Fallout 4 Optimization and Performance Systems Explained

[MissingMeshTV]

Sorry payl0ad...my post wasn't meant to be a response to your question, just a follow up to an earlier post.

 

Personally, I prefer to wait until the end of testing/development to generate precombines. SCOLs do help to a degree with draw calls. I've been using them a lot with interior cells and they do make a difference as far as I can tell.

[payl0ad]

Well thanks for the reply anyway. That helps. :)

 

 

 

Other opinions, for completeness?

[chucksteel]

 

Still I'd like some feedback on my approach; do SCOLs actually conserve performance by reducing objects to draw? Is it smarter to precombine right in the middle of development (e.g. when landscaping is finished) or save all that for later and exclude material swapped objects from precombination manually?

 

I would agree with RedRocketTV in your case, that it's probably better to wait until your close to the end of development/testing but, if you did start to see massive performance hits there would be nothing from stoping you to do your Pre-Combineds to see how much they help at any time. You can always go back and re-generate for the cells you update or edit afterwords and don't have to start the entire Pre-Combined process over. If you do this make sure to take notes on the cells you do edit, I keep detailed lists with block and sub-block info in xEdit but, I am working in the vanilla worldspace and do a lot of Pre-Combined cleaning.

 

I do think your on the right track with baking the materials you want directly into the nif's your using also. Where Pre-Combinds will loose the custom material added to the mesh, SCOL's will loose the materials added via the extras tab (and possibly the custom texture too I'm not 100% on this one.)

 

I build a lot of templets for my buildings in interior cells using the interior tile floors because I want their checkered patterns or whatnot. I even try to furnish and add most statics to them before placing them into the world. i create SCOL's. This way I can work on the grid and place all items into the world at one time, get them orientated correctly but, I have to break them up to re-apply the materials because the SCOL always defaults to what is baked into the nif from what I can tell.

[payl0ad]

> I do think your on the right track with baking the materials you want directly into the nif's your using also

 

I'll pack them up as modders resources when the collection becomes bigger. This will come in handy.

 

> I have to break them up to re-apply the materials because the SCOL always defaults to what is baked into the nif from what I can tell.

 

The underlying process seems to be the same. You can also see this when breaking up the CoastHouses added by Far Harbor. Thankfully most furniture doesn't use MSWPs as far as I can tell.

[chucksteel]

For the Modern furniture, the clean version doesn't but the dirty does and will revert to clean in a pre-combined. That's where I started to notice the issue the most. Now I just place the clean versions then give them the material I want in the Extras tab and they retain the swap when pre-combined.

[VIitS]

Two things of note:

1) From what I have found, once you have the precombined generated, you don't need the regular mesh for the precombineds to still work. I don't think I've actually tested it, but I have seen that some SCOLs (which are only used as part of precombineds) that don't actually have the SCOL mesh anywhere in the vanilla .ba2 files.

 

2) Thanks to jonwd7 updating Nifskope to work with CK-generated precombineds, if you are feeling particularly masochistic (or only need to fix material swaps for a few things), you can manually edit which material the precombined will use. Obviously you wouldn't want to do this when you have a ton of instances of an object, but it's something to keep in mind.

 

But chucksteel's method sounds best. If that is for Placed References like I think it is (as opposed to base objects), FO4Edit would be useful for applying the same material to tons of records.

[SMB92]

Yeah I can confirm that I've seen the precombined meshes bake their nifs, and textures. For the nif, I've been able to remove the original and it still shows up, but not the textures/materials (it will show up purple)

 

Another thing you might consider payload, is to generate for the major landscape and building only, and then apply your clutter (can do so via using layers as it has been said). This way you get a fair benefit from generating precalc without stressing yourself too much, you'd only need generate if you made major changes to landscape and major features.

[chucksteel]

Not exactly on the current subject of Payl0ad's question but, has anyone had issues with part's of the Physics.nif being generated for a cell? I have one cell in Easy City downs that repeatedly ends up with this issue.

 

I can fix it but, it's a bit frustrating because the last time it seemed to break I didn't edit that area. (possibly It was already broken but, I could swear i had tested it before making a minor update to another location.)

 

Edit, The issue is one of my custom building.nif will lose it's collision but all vanilla and other custom building.nifs still have them.

[SMB92]

I've not experienced that issue myself with any of my gens, or at least I have not found them, however BetaVirus has with his Downtown fps fix mod (Valyn81 on Nexus). You might talk to him about it, but he had mentioned he lost physics for fires and stairs (particularly those wrecked buses) with his generation.

[chucksteel]

I'll will talk to BetaVirus, I didn't know his nexus name be we do talk on Beth.net when one or the other of us isn't getting banned. :dance:

 

The building I seem to have issues with is one of my custom ones which is a combination of Bld02CornerBrickACom01 and Bld02CornerBrickACom01RR. you can't use the stairs and sometimes can walk through walls.

 

Like I said it's not hard to fix, I just have to re-generate the cell with the issue all by itself but, it's annoying and thought I might be causing the issue somehow.