Mod Problem - no grass and low draw distance?

[JakubDaviau]

If the Source folder was created, that means that it will not contain the neccesary textures and meshes that the CK requires. You should create the folder beforehand and prep it,...ie. extract the meshes and textures from the .bsa files to the appropriate folders, then convert the .dds textures into .tga files.

 

The CK looks for these file and if they are not there, then the outcome is probably flawed.

 

It's all in the tutorial and very easy to follow.

 

Wait but if i ever would want to put my mod on the net, like on nexus for instance, would that mean i would need to include all of those textures extracted from game even thou they are in the game?

[Tamb0]

If the Source folder was created, that means that it will not contain the neccesary textures and meshes that the CK requires. You should create the folder beforehand and prep it,...ie. extract the meshes and textures from the .bsa files to the appropriate folders, then convert the .dds textures into .tga files.

 

The CK looks for these file and if they are not there, then the outcome is probably flawed.

 

It's all in the tutorial and very easy to follow.

 

Wait but if i ever would want to put my mod on the net, like on nexus for instance, would that mean i would need to include all of those textures extracted from game even thou they are in the game?

The only thing you would need to include are the files/folders in the Skyrim\Data\Meshes\Terrain\YourWorldspace\ folder and the files/folders in Skyrim\Data\Textures\Terrain\YourWorldspace\ folder.

 

The Source folder is a 'working' folder for the CK and these files do not get included in your mod. As you say, they're already in the game.

[JakubDaviau]

I'm messing around with BSAopt now, I it is used to extract those things if I understood correctly, I just don't understand why CK cant handle all of this and you need 4 other applications to do stuff like that for LOD to work, and I haven't even finished the mod yet so even if I do it right I will have to do it again when I finish I guess. Also I'm still not sure if that animated grass objects that show on ground in CK and don't show in actual game will be visible when I do the LOD? are they part of terrain or tree LODs? Or maybe mesh LOD? And i have question about this BSAopt app, i tried to extract meshes from LOD but program automatically checks every single mesh for extracting so I have to uncheck all of them by hand, unless there is a way to uncheck all meshes and I just don't see it? That would kinda help

[Tamb0]

BSAopt

 

For BSAopt, open the Textures.bsa and click on - textures in the top window, to highlight it. Look down to the middle bar and put a tick in the box that says Show recursive.

This will show every texture within the texture folder in the bottom window. They will all be selected by default (I think). Next, click the red box with the X and it will deselect them all.

 

Now click the lod folder in the top window and all the files in the lod folder will appear in the bottom window, but will be unselected. Click the box with the green tick and all files in the lod folder will be selected again.

 

At the bottom, browse to where you want the files to go (Source) and click Unpack. The program will create a folder name Textures and create another folder inside Textures named lod. Folder structure is important, so just point BSAopt at the Source folder and it will sort thing out itself.

 

Textures

 

Once you've made the lod and you want to start texturing, you have to duplicate the landscape and texturesets, as mentioned in the tutorial. This will give the new copies an ID starting with 01. The existing landscape/texturesets have an ID starting with 00, which as far as I know, is reserved for .esm files.

 

That's why you need to duplicate them.

 

Then, once you start to paint the texture, the grasses will show in the CK and ingame. You'll also have to generate new lod, once texturing is finished. This will give your lod the new colours as well.

 

Hope this makes it a bit easier to understand.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Tamb0

[JakubDaviau]

BSAopt

 

For BSAopt, open the Textures.bsa and click on - textures in the top window, to highlight it. Look down to the middle bar and put a tick in the box that says Show recursive.

This will show every texture within the texture folder in the bottom window. They will all be selected by default (I think). Next, click the red box with the X and it will deselect them all.

 

Now click the lod folder in the top window and all the files in the lod folder will appear in the bottom window, but will be unselected. Click the box with the green tick and all files in the lod folder will be selected again.

 

At the bottom, browse to where you want the files to go (Source) and click Unpack. The program will create a folder name Textures and create another folder inside Textures named lod. Folder structure is important, so just point BSAopt at the Source folder and it will sort thing out itself.

 

Textures

 

Once you've made the lod and you want to start texturing, you have to duplicate the landscape and texturesets, as mentioned in the tutorial. This will give the new copies an ID starting with 01. The existing landscape/texturesets have an ID starting with 00, which as far as I know, is reserved for .esm files.

 

That's why you need to duplicate them.

 

Then, once you start to paint the texture, the grasses will show in the CK and ingame. You'll also have to generate new lod, once texturing is finished. This will give your lod the new colours as well.

 

Hope this makes it a bit easier to understand.

 

Yes it did clear it a bit, and thank you, but I have yet another questions. When I make duplicates of textures in CK I will have to paint terrain again with duplicates? And I'm having a slight problem with nConvert, I tried to convert textures from DDS to TGA as the tutorial says but when I make notepad file and rename it run.bat it just acts as notepad file, I guess it should run this nConvert app but my system (windows 7) sees it just as notepad file

 

EDIT: Also when I just try to open nConvert app itself the command line window shows up but just for a fraction of a second and then it disappears, I tried to open it as administrator but didn't help much :/ ill try capability mode

Edited May 31, 2012 by JakubDaviau

[Tamb0]

Make sure both nconvert.exe and run .bat are in the same folder as the .dds files.

 

Also, make sure you have a minus sign in front of the tga part. The wiki was wrong. It had some other strange extended hyphen in front of tga. I fixed it today. That part was causing a few problems on another forum. When folk copy/pasted as the wiki said, it wouldn't work.

 

...but when I make notepad file and rename it run.bat it just acts as notepad file...

 

Do you mean it opens Notepad and shows you the text ?

 

EDIT: Also when I just try to open nConvert app itself the command line window shows up but just for a fraction of a second and then it disappears, I tried to open it as administrator but didn't help much :/ ill try capability mode

 

You cannot run it by itself. It needs options entered into it, and these options are provided by the .bat file.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Tamb0

[JakubDaviau]

...but when I make notepad file and rename it run.bat it just acts as notepad file...

 

Do you mean it opens Notepad and shows you the text ?

 

 

Yes, its just txt file, it opens notepad, I tried to open it with nConvert but it didn't help, can I force my system to see it as .bat file instead of txt? just typing .bat extension in the name seems not to work :(

[Tamb0]

...but when I make notepad file and rename it run.bat it just acts as notepad file...

 

Do you mean it opens Notepad and shows you the text ?

 

 

Yes, its just txt file, it opens notepad, I tried to open it with nConvert but it didn't help, can I force my system to see it as .bat file instead of txt? just typing .bat extension in the name seems not to work :(

 

There are 2 possibilities here.

 

1. Your file is being named as Run.bat.txt...or...

2. At some point you have selected to open .bat files with Notepad.

 

I suspect it's number 1.

 

When you save the file in Notepad, File > Save as..., the save box appears. At the bottom there is a long box with Save as type : and the type is set to Text Documents (*.txt). You need to change this (use down pointer at right hand side) to All Files (*.*)

 

Now type Run.bat as the name and save. It will now be named Run.bat, not Run.bat.txt

Let me know if that works.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Tamb0

[JakubDaviau]

Yes it worked now, however I'm not sure if directory is right, since in tutorial it says it supposed to be "Source/TGATextures" and on my hard drive its "Source/DDSTextures" should I rename it? And also in that DDSTextures folder is folder "Textures" and inside that "Lod" and there are lod textures so it goes: "Source\DDSTextures\textures\lod" should I move stuff around or is it ok?

[Tamb0]

Make another folder in Source and name it TGATextures.

Browse the DDSTextures folder and cut the lod folder from it (only the lod folder). Paste the lod folder directly into TGATextures.

 

You can now browse to TGATextures\lod\ and just delete the .dds files in there. You don't need them anymore.