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

[drift123]

I've read through this thread a couple times and the manual and still have some questions. Hopefully not too many and that the answers you provide will be useful to others. Forgive me if I missed an answer that was already provided.

1) How does Raise Steepness affect the visuals? Better to check on?

2) Does LOD32 only affect the world map? Can I simply delete LOD32 after generation to make it compatible with a Quality World Map?

3) Is it correct to add the command line ' -sse -o:"c:\output"' to the Target field of the SSELodgen shortcut on my desktop?

4) I am seeing mixed recommendations for texture resolutions.

T4gtr34um3r shared his settings for Terrain LOD Redone, and he increases the texture resolutions
as the LOD level increases. His rationale is that distant LOD is spread over more area.

He uses: LOD4 512/1024, LOD8 1024/1024, LOD16 2048/2048 (quality 5,10,15)

In this thread however, I see people using lower resolutions as the LOD level increases. Their rationale is that more distant terrain still looks detailed at a lower resolution.

For example, Godescalcus used: LOD4 512/256, LOD8 256/256, LOD16 256/128 (quality 5/10/10)

In your opinion, which approach will look better?

5) What is the purpose of the vanilla noise texture, visually? What is the filepath to noise.dss in the game folder?

6) If I let SSELodgen output files to the default folder, will it create a new folder for all the generated files, or mix up with/overwrite my existing data files? My worry is that I'll mess up the data files and have to reinstall mods (I use NMM) to undo changes.

7) Can I leave all mods activated in my load order when generating terrain LOD?

Edited July 23, 2018 by drift123

[sheson]

I've read through this thread a couple times and the manual and still have some questions. Hopefully not too many and that the answers you provide will be useful to others. Forgive me if I missed an answer that was already provided.

I suggest to read the included Terrain-LOD-Readme.txt.

 

1) How does Raise Steepness affect the visuals? Better to check on?

Normals of higher mip maps levels will be steeper instead of going more flat. They will react stronger to light instead of less.

 

2) Does LOD32 only affect the world map? Can I simply delete LOD32 after generation to make it compatible with a Quality World Map?

Terrain LOD level 32 is used in game for the map and the furthest distance (unless you set LOD level 16 distance so high it pushes level 32 out of the max render distance of about 100 cells).

 

 

You can delete or overwrite any LOD files you want. The game just loads them and displays them. There is no plugin/save game involvement.

 

3) Is it correct to add the command line ' -sse -o:"c:\output"' to the Target field of the SSELodgen shortcut on my desktop?

I don't know what it is you want to do, but the arguments are valid.

 

4) I am seeing mixed recommendations for texture resolutions.

 

T4gtr34um3r shared his settings for Terrain LOD Redone, and he increases the texture resolutions

as the LOD level increases. His rationale is that distant LOD is spread over more area.

 

He uses: LOD4 512/1024, LOD8 1024/1024, LOD16 2048/2048 (quality 5,10,15)

 

In this thread however, I see people using lower resolutions as the LOD level increases. Their rationale is that more distant terrain still looks detailed at a lower resolution.

 

For example, Godescalcus used: LOD4 512/256, LOD8 256/256, LOD16 256/128 (quality 5/10/10)

 

In your opinion, which approach will look better?

You create LOD with different resolutions and then compare visuals and resource usage for yourself.

 

Higher resolutions has more detail, less resolution has less detail. But you might not even see the all the detail anyways because the texture is far away / uses a high mip map level anyways. The normals size depends on baking option and compression.

 

5) What is the purpose of the vanilla noise texture, visually? What is the filepath to noise.dss in the game folder?

As already explained the textures\terrain\noise.dds is an overlay that modifies the brightness. It adds noise, so an area that uses the same terrain texture doesn't look monotonous.

 

6) If I let SSELodgen output files to the default folder, will it create a new folder for all the generated files, or mix up with/overwrite my existing data files? My worry is that I'll mess up the data files and have to reinstall mods (I use NMM) to undo changes.

Terrain LOD files have a specific path structure in the data folder. As explained already, generating terrain meshes will overwrite existing files. Generating terrain textures will skip over existing files.

 

7) Can I leave all mods activated in my load order when generating terrain LOD?

xLODGen generates LOD for the current load order based on the current plugins and assets in the load order. If you deactivate mods their plugins/assets will not be used. There are plugins/mods that make changes that can affect tree and object LOD generation negatively. Terrain LOD is fine so far.

Edited July 23, 2018 by sheson

[drift123]

Thanks for these answers. I have read the Read-me but I get confused as I'm not very familiar with some of the terms used. I guess I need to look them up in more detail.

 

With the command line question, I am trying to set the output folder to somewhere other than the default path. But I don't have Mod Organizer, so I am asking if it can be done alternatively by creating a shortcut for SSELodgen, going to shortcut properties and placing the arguments in the target field.

 

Anyhow I think I have a good enough understanding now and should experiment for myself.

[sheson]

Thanks for these answers. I have read the Read-me but I get confused as I'm not very familiar with some of the terms used. I guess I need to look them up in more detail.

 

With the command line question, I am trying to set the output folder to somewhere other than the default path. But I don't have Mod Organizer, so I am asking if it can be done alternatively by creating a shortcut for SSELodgen, going to shortcut properties and placing the arguments in the target field.

 

Anyhow I think I have a good enough understanding now and should experiment for myself.

All instruction are mod manager agnostic. Adding command line parameters to an executable is a basic OS function. To automatically apply them one can use windows shortcuts or batch files for example.

[drift123]

Well I did my first terrain LOD generation and received no errors. Took 42 min with an i7 7700k and the filesize is very large, 18.8 GB. Though only about 5 gb compressed as .zip archive. Is this normal for higher resolutions?

 

Settings used:

 

LOD4: quality 5, 1024/1024

LOD8: quality 10, 512/512

LOD16: quality 10, 512/512

LOD32: quality 15, 512/512

Edited July 23, 2018 by drift123

[sheson]

Well I did my first terrain LOD generation and received no errors. Took 42 min with an i7 7700k and the filesize is very large, 18.8 GB. Is this normal for higher resolutions?

 

Settings used:

 

LOD4: quality 5, 1024/1024

LOD8: quality 10, 512/512

LOD16: quality 10, 512/512

LOD32: quality 15, 512/512

When doubling the resolution of textures it means quadruple the file size.

[sheson]

Beta 22 fixes that water bug in Tamriel in case SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm is not loaded that we discussed with Zanderat and David2408

Edited July 23, 2018 by sheson

[drift123]

Well, here is my generated terrain. With the adjusted vanilla noise texture, the terrain LOD matches the loaded cell terrain very well. The light and dark areas are from ENB cloud shadows. Later I will regenerate the LOD with lower resolutions to see if there is a difference and save some performance.

 

 

The next step I would like to take is figuring out how to edit the tundra textures so that they match the grass in loaded cells, like what T4gtr34um3r did in Terrain LOD Redone. He gave me some tips on how he did it, by taking screenshots of the tundra ground to bake the grass into the tundra LOD. Do you think you will find a way to auto-generate this?

 

I also need to generate tree/object LOD with DynDOLOD, which will make things look much better.

Edited July 23, 2018 by drift123

[Zanderat]

Beta 22 fixes that water bug in Tamriel in case SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm is not loaded that we discussed with Zanderat and David2408

Awesome! Thank you.

[sheson]

 

The next step I would like to take is figuring out how to edit the tundra textures so that they match the grass in loaded cells, like what T4gtr34um3r did in Terrain LOD Redone. He gave me some tips on how he did it, by taking screenshots of the tundra ground to bake the grass into the tundra LOD. Do you think you will find a way to auto-generate this?

 

I also need to generate tree/object LOD with DynDOLOD, which will make things look much better.

I am testing different ways to automatically bake grass, but no promises or ETA.

[LoD7995]

There's a small issue with the world map of Tamriel. LOD water disappears and reappears in certain situations. I only created terrain meshes, quality 0 for all levels and optimize unseen 100 for all levels.

 

When generating the meshes, only USSEP and SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm were active. 

 

https://imgur.com/a/dC6yNIo

 

Areas around Solitude and Morthal are missing LOD water when looking from a certain angle.

Which value for optimize unseen would you suggest? I'm unsure what benefits or disadvantages higher or lower values bring.

[sheson]

There's a small issue with the world map of Tamriel. LOD water disappears and reappears in certain situations. I only created terrain meshes, quality 0 for all levels and optimize unseen 100 for all levels.

 

When generating the meshes, only USSEP and SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm were active. 

 

https://imgur.com/a/dC6yNIo

 

Areas around Solitude and Morthal are missing LOD water when looking from a certain angle.

Which value for optimize unseen would you suggest? I'm unsure what benefits or disadvantages higher or lower values bring.

 

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr/page-13?do=findComment&comment=223540

 

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr/page-9?p=221095&do=findComment&comment=221095

 

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr/page-8?p=220612&do=findComment&comment=220612

[David2408]

Beta 22 fixes that water bug in Tamriel in case SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm is not loaded that we discussed with Zanderat and David2408

Nice! Glad we could help solving this bug for other players, too.

 

I am testing different ways to automatically bake grass, but no promises or ETA.

This sounds very interesting, and would be quite revolutionary. To this day I do not know of any game that has a good solution for baked grass lod.

[Pickysaurus]

Hi Sheson,
 
I'm having a weird bug generating LOD for Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil. 
 
Any cells beyond Y: -80 have the ocean level significantly higher than the rest of the world (Water height is -14000 as standard)
 
I have noticed a big terrian tear under the ocean, but when I look in CK, the cells in Y: -81 to -96 are given the FormID prefix different to the master plugin. I assume these are somehow dynamically generated by the game/CK? 
 
I wouldn't be an issue, but in the LOD you can clearly see the ocean height being almost above the distant mountains. 
 

 
World map view:

 

 

I know the folks at BS: Roscrea are having similar issues. 

[sheson]

Hi Sheson,

 

I'm having a weird bug generating LOD for Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil. 

 

Any cells beyond Y: -80 have the ocean level significantly higher than the rest of the world (Water height is -14000 as standard)

 

I have noticed a big terrian tear under the ocean, but when I look in CK, the cells in Y: -81 to -96 are given the FormID prefix different to the master plugin. I assume these are somehow dynamically generated by the game/CK? 

 

I wouldn't be an issue, but in the LOD you can clearly see the ocean height being almost above the distant mountains. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

World map view:

 

 

 

 

 

I know the folks at BS: Roscrea are having similar issues. 

 

Are you saying the same CELL x,y coordinate is defined twice in different plugins with different form IDs for these worldspaces or only once, but some are in a different plugin? AFAIK that is should not ever happen.

 

Send me plugin in question so I can investigate and maybe try to determine what default / cell water/terrain to use. 

Edited July 28, 2018 by sheson