Distant LOD help - Theryon - need my island in the sky

[humantis]

Hi. I've downloaded this mod, Theryon.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32699

 

What I would like, is for this giant floating island to be viewable when distant so when you look up in the sky, while standing on the ground, there's a giant floating island there. I would like that very very much.

 

I am not sure how to do it, though. I looked at "DistantLOD" related entries on the UESPwiki and the Construction Set wiki but I'm the first to admit I don't understand this stuff at all. So I fiddled. I tried, for example, copying "earth.nif" - which appears ... maybe ...? to be the model file for the island object itself - to "earth_far.nif" and using TES4LODGen to regenerate the LOD. It didn't help, though.

 

I looked at the landscape editor (The Construction Set wiki has a distantlod tutorial that says the relevant options might be in there) but I didn't really understand what I was looking at. I accidentally made a huge mountain on the heightmap and had to exit without saving my changes.

 

So. I'm guessing this is really easy, I just don't know how to do it myself. May I ask for someone to show me where the clue is? I seem to have dropped mine.

 

Thanks in advance!

[DavidBudreck]

TES4LODgen http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15781

 

Keep a backup of your DistantLOD Folder in case you don't like the results.

[LadyMilla]

Hi. I've downloaded this mod, Theryon.

http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=32699

 

What I would like, is for this giant floating island to be viewable when distant so when you look up in the sky, while standing on the ground, there's a giant floating island there. I would like that very very much.

 

I am not sure how to do it, though. I looked at "DistantLOD" related entries on the UESPwiki and the Construction Set wiki but I'm the first to admit I don't understand this stuff at all. So I fiddled. I tried, for example, copying "earth.nif" - which appears ... maybe ...? to be the model file for the island object itself - to "earth_far.nif" and using TES4LODGen to regenerate the LOD. It didn't help, though.

 

I looked at the landscape editor (The Construction Set wiki has a distantlod tutorial that says the relevant options might be in there) but I didn't really understand what I was looking at. I accidentally made a huge mountain on the heightmap and had to exit without saving my changes.

 

So. I'm guessing this is really easy, I just don't know how to do it myself. May I ask for someone to show me where the clue is? I seem to have dropped mine.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

First of all, you do not need to move or do anthing with .nif file if you want to use TES4LODGen. Simply run TES4LODGen in the directory where you installed it, and it will generate a bunch of .lod files in the 'Oblivion\Data\DistandLOD' directory.

 

Once the process is completed, you can jump into the game and you should see your floating island from the distance.

 

On a second note: In my experience, if you generate LOD files for all distant object in Tamriel, you'll suffer a fairly big performance drop. My method is: I check the coordinates (the 'Location' column in Cell View in the TES editor) of the distant objects, then I generate the LOD files with TES4LODGen, but I only keep the ones that are related to the locations where my new building/terrain objects are. It is a bit time consuming, but for me it made a huge difference in FPS.

 

 

 

[humantis]

Thanks for the replies! This is pretty much the best site ever.

 

DB: I mentioned that I use TES4LODGen in the OP ;)

 

LM: I also forgot to mention that I use RAEVWD, which does indeed crush my performance utterly, but I love it.

 

So really the issue (to explain it a little more properly) seems to be: Something about the giant floating island causes it to be ignored? by TES4LODGen. Or else the distant version is being generated but in-game it still won't show up. For some reason that doesn't seem likely to me; I think it's being skipped by the generator, but I don't know why.

 

I thought that TES4LODGen would ignore .nifs that didn't have a _far.nif attached to them; so that's why I made a copy and ran TES4LODGen again; it didn't help.

 

It's even possible that I don't actually know the real name of the model of the giant floating island object itself. (Upon further thought, I realized that's almost certainly not what earth.nif is. So even if I took the right steps I probably took them on the wrong model.)

 

Is there a way I can 'preview' .nif files (preferably textured) so I can be sure I have the right one? I tried double-clicking/right-clicking and whatnot on .nif files in the CS, but I didn't really accomplish anything.

[LadyMilla]

Thanks for the replies! This is pretty much the best site ever.

 

DB: I mentioned that I use TES4LODGen in the OP ;)

 

LM: I also forgot to mention that I use RAEVWD, which does indeed crush my performance utterly, but I love it.

 

So really the issue (to explain it a little more properly) seems to be: Something about the giant floating island causes it to be ignored? by TES4LODGen. Or else the distant version is being generated but in-game it still won't show up. For some reason that doesn't seem likely to me; I think it's being skipped by the generator, but I don't know why.

 

I thought that TES4LODGen would ignore .nifs that didn't have a _far.nif attached to them; so that's why I made a copy and ran TES4LODGen again; it didn't help.

 

It's even possible that I don't actually know the real name of the model of the giant floating island object itself. (Upon further thought, I realized that's almost certainly not what earth.nif is. So even if I took the right steps I probably took them on the wrong model.)

 

Is there a way I can 'preview' .nif files (preferably textured) so I can be sure I have the right one? I tried double-clicking/right-clicking and whatnot on .nif files in the CS, but I didn't really accomplish anything.

 

 

You can use NifSkope to view .nif files. If your .nif files are installed correctly, you should see the object in Nifskope with its textures. NifSkope

 

 

[humantis]

You can use NifSkope to view .nif files. If your .nif files are installed correctly, you should see the object in Nifskope with its textures. NifSkope

 

Thank you! I installed NifSkope, and after cluelessly needle-in-haystack rummaging through random .nif files, which at least told me I was indeed wrong about what model to use (heh), I realized I could probably use FormID Finder to tell me the object; the model was ayefloatingisle.nif. Which in retrospect... seems rather obvious. :P I verified that it was the right model in NifSkope and everything looked right.

 

So I copied ayefloatingisle.nif to ayefloatingisle_far.nif and reran TES4LODGen and now I can indeed see the floating island from far away! I know it's not an optimized mesh, but I'm no ninja and the mesh is pretty simple anyway; I'm just going to leave it as is.

 

Thanks for the help!