Precombine/Previs regeneration question for settlement mods

[kevkiev]

I have 2 mods that affect Sanctuary that I'd like to run through the CK to regenerate precombines/previs since they both break precombined meshes.

 

I've read the (rather astounding) "optimization" thread in the CK forum about this, and have watched RedRocketTV's tutorial where he used Tales from the Commonwealth as an example, but I'm still struggling with the mass of info and have a couple Q's about what I want to do. (The info overload is mainly from that thread, RRTV's tutorial is nicely straightfoward. Not that the thread is unclear, it's just that a lot of it was way over my dumbass head.)

 

Anyways...

 

1. If you regenerate precombines/previs, does anything that wasn't part of a pre-combined mesh in vanilla become part of the "new" precombined meshes you create in the CK during regeneration? For example, would an object in Sanctuary that was able to be disabled via console in vanilla become part of a precombine after running the regen in the CK such that you would no longer be able to disable it? I'm pretty sure the answer is "no" but...

 

2. Even though these 2 mods touch the same area, I think I have to load them into the CK and run the regeneration separately? Any point in loading them both into the CK when running the regen, even though you can only make one of them active?

 

3. Anything else I should take heed of before doing this?

 

I'm not even sure if that second question made sense. (Hopefully the first one did.) Like I said, I'm still kinda struggling with all this new info.

 

PS: I don't think this is relevant but, just in case it is, one of the mods changes the terrain slightly such that I have to ensure it loads before the other one in my load order, or else I get huge gaps in the terrain.

 

PPS: I know this would have been better posted in the CK forum. Will try and get a moderator to move it.

[wim95]

1. Objects with scrap recipes are automatically not included in precombines for settlement cells. I haven't checked it for non settlement cells.

 

2.

If you have two mods that modify the same cell you would load them both in the CK with none set to active, and just generate new previs data, and save it as a patch.

Double click in Data select. Not "set as active", just double click.

If you using Scrap Everything - double click them.

 

3. Regen precombines for all "double clicked" (loaded) plugins

 

As a result: scrapable settlement with precombine and previs.

 

 

Just in case add to CreationKitCustom.ini

[General]

bAllowMultipleMasterLoads=1

[kevkiev]

Ah, thanks for that wim95. I was looking at the Creation Kit site and there was a quick blurb that went something like "the problem modders face is when cells overlap" (which got me kinda nervous) but from other posts I saw on Beth.net, patches were mentioned but nothing specifically about doing 2 overlapping mods. Yours sounds like a great suggestion.

 

Good to know that scrappable objects are auto-excluded, although I was still wondering about objects that aren't scrappable but I can disable in console. However, (literally about 10 minutes ago) I came across a couple posts by chucksteel on beth.net that seemed to address this, by running a FO4Edit script, from a mod here on Nexus, to clean out unnecessary meshes from the precombine folder.

 

you can reduce the size of generated pre-combined meshes my cleaning them with xEdit. This will remove any meshes that were unchanged from vanilla but duplicated during the generation process. Also user generated prexcombindes are about 10 times larger then the vanilla making cleaning very important.

 

and a step-by-step example

 

1. .esm my mod in xEdit (Backup a copy of the original.esp for later use)

2. Load the mew .esm’ed mod in the Ckit

3. (Example only) generate new pre-combined meshes for every cell edited in Concord (DO NOT generate visibility)

4. Save as “MyMod.esp” in the Ckit and quiet

5. Open “MyMod.esp” in xEdit

6. Go to each cell edited and run the xEdit cleaning script. One at a time and each time it’s run it generates a new .bat file. Name each .bat file with the X, Y axis of the cell.

7. Close xEdit

8. Run the generated .bat files. They will delete all unneeded meshes from your Data/meshes/precombined folder. (I’ll give DLC notes at the end)

9. Load “MyMod.esp” in the Ckit again and fo to the center of (above example) Concord and generate visibilit.

10. Save and quit.

11. Open “MyMod.esp” in xEdit

12. Go to file header and change the original mods name from .esm to .esp

13. Quit xEdit and save. (Your patch will now work with your.esp version for distribution)

Done and done! You now have a squiky clean optimization patch that people can choose to use or not.

Note: NEVER open and save a patch that uses an .esp as a master in the Ckit, the Ckit will ERASE all the edits

 

I've underlined the part that I think will "preserve" meshes that are originally able to be console-deleted (afaik, which means they're not part of a precombine.

 

This is the mod/script to which he's referring

 

Here's the thread for reference

 

Although I am a bit confused by the esm part. And the warning not to open/save a patch with that uses an esp as a master (thus the esm'g). Or does setting niether mod as active mean that they don't technically even have masters? Such that I could do what you were saying, but then run the FO4Edit script from that mod to clean things up afterwards.

 

Edit: I'm also wondering how many cells to include for the previs regeneration. I know you have to go outside just the affected cells but, especially since one of the Sanctuary mods touches most of the island and the other is for the bridge, this is going to cover a very large area. But how large?

 

Edit2: Just realized a flaw in my thinking: some of the objects I was able to delete via console may have been that way because of broken precombines. That actually makes me question whether or not to regenerate the meshes. I don't have any previs issues and, although I might be able to increase fps by regenerating precombines I'm not sure the tradeoff of not being able to customize Sanctuary to my liking would be worth it. Still, I guess I could give it a shot to see what happens and go back to the original set up if that turns out to be the case.