I've tried looking at and have read all the other world creation threads and am getting no further with this so thought I'd start my own so I can at least remain focused on the issues I'm experiencing without clogging up other threads with my constant questions. Maybe someone with a better knowledge of LOD and how it works can help and point out specifically where I'm going wrong.. I've literally been on this for days worth of my spare time now and it's frankly driving me up the wall!

Basically I'm trying to export a map of Vvardenfel from Morrowind so that I can create the area in Skyrim's engine. So far I've got the image exported to a 16bit bmp using TESannwyn, then imported to a .esp file which loads up fine in the creation kit. No problems there, default water height of 0 appears to be fine as it is (cross-referenced with the original game http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/861/vivecckwaterheight.jpg/).

I did originally want to include Solstheim in an http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/407/morrowindsols01.jpg/ (128 cells square) but this image seemed to result in http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/screenshot4ai.jpg/ and massive landscape errors everywhere - good if anyone knows the answer to that (probably photoshop related) but for now I'm working with just the vvardenfel map because it works and makes me marginally less stabby.

I then attempted to follow http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1351378-tutorial-for-generating-landscape-lod/ about generating LOD - and to some extent appear to have it working. These are my current results -

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/screenshot5mk.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/513/screenshot6so.jpg/

As you can see from the first one I seem to have the grass fading out nicely and the textures diffusing to lower res ones as I move outwards. The really distant landscape is there too, but from screenshot 2 you can see there's a pretty sharp dropoff in texture detail outside the cell too. I should point out the water issue has been solved and I got water LOD to work in-game just using the CK (see point 7 below).

Any ideas? I've read a few things but it seems like searching for a needle in a haystack at times when you need fundamental information on how the process of LOD actually works. I guess it doesn't help you've got people discussing 4 or 5 different programs they're switching between to get it working. Currently my method is thus -

• Export 16bit .bmp image from .esm file using TESAnnwyn
  
• Import .bmp image to .esp file using TESAnnwyn (only real change is repositioning bottom left cell to position -64, -64).
  
• Use Wrye Bash to create .esm copy of the generated .esp file (Oscape won't work with .esp files) scratch that you don't need to do this, although x64 version of oscape doesn't like me for some reason.
  
• Use Oscape in the way mentioned in the above tutorial, use Nconvert to convert the generated textures and place everything in the relevant folders. Note I used 2/3 Vanilla skyrim setting while generating the textures.
  
• Use the LOD file generator to create a simple LOD file for the worldspace (found out this only works in multiples of 32 so just made the .lod file 128x128 cells). Placed this in the lodsettings folder.
  
• Used the CK World LOD to generate DIffuse and Normal textures for the worldspace (once again as stated in the tutorial). This fails multiple times (just appears to stop doing anything) although restarting the CK and starting the process again appears to pick up from the % complete it left off at, and eventually finishes.
  
• After testing it in-game (and seeing no LOD water), checked the "Distant Terrain/Water" option in the World LOD generation to see what it did. Putting this at high priority seemed to work a LOT faster (probably because it uses all 8 of my cores instead of the one that textures uses!) and water becomes visible right off into the distance.

OK, so roughly, this process gets me to the shots you see above, albeit with water LOD seemingly working. Now, a few questions that have been bugging me, if anyone could answer them I'd be much obliged -

• Any idea what I'm doing wrong with the land LOD and why there's such an abrubt, short-range cutoff before it becomes super-low-res?
  
• If I'm making a huge worldspace mod, how often do I have to do this stuff? Is it literally every time I make any changes to my worldspace's landscape/textures/objects etc?
  
• On a related note if I just change a few cells, does the debug option in the top right of the world LOD menu allow me to do the whole process for just a specific few cells?
  
• Any tutorials out there or working methods for object LOD? I'm guessing it's at least as annoying as the landscape and water but wanted to get this working before moving on to it.

[quote name='God_made_me_do_it' timestamp='1330308808' post='20399149']
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/screenshot5mk.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/513/screenshot6so.jpg/
[/quote]
I hate to say this, but don't use oscape. :/ First, it only generated default-level water at a certain level, which is why you have no LOD water. Second, the textures dont work. Oscape always makes them brown and it looks like crap where the transition is. You can generate land/water LOD with hte CK with abo[censored]ely no problems, and you can proper water LOD. Textures made with the CK appear as the right color (Making that transition far more smooth), though there is some striping issues and weirdness.

In my personal experience, the CK has done a better job at all the texture and land/water LOD than Oscape. Though, it does take far longer to generate, but I think that's because it's actually doing it properly....

However no offense to Ethatron, Oscape is an awesome tool, it just appears (To me) to be quite disfunctional. (Not that the CK works perfectly either...)

Hmmmmmm.. so would simply deleting all the files (apart from my .lod file - CK always crashes trying to make this and the other tool seems to work fine for generating this) from the relevant folders (data/meshes/terrain/worldspace & data/textures/terrain/worldspace) then generating with the CK entirely work?

Any advice on what settings I need to set off in the CK LOD generation window? I'm guessing diffuse/normal textures ticked and then landscape/water generation. I've currently got "source textures only" selected as well.

Also (setting this off working now to see what happens) - any issues with the static objects/tree generation options in the CK I'd need to know about?

Oh and should I still not save after this process? I read somewhere it destroys your landscape if you do.



EDIT - OK tried using the CK - took a suspiciously short time (just over 3 minutes) - I deleted all files beforehand from the above textures/meshes directories - now have the dreaded purple textures as well as all my previous woes - http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/859/screenshot9n.jpg/

EDIT 2 - there has been NO texture data generated, despite the fact it says it's 100% complete. The problem now is that attempting to generate textures with the CK results in the program going "100% complete!" immediately, there doesn't appear to be a way to tell it "I Don't care CK, do it again!" My attempt to work around this was to create an identical worldspace with a different ID and name. The CK then manages to create all the meshes and crashes when attempting to go onto textures - a restart picks up the process, albeit dropping back to texture generation's amazingly slow single-threaded operation. I'm going to see how this pans out but if I'm going to need to generate LOD multiple times for one project and the CK refuses to do it more than once for any worldspace I can't see it panning out well. Maybe there's a workaround for this?

To be safe, I would avoid saving afterward. I don't.

You have purple textures because you did just what I did. You didn't move the texture files it made to the appropriate place. It's not all automatic. In Source/DDSTextures (Source is in Steam/SteamApps/Common, right below Skyrim) there are all teh texture you need to move into your texture folder just like the Oscape generated ones. Then you have your LOD, both land and water, and the nice accurate CK textures. However, with the CK you will get black stripes of land and some other weirdness that we are currently trying to figure out, but it certainly isn't as bad as evertying being solid brown. (Assuming you've textured most of your world, otherwise until then it makes little difference.)

I believe that the answer to the black stripes generated with the CK is open each file in photoshop or a similar DDS-compatible program and fill in the black areas. I'm fairly certain that's currently the best process we have. Definitely not Oscape, unfortunately. It seems to be incompatible with skyrim at the moment.

Aww, man. It's located in Source/DDStextures? No WONDER I couldn't find them! I'm assuming I just move those .DDS files to the data/textures/terrain/myworldspace folder then? That may explain it thinking the process was complete too.

Yeah that gets rid of the purple, but it's added those black lines or dark areas over everything, plus the issue with the higher res textures popping in at what seems ridiculously close range is even worse now.. I'm practically standing on the low res textures in some cases before the high res ones decide to pop in!

OT: It's not that, because: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4834 , it's something else.

Wouldn't that take, like, for ever? There are currently 1300 files in my textures for my worldspace. That is most definitely not a viable option haha.

I've heard those black lines and areas are generated when you select the "source and compressed" option in the "World LOD" texture generator... So don't select that option, see if that works.

Nope, I always selected "source only" when generating textures, so it's definitely not that. Has anyone actually had any luck generating realistic LOD with no error using an original worldspace? Or are we all basically in the same boat until someone works out a fix for using Oscape/The CK to generate non-buggy textures?

Hey Ethatron, i tried to generate the lods for the Skyrim map myself with Oscape and it worked. However, i can confirm that lods for custom maps end up all brown. These are by far the most strange bugs I ever came across and it seems really not to be your fault. Unfortunatly the only ones who could lighten up this creepy dungeon remain silent until now.
HEY BETHESDA, DON'T LEAVE US IN THE DARK!

But there's another thing concerning Oscape:
I'm still having issues with water lod. When I leave water height at zero, the lod doesn't show up. When I lower the water height to -14000 in the CK and in oscape, I'll eventually get my lod. Both left at zero doesn't work.
Well there surely must have been more catastrophic events on Nirn then just the eruption of red mountain in the last two centuries with the water level lowered that much

Yes, it most certainly would! Some people (including myself) have had success in getting Oscape to generate color maps that works; many others (also including myself) get the purple texture issue when using Oscape. You could also try using TES4qLOD for color maps. It seems each program (CK, Oscape, etc.) works differently for different people, so there's no real answers as of yet.

Oscape doesn't generate textures when they are applied in a ESP file that is dependant on the ESM containing the worldspace. The textures need to be applied inside the ESM (i.e. merge your ESP into the ESM).

Ah yes, I converted my map to an ESM because it's quite a pain to save such a big ESP everytime and then worked on an ESP wich I linked to the other one being an ESM now. So that would be the reason why Oscape didn't produce the proper lods? If that's the Case then this seems only to apply to textures, since the meshes worked fine after I edited the height in the new ESP...
Anyway, I'm gonna try it out.

Very odd. Can you explain then how you got Oscape to generate non-brown colors? If I generate them, even as PNG so I have previews, they are all just solid brown. It's just the files Oscape generates, so it can't be anything else... I'd love if I could get Oscape working, as it doesnt stripe the land with black lines like the ck... :/

*EDIT: I'm going to try generating for my esm now as well, as I too was doing an esp before.

Am I failing or can anyone confirm that there is no possibility to merge Skyrim plugins at this time?

I was just thinking this last night too - since most of our mod textures currently come from references within the Skyrim.esm file. I can confirm it's not just plain converting a file to a .esm at least since I already do that. Here's a few ideas I was milling about though;

What about setting Tamriel as a parent worldspace in the CK? might that work? EDIT: no, no it won't. Just realised how parent worldspaces work.. not exactly what I was looking for.

As mentioned - presumably since all the generated references are external and linked to the worldspace ID as opposed to the actual specific .esm file - it seems entirely viable that creating a copy of Skyrim.esm and merging it with a copy of your worldspace would work for generation, then the .esp would theoretically have exactly the same worldspace data, reference the exact same external LOD textures and work as normal. I'm going to look into seeing ways to merge the .esp with Skyrim.esm, but haven't found anything just yet.

Also, is there any way to make a .esp file link directly to either the compressed textures in the .bsa or even unpacked textures in the same way that Skyrim.esm references it's own? Once again I'm not entirely sure on adding custom landscape textures.

I'm going to look into these myself but if anyone else works anything out there could be a potential fix in that somewhere.

I got it working with Version Control set up in the CK, but it's a bit long winded to explain it all here. I may write a tutorial on the CK about it soon, once I figured out all details.

Please let me know if the merged .esm causes Oscape to generate the correct textures for your worldspace! Even if writing up the method would take a while, that alone would let us know we're not barking up the wrong tree. Unfortunately I'm coming up blank trying to find any other way to merge .esm files. FNVedit seems the most likely option but you need New Vegas installed to even use it.. which svcks.

Right now fully merging MERP's first regional plugin gets stuck somewhere along the way. I did manage to merge architecture content successfully though. I'm pretty convinced myself that Oscape doesn't detect textures in dependant ESP files, but I'll let you know when I have hard proof of that. I just gotta find out where it gets stuck and how to solve that.

Yeah my thought was that merging the two would make the worldspace itself an integral part of Skyrim.esm and therefore all the texture references within it would be correct and no longer externally dependant.

After merging the generated colour textures into our MiddleEarth.esm file using the CK's Version Control, Oscape generated colour textures correctly. My hypothesis was correct then, Oscape doesn't read textures from secondary files (correctly).

I'm sorry, I don't get all this about version control. So you have the proper lod now? And it works? Could you please provide some more information?

The bug is slightly different than I thought. The problem is that you need to have the texture forms, the worldspace itself, and the applied texture data (LAND data) in the same plugin. For example, our MiddleEarth.esm contains our custom texture forms, the worldspace, and the applied textures, but vanilla textures that are in Skyrim.esm still don't show up.

I'll make a tutorial for Version Control in Skyrim later, meanwhile you can read up on the concept here:

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Version_Control