The "Object LOD" Limitation

[Jeux]

You know, I'm usually ok with the LOD issue. I'm usually ok with "snaking" my worldspace designs. But now I have this desire to create open, green plains for my mod, and I can't do it.

 

Tree and land LOD is one thing, but the thought of generating object LOD is still a scare for me.

 

I want to set up the worldspace to be vast, surrounded by the NV underwater rock meshes, and the land is nothing but grass, few flora here n there and one or two trees.

 

So if I wanted to set up the LOD for ONLY the Underwater Rock Canyon Nifs (Underwater Lake Rocks), what will it take? Is it even worth the effort?

 

So from the looks of it, it goes like this:

 

1.) Extract desiredStatic.nif from bsa. Duplicate it and rename desiredStatic_lod.nif. Keep duplicate in same folder.

2.) Extract the base, normal and possible glowmap dds textures from bsa that correspond to desiredStatic.nif

3.) Convert the dds texture(s) to TGA

4.) Create a folder in the root directory of the game folder...like this: fallout new vegas\Textures TGA\(whatever directory path the original textures were in)

5.) Generate Objects in the GECK

6.) Take the newly generated textures from the Textres TGA folder and put them in the directory path of the original textures.

7.) ?

8.) Profit?

[Jeux]

Furthermore, what if the object doesn't have an lod variant in-game? I just looked in the bsa and I don't see _lod files for the rocks of my choice, while other rocks do.

[avianrave]

LOD object generation is a simple but buggy process once you familiarize yourself with it. Once you have the necessary meshes/textures, then it takes a fraction of the time to generate when compared to a landscape.

 

1.) Extract desiredStatic.nif from bsa. Duplicate it and rename desiredStatic_lod.nif. Keep duplicate in same folder.

 

Furthermore, what if the object doesn't have an lod variant in-game? I just looked in the bsa and I don't see _lod files for the rocks of my choice, while other rocks do.

 

Do not rename desiredStatic.nif to desiredStatic_lod.nif unless there is no lod variant. Using this will use a larger and more complicated mesh then what is needed. This might cause errors if enough non-lod objects are used in lod generation. Only the larger rocks are included in the lod generation by default, the one without lod simply have no lod included. Using objects that have no in-game lod in lod generation usually causes most of my problems.

 

2.) Extract the base, normal and possible glowmap dds textures from bsa that correspond to desiredStatic.nif

 

Yup. If you are missing a texture, you will get an error message telling you what texture you need to replace.

 

3.) Convert the dds texture(s) to TGA

 

I use paint.net and just do save as .TGA

 

4.) Create a folder in the root directory of the game folder...like this: fallout new vegas\Textures TGA\(whatever directory path the original textures were in)

 

Wrong, one folder up. For Example my fallout directory is

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas

and my Textures TGA folder is located in

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Source\Textures TGA

 

It will be generated when you generate the landscape textures if you did not create one already.

 

5.) Generate Objects in the GECK

 

That'll do. If you change the size of the worldspace from the last time you ran the landscape generation, then you will need to run the landscape mesh generation again before you generate objects again. Don't ask me why, its some error I've run into.

 

6.) Take the newly generated textures from the Textres TGA folder and put them in the directory path of the original textures.

7.) ?

8.) Profit?

 

Correct. You must also remember to move the texture from the DiffuseGenerated folder to the Diffuse folder for the landscape texture to work correctly.

 

If you want to send me your addon, I could run the LOD generation process. If you have everything but the static objects, then it would only take me a few seconds since I have a large amount of meshes/textures already for the generation process.

Edited December 7, 2011 by avianrave

[Jeux]

Very nice, thanks for answering this.

 

Do not rename desiredStatic.nif to desiredStatic_lod.nif unless there is no lod variant. Using this will use a larger and more complicated mesh then what is needed. This might cause errors if enough non-lod objects are used in lod generation. Only the larger rocks are included in the lod generation by default, the one without lod simply have no lod included. Using objects that have no in-game lod in lod generation usually causes most of my problems.

 

I did not think of this. Glad you pointed this out. So does that mean that my "underwater rocks" won't be worth the lod effort?

 

Wrong, one folder up. For Example my fallout directory is

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas

and my Textures TGA folder is located in

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Source\Textures TGA

 

It will be generated when you generate the landscape textures if you did not create one already.

 

Yup, I figured out that much when I actually attempted the process. The folder was created for me.

 

If you want to send me your addon, I could run the LOD generation process. If you have everything but the static objects, then it would only take me a few seconds since I have a large amount of meshes/textures already for the generation process.

 

I thank you for the offer, but my addon is quite large. I'm sure that if I try the process again, it will work. The issue with me was that I tried to make LODs out of objects that weren't meant to be LOD (and didn't have "visible when distant" check in the GECK for the origninal static mesh).

 

 

One more question. Do you HAVE to provide LODs for EVERY static mesh in your worldspace? I had a worldspace with a wide variety of statics, and only wished to make the rocks LOD. But when I provided the necessary stuff and ran generation, I got errors saying that I had missing textures for some tree meshes...?

[avianrave]

Try this out. It has a good majority of the meshes that are used, and will give you an idea of what meshes have lod meshes. Another way is to browse the meshes.bsa and type "lod" in the filter and extract.

 

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36693

 

Try to stick to all lodmeshes. There are time however that you might want to add an object without lod in with the landscape. The generation does work if you only use a few of the "fake lod" objects in the generation, but also gets buggy rather quickly if you use too many. If you need to extract your own textures, try to scale them down to 64x64 or 128x128.

 

You can also decrease the scale of the larger rocks that have lod to the smaller size of the underwater rocks.