So my castle, the bulk of it is spread over a few exterior cells (Wilderness) and my castle-castle sits just on the other side of a cell line and whenever I view it it doesn't load until you get close enough, so it looks awkward from a distance or even in parts of the city. Anyway to fix this?

I am in a similar situation. I've got my castle in the sky and you can always see two or three pieces of the exterior...awkwardly floating up there.

Just been through creating LOD I must have watched this video about 30 times now. Instead of using the BSA unpacker he uses I found BSAopt worked just as well for me.

http://www.youtu.be/kB2rqH7Ytko?hd=1

And the very best of luck to you both!

Hmm, he doesn't recommend it for the Tameriel worldspace but it is still useful as I have always wanted to create a custom worldspace, might come in handy later. Still need help though with my LOD problem.

If it's only the static objects, buildings, walls etc, that are the problem you might be able to generate LOD for the objects only through CK for the cells you modified. I must admit I didn't take too much notice of extra options CK has available when I generated LOD for the statics, you might be able to be selective with the cells.

I think if I remember you right click on a selected object the cursor selection has a LOD option for just that object, never tried it but you would probably have to have all the LOD textures / meshes in place before.

Recommend that you make up a custom test worldspace just to get the gist of things first.

I would be really scared to try land LOD on original Tameriel cells.

Yeah it is just statics such as walls and towers really.

Check "Has Distant LOD" in the http://www.creationkit.com/Static. Then http://www.creationkit.com/Distant_LOD_Meshes_Dialog to associate it to.

Depending on what statics you used there might be LOD meshes/textures already available or you may have to create them yourself.

Going to try this when I start up the CK, looks right though, thanks!

I think that's only used when generating LOD, meaning it wont do anything if he never actually re-generates LOD for the Tamriel worldspace.

The issue with that is who the heck knows what else you're overriding and what other issues you're creating.

I think the Fallouts had a command specifically for 'Generate this cell's LOD' or something, but they seem to have taken that out. So, I'm not sure what you can do...

Late Reply: That svcks. Ugh.

What I ended up doing was generating the LOD and then comparing the LOD files with LOD textures to figure out where on the map would be affected. When I found the section of map that my mod occupied, I pulled out only those BTO files and ditched the rest. It took awhile, but in the end I discovered exactly which quads the mod occupied so I could pull out only the relevant LOD files for it.

There are three levels that BTO (Distant Object) files are generated at: a 4x4 cellgrid, an 8x8 cellgrid, and a 16x16 cellgrid. Unless you are adding a new mountain or some other very large landmark, the 16x16 version should be trashed as it will result in heavy incompatibilities with other mods that add LOD visuals to Tamriel. Whether or not you keep the 8x8 depends on where your stuff is located, but even then it is debatable if all you are adding is a village because the distance the game switches to the 8x8 LOD is so great you'll be hard-pressed to even see the objects.

Well apparently, each object, statics only from what I have checked, and lightning, have an option called "Is Full LOD" which on the wiki says it will not fade from a distance making things awkward, sounds like the answer. http://www.creationkit.com/Reference

Edit: Yup that did it. Failed.

Doh, I don't know why I didn't think to suggest that earlier. Yeah you can check that on all the objects. Though keep in mind I believe that loads them in at full quality all the time. So just make sure you don't do it to 500 things, I'm not sure what effect that would have on exterior performance at that point.

Good to remember a handy thing to use if you just have a simple dungeon entrance with only about 4 statics outside.

I'll have to check it out from areas around it. Sadly I have to cut content anyways because it is too laggy in some areas that they are generally unplayable, they don't make you crash but you wuill stall for like 2 minutes.

Don't no why I didn't think to comment earlier but have you tried sticking occlusion planes inside the walls might help reduce lag.

Yeah I have been doing that occlusion plane thing.

But uhh, the "is Full LOD" thing has some terrible out of control long term effects that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. I lost like everything and am in the process of rebuilding and stuff. Like I said: I wouldn't recommend it.

Edit: That was a terrible sentence, I hate using "like" or "stuff".

Can you explain a little bit about what happens? I was going to start doing this on some scaled up statics (I used the nifs from other non static objects) to try and get around LOD issues, now you've got me wondering.

Well, it seems objects started rendering invisible up close but they were still there and landmass, amongst other things, started to flicker and disappear.

I have had the invisible statics issue before, not very often though. I'd say once in three months, generally a reload fixes the issue but I'm not sure if the static has the full LOD checked. I'm about to finish my mods quest so I'll fool around with the LOD too.

Well let me know what you find works, I'm going to hold off one what Thomas said as it seems complex reading it. Not really feeling mod making right now anyways.

I made a fairly detailed explaination on the Nexus. It explains how to work out what files to keep for your LOD to work correctly -

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/592745-skyrim-castle-mod-wip/page__view__findpost__p__5619679