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[RELz] Cell Sized LOD Water Plane


Arthmoor

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Bodies of water. They're everywhere in the game. The most obvious of which are Lake Rumare and the Niben Bay. They're both visible in LOD all the time. But what about your big lake in the hills? Or the lake outside of Cheydinhal? Or any other body of water which is raised above sea level? No, those are not visible at all in LOD. There is apparently a limitation in the game engine which will simply not display it regardless of the water height assigned to the cells. This resource is meant to aid you in changing that.

Provided in this package are two simple nif files. LODWaterPlane.nif is simply a large square editor object that you use within the CS to add to a cell where you have water. LODWaterPlane_far.nif is the LOD version of the same, which is a basic two triangle water plane with the Lava material added so that the game will treat it as water. It has all of the reflective properties expected, and even displays water ripples when passing over it with the free camera.

My Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/arthmoor

Downloads

AFK Mods
TES Alliance

How To Use This Resource

Copy the two mesh files into a folder of your choice under Data\Meshes. The specifics don't matter.

Create a static in the CS using LODWaterPlane.nif.

For best results, drag the mesh into the render window and use its upper right corner to place it as precisely as you can on the NE corner of the cell you want. Use the INNER border of the editor marker, not the outer. Do not rotate the piece. It helps if you turn on cell borders while editing, that way you can zoom in close on the border for an exact fit. It should be placed exactly at the Z coordinate of your cell's water level.

To string multiple pieces together for larger bodies of water spanning several cells, simply add or subtract 4096 to the X or Y coordinates of the object. That will cause the piece to center into the next cell over.

For this to be visible in-game, you will either need to generate LOD files for your mod, or instruct your users to download and run TES4LODGen (recommended).

See the screenshots on the Nexus download page for visual aids.

The type and coloring of the water will be dependent on whatever water mods the user has installed and what type of water is present in the cell. So it should adapt itself to things like green slimy water vs clear blue water. It is also for this reason that you should avoid overlapping a water plane past a cell boundary.

Performance In Game

In game performance impact from this should be negligible. I've used it in a fairly large area already an noticed absolutely no change in frame rates. The _far.nif is two triangles, so it's as low as the poly count can possibly get. There is no need to optimize it.

I have not noticed any visual anomalies due to leaving the alpha channel in place on the LOD nif. I am fairly certain that is required or the water will not be transparent.

How It Works

This method works by essentially tricking the game into switching the _far.nif in for the editor object. The editor object and the _far.nif both came from the same source object. The nif was initially blown up to the exact size of one cell in the CS, then split into two parts.

An LOD _far.nif file does not have to have the same contents as its close-up counterpart. TES4LODGen does not care, and the CS won't know the difference either.

Credits

Da Mage and Throttlekitty for the original Real Water Mesh resource.
The original water plane resource is quite awesome in and of itself, check it out. You may have use for it too.

Disclaimer

This mod is not made, guaranteed, or supported by Microsoft, Zenimax, Bethesda Game Studios, or any of their affiliates.

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Another one that had no thread here. Also seems to have been lost at Bethsoft :|

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