About PreVis Generation and Precombines

[Zorkaz]

Quick question because I'm writing an article about it.

 

If you've got Precombined Meshes in a cell do you have to:

 

Generate PreVis

Generate PrecombinedVis

 

or:

 

Just Generate PrecombinedVis alone?

 

 

Because of the hassle of destroying my worldspace I don't want to test this out.

 

 

 

 

[Blinxys]

This is the most advanced/concise explanation I've found on the subject.

Fallout 4 Creation Kit PreCombines Tutorial

Still don't fully grock it, (I don't understand anything until I truly realize it myself).

but I Totally want that Excel sheet! :yes:

Edited September 2, 2020 by Blinxys

[Balx2]

This is the most advanced/concise explanation I've found on the subject.

Fallout 4 Creation Kit PreCombines Tutorial

Still don't fully grock it, (I don't understand anything until I truly realize it myself).

but I Totally want that Excel sheet! :yes:

 

Good link, RedRocketTV and Trosski have good videos as well. That excel sheet was a great idea imo, I made a copy and tested rebuilding precombines and learned a lot.

There isn't really a right way or a wrong way if it works but I think Instant Hero's video is the best source at this time for people.

If you want to see how generate all loaded behaves then make a 3x3 grid of cells or just use this list as a sample

{sanctuary/vault111} Center -21,21 cells in grid: -22,22 / -22,21 / -22,20 / -21,22 / -21,21 / -21,20 / -20,22 / -20,21 / -20,20

Generate all loaded from various cells in that 3x3 and watch which *.uvd are created (each *.uvd represents one 3x3 and is the FormID of the center cell) and mark your grids on your paper or excel sheet. Set your ugrids to 7 and do it again. That should give you a better idea of when to generate current cell or all loaded and how doing it in downtown can be problematic.

Your mileage will vary.

[Blinxys]

Those videos are full of goodness, but too long and TMI, psuedo-ADHD & confusion set in.

 

Like the dual interiors for Red Rocket really threw my head out,

How was I supposed to understand why that would be and was the result! :wacko:

 

Ok, i read what you wrote about 11 times and i think I get what's going on there, (that's basically what he was saying (?)).

(Sounds like I'll have to set a day aside just for this experiment, but I need to deal with it).

 

BTW:

My uGrids are set to 9 (seemed logical with the 3x3 thing).

Why would that matter more, or less?

(The answer to that is the question I've been looking for).

There is also another setting that needs to pair with uGrids but I forget what it is offhand... :unsure:

[Zorkaz]

Personally I dislike a lot of the youtube videos even if the info is actually good, because of the presentation. Too long but more importantly, their resolution is often way too big so you have to squint sometimes.

 

Actually I'm about to make a tutorial for better or worse or at least add the info to the wiki.

[Blinxys]

I'm in 4k and have the opposite problem, material swap videos are in the worst low res.

(Why show text based programs if the text can't be read). (???) :mad:

 

Everyone says looks at youtube and most material is so poorly organized.

They generally bug me because it's linear time, and too much of it is wasted fishing in menus or waffling TMI.

"Just stick to the the facts Ma'am/[Man]..."

All vids should have timeline guides, outline, & plain text version.

oh and objective editors! :geek:

 

Also: Instant Hero really should have posted that Excel sheet somewhere! :ermm:

Really what was the point of that?

 

"I have the answer(s) right here"...

Go compile them your own d@mned self! :devil:

 

AFAIC the Excel sheet was the point of that vid...

 

Looking forward to your article Zorkaz. :cool:

[ArdaxT]

See, I did up my Excel sheet a different way, it was just a running list of cells. Added 2 columns to calculate the nearest 3x3 center. I wish I knew how xEdit sorted cell lists, because I'd resort my lists depending on whether I was working in xEdit or Creation Kit and matching sort orders helps a bit. That said, having the data of what to build would have been cool too.

 

I was thiiiis close --><-- to having a largely touch-free system for rebuilding precombines and previs. xEdit isn't really designed for unattended operation, so you had to run scripts against plugins by hand, but that was it. Used the CK's command line params to generate precombines and previs data, xEdit scripts to handle putting it all into a plugin for the user, and a PowerShell script to guide the user through everything, bundle the results into a BA2 archive, and clean up afterward.

 

I had script variants that theoretically could have handled an entire load order and rebuilt precombines for every interior and exterior cell. Think FO4FI, only less disk space by using shared precombines, better coverage, and customized for your load order. It would have taken a really, really, really long time to do. My mid-range 2019 laptop (9th gen quad core i5, 16 GB RAM, NVMe SSD) was churning for 4 days straight and was -- by my estimate -- about 40% of the way through the Commonwealth before I killed it. A high-end desktop with gobs of RAM may have been able to finish in about that time.

 

After getting burnt out trying to solve the "green diamond glitch" in my precombines, I kinda put things off to the side for a bit. I'll go back and rebuild the plugins I made in my FO4FI patches mod (the long way :cry:), but until I solve that bug I'm done for the time being. I'm happy to share my work with anyone that's interested and wants to take a crack at it. I suck at documenting things, but I'm willing to email/chat anyone through what I've created provided they're comfortable with xEdit and the Creation Kit.

[ArdaxT]

Oh, and to reply to your actual question Zorkaz: It seems to be required to do both PreVis and PrecombinedVis.

[Balx2]

Default grid 5 touches 9 cell groups (a 3x3 of cells). If you generate vis then you will find a *.uvd file where the * is FORMID.

If you stand in the center and I will use -26,6 as an example and generate all loaded then you will jump to 9 group centers during the process.

If you move one cell straight line to the right for an example -20,6 and generate all loaded, suddenly you only load 6 clusters.

If you move diagonally one cell to -22,5 and generate all loaded, suddenly you only load 4 clusters.

 

Ok set grid to 9 and stand in -21,6 you are loading 9 clusters. Move one cell left,right,up or down and you now load 12 clusters on generate all loaded.

Move diagonally one cell and now you load 16 clusters when you generate all loaded.

 

Sanctuary is a popular spot to mod. Sanctuary covers two cell groups/clusters with centers at -21,21 and -18,21. Generate all loaded would work fine if you don't care about RedRocket (another popular spot to mod, right next to sucktuary) which covers 3 cells in group with a center of -18,18. (Your sanctuary generate for all loaded just hit upon the cluster RR is in) --> that's with default grid of 5 btw. Imagine grid of 9 and deciding to generate all loaded from the bridge, oh hello concord.

 

Hope that makes any sort of sense to anyone else on why all loaded may not be a good idea. IMO if you are not doing s#*&#33; across 50+ cells dont use it.

[ArdaxT]

Agreed. I only did Previs for current cell, and made sure to put myself on the cluster's center. It's trivial to figure out in Excel if you want to do that.

 

Also, don't forget to clean up your plug in in xEdit after. PreVis will add extra cells to your mod that you didn't modify. Since the PreVis timestamp is updated, you can't just clean ITMs either.