extracting heightmap/terrain meshes

[n0p0n3]

Does anyone know how to extract either a heightmap of the exterior worldspace or the terrain meshes for skyrim sse and fallout 4? I've found the lod meshes in /meshes/terrain/commonwealth/*btr, but wondering if any higher quality ones can be made/extracted. I'm trying to recreate the worldspace as chunks in blender for a project. The creation kit has an "export all landscape" function, but I cannout figure out where it saves. The "create local map" function kinda works, but I believe its more for the local map in the pipboy.

[thousande]

Not sure how much of the height map functions in Fallout4/CK that actually works. Looks like old stuff that is partially ripped out.

Only thing that comes to my mind at the moment is xEdit's worldspace browser (in Apply Script). It has some parameters and can create a normal map of the selected worldspace for save/export.

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

But doesn't that XEdit thing only work for LOD "heightmaps" ?

[thousande]

> But doesn't that XEdit thing only work for LOD "heightmaps" ?

 

Probably a bad idea, I thought maybe the normal map could be used as a base

[n0p0n3]

I'm not adverse to using LOD data, as long as it's not too different from the base game. I was thinking of looking at fo4lodgen, if it's a script that can be edited to output the precombined cell mesh before whatever it does to simplify it (otherwise I have to build maps by hand using xyz positional and rotational data, I already have to for interiors, would rather not for exteriors unless this works then I won't have to do either). I've pulled the object lod from the base game thinking i could use the versions meant for closer to the player, but don't know if the .btr data (terrain .bto and object .btr can be opened by nifscope 2.08 dev) is done in ranks or not (like rank 1 is higher poly for close, rank 5 is ultra low poly, etc). I've also seen people say tesannwynn can extract the heightmap, but I can't find a confirmed command, or if it supports fallout 4. Everything I see for it seems to be about using it to create a mesh from heightmap, when I wish to do the opposite.

[n0p0n3]

So, after a few hours of research and testing, It does seem as if xedit/xlodgen could be used for this purpose. I'm not very familiar with pascal, but if I can figure out where in the lodgen.pas script it pars down the meshes to be simpler (or if I can figure out how to use the full model setting in the script), I should be able to skip that and have object lod that is actually the same as the in game quality.

[thousande]

Trying to learn this stuff myself so I am just throwing stuff out here.

 

tesannwynn has an export command. There are some documentation with examples in the distribution/html file.

 

http://projectmanager.f2s.com/morrowind/TESAnnwyn.html

 

I can't find the discussions atm., but it has been said that Worldspace hasn't changed much since Skyrim and tesannwynn should work with Fallout4. In my own little experienceI haven't had problems regarding import.

[n0p0n3]

I've solved half the problem using xlodgen.62. Its possible to extract EXACT terrain data. I read in a thread on S.T.E.P. site by the author himself that the terrain data is stored in the CELL data under LAND, the VHGT (vertex height). I just used xlodgen.62, and set the lod 4/8/16/32 quality to as low as it would go (-1 for 4, 0 for rest) and the rest of the quality to 4096, and the generated terrain appears to be as smooth as ingame. Now if I could just get the object generation script to not perform the quality downgrade on objects, then I'd be happy. In case you're wondering, I'm working on a more modern VR port in unity. Trying to add features like Pavlov vr style reloading and physics based interaction with objects, as well as possible multiplayer (via network enaled scenegraph, similar to how TES3MP port of openmw does). Ultimately, even if I can't stop the mesh downgrade, I can still use the xyz positional/rotational data to hand place every object, so I'm already happy with what I've found.

[thousande]

Ok. I see for the most of it ;) I have not looked too much into LOD generation other than making a 'first pass'.

I think landscape textures are outside of CELLs if you are going to map these (see xEdit's Replace Landscape Texture.pas)

 

I you haven't tried already there is xEdit discord server. There is also the Modding Tools discord (https://discord.gg/fvHSEx)

 

If Node.js / JavaScript is your jam, there is a Node.js wrapper for xEdit's lib here: https://github.com/z-edit/xelib

[n0p0n3]

I got in contact with the xedit author themself and requested a feature for it. They said DynDOLOD with full model setting will do exactly what I need. I haven't found a version for fallout 4 or 76, but I'm about to try sse version to see if it wil work. If it does, that will jumpstart me ahead of where I thought I'd be.