Need help with first mod.

[Sifesboran]

Okay, so I started off relatively simple. I took one of the Hangars from Nellis Air Force Base and put it into a palette I have created called Buildings. I then loaded up the area for Searchlight Airport and placed the hangar at the end of the runway. I deleted the few rocks, bushes and radscorpion spawns that were originally placed where I wanted to put the hangar first though. Then I copied the interior of the hangar that has the plane inside it. I completely emptied the inside of the hangar out as I have plans for what I want to build in there later. Then I used another palette I called Doors and I put the doors on the hangar and I linked them to the doors on the interior of the hangar. So far so good. The next step I removed all the navmesh that was under the hangar I just placed and added a bit so that the navmesh went right up to the sides of the hangar.

 

As far as I thought, that should have been it. I loaded the game up, checked the box to add my mod to the data files to be loaded and hit play. The game started fine and I worked my way down to Searchlight Airport. As I was approaching it I could clearly see the airport, the fence around it and the tower. No hangar though. I went through the tunnel and came up onto the runway. From inside the airport fence I could see the two doors to the hangar but no hangar. I started to approach the doors and when I was maybe 30 yards away the hangar suddenly appeared as though an invisibility spell just lifted.

 

What do I need to do to make the hangar visible from a distance? Oh, and once the airport became visible it then seemed to stay visible as I left the area. Have I set something wrong preventing the hangar from rendering at the same time as everything else?

Edited November 30, 2010 by Sifesboran

[ObLars]

Okay, so I started off relatively simple. I took one of the Hangars from Nellis Air Force Base and put it into a palette I have created called Buildings. I then loaded up the area for Searchlight Airport and placed the hangar at the end of the runway. I deleted the few rocks, bushes and radscorpion spawns that were originally placed where I wanted to put the hangar first though. Then I copied the interior of the hangar that has the plane inside it. I completely emptied the inside of the hangar out as I have plans for what I want to build in there later. Then I used another palette I called Doors and I put the doors on the hangar and I linked them to the doors on the interior of the hangar. So far so good. The next step I removed all the navmesh that was under the hangar I just placed and added a bit so that the navmesh went right up to the sides of the hangar.

 

As far as I thought, that should have been it. I loaded the game up, checked the box to add my mod to the data files to be loaded and hit play. The game started fine and I worked my way down to Searchlight Airport As I was approaching it I could clearly see the airport, the fence around it and the tower. No hangar though. I went through the tunnel and came up onto the runway. From inside the airport fence I could see the two doors to the hangar but no hangar. I started to approach the doors and when I was maybe 30 yards away the hangar suddenly appeared as though an invisibility spell just lifted.

 

What do I need to do to make the hangar visible from a distance?

 

The hangar is a Static object, right? So you open it up, thick Visible from distance. Its easy as pie in the morning. :)

[Interfer0]

You have run into the LOD problem.

 

LOD stands for Level of Detail. It it what controls landscape/ objects at a distance. Take for instance the Goodsprings general store. If you are far away you look at the building, and it is actually showing a seperate object then when you view it close up. The LOD object is a very very basic model, both models exist in the meshes BSA. The stores filesize is 635k and includes a lot of detail, if your walk away from it, it eventually swaps out models with the LOD object which takes up only 11k. This keeps the models from eating up your memory.

 

In the GECK you would need to run the World LOD specifically the Generate Objects option. The problem with this is Bethesda's objects contain some kind of problem. IF you try to run the World LOD, it gives errors about TGA files not being the same size as the DDS files, or something like that.

 

There may be a work around, I am not sure. I know Jaysus has done some work with them, because he posted in the Discusion on the GECK page, I believe when he was working with his underwater hideout.

 

 

World LOD

[Interfer0]

Oh, and the Visible from a distance box is only available if you have a LOD nif. Like if you have a nif called Hugebuildingthatisawesome.nif you also need a Hugebuildingthatisawesome_LOD.nif. and I believe this LOD must be under a certain size.

[ObLars]

Oh, and the Visible from a distance box is only available if you have a LOD nif. Like if you have a nif called Hugebuildingthatisawesome.nif you also need a Hugebuildingthatisawesome_LOD.nif. and I believe this LOD must be under a certain size.

 

You're like a vault of information, kudos when i can. Although this ain't my post, im sure it helped the author heeps.

[Sifesboran]

Firstly, thank you to Interfer0. I did not know about LOD but that makes sense now. I have noticed sometimes when walking around the wasteland that the graphics suddenly jump from basic graphics to more detailed ones. The only problem with your reply is that it tells me what I need but not how to get or make what I need. The hangars on the Nellis Airforce Base can be seen from a distance away. Am I right in thinking that this means there must be *LOD.nif files somewhere for the hangar at the Nellis AFB? If so, any idea where I would find them?