[question][creationkit] Creating an endless open sea horizon LOD?

[worik]

I have a worldspace LOD question.

 

I have created a custom worldspace with a ship in the middle, a smal island (purely composed of static worldobjects) nearby and open sea around it all as far as it goes.

 

It all appears fine, as long as I am standing on the deck. But as soon as I climb the mast , the world has  visible sharp edges and at some areas strange artifacts, like an underlying untextured landscape.

But there isn't any landscape included in the file. The cells in question are not existing at all, not even speaking of a landscape.

 

I generated the world LOD with the CK => World => World LOD and default settings.

And I generated the LOD files for the static objects with TES5LODGen.

 

What am I missing here to get a natural flat sea horizon?

 

Worldspace in the CK

Spoiler

 

Edges of the world

Spoiler

Artifacts at the horizon

Spoiler

 

 

[donttouchmethere]

This is the proof that the world is flat! ?

(And a square ?)

[worik]

1 minute ago, donttouchmethere said:

This is the proof that the world is flat! ?

I intend to unflatten it ? .. at least my little ocean world

[donttouchmethere]

49 minutes ago, worik said:

I intend to unflatten it ? .. at least my little ocean world

Might be a bit early to ask, but all your CK questions topics are really useful.

Do they maybe end in your blog?

[worik]

8 minutes ago, donttouchmethere said:

Do they maybe end in your blog?

That was the plan. But available RL time to spare is lacking behind my hopes

And there are still 2 ideas for Laura's shop (or similar mods) that I have on my priority list. Can't really concentrate to write them down on my notepad, while I'm sitting in the garden with the family

[worik]

Update:

A promising idea so solve the artifacts and world edges seems to be to

1. scroll in the landscape until the cell window tells me  iIm in a new cell,
2. give it simply a cell name ..
3. e.g. "OpenSea_W6" for the empty ocean cell at coordinates (-6,0)
4. etc...
5. regenerate the world LOD

I've tested it with the NWcorner up to 6 cells distance and it looks promising

I'm doing that right now for up to 10 cells along the X and Y axis, (OpenSea_W10, ...N10, ...E10 and ...S10) and see if that works as intended.

 

Edit:

Fuck#$%&ing Creationkit is crashing every few generated cells and I have to restart it again and again

[Tyrant99]

1 hour ago, worik said:

Edit:

Fuck#$%&ing Creationkit is crashing every few generated cells and I have to restart it again and again

I remember that there's this very obscure thing that you can do in the CK. After I did it, the CK became much much more stable and it would almost never crash.

 

But I haven't been in CK for a long time so I feel a little like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria.

 

 

[Tyrant99]

Oh yes, Skyrim install directory, SkyrimEditor.ini

 

 

Make sure you have this line: bEnableAudio=0.

 

Change to 0 if it's 1, or add it in if it isn't there.

 

This made CK crashes a rare occurrence in my experience.

 

FYI, this increases stability because of a problem with XAudio2_6.dll that never got fixed for CK. Some guy made a nice blog on it once, but the website doesn't exist anymore.

[worik]

5 hours ago, Tyrant99 said:

This made CK crashes a rare occurrence in my experience.

I had that setting already ... one of the first things I did before diving a bit deeper into the CK dungeon

[worik]

Update:

In the worldspace settings

• untick "small world" .. it seems to use only a  6x6 or 7x7 cells world (couldn't distinguish that in the open sea)
• untick "fixed dimension" ... same as above
• touching each cell in the open sea and e.g. giving it a name makes it a valid object for the CK-LOD generator
• the current 6.2 beta version of xLODGen seems NOT to be able to generate (bottomless) open sea without an underlying terrain

Visibility ranges

• if I am near sea level, I am able to see the water surface for about 4 cells. I am not able to see the edges of the world that way.
• if I am on top of the mast of the longboat, I can see the edge of the water cells, even beyond  a distance of 10 cells

 

Idea

That 10 cell thing probably means that I would need to use fog to hide the horizon line between water and sky ?

[blank_v]

Try to place Rock underground of everysingle Cell

it will force LOD to generate those cells because they are not empty.

 

LOD Generator count how many objects are in cell and if there is 0 objects, cell may get Skipped in processing 

 ( if there is 0 objects in cell and no objects in nearby cells )

+ LOD can't skip cell if there is Land Texture used so u can paint You land with any texture

 

But simple ricks should help

 

Edit:

Fuck#$%&ing Creationkit is crashing every few generated cells and I have to restart it again and again 

 

But i have 2 questions for You:

 

1) Why You generate LOD now?...

 First You should finish Your world, then generate LOD...

 otherwise its just waste of time to generate LOD over and over again, do it once when Your Landscape and main structures are done

 

2) Why You use Vanilla LOD Generator?

 - There are way better Tools for LOD Generating, if i remember i was using DynDOLOD for my Braverock 3 Mod

 Creation Kit LOD Generator is bad and slow :x

 

I remember when i was generating Braverock 3 LOD Creation Kid said -> 7 hours

so i downloaded LOD Tools and generated my LOD in less than hour :x...

 

 

 

So 4 possible solutions:

1) Try to place rock underground in every single cell You want to be generated with LOD

2) Paint every single cell with any land texture

3) use LOD Tools instead of Creation Kit ( kid )

4) Create Regions and borders ( so LOD Generator will know how big Your map is )

 

 

If You want to know how Your world will look like with LOD but You dont want to generate LOD yet:

Spoiler

In creation Kit You can see How your world will look like with LOD without generation LOD

ofc. if You want to see Tamriel... you have to know its not "TEMP LOD" its as name says " Grids to Load"

 

You can try how many chunks You can load in Tamriel but my CK crash if i wnat to load more than 13 chunks ;x...
 

Spoiler

 

Easy way to Landedit:

Spoiler

Press "0" Key to switch to orthgraphics view ( its better to work on Land Scape / Texture )

 

[worik]

43 minutes ago, TobiaszPL said:

Try to place Rock underground of everysingle Cell

That's a very good idea! Much less work than my naming routine.

44 minutes ago, TobiaszPL said:

1) Why You generate LOD now?...

That worldspace is finished. It's a ship in the ocean, and when the journey is done, the PC is in the interior ship's cell, I enable the land, et voila, we have arrived.

The island in the scene is just theater decoration, but I thought it's important for the feeling of a journey to High Rock.

 

My next step is to create a second worldspace for the harbour city. That would be limited by city walls in 2 directions, rocks in another and open sea in the last one.

48 minutes ago, TobiaszPL said:

2) Why You use Vanilla LOD Generator?

Because I didn't know any better. Later, I have discovered xODGen, but it skipped the open water cells. Perhaps I know now, why. Will try that trick with the rocks for the island world

 

Thanks again

 

[t.ara]

That Ck creation of the LOD seems to me not successful.

What you have there as a LOD-result, I have not even always without a LOD creation inside of the ZAP-world.

Skyrim has some problems with the RAM. Some stuff seems to be ejected and other stuff has to be loaded, depending where you are with your character and how the cam is acting-which is like in tons of other games of that decade.

If you have only SKYRIM vanilla assets, you need even to guarantee, that the LOD-creation is grabing the LOD-textures so to create a new LOD for the landscape.

If the water is missing-it´s really missing-it´s an activator and it has a collision. If some quaders are not there, the water is not there if you swim over there....

I will not create the LOD by using CK, there´s a good guide on youtube from the creator of falskaar. It´s not exactly "easy", but by this workaround, it also possible to add NEW LOD-objects into the map with of course dedicated LOD-textures.

And yes, LOD - creation is the last action, I guess.

 

 

[t.ara]

My editor ini-stuff, maybe you can use it.

I would use the CK WITH ENB ! One which is CLOSE to vanilla, or better:  "switched off".

SkyrimEditor.ini SkyrimEditorPrefs.ini

 

 

About that audio "correction":

if you switch that off you can not use audio of the CK...!!!

If you need to work on audio-objects, you NEED this function...

and I do not have issures because of that.

It´s a broadcasted "solution" which is maybe depending on the driver which tyrant has bespoken higher.

I need audio and it is not confliction inside of my system.

CK stabilizing problems came to me in the past if win 7 lost somehow it´s compatibility with the CK-version, we have from bethesda got for a download.

The system´s update or some drivers of dedicated hardware may cause that CK is starting to run INSTABIL.

Windows got updates, but not CK....CK has been left alone in 2011 and there´s of course no guarantee that you can "ride around" with more modern hard- and software without an dedicated update of CK itself-which is of course not happening.

 

AUDIO: I would switch it ON, if it is not disturbing.

 

Pleas keep in mind:

If you only LOAD one crappy gamebryo-file maybe with a mod, which adds new assets (which have not been created 100% compatible for skyrim), then your CK can hang up, freeze - a secure sign that the engine has a problem with a gamebryo-file. If you keep on loading such crappy assets all the time, you will not be able to find the problem. And the more you have spreadded over that mod and area, the more you will not be able to find the error(s).  It´s then very hard to find the reason for all that. It´s not always the guilt of a modder to bring into the game "half-working assets"...lot of stuff have been converted as new resources and invite us, to use them inside of our mods. To avoid a total confusion it´s the best to go this way:

 

 

The best is, to check CK ONLY inside the vanilla exterieur and move around the map, so to find out if the loading process is working. The vanilla game-also if it is not being CLEANED by using TESVexe, is running quite stabil. Ony this vanilla behavior of CK can be your basic origin, where to start with.

 

 

And maybe one last info:

Do not use automatical nif-converters because they do not work for all sort of skyrim´s gamebryo-files. Such converters work only for static elements or bodies-clothing-and heads if they have a sort of possibility for a switch. Even NIFSCOPE has SPELL-functions, which cause a gamebryo-file to become UNUSEABLE for skyrim. Automatism is only working, if you exactly know what you do. This is specially important if you go "Skyrim SE".

 

 

The engine (skyrim) and CK can be tested with a "hard-core-check" by adding with "paste-copy" HIGH-poly-meshes in repeatition-you will mostly be able to add hundred or thousand of churches* (can be for best buildings with higher poly-amount)  behind each other and go over them in CK or in game. The engine´s problems do not start with such sort of stuff. The engine has instead a problem to use objects with high poly objects in near-field. And on top of that comes an effect, if such assets use high-texture-pictures like 4K or higher. 4K is also not ideal for the "Add Item Menu"...you can scroll vanilla clothing and compare that with the luxury-collection side by side. Specially GO-files should consist by using only LOW-poly-textures ! in  case of that mod.

If on your island are existing LOT of stuff all narrow put by each other, the engine maybe is not able to build up the far-distance-stuff, so some water-planes don´t load, they are simply not there. As soon as you "relax" the narrow collection of assets onto your island, the behavior of the engine will change. It´s not bad to have an island with a middle-area, which is little higher, so that the engine is loading those parts where you can "mostly" look around and behind the horizon, it´s not important, what is missing in that moment. I used this trick also for the ZAP-world....that world could surprisingly be also released without a LOD-map, because it is working quite well. Density and their distances of objects is an important aspect of creating new "worlds":-)

Compared to the overall skyrim world is ZAP but only SMALL.

 

[Audio]

bEnableAudio=1

 

 

p.s. simple texture-shader-changes during an import into 3dsmax and it´s following export can cause a nif-file to crash skyrim and the CK-if you have one single file with such an error it can take DAYS and WEEKS to sort this out - it´s one of the most UGLY error, which can happen to a modder, because it all looks fine-for a longer time;-)))).....!!!!
 

 

[worik]

1 hour ago, t.ara said:

If the water is missing-it´s really missing-it´s an activator and it has a collision. If some quaders are not there, the water is not there if you swim over there....

? I think this sentence is the key.

In the end, my idea of an seemingly endless ocean horizon would either have a visible "edge of the world" or would need some fog to cover the border of my worldspace.

 

I'm trying it right now with 6 cells of ocean  in each direction, but that's not convincing on a bright day. So I think, I will go for a 10x10 map with my ship in the middle and cover the "edge" with light fog on a sunny day.

From my experiments: The generic Skyrim rain weather  is limiting my view nicely below 3 cells

[worik]

For the record:

I am using now xLodGen

https://forum.step-project.com/topic/13451-xlodgen-terrain-lod-beta-for-fnv-fo3-fo4-fo4vr-tes5-sse-tes5vr-enderal/

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/62698/

https://github.com/TES5Edit/xLODGen

 

They are right now at the beta version 6.3 but my v6.2 is doing quite nice

1000 Kudos to the xEdit Team at this point ?

[worik]

I think, I need to learn a bit more about the settings

See my next  experiment in a mountain valley below

 

View south:

Spoiler

 

View north

Spoiler

strange ....

 

But if I get closer it's looking good

 

What I don't understand is, when I return to my original position, the view is exactly like it should be right from the start ?

Spoiler