SSE Do I need LOD for large interiors?

[antstubell]

Making an epic, epic cave and using some mountain objects inside an interior cell. Will these objects display correctly in the distance or will I get pop-in/fade-out with them?

Thanks.

[zilav]

Interior cells don't have LOD.

[maxarturo]

As zilav said, interior cell don't use lod.

Although you can make it to use it.

"Will these objects display correctly in the distance or will I get pop-in/fade-out with them?"

This can definitely happen, but it depends clearly on the player's Skyrim graphic settings.

And here is where the "Although you can make it to use it." comes in.

But i would recommend first to pre design your cell carefully so that it can easily and successfully be optimized by using "RoomBounds" + "Occlusion Planes", before attempting in trying to make LOD work on an interior cell (is a recipe for migraines and headache).

Pre design in a paper your cell, how it should be constructed so that you know from the beginning where the "Portals" will be placed, and of course that you don't end up with conflicting "Roombounds".

Edited April 23, 2020 by maxarturo

[antstubell]

I've worked with Roombounds before but in this case the cave is massive and empty really. I guess with some lighting and fog I can make visibility limited so any pop-in won't be seen.

[maxarturo]

You can always take the easy route and construct your cave/cell the same way that Bethesda did "Blackreach", which is actually an interior cell placed on an "Exterior World Space".

There is nothing wrong with the easy route, especially if you don't intend on doing something special or extravagance and it's just a simple cell, no need to waste precious time on unimportant things.

Edited April 23, 2020 by maxarturo

[antstubell]

I considered that... too late. There are so many objects, translating moveable's I really don't want to mess anything up. I'll see how it looks with fogging set to close and a few mists here and there.

Thanks.

[maxarturo]

One small tip: if you want to construct a cave that from one end to the other it will have 1 kilometer (just an example in human metrics) in length, then to reduce the possibility of each of the opposite ends to "pop-in/fade-out", construct the cave in a "U" shape so this way you cut in half the "Visible Legth" but it still retains the 1 kilometer length.

 

Plus, you now have a cave that can at last be separated into 3 "Optimizable" sections (3 roombounds), this way you instantly cut the rendering process by 60%.

Edited April 23, 2020 by maxarturo

[antstubell]

:thumbsup: