Help with Exterior landscaping issue

[Armornv]

Hey folks! This is now the second time i've seen this. The first time I simply raised the height of the landscaping/added statics to cover it up. This time however, it is just not possible to do that. I'll try and explain what's in the pictures.

 

I'm modifying the lanscape in order to build a new player home/castle. Built in/on a mountain side. Everything was going fine until I started leveling off the top area where the actual castle will be. I saved, went into the game to check my progress and when I got to the top leveled off area, there were this giant blob of undefined color.

 

Now for the details of said blob...

You can clearly see it in game, but it DOES NOT show up in the CK. I've attached two images. One from in game, one from CK. You can walk through the blob just as though it was not there. Once on the "inside" of it, the terrain continues just as it is supposed to. When you turn around while inside of it, it acts just like any other piece in the ck that has an outside texture but not an inside one. I.E.: You can see through it once inside it.

 

Thinks I have tried. Starting over= No change

Turning off all mods(except DG and HF as the mod will use pieces from both) = No change....

 

I'd be very appreciative of any help with this issue.

 

Wow...250k limit......

 

Ok, the first pic is from the CK. I'll post the in game shot in minute. :)

Edited December 23, 2012 by Armornv

[Armornv]

Ok, here's the in game shot of the same area.

 

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Armornv]

Just noticed.... The blob appears to be what all textures look like from a certain distance, but this blob doesn't refresh/update itself when you get closer. It is also not where it should be as if the game engine doesn't know I changed that area.

[acidzebra]

What you're seeing is the default tamriel LOD mesh for that part of the terrain, essentially what you would see if you were far away, and there are multiple levels of LOD (typically 4,8,16,32 in skyrim, each higher level having less detail/polygons to render quicker at a further distance and the highest level -32- being used to generate the world map). Normally Skyrim will switch more or less seamlessly between levels as you approach, but since you've altered level 1 radically, it probably doesn't know what to do so presents the closest LOD mesh it has.

 

Since you've altered the terrain, you should generate new LOD files. The CK LOD generator is pretty buggy though (it works fine for object LOD, but not so good for landscape LOD), and many people use tools like Oscape to work around that. You can use this to generate a new Tamriel worldspace LOD. How to properly use Oscape is a chapter of text in itself, so I will just refer you to one of the many tutorials out there. (the one I'm pointing at is somewhat out of date but the general practice is sound - no need to duplicate every texture used though)

 

However, if you do that, your mod will become automatically incompatible with other mods which also alter Tamriel and have their own LOD set for that worldspace (and by incompatible I do not mean "will crash their game" but "will cause unpredictable visual artifacts like you're having right now"). I don't know of a way to generate partial LOD for, say, just a cell. Ideally, we want a tool like Oblivion's tes4lodgen, which would enable an end-user to install a bunch of terrain-altering mods, run tes4lodgen, and so generate proper LOD for their own custom worldspace. Not sure if anyone is working on that though.

 

So taking all the above into account, I can't really recommend radically altering vanilla Tamriel cell terrain right now. Well that or generate your own terrain and just say to hell with compatibility.

Edited December 23, 2012 by acidzebra

[Armornv]

Holy cow, thanks for the quick response!

What you're saying make sense, but I just looked at the generate worl LOD thing in the ck and don't have the slightest idea and what to click and what not to. Rather the completeley screwing something up, I may just opt for a not so cool/huge castle for myself. :( Sigh..... I don't gues I HAVE to have a castle that has a mall. lol......

[acidzebra]

I'd recommend staying away from CK's LOD generator altogether (or if you do use it - do NOT NOT NOT EVER save your mod after that. Close CK, reopen, reload). Oscape will do what you want but like I said, it comes with its own quirks and usage guide.

 

Perhaps an underground mall? Or mall-in-a-mountain? Or find a bit of open space and build there.

Edited December 23, 2012 by acidzebra

[Armornv]

Now that I think about it....There is a very very very slight chance that I maybe might have completely by accident clicked the "generate" button a while back(before the first occurence of the blobs).... :facepalm: Would it be possible that that is the cause? Edited December 23, 2012 by Armornv

[acidzebra]

Believe me, if "generate" bugged out on you, you would know it because you'd have missing/floating/otherwise messed up landscape all over the place. But most likely it failed to run/complete because you ticked some boxes at random and didn't have the source object textures in TGA format and/or landscape source DDS textures in the proper places.

 

This post should help you get an idea of how to reliably generate object LOD.

 

Which leads to my second tip: whenever you're going to start working on a mod, make a manual backup. When you're done, make a manual backup. If you find you've been working for 4 hours straight, save and make a backup.

Edited December 23, 2012 by acidzebra

[Armornv]

Very nice artlcle. Still more in depth than I am at this point tho lol. I apprciate your time and help sir! And by the way, thanks for making that cell location book. Unbe-weave-ably helpful. Have some kudos sir!