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Generating LOD with dyndolod on a custom worldspace


Shurugar

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Hi!

 

I've recently (more or less) finished a worldspace for a mod I'm working on at the moment. The next thing I did was working on the LOD. Didn't had the success I hoped for, till I found out that vanilla skyrim doesn't have LOD for assets used in Blackreach. seeking for help on the nexus I was redirectet to the mods TES5LODGen/Dyndolod.

 

My Issue: Can't generate LOD for Blackreachmushrooms, Pillars, Balconys. (These are the most important)

 

graphic example, same place but a little bit closer on the second screenshot:

 

https://i.imgur.com/h2V5aAr.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/6RyEPqa.jpg

 

 

I (atleast I think) got the LOD with help of the tutorials, but the required meshes were still missing. I took a look into the Dyndolod Ressources, and didn't found the specific meshes - am I right with the assumption that they're no part of this mod at the moment? If they are included, I would need help getting them to work.. (I can post more specific about the things I've done and the Logs [if they're needed] If this is the case - I don't want to bust my first post..)

 

If not I would realy need help to get it somehow to work. My experience with LOD in general is extremly limited as you can guess, as I started just around 3 Days ago messing around with it. What I could do (atleast I think I can) would be creating extremly basic meshes/textures, but I don't have a single clue how I could tell the game that the assets should use them as LOD. I tried telling DynDolod during the installation that a specific asset has to use a specific mesh as LOD like it's explained in the tutorial with the statue of azura, but without success. 

 

Another Issue that concerns me is that I would want to publish this mod as soon as it is finished, and if I would create the LOD in the worldspace with DynDOLOD, would they have to install the mod themselves? Or how does this work? I hope they wouldn't have to create the LOD for the worldspace themselve...

 

I hope I'm on the right subforum to ask this things. I'm glad for any help, or redirection to the "right" place. ::):

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There are no LOD models for the mushrooms in the vanilla and I haven't created any for them. I am also not aware anyone else has.

 

Have a look at DynDOLOD_Mod_Authors.html in the docs which explains the different ways how to "assign" LOD meshes to full meshes. I hope that will help you with that question. There are several methods and which to use also depends what type of LOD model are available.

It also explains the best method to include pre-made object/tree LOD with your mod.

 

If no LOD models exists the easy way out is to use full meshes for LOD. If the worldspace is small enough or the objects are not used a lot it may still work out performance wise.

Since the mushrooms are animated and using glow them for static LOD may not work right without adjusting for static LOD limitations.

 

One way to create static versions more suitable for LOD would be to use nifskope to remove all collision/animation/skin information and any NiTriShapes for the small features from the full models and rename them to *passthru_lod_0.nif

However, the mushrooms also use an additional overlay Shape with an BSEffectShaderProperty to add additional glow which should preferably be emulated on the main shape with the BSLightingShaderProperty for performance reasons.

It all depends on how many of these mushrooms are used and how big the worldspace is.

 

Otherwise there is no way around to use something like 3DMax or Blender to create a decimated LOD model and be creative with the textures and the glow shaders to get close to the same glow effect.

All of this requires some understanding of UV, textures, shaders and a lot trial and error to see what works in static LOD.

 

In case the glow can not be made to look identical in static LOD, you need to use full models in dynamic LOD through mesh rules as explained in the documentation. This should be only done when we talk about a couple dozen of mushrooms within the Near/Far Grids what the mesh rule is setting.

It would be still beneficial to remove collision/animation/skin and then rename them to *_dyndolod_lod.nif

The pre-made dynamic LOD should not be included in the mod itself. Just the models/rules.

Edited by sheson
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Thanks for the reply, I'll look into it the next days. It's more or less the worst case I thought of (no meshes atm, lots of try and error etc) but atleast now I know where I stand.

 

The worldspace is sized between Blackreach and Solstheim, it's roughly 25x25. With approximately 2-300 Mushrooms in it. I guess that's way to much to use them directly as the LOD mesh.

 

The good thing about the Blackreach weather is It doesn't have to look perfect - the darkness and fog restrain the vision enough to get away with alot. Not saying that I want to be sloppy but I know my limits with texture/mesh work. And everything is a improvement to having no LOD for them at all. 

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