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

[cumbrianlad]

Hi.

 

This may not be the right place to ask this question. If not then maybe someone could point me in the right direction.

I used this tool to generate LOD for landscape and objects using the settings suggested. First of all SSE crashed when loading my worldspace. I found this in an earlier post. I use windows 7 and changing the format from 565 to DXT5 sorted this.

 

Everything looks fine except that water is not visible more than a couple of cells away. I thought this may be because I'd not edited any cells to add a sea bed texture more than a cell or two from the coastline, so I opened CK, got out a big paintbrush and slapped a coat of sea bed up to 5 cells from the coast. I deleted the previous LOD and ran the tool again with the same results.

 

Is water LOD done elsewhere or have I missed something in CK so that the tool can't generate it?

 

My worldspace is an island with a few islets and icebergs floating around. as you can see from the screenshot, it doesn't look good! This is the view in the worst direction from the top of the lighthouse which is the highest point in the worldspace.

[sheson]

Hi.

 

This may not be the right place to ask this question. If not then maybe someone could point me in the right direction.

I used this tool to generate LOD for landscape and objects using the settings suggested. First of all SSE crashed when loading my worldspace. I found this in an earlier post. I use windows 7 and changing the format from 565 to DXT5 sorted this.

 

Everything looks fine except that water is not visible more than a couple of cells away. I thought this may be because I'd not edited any cells to add a sea bed texture more than a cell or two from the coastline, so I opened CK, got out a big paintbrush and slapped a coat of sea bed up to 5 cells from the coast. I deleted the previous LOD and ran the tool again with the same results.

 

Is water LOD done elsewhere or have I missed something in CK so that the tool can't generate it?

 

My worldspace is an island with a few islets and icebergs floating around. as you can see from the screenshot, it doesn't look good! This is the view in the worst direction from the top of the lighthouse which is the highest point in the worldspace.

 

 

Judging by the screenshot there is neither terrain or water beyond a certain distance. Check the dimensions xLODGen discovered for the worldspace, which are based on the defined cells. Is there even any LOD, kinda hard to tell? Toggle with console tll.

 

xLODGen should pad cells that are not defined for the different LOD levels (to fill the areas of the 4/8/16/32) with the default land and water heights defined on the worldrecord.

 

If you set the data flag "No LOD water" on a world record then of course no LOD water is generated at all.

 

Maybe post the top of LOD generation log that looks like this

 

[Tamriel] Generating LOD

[Tamriel] Gathering CELL and LAND records.

[Tamriel] Land height: -27000, Water height: -14000, Scanned: 11188 CELL records, Found: 11186 LAND records for area [-57,-43] to [61,50]

[Tamriel] LODsettings: Level 4 to 32 stride 256 from -96,-96 to 0,0

[Tamriel] Exporting terrain mesh data for LODGen to C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Tamriel.bin

[Tamriel] No options file found: C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\SSELODGen_Skyrim_Tamriel_Options.txt

[Tamriel] Saving LODGen data: C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Tamriel.txt

[Tamriel] Running "C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGenx64.exe" "C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Tamriel.txt"

[cumbrianlad]

Judging by the screenshot there is neither terrain or water beyond a certain distance. Check the dimensions xLODGen discovered for the worldspace, which are based on the defined cells. Is there even any LOD, kinda hard to tell? Toggle with console tll.

 

xLODGen should pad cells that are not defined for the different LOD levels (to fill the areas of the 4/8/16/32) with the default land and water heights defined on the worldrecord.

 

If you set the data flag "No LOD water" on a world record then of course no LOD water is generated at all.

 

Maybe post the top of LOD generation log that looks like this

 

[Tamriel] Generating LOD

[Tamriel] Gathering CELL and LAND records.

[Tamriel] Land height: -27000, Water height: -14000, Scanned: 11188 CELL records, Found: 11186 LAND records for area [-57,-43] to [61,50]

[Tamriel] LODsettings: Level 4 to 32 stride 256 from -96,-96 to 0,0

[Tamriel] Exporting terrain mesh data for LODGen to C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Tamriel.bin

[Tamriel] No options file found: C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\SSELODGen_Skyrim_Tamriel_Options.txt

[Tamriel] Saving LODGen data: C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Tamriel.txt

[Tamriel] Running "C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGenx64.exe" "C:\Skyrim\xLODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Tamriel.txt"

thanks for that. the worldspace definitely has water and I checked out the wilderness cells that are submerged and they were all marked as having water. from your reply I take it that lodgen should have done water. It definitely has generated all object and terrain LOD on the island because where previously, from the teleport marker on the beach, you could see all the holes where there were no mountain cliff objects (and no fort on top of the plateau, now you can see everything... except distant water! I'd have to agree it looks like away from the island there is no LOD at all.

 

I'll run it again and have a look for the records you suggested. Default water for the worldspace is 0.0 and default land is set to -400.

 

next time I'll show the view from the beach which clearly shows that some LOD has been generated. My shot was the most outrageous example of the lack of water LOD.

 

Thanks for the quick response. I've never made a worldspace before and am a bit out of my depth... Maybe I should move to my own 'Svellsker world', at least then I'd have no fear of drowning out at sea! You deserve a medal.

[cumbrianlad]

Sheson,

 

I finally found the problem after doing as you suggested and checking the log for xlodgen.

 

It was only generating LOD for -2,-4 to 7,6. These cells are only just off the coast, hence the screenshot.

 

Going back into the world in CK and toggling water off showed that the textures I'd put in to try to resolve the issue yesterday had gone! 

 

I read the warnings dialogue and found this...

 

Unable to complete operation due to failure removing previous file. Plugin Data\MBWRfarmhouse may be locked or read only.

 

the warning went on to say that data was saved to a new file MBWRfarmhouse.tes

 

Renaming my files and changing the .tes to .esp and running lodgen gave me water almost as far as the eye can see when in game (I'd added texture 5 to 6 cells further out.)

 

Now I've just got to work out why the hell this has happened to my .esp.

[mtreis86]

Thanks for the tool, Sheshon.

What do you recommend for diffuse/normal resolutions for terrain generation at varying lod levels? I have seen conflicting information, some claim to use higher resolution at further distances, others claim the opposite.

Edited August 2, 2018 by mtreis86

[sheson]

Thanks for the tool, Sheshon.

 

What do you recommend for diffuse/normal resolutions for terrain generation at varying lod levels? I have seen conflicting information, some claim to use higher resolution at further distances, others claim the opposite.

I will always answer this question the same: Create LOD with different resolutions and then compare visuals and resource usage for yourself.

 

Use the specific chunk option to only generate a small area you are currently testing.

 

See below image which shows how much area a terrain LOD textures covers at different LOD levels. I believe I took it with ultra settings, so lower distances will bring them closer to the player.

 

[mtreis86]

I will always answer this question the same: Create LOD with different resolutions and then compare visuals and resource usage for yourself.

 

Use the specific chunk option to only generate a small area you are currently testing.

 

See below image which shows how much area a terrain LOD textures covers at different LOD levels. I believe I took it with ultra settings, so lower distances will bring them closer to the player.

 

 

That picture is extremely informative, I wish I had seen it earlier - I wouldn't have needed to ask. Please post that on the front page. I was under the impression the ublocks picture you included in DynDOLOD was the same block pattern the terrain used. Clearly I was wrong. While I do test things myself there and find tests very valuable, there is only so much that can be done with a lack of resources, and not having a clear idea of how the grid is laid out was a severe hinderance to my understanding. So, thanks.

[Saqer]

I'm not fully understanding the LOD system for Skyrim but I was thinking after messing with the mod a little bit... Can I generate terrain meshes and textures from this mod and use DynDOLOD fully (resources and Texgen)?... In other words, can I use both mods SSELODGen and DynDOLOD?

Edited August 9, 2018 by Saqer

[sheson]

I'm not fully understanding the LOD system for Skyrim but I was thinking after messing with the mod a little bit... Can I generate terrain meshes and textures from this mod and use DynDOLOD fully (resources and Texgen)?... In other words, can I use both mods SSELODGen and DynDOLOD?

From the first post: The object and tree LOD generation is the same as the current versions of xEdit / xLODGen. Refer to their respective descriptions and explanations. Obviously, users of Skryim/Skyrim SE/Skyrim VR continue to use DynDOLOD for drastically improved object and tree LOD generation.

 

Similar questions were asked and answered in this thread, right of start post #3. Also the last picture of my post #6 could be a clue.

 

There is more useful discussions and info, which can be found searching this topic for DynDOLOD:

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr/page-3?do=findComment&comment=217055

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr/page-8?do=findComment&comment=220696

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr/page-13?do=findComment&comment=223804

[cardamom]

Hi sheson. For FO4LodGen, I'm putting the meshes created by object LOD in a ba2 because that's what you recommend. It adds some houses that I added to my game. I really enjoy that. I don't generate alphas. I use BC5 for everything except specular which I use Dxt1 on! When I tried UV range 10, everything was brown. So I did UV range 1.5 and it's back to normal. I like that. I keep the alpha threshold as default and 1024 kb sizes. and No Backlight Power since I'm not informed on it. It's good, but some far off houses were really ugly. Even when in a Ba2. I thought it was the terrain LOD.

 

So for terrain LOD4, 8, and 16, I did 2k textures. Max vertices with 30 quality (max). LOD32 got 1k textures. I protected borders and optimized unseen. I build meshes, diffuse, and normals, but didn't bake normal maps. It's all DXT5 with no changes in brightness or gamma. It has mip maps and raised steepness.

 

anyway, far off houses are extremely ugly when compared to the high res DLC terrain. After the ba2s are generated, I delete the loose files from the folder, as per your instruction.

 

SanctuaryHillsWorld is the pre-war world, so I don't think that's affecting sanctuary, right? 

 

The houses with your object LOD and terrain LOD are unbearably ugly from a distance. 

 

I think I'm going to try putting the 33 gigabytes of 2k commonwealth LOD4,8,16 and 1k LOD32 textures into a Ba2 and see if that helps far off towns look like they aren't a bowl of spaghetti.

 

but man, it's hard not to say that the program isn't worth it when you can see trees on top of far off mountains and new buildings. I just wish it didn't take up more data than the high res DLC while looking uglier at the same time.

 

I think you know this already but in the high res DLC, it generates an "objects" folder for each world. It contains 2k diffuse "Commonwealth.Objects.dds", 4k normal and specular "Commonwealth.Objects_n.dds" and "Commonwealth.Objects_s.dds", respectively. Maybe that is affecting it since your FO4LodGen didn't generate those. Maybe I should drag those files over and give it a run. Afterall, the terrain is beautiful but it's the objects that are ugly. So it is perhaps these extra files that your FO4LODGen doesn't have, that are needed for the beauty I'm looking for!

Edited August 16, 2018 by cardamom

[sheson]

Hi sheson. For FO4LodGen, I'm putting the meshes created by object LOD in a ba2 because that's what you recommend. It adds some houses that I added to my game. I really enjoy that. I don't generate alphas. I use BC5 for everything except specular which I use Dxt1 on! When I tried UV range 10, everything was brown. So I did UV range 1.5 and it's back to normal. I like that. I keep the alpha threshold as default and 1024 kb sizes. and No Backlight Power since I'm not informed on it. It's good, but some far off houses were really ugly. Even when in a Ba2. I thought it was the terrain LOD.

 

So for terrain LOD4, 8, and 16, I did 2k textures. Max vertices with 30 quality (max). LOD32 got 1k textures. I protected borders and optimized unseen. I build meshes, diffuse, and normals, but didn't bake normal maps. It's all DXT5 with no changes in brightness or gamma. It has mip maps and raised steepness.

 

anyway, far off houses are extremely ugly when compared to the high res DLC terrain. After the ba2s are generated, I delete the loose files from the folder, as per your instruction.

 

SanctuaryHillsWorld is the pre-war world, so I don't think that's affecting sanctuary, right? 

 

The houses with your object LOD and terrain LOD are unbearably ugly from a distance. 

 

I think I'm going to try putting the 33 gigabytes of 2k commonwealth LOD4,8,16 and 1k LOD32 textures into a Ba2 and see if that helps far off towns look like they aren't a bowl of spaghetti.

 

but man, it's hard not to say that the program isn't worth it when you can see trees on top of far off mountains and new buildings. I just wish it didn't take up more data than the high res DLC while looking uglier at the same time.

 

I think you know this already but in the high res DLC, it generates an "objects" folder for each world. It contains 2k diffuse "Commonwealth.Objects.dds", 4k normal and specular "Commonwealth.Objects_n.dds" and "Commonwealth.Objects_s.dds", respectively. Maybe that is affecting it since your FO4LodGen didn't generate those. Maybe I should drag those files over and give it a run. Afterall, the terrain is beautiful but it's the objects that are ugly. So it is perhaps these extra files that your FO4LODGen doesn't have, that are needed for the beauty I'm looking for!

It hard to tell if house are "ugly" because of a problem or just because that is how the LOD models/textures are that ship with the game.

 

Terrain LOD is the ground you walk on and nothing else. I suggest to read the included readme / hover the mouse over elements to learn what the settings do. The terrain meshes have better quality the lower the number is for example.

 

Object LOD are houses, trees, rocks, bridges whatever. Use DXT1 or DXT5 for diffuse. Use BC5 for both Normal and Specular - using any other format for them doesn't really make sense.

You could try using a UV range of 1.1 or 1.0 even to see if that changes anything. Make sure to use the fixed LOD models from FO4LODGen Resources as quite a few vanilla LOD models have UV errors which can result in blurry UV when using textures on the atlas with a high UV range.

 

For Fallout 4, all LOD files for each LOD type are generated into exactly the folders where they should be and with the filenames they should be. FO4LODGen especially creates Commonwealth.Objects.DDS etc. as long as the "Create Atlas" checkbox is checked. Not sure why you think it doesn't?

 

[cardamom]

I didn't think it didn't, that's why I told you everything I've done. I've only generated the LOD at 2k resolution twice. It only takes 5.5 hours of my computer time per LOD generation for the commonwealth. So in total, I've only put in about 11 hours of dedicated LOD generation time. This is why I'm messaging you -- I have significantly less hours in generating these things than you do. My cursory knowledge is based on mostly external information and reading your posts.

 

I'm going to try using FO4LODGen Resources (downloaded) and see if that helps in generating these textures. I'll have to do it while I sleep since it takes 5.5 hours. I'll lower the UV Range to 1.1 as per instruction. Thanks

 

(Should the textures be inserted into a Ba2? 30 gigabytes is a rather large ba2. It probably won't work, I think, and should be broken up into 8 sets of 4gb.)

Edited August 16, 2018 by cardamom

[sheson]

I didn't think it didn't, that's why I told you everything I've done. I've only generated the LOD at 2k resolution twice. It only takes 5.5 hours of my computer time per LOD generation for the commonwealth. So in total, I've only put in about 11 hours of dedicated LOD generation time. This is why I'm messaging you -- I have significantly less hours in generating these things than you do. My cursory knowledge is based on mostly external information and reading your posts.

 

I'm going to try using FO4LODGen Resources (downloaded) and see if that helps in generating these textures. I'll have to do it while I sleep since it takes 5.5 hours. I'll lower the UV Range to 1.1 as per instruction. Thanks

 

(Should the textures be inserted into a Ba2? 30 gigabytes is a rather large ba2. It probably won't work, I think, and should be broken up into 8 sets of 4gb.)

5 hours is really long and 30GB is really a lot. You probably should consider smaller terrain LOD texture sizes. Use the chunk checkbox to generate different resolutions and settings when doing terrain LOD and then just check/screenshot the area in the game to compare results before doing them for the entire world.

 

You do not need to generate terrain LOD if you just want to update object LOD. You do not need to generate terrain LOD meshes and textures at the same time.

 

Reportedly it seems that adding the object LOD textures to BA2 helps with some form of engine optimization to prevent object LOD using the wrong mipmaps resulting in blurry object LOD.

 

I do not know of any visual side effects if object LOD meshes or terrain LOD meshes and textures are not in BA2s.

Edited August 17, 2018 by sheson

[Kesta]

[Roscrea] Generating LOD
[Roscrea] Gathering CELL and LAND records.
[Roscrea] Land height: -140000, Water height: -8000, Scanned: 4361 CELL records, Found: 4357 LAND records for area [-32,-32] to [34,34]
[Roscrea] LODsettings: Level 4 to 32 stride 128 from -32,-32 to 0,0
[Roscrea] Exporting terrain mesh data for LODGen to F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.bin
[Roscrea] No options file found: F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\TES5LODGen_Roscrea_Roscrea_Options.txt
[Roscrea] Saving LODGen data: F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.txt
[Roscrea] Running "F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen.exe" "F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.txt"
============================================================
Skyrim Object LOD Generator 2.3.1.0
Created by Ehamloptiran and Zilav
Updated by Sheson

Log started at 12:43:27
Game Mode: TERRAINTES5
Generating terrain LOD for worldspace Roscrea
Reading F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.bin
Error processing terrain data F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.bin Un élément avec la même clé a déjà été ajouté. System.ArgumentException
Log ended at 12:43:27
LOD Generator: finished (you can close this application now)

Can't seem to generate terrain LOD for this custom worldspace, and I have absolutely no idea what's wrong... 

The bit in french say "An element with the same key has already been added". I tried to look up in my registry in case there was some leftover in here (install path of xedit and xlodgen may have changed recently), but didn't find anything 

[sheson]

[Roscrea] Generating LOD
[Roscrea] Gathering CELL and LAND records.
[Roscrea] Land height: -140000, Water height: -8000, Scanned: 4361 CELL records, Found: 4357 LAND records for area [-32,-32] to [34,34]
[Roscrea] LODsettings: Level 4 to 32 stride 128 from -32,-32 to 0,0
[Roscrea] Exporting terrain mesh data for LODGen to F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.bin
[Roscrea] No options file found: F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\TES5LODGen_Roscrea_Roscrea_Options.txt
[Roscrea] Saving LODGen data: F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.txt
[Roscrea] Running "F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen.exe" "F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.txt"
============================================================
Skyrim Object LOD Generator 2.3.1.0
Created by Ehamloptiran and Zilav
Updated by Sheson

Log started at 12:43:27
Game Mode: TERRAINTES5
Generating terrain LOD for worldspace Roscrea
Reading F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.bin
Error processing terrain data F:\Modding Tools\LODGen\Edit Scripts\LODGen_Terrain_Roscrea.bin Un élément avec la même clé a déjà été ajouté. System.ArgumentException
Log ended at 12:43:27
LOD Generator: finished (you can close this application now)

Can't seem to generate terrain LOD for this custom worldspace, and I have absolutely no idea what's wrong... 

The bit in french say "An element with the same key has already been added". I tried to look up in my registry in case there was some leftover in here (install path of xedit and xlodgen may have changed recently), but didn't find anything 

 

I believe this error seems to indicate there are duplicate CELLs in the worldspace with different form ids, but the same coordinates.

 

Edit: Replace LODGen.exe/LODGenx64.exe in Edit Scripts folder with this version, it will print the CELL coordinates and ignore the duplicate data.

Edited August 26, 2018 by sheson