Graphical Improvements - Squeezing the most out of LoD?

[apprendista]

Try getting rid of the noise replacer, it should get rid of some of the patchyness. Using a smaller normal map might also help since the one used seems to simulate way too much surface detail. If possible, you might want to try making your own using exported .raw files, adjusting them slightly, and converting them to a normal map.

 

Additionally, if your computer can handle it, you might want to try upping uGridsToLoad=5 to 7 instead. What this will do is make 1 more cell on all sides of you part of the active area, and use the real texturing instead of LOD. However, this requires quite a bit more system resources since you are essentially doubling the number of active cells and everything that might go with it.

Normal

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With it at 7

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Excellent information! I'll work with that soon.

 

A few questions: It seems I may not fully understand how the LoD alterations need to work. From my understanding you need at least these two things:

 

Normal Maps (I use Qarl's 4096 LoD normal maps)

Color Maps (I use the Better Tiling 4096 LoD color maps)

 

That should be it? Right? I've read TOTO over and over again, but I can't find a single place that actually spells out what's required for proper LoD conversion. I've also heard of generating my own LoD using a tool, but before I do that I want to make sure I understand the basics. Assuming I'm going to use QTP3 for my world textures, what else would be required for LoD improvement, and in what order should things be handled? What side tools are required?

 

I really hate to pull the "newbie" card, but TOTO isn't as specific as I'd like, and it also seems slightly outdated.

[billypnats]

if you installed everything RIGHT, and its still not showing up right then its probably archive invalidation, I never trust OBMM's function because it just takes too long and almost always ended up crashing my game, wrye bash used to have archive invalidation features in it but after not playing oblivion for a while I can't find the invalidation button in wrye bash =/

 

 

But! there's this wonderful thing called "archive invalidation invalidated!" its like an automatic archive thing that does eveything for you without all the fuss, if you've been using the self created text file, you don't know what you've been missing.

[Vagrant0]

Well, the generating methods would only result in something worse than what you have since they either work on the lower resolution images created by the CS, or create the LOD using pieces of textures from the landscaping, which ends up making things look patchwork. What I suggested was simply opening up tamriel in the heightmap editor, and exporting it as .raw files. These files are grayscale images which are 1024x1024. You can then take these images into photoshop, enlarge them to 2048x2048, adjust the contrast, add some slight noise, use the normalmap filter, and save them as a normal map.

 

What this will do is make it so that the bumpyness of the distant terrain follows more closely with the actual landscape of those cells, instead of emulating some sort of erosion effects everywhere that aren't actually there.

 

As far as terrain noise goes, turning that down will get rid of some of the "peppering" on the distant landscape, and should make things look a bit better.

[apprendista]

I suppose I'm rather confused, then. What's the installation order for Really AEVWD? Right now I'm doing: Qarl's 4096 maps, Better Tiling 4096 maps, Noise replacer (now the light version), RAEVWD, and THEN QTP3.

 

The problem is QTP3 overwrites things from the first few. So my question is, how the hell can I tell which ones need to take priority and be overwritten?

[billypnats]

you should install QTP 3 last, since you see QTP 3 the most.

[apprendista]

Normally I'd agree with you right off the bat, since QTP3 is a large upgrade. However I've seen on the forums that QTP3 should be done before RAEWVD, since RAEWVD replaces certain texture files? Struggling to find documentation before I commit.