Bit of LOD Help

[Aliah]

Hello, I was recommended to come here by another modder, I'm a landscaper mostly, as I'm not-so-great with modelling and the like. I'm currently working on a new mod I'd like to release with Distant LOD, but the only problem is that I'm terribly with Distant LOD, it hates me. I've tried to get the Wiki to help me but the Wiki doesn't talk back.
So I came here, since this place appears to be landscaper-heaven, to ask if there is anyone who would be willing to give five to ten minutes of their time to help me.
Any links to tutorials I might've missed, personal help, etc, all appreciated!
So far my most major problems are the dreaded hole in the center of the world and black outlines on my landscape when viewed ingame or in the CS, but besides those I haven't been able to get one landscape LOD to work(and I even used the fractal world explorer and the Wiki tutorial).
My email is nataliewestland@yahoo.com and I'm on AIM as TalisaNahimana quite often, any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

[Dave_91]

Hi Aliah.

Here's I guide I made:

(Skip the heightmap part if you want.)

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Before we begin, I recommend backing up your Textures-> LandscapeLOD-> Generated folder to another location. Also, back up your Meshes-> Landscape-> LOD folder. Then clear out all the files from these folders, so they're empty; the Generated folder in Textures in particular.

First things first. Save your .esp. Even if you are yet to even mod anything, save it. The CS doesn?t like it when you?re generating land to an unsaved .esp, if not, 90% of the time the CS WILL crash.

Secondly, don?t go wild in the heightmap editor, try and stay realistic. IMO, when raising land, don?t create areas above the red/orange colouring or it?ll go too high. However, if you do go above red and into yellow and intend to make a huge mountain, if it?s smoothed and blended into the surrounding landmass It should look fine.

To make your landmass appear eroded, the noise tool comes in really handy. I usually have the area turned right up so a lot of land is edited and cover all of the landscape in noise. Again don?t go nuts with this tool, it may look good, but you don?t want your land too bumpy and rigid. I usually give an area a few clicks of noise then move on. Afterwards, I use the smooth tool to clear any really bad bumpiness so that it appears smooth, but complex looking, with a ?cloudy? like effect.

When you?re happy with that, save it. Depending on the size of the landmass, this may take several minutes, but it?s usually a speedy procedure.

Here?s a screenshot of my heightmap:

Click

With that done, you?re ready for your LOD. At this point, I could go into regions and regional generation, but since this is based primarily on getting the LOD working without problems, we?ll just get right to the point.

Save your plug in. If you get errors about missing landscape TAKE NOTE OF THE CELLS, DO NOT click yes to all. If you do, you?ll give yourself a longer job than necessary. Now, usually these errors are because of geometry seems in between quads. Most of the time you?ll get these, they?re simple to fix though. The cells you?ve just taken note of, move to these cells and look for a small, but very deep hole leading right down or right up through your land (sometimes wire frame mode comes in handy here) and smooth those off. Save the file again. If you get errors still, take note and fix.

When that?s done, go into the height map editor and load up your worldspace. We?re going to create the LOD now, which is simple enough to do. Just click File-> Generate LOD

Select Full, and it?ll generate. Give it a few minutes to generate.

Once that?s done, your distant meshes are complete, however if you tried it in game now the landscape would be completely pink since you haven?t yet generated the textures. This is where a separate program comes into use, TES4qLOD, by Lightwave.

This excellent and powerful program can generate the textures in seconds, doesn?t have the black texture or naming bug, and is simple to use. Get it here.

Once it?s done, use the command prompt and specify the following (where MyWorldspaceID is the ID of you worldspace, and MyMod.esp the name of your plugin file):

tes4qlod -f MyWorldspaceID MyMod.esp

And press enter. It will generate, and clean up the partials for you.

NOTE: When typing the command, the program IS CASE SENSETIVE, so type the ID's exactly as they should appear or else you'll encounter problems.

When that?s done, you?re almost ready to check out your landscape, however one last thing to note is your load order. Make sure your mod for the moment is in the mod index 01 (loaded after Oblivion.esm) for the LOD to work. If you see no distant land, it?s probably your load order. When that?s ready, and you?re running only Oblivion and your mod for the time being, test it and enjoy your lovely landscape with LOD!

Click

Hopefully I didn't miss anything. xD

[Alasdair]

Originally posted by Dave_91
Once that?s done, your distant meshes are complete, however if you tried it in game now the landscape would be completely pink since you haven?t yet generated the textures. This is where a separate program comes into use, TES4qLOD, by Lightwave.

This excellent and powerful program can generate the textures in seconds, doesn?t have the black texture or naming bug, and is simple to use. Get it here.

I never new about that program. It looks awsome! Will save me so much time!

[Dave_91]

Yeah it's an excellent utility. It saves all that messing around with black texture issues and the renaming bug the CS seems to always create. :yes:

[blackbird]

What kind of program is this? I haven't downloaded it for several reasons. Does it create only textures or so?

[Alasdair]

It creates LOD textures, all you do is give it the name of an esp/esm file and it will generate the textures for the whole worldspace. The reason why it's awsome is that the CS crashes regularly while performing this task, can only do 1 quad at a time, is mind-bogglingly slow, and is unbelievably buggy. This can do in 3 minutes what the CS would take 3-4 hours to do.

[Aliah]

I'll give your instructions a try, though I'd hate to shutdown all my mods. X_x
One thing though, does anyone know what the black outlines on landscape is? Is that my graphics card telling me something, or is it a problem with how I modified the landscape? My graphics card is about half a year old so I hope it's not that...
The black outlines appear on the borders of the landscape, like around each square, though it isn't consistent...it's on some spots, not on others.

[Alasdair]

Make sure you turn of the Cell boundary lines (B key) before generating the LOD textures in the CS and turn of the water too (Shift+W). The CS is really buggy when generating the textures, and that may well be the cause of the black lines. You could try using lightwaves TESqLOD tool to generate the textures instead of the CS and see if that fixes the problem.

[Aliah]

Well I should probably list out my problems so I don't confuse anyone...

1: Generating LOD doesn't bring my LOD up ingame to be visible, the one time I got it to work, I got the pink landscape which crashed if I entered another cell.
2: I haven't been able to get even the textureless LOD since then...
3: I usually manually mold the landscape in the heightmap before going into the CS and texturing it as I fill in buildings, I found texturing it myself makes it far more accurate, but perhaps this LOD texture program will help me get the textures to show up. I'm gonna try it out on one of my old worlds.


Edit:
I got the distant LOD to show up in a blank world, leastways, I believe I did. I'm going to try my older worlds now, thank you for the help thus far!

[Mormacil]

The loadorder you use in the CS while generatiing LOD must be the same that you use ingame. Anyway the guy I wanted to recommend first fixed his PC. PM Qazaaq either here or better at BSF.