A LOD noob needs help with disappearing landscape

Post » Fri May 04, 2012 9:09 am

I've been working on my mod for a long time going in and out of the game almost every day, but it has been months since the last time I actually looked around the mod worldspace.

Now that I did, I noticed that I can only see the landscape around the player (loaded cells). Everything else is just water.
It was OK last time I checked.

I remember I had this problem a couple of years ago when I played around a bit with worldspace creation (another one), but I just cant remember how I fixed it at the time.
(btw, I am quite a noob in this landscape creation area)

(before posting, I decided to read the WIKI tutorial and it suggests using TES4Gecko Move Worldspace. I did and now most of the landscape vanished *bangs head*)

Any hint on how to fix this or where to look would be greatly appreciated.
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Trish
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 6:49 pm

Step 1 - Try temporarily moving your esm/esp to 01 in the load order (i.e. immediately after oblivion.esm). If it works fine, then your worldspace is good and you can proceed with the next steps.

Step 2 - Use TES4Gecko to "Move Worldspaces". If other esps depend on your mod, you should check "Insert Worldspace Placeholders". Otherwise it is optional.

Step 3 - If it still doesn't work, you'll have to remove the "Visible When Distant" flag from every object in the custom worldspace - trees have VWD checked by default. (Yes, it makes no sense, but trust me, http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1361740-move-worldspaces/).

If it STILL doesn't work after that, then I'm out of ideas. :P
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Crystal Birch
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 6:18 pm

Thanks for the help, but, unfortunately, that was not it.

My load order is quite small: just this mod I am working on (1 ESM and 2 ESPs) and a dozen old, stable mods I have been using for years (DarkUI, Unofficial Patch, etc). The ESM in question is the only one and I suppose is number 01.

I tried TES4Gecko "Move Worldspaces" several times, but it made things worse (and I cant find a way to 'undo' it)

About 3), I believe you, but this is a quite large worldspace and I am not sure I would have the time and patience to do it.

I got this worldspace (a large island) from the "NPC with Jobs" project and I adapted it and created this ESM.
I will try to re-create the ESM from the original as I did last year and see if it works again.
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sas
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 2:46 pm

I lied... I actually haveone mored idea. :P Make a backup and use TES4Gecko to turn your esm into an esp just for testing purposes. You may have to rename the masters. You may find that the landscape works while it's an esp which hints that the esm is mostly fine, but some glitch is causing the landscape to disappear.

As for removing VWD, using the filters in TES4Edit, it took me about 2 hours to do 1200 cells, and that was including the time to figure out the best way to do it. If I had to do it again, I could probably do it in under an hour.
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Haley Merkley
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 5:33 am

Nope.

I tried converting the esm to esp.
I tried my original esp (the one I converted to ESM in the first place)
I also tried regenerating the lod in the world/heightmap menu and by right clicking on the render window.

In all cases, the same problem as the ESM: There is land only in the 5x5 cells around the player. Everything beyond that is water (or invisible landscape). As I move around, the landscape ahead shows up and the landscape behind disappear.

Does the TES4Edit VWD removal applies to ESPs also? Or just to ESMs above load order position 01?
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Causon-Chambers
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 5:52 pm

If converting it to an esp doesn't make any difference, then it's not the VWD problem.

Check the meshes\Landscape\LOD folder. There should be a whole bunch of meshes named something like "8880771.00.32.32.nif". The 8880771 bit is actually the FormID of the worldspace converted to decimal. (In this case, 8880771 in decimal = 00878283 in hexadecimal, which is my worldspace's FormID.)

Your worldspace's FormID should begin with "00" as you've already used "Move Worldspaces" on it. Double check that the Landscape LOD meshes have the correct FormID.
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Kira! :)))
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 4:36 pm

Those files were all there:
the NIFs in Data\Meshes\Landscape\LOD
the DDSs in Data\Textures\LandscapeLOD\Generated
the .LODs in Data\DistantLOD
the .jpg in Data\HeightField
as I imported them from the original makers of the worldspace.

I found a couple of mistakes I did in the process: I changed the worldspace name and did not change the .LOD names, so that was the reason I did not see lod trees.
I changed the .lod names and the trees showed at distance (but in the air, as the ladscape was still invisible)
But the original island had towns and villages, which I removed (because my mod must start in an empty island) but they still were present in the LOD files.

So, I decided to delete all those files and start over, following the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Landscape_Generationand, miraculously, everything worked and now I have the worldspace working fine.
(just a small glitch: I got the colored landscape bug, but DDS Converter fixed it)

Have no idea why the landscape was missing and what fixed it.

Ooooops, not done yet: converted it to ESM and now I have exactly the opposite: the distant landscape is fine and the area around the player has no ground. Just water and trees in the air. To make things worse, the CS now refuses to save the esp (CTD). Tomorrow I will do some more tests and post back.
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QuinDINGDONGcey
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 5:27 pm

Oh well, it looks like it's Move Worldspaces/delete VWD time then. I hope you can create keyboard macros. ;)
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Christina Trayler
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 9:14 am

Went several generations back and finally found a version that I could load and save in the CS. Fortunatelly not much to redo.

Anyway, tried several approaches several times, rebuilt the LOD a couple of times and nothing worked

So I decided to go thru the pain (No. No keyboard macro, but the '+' key comes handy to expand the nodes) and . . .


. . . as you said . . . IT WOKKS !!!


Thanks !!!
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Amber Ably
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 2:12 pm

Yay! Glad to see it all came together in the end. :goodjob:
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megan gleeson
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 4:44 am

@QQuix, you could get the latest beta build of CSE v6 from http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/files/file/212-oblivion-construction-set-extender/ in case you have more trouble - I think I fixed some bugs in the LOD generating code.

PS: The new script editor ought to fix your issues with the Undo/Redo actions.
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I love YOu
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 1:26 pm

Looking very good. It seems I will finally be able to use CSE full time. Thanks.

The Reference Windows got a little shy, thou: every time I double click an object in the render window, the reference window shows up for a fraction of a second and then hides behind the render window. No problem: CS Hotkeys Ctrl-Tab brings it right back to front.

Nice messages! Now when it crashes I laugh instead of getting mad.
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Jessica White
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 4:11 pm

The Reference Windows got a little shy, thou: every time I double click an object in the render window, the reference window shows up for a fraction of a second and then hides behind the render window. No problem: CS Hotkeys Ctrl-Tab brings it right back to front.
Yeah, that's a known bug. CSE's got a forum of its own back at Dark Creations - You can register there to follow the plugin's progress.
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Gemma Archer
 
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Post » Fri May 04, 2012 6:51 am

I did and i will. Thanks.
(cant wait for using CSAS)
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christelle047
 
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