FORWARD
I posted a somewhat differently worded version of this query in our Construction Set sub-forum, where it languished without response. Assuming it will receive none, I hesitantly decided to resubmit here. In justification, while what I want to do requires, so far as I know, CS, I hope to use at least one player-made utility (mentioned below) to speed things along.

I should also point out, as I did on the other sub-forum, that I am a total modding ignoramus. I've never even installed CS. My sole claim to fame is modifying an existing mod by opening its esp in TES4edit and flagging horses to not perform corpse checks. (I also slowed down an overly fast horse).

THE GIST OF IT
I want to create high-resolution replacement Landscape LODs that take into account all mod-created landscape modifications.

DETAILED EXPLANATION
I currently use http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18497 (converted into a BAIN package) as my LandscapeLODs of choice. I like it very much, warts and all. http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/ESIV%20Oblivion/ImpIslePanorama1.jpg. Its 2048x2048 borderland LODs aren't shabby either. I've tried a variety of lesser resolution LandscapeLOD packs. They're nice in their way, but I find myself returning to "4096X4096 Normal Map-2048X2048 Border Regions-LOD_OMOD" every time.

Here's the rub. A great many individual "4096X4096 Normal Map-2048X2048 Border Regions-LOD_OMOD" files get overwritten by other mods. Elsweyr-Anequina, Kvatch Watch Towers, Fort Akatosh Redux, and at least one Unique Landscape (Gold Coast/Cliff of Anvil) come to mind, though there might be others. These mod-provided LODs are invariably standard resolution. Their lack of detail is even more apparent when one sits next to a highly detailed "4096X4096 Normal Map-2048X2048 Border Regions-LOD_OMOD" LOD.

Additionally, nice as "4096X4096 Normal Map-2048X2048 Border Regions-LOD_OMOD" is, its LODs do not take into account a great many mod-created landscape alterations. These discrepancies can be mildly off-putting and sometimes worse.

I want to create a set of LandscapeLODs equal to those provided by "4096X4096 Normal Map-2048X2048 Border Regions-LOD_OMOD" in every way, yet accommodating any and all mod alterations within a particular LOD. I might begin with a set of higher resolution Elsweyr-Anequina LODs, at 4096 or maybe “just” 2048. Some Elsweyr LODs spill over into Cyrodiil proper. For those I'd want to include Cyrodiil mods in the mix.

I'd then redo stuff like Fort Akatosh, Watch Towers and UL(s). I might eventually redo every LandscapeLOD in existence, but that's a big “if” depending on how all else goes.

RESEARCH
Googling unearthed http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Landscape_LOD_Tutorial. Besides being largely Greek to me, it seems geared toward folk creating their own worldspace, not those wanting to redo existing LODs. Nor does it address, so far as I can tell, high resolution and/or other quality ehancements. Is a better tutorial available?

Nexus contains http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27220 that, on the surface, looks appealing. For one thing, it is authored by someone who himself/herself made a set of high resolution LODs. Instructions are more understandable, though as a newb I find them somewhat confusing.

Surely what I want is feasible. Otherwise how did mods like Elsweyr-Anequina get their landscapeLODs in the first place? But how to go about it? Will a combination of CS and the Nexus utility give me what I want at the same quality as the LOD mod I currently use? Or is there more to it than that? Is it better to save LODs at the highest resolution (which I assume is 4096x4096 since I've seen no higher at Nexus) and reduce them as/if needed via some third-party program (and which)?

How does one even know which LOD file goes with a particular plot of land? The files themselves are just a series of numbers that mean nothing to me. I Googled “Oblivion Landscape LOD map”. It found zilch.

CLOSE
There are a host of questions I don't yet know to ask. In any case this is enough to give everyone a basic idea of where I'm coming from and what I want to do.

This is all just a pipe-dream, and me being the lazy person I am will likely never bear fruit. Still, of all the lame-brained modding schemes I come up with it might be more feasible than most.

Any and all input is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
-Decrepit-

Warning: I am not (yet) a modder!

But, by any chance, would http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Generate_High_resolution_LOD_textures be useful information?

Thanks for the link. My research never unearthed that page. What's more, its author happens to be the creator of those 4096x4096 LODs in the mod I currently use! I gave the article a quick glance so don't yet know how helpful it will prove. Sort of scary that, assuming I understand things correctly, CS doesn't handle non-Cyrodiil LOD so won't do Elsweyr. Then again, I have a vague recollection of this being addressed by the utility mentioned in my initial post. That utility might also handle the LOD Texture fix, but we shall see.

Thanks again!

It strikes me as a little bit terrifying. :bolt:

However, I'm really hoping it all works out for you. Yes, for your sake , but also because I would also really like to have hi-res LOD textures, normals, etc., for at least all the major mods (e.g., ULs) that I tend to use. Also, that a lot of other people tend to use, so I guess I'm hoping for lots of my fellow gamers too!

Looks like exactly the information you need is in that last link there. Just remember, when generating the local maps described in that procedure, be sure to activate all the mods you want the LOD to work for in the CS when loading it up. I think I might try this out myself.

There is also http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4qLOD. It is a command line utility though and setting it up properly could be a bit of a challenge.

Be aware also that generating local maps is a hugely memory intensive operation and is prone to failure. You may or may not have luck with setting the LAA flag on the CS. I've tried, and in my case it makes no difference.

The local maps procedure is a huge mess in and of itself and I've yet to bother trying more than a couple of times even though I'd love to have higher resolution LOD to match the mods I'm using.

And that's just the textures.

There is no utility in existence to generate the LOD mesh other than the CS. The process for that is less of a pain, but still prone to error, and you can only get one quad out of it at a time. Subsequent attempts to make other quads result in meshes with hundreds of missing triangles. You'll end up having to quit and reload the CS a bunch of times.

This utility you found on Nexus looks like it would solve at least part of the mess by automating the process of stitching the local map files together. That's a huge help.

I can't find it at the moment, but there's another entry on Nexus that has several different modders' resource maps and one of them has the large squares (quads) that are used for the landscape LOD map.

this works indeed indeed a lot faster and more stable than the CS... but has a lot of limitations...in this case here especially even less detail than the the textures produced with the CS...it can not handle unique textures (you have to create a special folder containing 4x4 bmp's of these textures) etc...it is a great help during modding and for providing wip textures especially for large landscape mods...

@ Decrepit

As Arthmoor said...the local map way is a real pain in the......I guess having manually improved high Rez textures will be at the end what we have to live with...we should also keep in mind that the real problem are the ugly buggy lod meshes ....where not covered by forrest is using distant blur a great help, but also makes more detailed textures obsolete....

Thanks for the input onra. Alas, I am not of the blurry soft-focus distant view persuasion. Nor do I care for distance-concealing fog except when brought about naturally by atmospheric conditions. On a crystal clear sunshiny day I want to see from one end of Cyrodiil to the other in sharp focus. I live for such views. There's one of the things that keep me coming back for more time and time again.. So I'll continue researching creating my own high resolution landscape LODs, realizing absolutely nothing is likely to come of it.

And thanks to all for the ideas, insights and links. I bookmarked 'em all for further study. I'm feeling sort of crappy and work the weekend to boot, so doubt I'll do much more research until some time next week... assuming I've not abandoned all hope by then.

Arthmoor's comment about there being some sort of landscape LOD coordinate map at Nexus sparked a dim memory. I vaguely recalled seeing a Unique Landscapes map whose sub-divisions might be the very thing I seek. Googled it. http://bettercities.free.fr//UniqueLandscapes/Maps/UniqueLandscapesGridMapReleasedAndWIP.jpg. Alas, my grasses recently left my eyes and I'm not due an insurance-covered eye-glass-prescription exam until next month. Those tiny numbers lining what I believe to be landscape LOD squares (tell me if I'm wrong) are too small to make out for now. But the borders of many of those squares fall exactly where I know LOD change occurs. If nothing else, this map gives me a good idea of which grids I'd want to create high res replacements for, and broadly speaking which mods I'd need to load for each.

Should I actually follow through with this (I again stress that that's a BIG "if"), rather than Elsweyr I think I'd start with the landscape square surrounding Kvatch. That one tends to bother me more than most in-game. The square just north of Kvatch is high res. Part way up "Kvatch Hill" the standard-res square begins. Not one of my favorite views, and due to its nature stands out like a sore thumb, especially when traveling south on the western-most of the two West Roads as I often do.

Keep the input coming!
-Decrepit-

The next update to CSE should quadruple the resolution of the generated diffuse maps, to 4096x4096.

Huh. I was going to post something like, "I wonder if CSE has anything over the standard CS, for this..." - and whaddayaknow!

I really must get into modding properly, one of these days.

excellent news since I have to create lod resources for the southern provinces soon....any chance for improved lod meshes generation also in the future :violin:

regards

It's on the agenda.

wonderful...this means a lot for me since I a have deceided to create a complete working tamriel using Tes4 and not to start from the scratch again using Tes5...such improvments and stuff like OBGE and Obse set a complete new standart for the game... :foodndrink:



sorry Decrepit for being off topic :whistling:

No no, keep at it. It's all good! I'm glad to see all these replies. I might well be interested in the CS extension myself should I choose to follow through with my idea of custom high-res LandscapeLOD. Should I not, the thread can serve as sounding board for those with similar interests.

Good to hear that you plan to stick with TES4 rather than automatically move on to Skyrim. I think Oblivion still has great growth potential, and TES5 is a total unknown as both game and modding platform. I do have Skyrim pre-ordered****, but for now see it more as short-term diversion rather than permanent addiction. Time will tell of course, but I certainly don't see myself abandoning Oblivion.

-Decrepit-

**** While typing the above it dawned on me that "pre-order" is a totally bogus term. I mean, if you order something you order it. It's an order, not a "pre-order". A "pre-order" would be if you planned to reserve it but had not yet done so, if that makes sense. Talk about off-topic! Har! :shakehead:

quiet simple ....Fallout uses the same heightmap editor as Oblivion and I am pretty sure Skyrim will use it too...probably with some improvmenst or modifications....this means Skyrim will be in the center of the Heightmap Editor / Gridmap where Cyodiil is now in Tes 4...so my guess is it will not be possible to have complete Tamriel on one map...also rebuilding all the imperial architecture seems to me a lot more difficult than to create or find resources for Skyrim...just a few thoughts...

cheers

Oh dang! That's great news!

You are going to make a whole lot of people VERY happy, myself included, when this happens. Assuming it also fixes that nagging half-black issue at the same time.

I haven't figured out what's causing that yet. I can't even get it generate all the 512 partial maps (the maximum I ever got was 246). The missing 10 are replaced with the generic 'default..dds' file but from what I can tell, the remaining half is never even considered for texture generation. Am I missing something ?

I just want to say that I for one would be all over hi-res landscape LOD replacements for the areas covered by Unique Landscapes. When I extracted the compilation omod I downloaded to peek around my only disappointment was seeing those files with the small default filesizes in the lansdscapelod\generated directory. I haven't really been put off by them too much in the game, only recently taking note of the area around the IC, but I've been really happy with http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32451 anyway. I actually thought about overwriting the landscapelod files from UL with the ones I had been using, but was afraid of making things look even worse.

Hell, if the process isn't too complicated and is just tedious more than anything, I'd be willing to generate the files myself. Having only opened the CS a few times to edit a single mod, though, I'm guessing I'm not the best volunteer.

Hi,...

Since this is about Landscape LOD. and i Think my problem stems from this, i will post here cause not sure where this would fit anyway.

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion_2011_04_07_16_46_09_179.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/Oblivion_2011_04_07_16_46_50_413.jpg

In the First pic you can see the ?? mesh showing up higher then the Landscape? As I approach it changes to what you see in the second pic.

Is this install order conflict?
Load order conflict?
All my mods are Bain packages, lets see..

I make a change to load or install order, BOSS then create bash patch, close BASH, Run tes4lod, Run Land Magic, Reopen Bash to boss Landmagic patch back to its place ,
Start Oblivion.
Is this right?

When I run tes4lod any steps should be taken before running>...I.e. Delete LOD files?
In BASH you can "Skip" LOD ....should all mods skip LOD and just use Tes4lod for that?
as far as BASH goes i could probably ask about 50 Questions but hate Buggin folks with that...

Any info you need ask, Thanks in advance.

UPDATE

Got off my mental duff yesterday and created a few landscape LODs. I picked the Imperial Isle as my testbed simply because I have easy access to both its LOD coordinates (60.00.00.32) and the arcane numbers needed for input into my downloaded LOD generator (-1 32 31 0). I'm not content with the product as it stands. Not by a long-shot. But then I'm going in blind and learning through trial and error, mostly the latter.

One thing I DO like about these self-created LODs is that mod-added roads are now visible at distance. Much as I like NR+B, the sunken road at the mainland terminus of the Imp Isle northernmost bridge can not be seen until almost on top of it. That has long bugged me. These LODs fix that. The road bypassing the Prison District is clearly visible at distance too. Almost too visible in fact. But I think that's partly due to me having created these on my secondary computer. That Oblivion install often uses lesser-quality textures than those on my primary machine. I'll of course fix that on any "final" version(s).

Here's a capture showing a portion of http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/ESIV%20errors/LandscapeLODImpIsle1.jpg. Nothing special here. But you CAN clearly see the above mentioned road improvements.

Here's a closer view of the http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/ESIV%20errors/LandscapeLODImpIsle2.jpg. My normal LOD setup shows neither road nor cutout at this distance.

The downloadable High Res LandscapeLOD generator linked in my initial post works as advertised, by the way. Very handy. One potential gotcha. Instructions sort of imply that if one has installed Python for Wrye Bash one is set to go, Python wise. Not so, at least in my case. I needed to download and install "PIL".

My current stumbling block is that the Generator creates only "color" maps. LODs needs two maps, "color" and "normal". I can generate "normals" in CS, but they are decidedly low res. There must be a way to produce high(er) quality "normals". I have a number of mods that included them. But how?

At any rate this is where things stand for now. Not sure how committed I am to this. Might depend of whether or not I can solve the "normals" issue.

-Decrepit-

Pretty sure you can create your own Normals with a plug-in for Paint.net. Those looked really good..the PIC's ..those are without Normals?

I believe that both shots use my own self-created normals. I also mixed my colors with downloaded high-res normals. But I'm pretty sure neither of my posted captures use high res stuff (for normals).

I do indeed use Paint.net. In fact at least one of my captures uses a self-made normal doctored with it. But I have no idea what I'm doing. Can't really tell from the DDS itself what the various alterations look like in-game. It would be nice if one of our old LandscapeLOD gurus wrote out a detailed guide on how to create high quality normals. It's prolly not that difficult if one knows which settings to apply and at what values.

My downloaded LandscapeLOD package looks far better than anything I've yet produced, except it of course doesn't show mod-added roads. I want that same quality, with better acknowledgment of my many terrain-altering mods. My own feeble attempts are nowhere close.

Have you tried the Nvidia plugin for the Normals?...found this http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Creating_detailed_Normal_Maps...