Trouble with LOD generation

[duude98]

This isn't my first tangle with LOD generation, but the ever troublesome function still finds unique problems to cause me. First of all, when Oscape generates LOD, it seems to use an outdated version of the worldspace. Mountains I place recently will not be generated. But, the weird thing is, other things that I placed more recently will recieve generation. It seems to just ignore some parts of the map, which is strange, because it does have some landscape edited where the mountain should be, just not as much. I did a little in that area and left it for a while, and it generates it to be the old landscape instead of the new edited one. Also, in some areas, the generation is simply incorrect. I have a crater in my worldspace, and the LOD generates it at only about 1/3 the depth it should be at. I set the land and water height correctly in Oscape, so I have no idea about that.

Also, the LOD seems to not disable for too long. I feel like I need to get way too close to the landscape before it actually renders properly. Did I just do a bad job at making my landscape so that is noticeable or is that actually an LOD problem? My LOD sliders are turned up all the way, and I feel like it is better in vanilla Skyrim than I am getting.

Lastly, I can have EITHER landscape OR Object LOD. When I generate one, it seems to overwrite the other. Also, tree LOD generation just doesn't work at all for me. No tree LOD is generated when I tell the ck to do it. Anyone have any ideas?

[Aragorn58]

This isn't my first tangle with LOD generation, but the ever troublesome function still finds unique problems to cause me. First of all, when Oscape generates LOD, it seems to use an outdated version of the worldspace. Mountains I place recently will not be generated. But, the weird thing is, other things that I placed more recently will recieve generation. It seems to just ignore some parts of the map, which is strange, because it does have some landscape edited where the mountain should be, just not as much. I did a little in that area and left it for a while, and it generates it to be the old landscape instead of the new edited one. Also, in some areas, the generation is simply incorrect. I have a crater in my worldspace, and the LOD generates it at only about 1/3 the depth it should be at. I set the land and water height correctly in Oscape, so I have no idea about that.

Also, the LOD seems to not disable for too long. I feel like I need to get way too close to the landscape before it actually renders properly. Did I just do a bad job at making my landscape so that is noticeable or is that actually an LOD problem? My LOD sliders are turned up all the way, and I feel like it is better in vanilla Skyrim than I am getting.

Lastly, I can have EITHER landscape OR Object LOD. When I generate one, it seems to overwrite the other. Also, tree LOD generation just doesn't work at all for me. No tree LOD is generated when I tell the ck to do it. Anyone have any ideas?

I do not use the CK at all for LOD generation, but many do with good results. This Post explains my method for generating LOD for a custom worldspace. Also there is a link to @ladyonthemoon's method, which works as well. I have done it numerous times without issue using Oscape and TES5LODGEN(for object and trees, just make sure you download the tree billboards from the mod page).

 

I did notice an issue similar to yours today while regenerating the LOD for some updates to my Forgotten Island mod. When I placed an object, an sFarmhouseSilodirt01 that does not have LOD meshes or textures in the same cell as a farmhouse that does have LOD, the LOD for that cell would not generate, until I removed the Silo. I have no explanation why this is but removing it worked. I have yet to try and locate it in an adjacent cell and test. Will do that when time permits.

 

If still having issues, PM me and I will give you an email to send your esp to and will try generating using my methods.

Edited November 18, 2015 by Aragorn58

[duude98]

 

I do not use the CK at all for LOD generation, but many do with good results. This Post explains my method for generating LOD for a custom worldspace. Also there is a link to @ladyonthemoon's method, which works as well. I have done it numerous times without issue using Oscape and TES5LODGEN(for object and trees, just make sure you download the tree billboards from the mod page).

 

I did notice an issue similar to yours today while regenerating the LOD for some updates to my Forgotten Island mod. When I placed an object, an sFarmhouseSilodirt01 that does not have LOD meshes or textures in the same cell as a farmhouse that does have LOD, the LOD for that cell would not generate, until I removed the Silo. I have no explanation why this is but removing it worked. I have yet to try and locate it in an adjacent cell and test. Will do that when time permits.

 

If still having issues, PM me and I will give you an email to send your esp to and will try generating using my methods.

 

Thanks, that fixed my problems with object and tree LOD, but my land LOD is still incorrect in places. It is even more obvious now, because I have a mountainous area that used to be extremely spiky and much taller, but I have since made it much shorter and flatter, but the LOD still shows it as tall and spiky. It is definitely using an old version of the map somehow. Do you know what might cause this? The method you showed for generating land LOD is exactly what I was doing, except I am not sure if my worldspace is a perfect square, nor do I know how to check that,

[Aragorn58]

Thanks, that fixed my problems with object and tree LOD, but my land LOD is still incorrect in places. It is even more obvious now, because I have a mountainous area that used to be extremely spiky and much taller, but I have since made it much shorter and flatter, but the LOD still shows it as tall and spiky. It is definitely using an old version of the map somehow. Do you know what might cause this? The method you showed for generating land LOD is exactly what I was doing, except I am not sure if my worldspace is a perfect square, nor do I know how to check that,

Did you delete all the previously generated LOD files before regenerating? Did you create your worldspace in the CK or with an external program. All the worldspaces I have done myself were created in the CK using only the Landscape Editor and not the Heightmap Editor. The CK's Hightmap Editor is extremely buggy and does not work properly. The only time I open it is to check the cell boarders to make sure every thing is square, and then before closing it I save it. When you do that you will receive a warning about the file is in use. But I just keep hitting Enter until it is finished. Close the editor, save my plugin and close the CK. Then generate the LOD using the mentioned tools.

 

To make sure your worldspace is square, open the heightmap editor, and turn the grid on. And zoom out until you can see the blue square that is your world surrounded by black. Then move the cursor to the extreme corners of the blue area and it will tell you what that cell is. For a 64x64 worldspace, the NW corner cell will be -32,31 and the SE cell will be 31,-32 just for an example. I had to add some cells for one test space to make it square, by opening my worldspace in the CK and typing the X,Y coordinates -32, 31 hitting go and dropping a small tree into the cell. Same for the other corner then going back to the Heightmap editor and checking and saving again. I also had to remove some cells in another test which I did using TES5Edit.

 

I have not had this issue but it has been suggested that you use a copy of your esp to generate the LODs, then when done, delete that copy and place your good esp back in the data folder. Something about the generation ruining your esp, but I have never had that problem.

 

Before Doing Any of the Above, make a backup of your esp in case something goes wrong and you lose all your hard work!

 

Offer still stands I will take a look at it if you like.

[duude98]

 

Did you delete all the previously generated LOD files before regenerating? Did you create your worldspace in the CK or with an external program. All the worldspaces I have done myself were created in the CK using only the Landscape Editor and not the Heightmap Editor. The CK's Hightmap Editor is extremely buggy and does not work properly. The only time I open it is to check the cell boarders to make sure every thing is square, and then before closing it I save it. When you do that you will receive a warning about the file is in use. But I just keep hitting Enter until it is finished. Close the editor, save my plugin and close the CK. Then generate the LOD using the mentioned tools.

 

To make sure your worldspace is square, open the heightmap editor, and turn the grid on. And zoom out until you can see the blue square that is your world surrounded by black. Then move the cursor to the extreme corners of the blue area and it will tell you what that cell is. For a 64x64 worldspace, the NW corner cell will be -32,31 and the SE cell will be 31,-32 just for an example. I had to add some cells for one test space to make it square, by opening my worldspace in the CK and typing the X,Y coordinates -32, 31 hitting go and dropping a small tree into the cell. Same for the other corner then going back to the Heightmap editor and checking and saving again. I also had to remove some cells in another test which I did using TES5Edit.

 

I have not had this issue but it has been suggested that you use a copy of your esp to generate the LODs, then when done, delete that copy and place your good esp back in the data folder. Something about the generation ruining your esp, but I have never had that problem.

 

Before Doing Any of the Above, make a backup of your esp in case something goes wrong and you lose all your hard work!

 

Offer still stands I will take a look at it if you like.

 

I have deleted the previous LOD, yes. The worldspace was made entirely in the CK using only the landscape editor, not heightmap. This is actually the second time I am making this worldspace, because the heightmap editor corrupted the first one and it was not salvageable, so I had to start again. If I ever need to open it for anything now, I don't even hit save, I just exit. I almost want to say that my computer might have cached something about my esp that tricks Oscape into getting the heightmap slightly wrong, but the area with the crater NEVER looked like how the LOD generated, and the parts that are from an older version I noticed actually show up correctly on the map, but not in game. Who knows, maybe I am doing something wrong I am not picking up on, I will pm you when I get home, thank you so much for offering to take a look.

 

P.S. I make a backup of my esp pretty much every time I close the ck. Also, for me anyway, whenever I try to generate landscape LOD in the ck, the land gets completely corrupted. The heights of cells are off from each other by a couple hundred feet, making the world a giant 3 dimensional floating checkerboard. That doesn't happen with Oscape, just my experience using the ck.

[duude98]

Ok, so one last development; The crater is not the only place in which the height of the LOD is incorrect. I also have a chasm elsewhere in the worldspace at a similar depth, and it too has LOD much higher than it should. My worldspace's land height is 1, while its water height is -5500, and in these places, the land is just below the water. Could it be that the heightmap can't tell how deep that is and is just generating LOD where it approximates land to be?

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out. Ticking with ocean-basin fixed it. I guess it mistook these areas for oceans and ignored them.

Edited November 21, 2015 by duude98