Hey guys, I just downloaded some new land areas like Ubanga, Elsweyr Anequina, and Valenwood Improved to name a few. Do I need the included LOD files with, say, Elsweyr for tes4lodgen to work properly or can I delete them and generate my own? Also, is there any way to make tes4lodgen work with Ubanga? It keeps hanging, which is a known issue, but I was wondering if there's a workaround short of skipping Ubanga completely?

They often include two sorts of lod. Elsweyr Anequina has both, distant meshes for trees, buildings and such (VWDs), plus landscape lods for the distant terrain. You can indeed go ahead and regenerate them with no worry, they will simply be overwritten, no need to delete, but note that you only use tes4lodgen for the trees, buildings etc.

For the landscape, you need to run http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/40549/. It takes a lot longer to run, but it's particularly essential for VI, TWMP VI - and, I've found, TWMP Hammerfell. Even if you don't have any new lands, it's a good idea to run it anyway, really improves the view, and that's only at medium resolution in my case.

[Can't help with the Ubanga thing, though.]

Actually, there's a problem with that. TES4LODGen deletes all DistantLOD files (all cells with items marked Visible While Distant), but then does NOT replace some of the ones from those new lands, leaving you without distant objects for those cells. The newest bleeding edge Wrye Bash catches the failure while previous versions missed it. Two lands that I know of are ElsweyrAnequina and TWMP Hammerfell.

If you run TES4LODGen, which I highly recommend (including after ANY change to your load order), you then need to reinstall the missing DistantLOD files from those mods. Wrye Bash makes it easy.

I wound up just unpacking them all and re-packing Ubanga distantlod into a bsa then moving it and the esm/esp files out of my data folder while i run tes4lodgen.

How does wrye bash catch missing distantlod files? Is it a BAIN thing, because I don't use it, I use tes mod manager because I live in the past.

Fascinating, thanks. I just hadn't noticed that, and I'm using RAEVWD for EA, can see some of the nearer EA structures from Cyrodiil. I have the latest WB now, but those were showing up before I upgraded too. I guess it must be some stuff further in. Going to double check in any case.

Yes, it's BAIN. It will tell you, among other things, what files are missing from the installer. And, just as important, any conflicts with other mod installers. It allows you fine control over installation order, not just load order, basically. I really would advise using it if you are installing big province mods. They can cause no end of trouble otherwise. But then I use it for everything...

For what it's worth, I've used Elsweyr and Valenwood Imp. together for three+ years and I use only TES4LODGen to fix the ghost hills in Valenwood. Last night I ran tes4ll for another mod and it broke Valenwood Imp.,http://i.imgur.com/sxV9NDw.jpg. I didn't attempt to troubleshoot it, I just removed the new mod.

Yes, it's the utumno-200-refreshDataSizeCrc branch on GitHub. After running TES4LODGen, those installers show up red under the installers tab, so I just do a "Install Missing." It's only two of the MANY cells for ElsweyrAnequina, and 28 cells for TWMP Hammerfell, so it may not be a big deal.

Does BAIN let me organize all my mod packages into categories like OBMM/TesMM? If so then I suppose I have little reason to not use it. If not, then I'll just use it for province/world space mods I guess.

I've frequently had various issues with VI, lots of CTDs that I never pinned down, they just went away when I removed it. But TWMP VI doesn't do that. Haven't seen your landscape glitch, though, I am using Tamriel Heightmaps, which might avoid it. But I haven't reinstalled TWMP VI yet (had a bad installation crash last year, still recovering. Not mods, something terrible happened to the main game files). When I do, will run tes4ll and check the coastline.

Thanks, my EA is OK, I find, but I'm likely to reinstall TWMP Hammerfell soon, will keep an eye open for that.

Maybe those files are from previous versions of the mods and those cells don't exist in the current versions - so naturally TES4LODGen wouldn't regenerate them. I'll check that when I get a chance.

Yes, you can create mod categories manually in Wrye Bash.

I've checked and those cells are indeed part of those mods, so another possibility is that they're cells with no DistandLOD objects, which is very possible. I'll keep reinstalling those files anyway, after running TES4LODGen, just to be on the safe side.

TES4LODGen works like this:

1. Delete all .lod files for a worldspace

2. Generate .lod files for a worldspace, for cells that have VWD references.



If mod included some .lod files that are not regenerated after running TES4LODGen, it could mean only:

1. Included .lod files were generated using a different plugin version than the packaged one

2. Author forgot to include _far meshes and billboard textures for trees so TES4LODGen doesn't include those vwd references in .lod files since there is nothing to show in game (or corresponding full meshes were renamed or relocated at some point and author forgot to rename/move the lod ones too).

3. TES4LODGen can't locate _far meshes and billboards due to installation error on user part or bugs in mod manager (so far MO is known to prevent lodgen from accessing BSA archives and breaks lod generation).

Use the latest version from nexus.

@Zilav, I appreciate your explaining that. Than you!

http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/15781/?

Yes. Hanging issue for Elsweyr mod was fixed there, and this is the first time I hear about problems with Ubanga.

Oh, yeah, Elsweyr worked fine, I only found out about the Ubanga one through a google search, the nexus topic had a few people mention it but one person got it to work, I don't know which version of tes4lodgen they were using though. It hangs up on provinchi maranta files. In one instance it crashed on one of them.

Here's where it hangs up on Ubanga:

"[01:29] LOD Generator: Replacing AAMaranta "Provinchi Maranta" [WRLD:01000CE6]"

It stops responding. It crashed once, I've had to end process the other times I tried. I'll leave it running for a while and see if it's just busy. Task manager seems to think it's still chugging along.

Most probably this mod has errors somewhere due to it's large size. Does "Check for Errors" menu in TES4Edit show anything?

Hopefully no typos, I had to type it out because tes4edit locked up after printing this, couldn't copy/paste.

Nevermind, it finished. Here's the error:

I had this problem with TWMP Valenwood Elsweyr. I'd suggest to download the latest version of TES5Edit and rename the exe file to TES4LODGEN. That fixed it for me.

I tried, it still locks up in the same spot.

Meanwhile I'll just install Ubanga's LOD stuff last and hide the esm/esps while generating the rest. I'm still in the middle of converting about 500 OMODS (I have a serious mod problem) to bash installers so I'll leave the program running and see if it decides to work after all, but I'm 99% sure it'll just crash again. It's an easy problem to circumvent by simply installing the esps and lod stuff last, so it's not a big deal. I'll post the tes4edit bugs on the Ubanga nexus comments too so maybe alimal can figure it out if he feels so inclined.

Nothing serious in check for errors log that could stop lodgen potentially. I'd like to test it myself, but this mod is so huge and finding the cause will probaby take too much time which I don't have right now. By the way you can selectively generate LOD using TES4Edit right click menu on a plugin -> Other -> Generate LOD, no need to hide anything.

Oh, great heavens, I'd never noticed that, how useful. Thanks for that, seems like there's always something new to learn on these threads...