything else, especially not the terrain LOD textures. Generate the terrain LOD meshes only.
If the problem is with a specific worldspace, do not select other worldspaces. Each worldspace has distinct LOD files and separate folders which can be generated seperatly.
If the problem is with a specific LOD level, use the specific chunk option and the LOD level drop down to only generate that LOD level.
Generating terrain LOD meshes should take only minutes.

All of the above is not going to change anything, if the load order, the game setup, INI settings, mods or whatever etc. is causing issues like the LOD meshes not being loaded or shown in the game.

You can open the generated LOD meshes in NifSkope to check the coastlines.

[nalathequeen2186]

7 minutes ago, sheson said:

The provided SSELODGen_log.txt shows that an old version of xLODGen was started and then nothing else. There are no log messages showing any LOD generation.

I don't know why my logs aren't showing correct information then, because it did generate LODs and I installed them and everything. Not sure what to say there.

8 minutes ago, sheson said:

Use sensible settings when generating LOD, especially for the terrain LOD textures resolution and compression so that the LOD generation does not take hours.

I used the lowest suggested quality settings in the xLODGen guide, not sure if there are other settings I'm supposed to be aware of. My computer is not that great so I want the lowest quality options, I don't care if it looks less than stellar, only that it works. It takes hours probably because I'm using Seasons of Skyrim, and I don't really know if there's a way to lower generation times. That's not a problem if I only have to generate once, but regenerating over and over again is just not an option when I'm trying to troubleshoot.

11 minutes ago, sheson said:

All of the above is not going to change anything, if the load order, the game setup, INI settings, mods or whatever etc. is causing issues like the LOD meshes not being loaded or shown in the game.

I'm not sure what else I can do. To the best of my knowledge, my load order is exactly as it's supposed to be as described in the guide, in both the left and right panes, and I've never had any problems before this. My INI settings are pretty much vanilla except for a couple of changes that I only made AFTER encountering this problem, which didn't seem to change anything for the better or worse. I can upload my load order but idk if that's something that can be diagnosed here, or if there's a rule about it or whatever. I'm just at a complete loss.

Also, I went and checked every other worldspace that has maps (including ones added by the map mod I mentioned) and they all have extremely low quality meshes/textures and no object LODs as well.

13 minutes ago, sheson said:

You can open the generated LOD meshes in NifSkope to check the coastlines.

Would that even show it properly though, with the water and objects everything? Or would it just be the raw terrain? I've never used NifSkope so idk, sorry.

[nalathequeen2186]

So I answered my own last question and downloaded NifSkope, and it does seem like it must be an issue with the xLODGen output, because from what I can tell even as someone who doesn't fully know what they're looking at, the generated meshes look TERRIBLE lol. But I'm not fully sure what settings I need to change to get them to look right, and I'm also confused at why, if the generated meshes were this terrible, my map actually looked normal and fine for a few hours in game before suddenly changing into this monstrosity...

[z929669]

7 minutes ago, nalathequeen2186 said:

So I answered my own last question and downloaded NifSkope, and it does seem like it must be an issue with the xLODGen output, because from what I can tell even as someone who doesn't fully know what they're looking at, the generated meshes look TERRIBLE lol. But I'm not fully sure what settings I need to change to get them to look right, and I'm also confused at why, if the generated meshes were this terrible, my map actually looked normal and fine for a few hours in game before suddenly changing into this monstrosity...

If it's taking you three + hours to generate terrain LOD, then you have background processes interfering (or you are using a low-end PC). Kill background processes related to driver-based post processing. I use Radeon, so I kill all processes beginning with 'AMD' before using xLODGen or DynDOLOD. Alternatively, install only your GFX driver without the extra software.

Let's focus on one map mod at a time, because changing from ACMoS to any other map mod changes the paradigm. Just use ACMoS and install according to these instructions.
Your issue is likely due to your xLODGen Quality settings. Use the xLODGen settings shown here, which align with what sheson has been advising. The quality of LOD32 should be '0'.

Once you have everything set up correctly, carefully check your mods in the MO left pane, including Overwrite. If you are shunting output to a mod from a MO executable (or if you ever did), that output could interfere just as it could in Overwrite. Use the Data tab of the right pane and MO mod Information > Conflicts so sort out asset conflicts w.

Once everything is in order, regenerate xLODGen using the latest version. Then check your map in game. It will be bare, because you haven't run DynDOLOD at this point. You should have smooth shorelines though.

[sheson]

16 hours ago, nalathequeen2186 said:

I don't know why my logs aren't showing correct information then, because it did generate LODs and I installed them and everything. Not sure what to say there.

I used the lowest suggested quality settings in the xLODGen guide, not sure if there are other settings I'm supposed to be aware of. My computer is not that great so I want the lowest quality options, I don't care if it looks less than stellar, only that it works. It takes hours probably because I'm using Seasons of Skyrim, and I don't really know if there's a way to lower generation times. That's not a problem if I only have to generate once, but regenerating over and over again is just not an option when I'm trying to troubleshoot.

I'm not sure what else I can do. To the best of my knowledge, my load order is exactly as it's supposed to be as described in the guide, in both the left and right panes, and I've never had any problems before this. My INI settings are pretty much vanilla except for a couple of changes that I only made AFTER encountering this problem, which didn't seem to change anything for the better or worse. I can upload my load order but idk if that's something that can be diagnosed here, or if there's a rule about it or whatever. I'm just at a complete loss.

Also, I went and checked every other worldspace that has maps (including ones added by the map mod I mentioned) and they all have extremely low quality meshes/textures and no object LODs as well.

Would that even show it properly though, with the water and objects everything? Or would it just be the raw terrain? I've never used NifSkope so idk, sorry.

No SSELODGen_log.txt generating new level 32 terrain LOD meshes with the latest xLODGen has been provided.
The log messages are appended to the log file every time the tool is being closed properly.

Also post a screenshot of NifSkope showing a NIF with the issue from the generation with the latest version shown in the log you are going to upload.
Upload the NIF as example, too. You understand that LOD textures for the map put 32x32 cells into 256x256 or 512x512 pixels. They are supposed to be extremally low resolution compared to the real thing.

Using a mod like Seasons Of Skyrim explains why the game does not show LOD in case LOD for the current season was not generated or is removed.

Generating seasons can make LOD generation take up to 5 times as long.  For the test do not check Seasons in addition to generating terrain LOD meshes only for a specific worldspace only. Then the test result in the default season.