My mod removed Precombined Meshes from a whole bunch of cells

[RaffTheSweetling]

The really confusing thing is that my mod consists of four interior levels (so far) built from scratch, with only one vanilla interior (Concord Civic Access), and one worldspace (near Oberland Station / Vault81) edited.

 

The worldspace edits I understand could have, in the past, caused the cell-reset, and I anticipated this perhaps popping up as a potential bug.

The edits to the interior cell, again, I am taking into account, and can accept if some bug presents itself there, but the 20+ vanilla cells which have had their precombined mesh data removed makes no sense.

 

Chuck, I can understand how the modding you do would present many editing problems, such as the ones I describe, as you edit a lot of vanilla locations, but I work almost exclusively on my own cells only, and don't touch any of those other cells. I have not edited them, have not taken assets from them, or deleted any references within them, so why are they edited?

 

My earlier theory of accidentally hitting "Clear affected Cells for Precombined Data" when I was looking at objects in the object window, also puzzles me, because I am working within my cells 100% of the time, not editing a vanilla cell, so what does it mean in the statement "Clear affected Cells for Precombined Data"? Which cells are being cleared? In what manner? It feels so arbitrary right now, and I don't really understand the rhyme or the reason.

 

I have had a look in this thread "Edits to *ANY* Cell Records Can Block Mesh Overrides" and again I am confused at how this information applies to the edits my mod created. If did not actually edit vanilla cells, except for Concord Civic Access, I simply took objects/packins from the object window form lists and added them to my cell/ during construction. And that's it. So, I don't see how I have disabled/removed the Precombined data in this way.

[TummaSuklaa]

 

I knew about the 'looking at a cell flags it as edited' already, and I know about placing objects. I've been doing this a long time. This is completely different. This is all the precombined meshes completely removed in a LOT of cells that I never looked at at all.

 

:sad: :sad: :sad:

Alright then, sorry. That is something entirely new to me, and obviously Fallout specific. But I do know that the CK for Skyrim at least has many bugs.. (there was a whole topic listing them). So undoubtedly, the CK has its problems for Fallout.

[chucksteel]

it could vary well be the theory about the "Clear affected Cells for Precombined Data" button. I did think and was corrected that the Pre-combined meshes worked on a 3x3 grid.

 

However the FO4 Ckit doe arbitrarily edit cells just like any other version prior to it. I often have to clean out cell edits across the map that I didn't touch because the Ckit decided they needed an edit.

 

Can you roll back to a version before you hit that button? I know this may mean loosing some work but it may be faster to rebuild some stuff then to try to fix the issue in other ways.

[zilav]

Clear affected Cells for Precombined Data removes precombined meshes data from cells where that object is placed and precombined with others. You can view "Use Info" to get an idea what cells would be or was affected.

[RaffTheSweetling]

Thanks Chuck, and thanks Zilav.

 

@Zilav - that's very handy clarification. I will be extra-bloody careful now not to accidentally hit that item when I am going for the "preview" option in the object window. You'd think there would be an "are you sure" secondary option or something for this type of situation.

 

@Chuck - I removed all of these edits in FO4Edit, and have checked in the CK, and the cells looked OK, and I then loaded my plugin in FO4Edit a second time and checked the data of the main .esm and the precombined mesh looks to have been restored. I hope this is all I needed to check.

It wouldn't have been impossible to go back to an older saved copy of my plugin, but because I can't be sure when I accidentally hit that button, it would have been a major hassle.

Fingers crossed that this issue is fixed now, and nothing broken inadvertently. And the take-away is to definitely be careful when going for that "preview" button to not accidently hit the "Clear affected Cells for Precombined Data".

 

Thanks guys!

[chucksteel]

Sure thing any time you need misinformation just ask! :tongue:

 

Lets see.

 

1. the sun rises in the West!
2. the sky is green
3. the moon is made of cheese

Need any more?

 

Seriously though zilav knows more about this then I do. I tried to get my head around it and again it gave me pains. some of it does seem pointless from a modding standpoint only creating conflicts and issues.

 

though if there is a better way I'm more then happy to learn it.

[ousnius]

When you edit one cell, all the adjacent cells around it will have their precombined data invalidated.

That means if you edit one cell, you actually edited 9 cells in total.

 

Quoting jonwd7:

"Precombined is not "at a distance". It literally replaces the actual refs with a baked mesh. The Previs is "at a distance", to hide the baked refs based on precomputed visibility from a grid of points in the cell and the adjacent cells. So the Vis files are basically what precombined data you can see from dozens/hundreds of positions in the cell."

[Ethreon]

It all makes sense from the point of view of a console. Which is not really helpful to us, but what can we do?

[ousnius]

It all makes sense from the point of view of a console. Which is not really helpful to us, but what can we do?

 

Well... nothing. If the CK wants to invalidate a certain precomb/previs, then that's what it's going to do. All mods affecting those invalidated cells could conflict (overriding all meshes of the other mod).

Which is why a mod such as SMIM is impossible in FO4.

[chucksteel]

 

It all makes sense from the point of view of a console. Which is not really helpful to us, but what can we do?

 

Well... nothing. If the CK wants to invalidate a certain precomb/previs, then that's what it's going to do. All mods affecting those invalidated cells could conflict (overriding all meshes of the other mod).

Which is why a mod such as SMIM is impossible in FO4.

 

This is kind of why I said I just stopped worrying about it. On top of that the XB1 people that do use my mod haven't had any issues with performance. (Well issues that have been reported that is.)