Ghost trees on the horizon

[Dillenger69]

âSo, I'm reworking a mod that removes all trees, underbrush, and a good deal of trash from the commonwealth, Nuka workd, and Far Harbor. My first go at it consisted of deleting references to remove the trees. I've been informed deleted references can cause CTDs and other issues.

So, this time I've replaced all the model NIFs and zero scaled them in a NIF editor. Everything looks as it should, trees, trash, underbrush, all gone. I even regenerated the LOD for every world successfully ... sort of.

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As you can see, there are ghost trees on the far horizon from vault 111. It happens in a few other places that are beyond the map boundaries. Why do they look this way? because there are no trees in the LOD texture map. I've replaced every tree in the game with zero scale river rocks. They are only trees in name out there. Not to mention zero scale. I did the same thing with the LOD NIFs for the trees. I found the smallest one, zero scaled it, and replaced every LOD tree with it. There's nothing there to make trees ... or at least there shouldn't be.

 

I've been out that way with the CK and the trees even show up in the CK ... but I can't select them and I've forced LOD on so they go poof as I get closer.

 

My only other thought has been to add the trees back, remove collision from them all, and give them transparent textures. This seems a bit daunting though and I'm not even sure it will work.

 

Any ideas on what these ghost trees are and how to get rid of them would be appreciated.

[steve40]

Ugh, horrible approach.

 

The KISS rule applies here. Don't delete the references, don't mess with the nifs or scaling, simply mark the tree references as "initially disabled" instead.

[Dillenger69]

Ugh, horrible approach.

 

The KISS rule applies here. Don't delete the references, don't mess with the nifs or scaling, simply mark the tree references as "initially disabled" instead.

 

you know what ... I'm smrt ... I didn't even think of that and I've been using it on other stuff for my own personal mod. Thanks!

[Dillenger69]

I just re-figured out why I hadn't done that. In order to do that I'll have to go to every cell in every part of the game, click on every individual tree, shrub and bush and mark it initially disabled.

The base form doesn't have that option. Only the reference in the cell.

 

You wouldn't happen to know of a bulk tool that could do this?

 

edit: however, there are few enough cells with the ghost trees. I can give it a try there.

[Deleted15964729User]

You can surely find an xedit script that you can edit. Check on github.

[BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah]

Poor way to do it is to delete whatever you want, then go to FO4Edit and "disable and undelete" (or something like that) cleanup.

Not a great way, but still.

 

Some handy things you should know about for the future are:

-The dash key. Select a bunch of objects and hit the dash - key. Can do some things in bulk that way.

-The "All loaded" at the top of the cell view window. Able to select many things across many cells that way (and then be used in conjunction with the dash key).

 

But yeah, I too am sure there is a script for disabling all trees somewhere (or something that would get you close to where you want with that particular interest in mind), like Kingtobe says.

[chucksteel]

I would guess but, could be wrong that the trees are part of a Pre-combined mesh and the cell would need an edit to disable the Pre-Combined system then New Pre-Combined/Pre-Vis generated.

[Dillenger69]

You can surely find an xedit script that you can edit. Check on github.

thanks, I'm pretty new to modding this game. I'm actually a developer by trade, so anything I can do without clicking is a bonus.

Any search tips as to what I'm trying to do? I've come up with nothing.

 

 

EDIT: to everyone, I've tried disabling the trees in those cells individually and just flat out going into the cells and removing all trees. The ghost trees are well outside the game border. I'm guessing there's either an LOD generation bug, a bug in the game. Or some dev got lazy and hard coded LOD trees into those cells. The only place they show up is beyond the edge of the map.

 

 

again, anyone who can point me to a fo4edit script I can modify, that would be great. I've found one that cycles through cells, now I just need to find one that deletes desired items from a cell and I can cobble them together. Being able to get rid of all the edited NIF files would be a plus.

[Deleted15964729User]

https://github.com/MajinCry/xEdit-Scripts

[Dillenger69]

I would guess but, could be wrong that the trees are part of a Pre-combined mesh and the cell would need an edit to disable the Pre-Combined system then New Pre-Combined/Pre-Vis generated.

 

DING DING DING ... that's what it turned out to be. With the help of FO4edit and the script sources provided I was able to strip preconbination and pre-vis from every cell. I redid the pre-vis in as many cells as I could get to. There doesn't seem to be a bulk way to do it. If there is, I'd love to know.

 

Anyway, Here's what the horizon from vault 111 looks like now. Someone should tell them Boston has never had a ring of mountains around it. It's pretty damn flat IRL.

http://i.imgur.com/wZ4yBA7.jpg