Dillenger69

bleh, I didn't think there was quite that much math involved. I'll check out the region generator. Unfortunately, what I'm trying to place is lights, not static objects.

wow, thanks Zilav. From what I can tell, that's exactly what I'm looking for. It looks pretty complex but not indecipherable. I just have to wrap my brain around it.

I'm googling it myself, but in the meantime I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask... I'm working on bulk item placement and I want to pepper in things here and there without having an original reference to base the X/Y/Z on, and without hand placing them with the CK. The CK is useless when it comes to working on large scales. It takes too long. Is there any way with FO4edit (the pascal scripting ... NOT papyrus) to find the "ground level" Z coordinate when you have a known X, Y, and CELL?

Thanks again, all very helpful stuff. Here's the script I have so far. I'd paste the source in here but it's well over 1000 lines. Other than the hiccup around where nuka world and the commonwealth overlap, it seems to work. can you see any glaring errors in it ... perhaps a more efficient way to do what I'm doing? Any constructive criticism is welcome. edit: It also throws around where far harbor and the commonwealth overlap with "Invalid Argument". For now I just catch, swallow, and don't place a light. edit 2: After running for 8 hours ... it didn't place a single light. grumble. I guess I'll try the copy instead of trying to create a new light. edit 3: After much revision and error trapping, Copying the light into place seems to do the trick. I've also figured out how to properly exit scripts rather than throwing an unhandled exception.

Thanks, the code snippet helps more than anything yet. What I'm doing is trying to place a light at the site of each item I've removed from the world using one of two methods ... 1) copy a light reference for the light type and just modify it's position and cell. RecordByFormID seems to be the key to this. I didn't know exactly what it did and couldn't find good examples of it. My google-fu for xedit scipts is lacking. or 2) create a light reference record with the properties I need and place it. I've tried this and it fails when I get to the cell that start's nuka world(I've got all 3 world ESMs as masters). So, I've got some troubleshooting to do. I suspect it has something to do with form IDs and load order. And that it would happen even if I were copying the light. the kicker is that this script takes for-ever to run so troubleshooting is a b&@*$. Even on an [email protected] it takes a few hours to scan the whole world, interior and exterior. And my exception doesn't happen until an hour and half in.

I've got a script to find forms, that's not a problem. I also have a script to do bulk operations. Essentially I want to add lighting to my mod. There's one particular light 'DefaultLightWaterGlowingSea01NSCaustics [LIGH:00204273]' from the glowing sea that I want to populate the landscape with, placing them where the trees used to be (I've already removed those and successfully redone the world LOD, that's whole other saga). I've been programming in various languages since 1979 ... Pascal hasn't been that tough to pick up. I'm only sorry the scrips can't take full advantage of what pascal can do. How do I copy a form without the main Process loop needing to hit it and get passed in? If I could get that one record or make one from scratch(tried that and failed, not sure why yet), I could use the main process loop to get the x/y/z/cell and place all the lights.

Is it possible to place new references with FO4edit, or just copy and manipulate existing ones? What I'm doing, or trying to do, is place lights at a series of x/y/z coordinates. If it were possible for the script runner to do 2 passes, I could get the existing light and copy it where I need it. But, it doesn't look like there's a way to do muti-pass scripting. I suppose I could write a script that prints out all the variables for each light as code then copy/paste that into script #2 that finds the original light reference to copy ... then see if it lets me replace the cell and x/y/x coords and save the new records. I've looked at scipt sources. It doesn't look like anyone's tried to do what I'm doing, I'm not even sure it's possible with FO4edit. If anyone out there knows, advice is appreciated.

huh, go figure. The crazy thing is. I could have sworn it used to bring up the gizmo the 2 key brings up. I must be from a different timeline. I hear president Clinton just brokered peace in Syria ... What's happened in this timeline?

Thanks to everyone's help. "Undelete and disable references" worked perfectly(along with all the other steps and then some). I no longer suffer from deleted references. Now I just need to tackle the ghost trees in the LOD. I have a fo4edit scipt that removes the VISI, RVIS, PCMB, and XCRI nodes from the cells of my choosing. I've got two ways I can do this. 1. Hit only cells north of -26, that way I know I'm getting some of them. (avoiding cells that show up with explicit EDID if any) 2. remove precombination/pre-vis from every cell not given an explicit EDID 3. Skip that and rip the LOD from my 9.2 gig behemoth. It already works. I tried #2 and it failed. miserably. Some of the disabled cells were too clode to civilization and every cell edge looked like a drop into the ocean. Don't try this at home. starting over from undelete and disable, then I'll use the good LOD I've already got.

That would be far easier I'm guessing. No, what I want to do is remove trees and clutter, just certain statics within the cell. But I want to do it in bulk. The CK is too clicky.

Never did get the scale key working, even when remapped. I was able to get what I needed from the 2 gizmo. 2 is good for off-center vertex scaling, the actual scale tool is nice if you want something evenly large. eh, I can live without it.

I created Barren Wasteland and did it by deleting references of static objects. I've since been informed that this is a no-no and can cause crashes. It's kind of a niche mod. I don't expect many people to be attracted to it, but I find it fun. Nobody has reported crashes yet. To do things better, maybe not the right way yet, I started over and zero scaled all the nifs I didn't want to see and switched them to river rocks (the smallest nif I could find in bytes). To get rid of ghost trees on the horizon I had to remove precombination and pre-vis from every cell. World LOD generation was flawless at that point. So, I redid the precombination for Far Harbor, Nuka World, the main map, and the other cells I'd stripped it from ... pretty much everything. That left me with 15.1 gigs of precombined meshes and my mod weighs in at 9.2 gigs compressed! way too big! I might download a 9.2 gig mod that only removes things, but I'm not so sure who else will. It's basically unacceptable. Is there a better way to do this? There has to be. I'm pretty sure I can modify my FO4edit script to only hit the cells I'm having precombination trouble in. That leaves the rest of the commonwealth to strip things from. Is there a f04edit script anywhere that can disable individual objects in a cell? Here's what I want to do 1. load cell 2. iterate though the cell for objects in a predefined list of forms, static objects in this case. Trees, shrubs, annoying ground cover, trash, etc. 3. Set "Initially disabled" on those static objects when they match one in the list. There seems to be a wealth of scripts out there for working with objects, but not by scanning a cell for them, and not static objects. I also don't know the scripting language well enough to get items from cells myself. I can load the cell, but all I ever get in it is landscape. Even for cells I know should have more. So I'm obviously looking at the wrong object to iterate through. Sadly the base forms don't contain the "initially disabled" flag. If I tried to do this in the creation kit it would take months. I'd have to click in to each cell and click initially disabled on each object I don't want to see. I might as well just hit delete at that point for it. Hence my initial approach of deleting references. Does anyone out there know fo4edit well enough to point me in the right direction to disable static objects en mass?

Hmm, scale reference is indeed set to S in my keyboard mapping and it does nothing. I tried removing the ini files and letting them be recreated. That didn't change anything. I also changed the keyboard mapping to another key. still no scale gizmo. Thanks for pointing out stuff I missed. this is quite frustrating.

hmm, in mine the translate gizmo is 2 and scale is S. How did you change it?

I've run into a bit of an odd issue with the CK I'm hoping somebody knows how to fix. My scale tool has completely stopped working. When I select an item and hit S ... nothing comes up. I can rotate and translate, but not scale. Go figure. I've reinstalled the CK a couple times, rebooted, etc, nothing seems to fix this. From what I know there's no more keyboard mapping, so that couldn't have gotten screwed up. Does anyone have any idea what might make the scale tool stop working across installs? I've even used it with different ESP files and noting changes. Any help appreciated, Thanks.

DING DING DING ... that's what it turned out to be. With the help of FO4edit and the script sources provided I was able to strip preconbination and pre-vis from every cell. I redid the pre-vis in as many cells as I could get to. There doesn't seem to be a bulk way to do it. If there is, I'd love to know. Anyway, Here's what the horizon from vault 111 looks like now. Someone should tell them Boston has never had a ring of mountains around it. It's pretty damn flat IRL. http://i.imgur.com/wZ4yBA7.jpg

thanks, I'm pretty new to modding this game. I'm actually a developer by trade, so anything I can do without clicking is a bonus. Any search tips as to what I'm trying to do? I've come up with nothing. EDIT: to everyone, I've tried disabling the trees in those cells individually and just flat out going into the cells and removing all trees. The ghost trees are well outside the game border. I'm guessing there's either an LOD generation bug, a bug in the game. Or some dev got lazy and hard coded LOD trees into those cells. The only place they show up is beyond the edge of the map. again, anyone who can point me to a fo4edit script I can modify, that would be great. I've found one that cycles through cells, now I just need to find one that deletes desired items from a cell and I can cobble them together. Being able to get rid of all the edited NIF files would be a plus.

I just re-figured out why I hadn't done that. In order to do that I'll have to go to every cell in every part of the game, click on every individual tree, shrub and bush and mark it initially disabled. The base form doesn't have that option. Only the reference in the cell. You wouldn't happen to know of a bulk tool that could do this? edit: however, there are few enough cells with the ghost trees. I can give it a try there.

you know what ... I'm smrt ... I didn't even think of that and I've been using it on other stuff for my own personal mod. Thanks!

âSo, I'm reworking a mod that removes all trees, underbrush, and a good deal of trash from the commonwealth, Nuka workd, and Far Harbor. My first go at it consisted of deleting references to remove the trees. I've been informed deleted references can cause CTDs and other issues. So, this time I've replaced all the model NIFs and zero scaled them in a NIF editor. Everything looks as it should, trees, trash, underbrush, all gone. I even regenerated the LOD for every world successfully ... sort of. âAs you can see, there are ghost trees on the far horizon from vault 111. It happens in a few other places that are beyond the map boundaries. Why do they look this way? because there are no trees in the LOD texture map. I've replaced every tree in the game with zero scale river rocks. They are only trees in name out there. Not to mention zero scale. I did the same thing with the LOD NIFs for the trees. I found the smallest one, zero scaled it, and replaced every LOD tree with it. There's nothing there to make trees ... or at least there shouldn't be. I've been out that way with the CK and the trees even show up in the CK ... but I can't select them and I've forced LOD on so they go poof as I get closer. My only other thought has been to add the trees back, remove collision from them all, and give them transparent textures. This seems a bit daunting though and I'm not even sure it will work. Any ideas on what these ghost trees are and how to get rid of them would be appreciated.

I fixed it! I had to clear out every last loose file to find out where the fershlugginer files were getting put. your path may vary depending on your steam library location. C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\LODSettings\Commonwealth.LOD C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\Meshes\Terrain\Commonwealth\Objects (ALL the objects) ... note the complete lack of LOD mention in the path or file names. That tripped me up. Last ... but not least. This is the step that the creation kit skips. Three TGA files get generated in C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Source\TGATextures\Terrain\Commonwealth\Objects These files need to get converted to DDS and copied over to C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\textures\Terrain\Commonwealth\Objects I did that with the GIMP and a DDS plugin. Once I did THAT, the LOD textures were 99.9% normal. Around the edge of the map there are still trees in the skybox. They look a tad wonky, but looking at the rest of the commonwealth from vault 111, you can practically see the whoooooole thing. For the life of me I can't figure out why the creation kit skips that last vital step. maybe it's some DDS compression licensing thing. Who knows. Here's the view downtown from vault 111 @ 2560x1440 http://i.imgur.com/aQQq7pu.jpg

Here's a n00b question to add to all of this. Is the LOD generation supposed to create new DDS texture files? because I get nothing but three TGA files in TGATextures\Terrain\Commonwealth\Objects. no DDSTextures directory gets created and nothing in my data directory changes except commonwealth.LOD. I've even gone so far as to remove my mod from the mix and the crap lod still shows up, so there are files going ... somewhere. Can anyone from the secret LOD cabal clue me in?

I'm working on a mod to fit my playstyle. I like large open expanses and huge waging battles, so I run 3 mods to add warring NPCs when I'm not working on my mod. I like to be able to watch and snipe. anyway ... I've been able to successfully remove all the trees and vision obscuring underbrush from the commonwealth, far harbor, and nuka world. I even added a settlement in the glowing sea for good measure (no questions there, it works perfectly). However ... I've hit a dead end. I can regenerate the static meshes for world LOD to get rid of the trees on the horizon, but the textures come out all screwy, like the mapping of nif to texture is off. I've converted all the DDS files from the main game and the DLCs to TGA. The file names and directory structure match perfectly in C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Source\TGATextures The Commonwealth.Objects.tga files that get generated look ok, from what I can tell. All the inputs look good to the best of my knowledge. When I generate I get the following: Build complete. 2670825 LOD object triangles. 604560 were rejected (0 degenerate, 604560 under landscape). 4778458 total LOD object vertices. The following issues were detected during the build process: Wrapping: A vertex in geom 'ShackBridgeFree01Support01_LOD_0:0' has a texture coordinate well outside of the (0,1) range. Wrapping is NOT supported in LOD. Followed by a bunch more wrapping not supported errors and some "this object has too many vertices for this level" errors I haven't touched any of the objects I see errors on. All the meshes are extracted fresh from the BA2 files. Here's the result I get. The view from vault 111: The trees are gone from the hills, but the rocks look like scrap piles and the electrical towers look like the side of a building. The only plus is that I'm pushing 100+ fps most places now with all settings maxed (except grass, I hate grass) at 2560x1440 I've scoured the web for days and gotten nowhere with this. It seems nobody has tried to regenerate the commonwealth LOD, or hasn't successfully done it, given up, and didn't say anything. Bethesda obviously either didn't use this tool to create the game, or they have some secret trick. So, can anyone help? Any tips? Am I missing something in the process? Any help appreciated. Thanks