LOD for moving object?

[jcdenton2012]

Hi, I had an idea for San Francisco, and wanted inquire into the possibility of creating a... let's call it, an odd LOD eye candy moment. I want know if it was possible to take a giant hat, 'giant hat' referencing something worn by an NPC who walks a long distance, and make that 'giant hat' have an LOD as it moves?

 

(brief repose)

 

OK, fine... the hats an aircraft carrier and I want to know if I can make an object LOD so that it renders after passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. If not, what I thought about doing, was just having the carrier pass under the bridge and park nearby, disabling the NPC, and enabling a nif of the carrier.

 

Also, for the curious, I've spent the last 3 days creating an LOD mesh for San Francisco, 267 land chunks. :laugh:

 

Also, expect a trailer in the next two days for "The Lost Legion." That mods really coming together now. :sleep:

[MartinPurvis]

Hi jcdenton2012,

 

I myself haven't been able to create movable LOD but it's something I've searched for in the past. I have however seen this mod for skyrim which is the only place I've seen movable LOD files, send the author a PM maybe.

 

Just thinking out loud, you could open the _lod.nif files for the above mod in nifskope and compare with yours. Then again, it might be something Skyrim is only able to do.

Edited August 3, 2015 by MartinPurvis

[Nimboss]

I think the game engine version for FONV is too limited (maybe wrong wording, closed down, seems more suitable) to what you want. Just was reminded that FONV have only one level of LOD compared to SKYRIM that have more, never thought about that much, and never have meddled with SKYRIM LOD very much at all, Yet! That at least makes it promising for FO4. But this was for fixed world LOD objects.

 

I never checked that out but for FO3 you had some Vertibirds swooping in and out of sight, did they use full fledge .NIF all the line or did they at some distance switch to LOD models, have you or anyone checked that? To me at least at distance it seemed a lower level model, but I can be wrong.

 

However you should be able to have a "LOD" or many "LOD" levels of a complicated .NIF and use some smart "blending" when it is close enough to a PC. It should be about some smart scripting and increase opacity for the lower detail .NIF and let the higher detail .NIF keep the path and take over. Actually for all levels needed depending on how high your .NIF details is.

 

Don't we have enough NVSE and plugin tools to make that happen already? Just asking? ( I have one old wild idea of letting some big Star Cruisers hovering down on low orbit over Mojave, and depending on distance use this "LOD" idea to not choke the game engine to death.)