[WIPz] TES5LODGen

[RHMgerards]

Hi there,

 

I've got a MAJOR problem!

 

I was using TES5Edit to generate LODS, following the steps in the opening post. I Somehow managed to screw up as every single tree LOD got replaced by those small, dead trees (don't know the name, they're found in the marshes of Hjaalmarch. When i'm in Hjaalmarch and parts of Haafingar i'm still able to play the game, but when i go somewhere else i get a CTD (managed to fast travel to whiterun, but crashes almost immediately, and can't even fast travel to the rift for example).

 

I have no idea how this happened but even worse, no idea how to fix/reverse it!

 

Is anybody able to help me?

 

Thanks in advance

 

[zilav]

Delete generated LOD files (they are mentioned in the first post: BTT files, LST file and DDS atlas image).

[Prometheus]

Those files are generated by CK from your lod meshes when you build objects lod. To have an idea of where different lod levels are relative to player, look at that picture.

oh how was done that image?

[zilav]

oh how was done that image?

It is from the author of OScape. I think he just tinted all landscape lod 0 texture files with red, lod 1 with green and so on.

[Prometheus]

Ok so pnly ver ver far mountains need the 4th lod ... Big big studd the third and all rest between 1 and 2 if I understoon correctly ... Thouugh is it possible to have larger texture sizes? I have several textures for most of my buildings and packing all inside a single 256x256 makes all very shallow .

[zilav]

Objects LOD doesn't have 4th lod level, it uses 3rd for everything very far and the map. LOD can only have a single hi-res texture per worldspace defined in worldspace properties and toggled by HD-LOD flag on statics.

[Prometheus]

Objects LOD doesn't have 4th lod level, it uses 3rd for everything very far and the map. LOD can only have a single hi-res texture per worldspace defined in worldspace properties and toggled by HD-LOD flag on statics.

You mean mountainslab01 and 02?

[zilav]

HD LOD in Skyrim is a mountain texture Data\Textures\Landscape\Mountains\MountainSlab02.dds

Bethesda used that trick to get a good looking mountains in the distance considering they are literally everywhere while all other lod elements suck. You can use whatever texture you want in your worldspace, but only a single HD LOD texture per worldspace.

[Sheson]

HD LOD in Skyrim is a mountain texture Data\Textures\Landscape\Mountains\MountainSlab02.dds

Bethesda used that trick to get a good looking mountains in the distance considering they are literally everywhere while all other lod elements suck. You can use whatever texture you want in your worldspace, but only a single HD LOD texture per worldspace.

 

 

That is, when you use CK to create object LOD. I think we completed the circle 

[Prometheus]

HD LOD in Skyrim is a mountain texture Data\Textures\Landscape\Mountains\MountainSlab02.dds

Bethesda used that trick to get a good looking mountains in the distance considering they are literally everywhere while all other lod elements suck. You can use whatever texture you want in your worldspace, but only a single HD LOD texture per worldspace.

Ok so can I perhaps Enlarge that mountainslab texture? perhaps doubling it to insert other textures inside?

Is not possible to use a 512x512 texture for lod lev  0 or somehow of others? I have some very large buildings, the size of a mountain , that with lods from distance look really crap in a 256 shriekned texture ...

[zilav]

Ok so can I perhaps Enlarge that mountainslab texture? perhaps doubling it to insert other textures inside?

Is not possible to use a 512x512 texture for lod lev  0 or somehow of others? I have some very large buildings, the size of a mountain , that with lods from distance look really crap in a 256 shriekned texture ...

Theoretically... when you mark some statics with HD LOD flag, when building LOD Creation Kit will place all of them in a separate TriShape and substiture whatever textures you used in a LOD models with the one defined in worldspace properties. And UV's are most likely preserved, Sheson should know better. This means you can probably create HD LOD texture as a huge atlas, lets say 4k resolution giving you space for 16x1k HD textures inside. You need to experiment with that though, I belive noone ever tried to do that.

[Prometheus]

I would then though redo the mountain lods I guess ... So would have to use only my mountains clones ... But if works would be a great solution ...

So resuming ...

Lod 0 to 3 use only one single texture , cannot use multiple ones, cant be tiled and are limited to size 256^2 plus I cant give different one to lod 0 right ?

[Tamu75]

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[zilav]

TES5LODGen is superior, but unfortunately is has some bugs preventing it from wide public usage. And I don't know when Ehamloptiran will fix them, he is modding Dragon Age Inquisition now.

 

@Prometheus When building LOD, CK will gather all lod textures from all LOD meshes for all LOD levels and put them all on 2048k atlas divided into 8x8 tiles, so the resolution of each tile is 256. If they won't fit, LOD will be corrupted. You can try to use 512 lod texture to test, I've never tried myself.

 

And to check if idea with HD LOD atlas will work, simply create 4 static lod objects (a plane or cube), create 2k atlas texture with 4 unique tiles, UV statics to each tile. Then make a copy of that atlas and resize it to 256, assign it to actual lod models. This texture will go into atlas generated by CK and be used by level 1 and 2 lod. Now assign HD LOD atlas in worldspace properties so it will be used in lod level 0. Put all objects into a test worldspace and build objects LOD.

[Deathbydestiny]

Perhaps he is willing to release the source for lodgen? If he's more interested in other games, perhaps someone can take it over for him.

[zilav]

Perhaps he is willing to release the source for lodgen? If he's more interested in other games, perhaps someone can take it over for him.

I don't have a contact with him atm.

[Prometheus]

TES5LODGen is superior, but unfortunately is has some bugs preventing it from wide public usage. And I don't know when Ehamloptiran will fix them, he is modding Dragon Age Inquisition now.

 

@Prometheus When building LOD, CK will gather all lod textures from all LOD meshes for all LOD levels and put them all on 2048k atlas divided into 8x8 tiles, so the resolution of each tile is 256. If they won't fit, LOD will be corrupted. You can try to use 512 lod texture to test, I've never tried myself.

 

And to check if idea with HD LOD atlas will work, simply create 4 static lod objects (a plane or cube), create 2k atlas texture with 4 unique tiles, UV statics to each tile. Then make a copy of that atlas and resize it to 256, assign it to actual lod models. This texture will go into atlas generated by CK and be used by level 1 and 2 lod. Now assign HD LOD atlas in worldspace properties so it will be used in lod level 0. Put all objects into a test worldspace and build objects LOD.

So there is actually a limit to the maximum number of Textures for lods available for a worldspace?

Also what bugs And would be possible to use the tool in hybrid way like make most of the lods in CK and then only some specific items in the tool and merge them somehow?

[zilav]

We've told you already that the total number of lod textures per worldspace is limited (by CK's created atlas size).

Making lod in separete tools will cause a worse performance and bigger memory consumption imho.

[Sheson]

Perhaps he is willing to release the source for lodgen? If he's more interested in other games, perhaps someone can take it over for him.

Good news everyone!

Ehamloptiran gave Zilav and I the source and permission to update and continue LODGen.exe.

 

Update coming soon...

[Sheson]

The latest updated version of LODGen.exe is in xEdit svn1893 and higher

 

 

 

All issues reported in this thread are fixed and a few features Zilav and I needed have been added. Click "Generate LOD" from the right click menu in xEdit to start creating CK like object LOD for a worldspace.

 

If you find any visual problems with LOD generated by LODGen.exe please post in this thread.

 

 

If you need to go beyond that the DynDOLOD package contains 100s, what I saying, 1000s new LOD objects.

DynDOLOD worlds.pas has an ini setting that allows to create a mod with updated STAT records for the new LOD models based on mesh rules. The updated STAT records should then be merged.

Then use the quick and simple xEdit LODGen to create object LOD for a worldspace. This way a mod author can carefully chose which LOD models to use for balanced LOD to ship with a mod.

 

Any questions regarding DynDOLOD should be asked here http://forum.step-project.com/topic/5011-beta-dynamic-distant-objects-lod-dyndolod-05100/

[Tamu75]

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[keithinhanoi]

So... as mentioned over on the Nexus comments thread for the standalone TES5LODGen utilitiy, I seem to be getting a Mod Organizer VFS-related exception error when running the LODGen script that comes with TES5Edit v3.1.0.

 

The first thing is that I'm not sure about the exact cause of the exception error because I get an error dialog to pop-up over the cmd window ("LODGeneratorCMD has stopped working") and that error dialog disables control of the cmd window, so I can't scroll down to see the rest of the text about the exception error. Does the LODGen.exe save the cmd window output in a log anywhere? I could not find any log file that contains the full text of the exception error.

 

The other thing is that I can't figure out how to get the LODGen script / LODGen.exe to output to a directory outside MO's VFS so I can see if that avoids the exception error.

 

Since the script dialogue window has changed since the OP of this thread, here's a screenie so I can refer to it:

 

 

What you see above is the paths plugged in when I hit the [Default] button.

 

For the Data folder, I assume that is there so you can define where LODGen will look for the "source" object lod meshes / textures, and in my case I've copied Nico coiN's Vanilla LOD Source Files collection into my actual Skyrim/data/ folder. That's why I've left it as default.

 

Then, the LODGen path is where I want to output the new .bto files as I understand it, so in order to attempt to avoid the exception error, I set my LODGen path to D:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\skyrim\TES5LODGen. However, I still saw the generated .bto files showing up in MO's Overwrite directory. 

 

After this, I noticed an error in my TES5Edit_log.txt: Error: LODGen path must contain "meshes\" folder if building atlas. That seems a bit weird since this variant of the TES5LODGen is not supposed to build an atlas file. But it was a clue of what my problem might be.

 

I tried building the whole directory structure for the Object LOD .bto files inside, so I could set LODGen path to D:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\skyrim\TES5LODGen\meshes\terrain\Tamriel\objects

 

And it worked. However....

 

A atlas file was built, which is not what I wanted. I'm trying to create Object LOD .bto files to include with a mod, and they need to either refer to the vanilla atlas or to the separate vanilla "source" lod textures. The order of LOD texture batches in the atlas doesn't match the order in the vanilla atlas, so it won't work for my situation.

 

All of this has left me a bit confused. I guess not many other MO users have had the exception error problem, because then they would have come up against the constraints of having to manually build the correct directory structure outside of the Skyrim /data to use for the LODGen path.

 

But the other thing that's confusing - the OP states that this variant of TES5LODGen doesn't create an atlas of LOD textures. But now it does, and there's no option create / not create an atlas as there is in the standalone TES5LODGen utility. I'd prefer to use this script variant of TES5LODGen because it has some greater control / more options than the standalone utility, but I don't know how to turn off atlas creation - and - be able to set the LODGen path so I don't get the exception error using it with MO.

 

So can anybody please help clear these things up?

[zilav]

So can anybody please help clear these things up?

The difference between output folder for TES5LODGen using -O switch and output folder for this script is that TES5LODGen's output is a root "Data" folder where meshes\terrain\.. and textures\terrain\.. folders will be created and generated lod files and atlas written. But lodgen script uses the full path to BTO files instead of root path, so to find out the path for atlas texture it tries to go up to "meshes\" folder in that path, and gets confused if there is none. Maybe it would be better to make them work the same way considering output folder, but I doubt anyone will be using LODGen.pas at all.

Atlas creation is controlled by a constant at the top of script

bBuildAtlas = True;

Change it to false.

 

As for MO issues, I don't have any clue, sorry. Not using it myself. The benefits it provides just don't outweight cons for me personally. Clean data folder, profiles? I don't need these. Wrye Bash gives me everyhing I need from a mod manager.

[keithinhanoi]

Ah, okay, that helps greatly. And don't worry about the MO issue - I was more concerned about finding a way to circumvent the issue by redirecting output elsewhere (the usual workaround when MO doesn't work as you hope.)

 

If the standalone TES5LODGen could have an advanced options menu that incorporates the Mesh lodgen rules, Generate LOD level(s) only, Generate for block(s), etc. features, then there would be no reason to continue to include the script / .exe with TES5Edit.

 

If scaring off users or causing more support headaches with an advanced menu is a concern, perhaps it could be toggled by setting in an .ini file or something similar. Just a thought.

 

I really appreciate the reply and help, and all of your work on this and xEdit, simply fantastic!

[zilav]

That's why the LODGen script exists - to get access to custom settings, no need to add them into TES5LODGen.

DynDOLOD also provides custom options and much more.