I did use the level 4 and 8 btr files from Oscape, however when I reached level 16 and 32 they were displaced compared to the ones generated by the Creation kit - but it definately is an interesting idea to simply scale my world in size multiples of 32 - I'll try that, thanks!

What I mean is, why did you even bother to generate them with the CK. Apart from the fact that it takes hours, as opposed to 10-15 minutes with Oscape, you cannot use the textures that the CK creates.
It would have been better for you to skip making terrain/water lod in the CK and just use Oscape instead. Then install the Oscape meshes and textures.

I tried that, plenty of times - over and over again and again! Using the lodfile generated through Oscape would never let me have both textures and objects (mountains and trees) show at the same time ingame, but using the lodfile generated by the creation kit I could have both textures and objects show up at the same time, so basically thats why - and the fact that I was experiencing displacement issues between level 16 and 32 meshes generated through oscape compared to the ones generated in the creation kit!

EDIT: Also tried lodfilegenerator v2, but that didn't work as intended either... At least not for me!

That explains it. I didn't realise that the .lod file that Oscape generates, is faulty. Haven't tried it with object and tree lod, still texturing.

Okay, so I went over my steps again, with the above in mind, and I believe I've found an easier/faster way to get both my distant terrain lod, textures and distant objects (mountains and trees) show ingame at the same time, however there are still quite a few steps involved so I figured I'd post it here in the hopes that it might help someone with the same issues I've been experiencing!

Of course I assume you've already unpacked the various lod's and textures from the Skyrim - Meshes.bsa and Skyrim - Textures.bsa files, and that you've referenced to Data\Textures\Landscape\Mountains\MountainSlab02.dds under HD LOD Diffuse and Data\Textures\Landscape\Mountains\MountainSlab02_N.dds under HD LOD Normal in "World Spaces" in the CK (in order to have your distant mountains textured)!

Now on to the fun! Make sure to backup your esp/esm before proceeding!

Make sure to delete any old distant lod files, lodsettings, lod textures, object texture etc. located inside your "/Data/Meshes/Terrain/MyWorld/", "/Data/Textures/Terrain/MyWorld", "/Common/Source/DDSTextures/Terrain/MyWorld/" and "/Data/LODSettings/" folders


EDIT: Went over this again, and it would seem that following the below I can now use the Lodfile generated by Oscape, which again makes things faster/easier!


Step 1:
Ensure that your world scales to 32, otherwise you'll be having trouble later when transfering the oscape meshes and textures over to your worldspace! The number of cells processed by the CK can be determined in "World -> Regions"! White cells are processed - for MyWorld I've used a range from -64;-64 to 64;64 (128x128 in all)! It is important that your world scales to 32, otherwise the CK generated meshes and textures will have different cell names (Example: MyWorld.32.-64.-32.dds), compared to the ones generated by Oscape, and you'll end up having to manually edit each texture file in an image editor, which will be a pain in the ass (trust me)!


Step 2:
Now open "World -> World LOD..." in the CK, select your world and tick "Static Objects" ONLY, and press Generate! This shouldn't take long, mine took a few minutes!


Step 3:
Still in "World -> World LOD...", select your world and tick "Trees" ONLY, and press Generate! Again, this shouldn't take more than a few minutes!

_{Now as I've yet to be able to use any custom lodfiles from either Oscape or Lodfilegeneratorv2 to succesfully have both distant terrain (with textures) and distant objects (mountains/trees) show up at the same time ingame, we'll need to use the one generated by the Creation kit! So we'll do a little trick (to avoid having to wait for the CK to create meshes and textures for your distant terrain, which will litterally take hours in the CK)!
Step 4:
Still in "World -> World LOD...", select your world and tick "Distant Terrain / Water", "Static Objects", "Trees", "High Priority", "Generate Diffuse Textures", "Generate Normal Textures" and "Source Textures Only"! Now Press Generate, wait about 10 seconds (or until it finishes "Creating queue of files to be built..."), and then press cancel and wait for it to complete cancelling! This will have created the crucial LODSettings file!
It is a good idea to make a backup of this newly generated lodsettings file at this stage! It can be found in "/Data/LODSettings/" and should be named "MyWorld.LOD"!}

Now you can close the "World LOD" window in your creation kit, as we won't be needing it anymore!


Step 5:
Navigate to "/Common/Source/DDSTextures/Terrain/MyWorld/" and copy the "Objects" folder! Paste this folder inside "/Data/Textures/Terrain/MyWorld/"!
Inside "/Data/Textures/Terrain/MyWorld/" create a new folder called "Trees"!
So now you have two folder (possible three, as there might be one called "Land" also, ignore this one), "Objects" and "Trees"!

As the Creation Kit doesn't seem to be able to create the LOD Textures for trees we'll have to copy the one from Skyrim/Tamriel and use that one!
Navigate to "/Data/Textures/Terrain/Tamriel/Trees/" and copy "tamrieltreelod.dds" and paste this into "/Data/Textures/Terrain/MyWorld/Trees"!
Once pasted, select the file and rename it "MyWorldtreelod.dds", where "MyWorld" of course is the name of your worldspace!

With this done, we're ready to generate the distant terrain meshes and textures with Oscape (you can find it on the Skyrim Nexus)!


Step 6:
Open Oscape and create your distant lod textures (.dds) and meshes (.btr)!
Maegfaer made a fine tutorial of how to use Oscape here:
forums.gamesas. com/topic/1348239-creating-new-worldspacesdiscussion-thread-3/page__p__20314676#entry20314676(remove the space)! But for the ease of it, I've included the relevant steps here!

_{Step 7:
Now with the terrain meshes and textures generated with Oscape (but not installed) we'll be doing this manually!
Navigate to the folder where Oscape saved the generated meshes and textures!
Find your Textures (.dds), and copy/paste these to "/Data/Textures/Terrain/MyWorld/"!
Find your Meshes (.btr), and copy/paste these to "/Data/Meshes/Terrain/MyWorld/"! Remember to paste all levels! (Level 4, 8, 16 and 32)!
Step 8:
Now test your world space ingame!
If for some reason your lod trees still won't show up, reopen the Creation Kit, enter "World -> World LOD...", select your world space, and tick "Trees" ONLY and press generate! And retest your world space ingame!}

For my test-world (WIP) this produced the following results:
Ground view: i45.tinypic. com/1445wso.jpg(remove the space)

Map view: i47.tinypic. com/64gejd.jpg(remove the space)



Hopefully this proces will be faster/easier than the one I described earlier! As always, if there's anything I could be doing better (more optimal) than do enlighten me!

With Best Regards,
KDashnaw

To me generate distant terrain / lods and water always results in shifted planes and wrongly aligned surfaces , the only way to get good lods for terrain at least for me isOscape , but why you generate first in CK then in Oscape?

As for the problem of lods alternatibvely displaying either terrain or objects is couse of the lod setting file not matching both map sizes , try making the region in the region editor the same size of the map so that the white are matches the same dimensions and quads of the heightmap so it fixed for me atm ... unless someotherweirdness comes out ....

_{The reason for generating in the CK first, is so that you get a working lodfile for your worldspace, without having to fear the CK overwriting any custom Oscape meshes/textures, as the lodfile generated by oscape won't work with distant objects (atleast not for me)! But as the lodfile is one of the first things generated by the CK you won't have to complete generating your distant terrain / water in the CK, as you can simply press "cancel" shortly after the proces has started, and then copy in your textures and meshes from Oscape!}

EDIT: Scratch that, it would seem that once your world has been scaled to 32 that the lodfile from Oscape actually works with both Distant Terrain and Objects!

But yeah, the key seems to lie in making sure your worldspace scales to 32 (32 - 64 - 96 - 128 etc.) under regions, on both the X and Y axis, otherwise, as you've also experienced, there will be a mismatch between Oscape meshes and the CK object/tree files!

Still stuck with my lod. Now I can either have objects and trees or land, water and textures not all at the same time. Oscape seems to rid my objects/trees. Or when i generate in ck it rids the landscape textures, water

Tried various methods-

oscape first, both ways, with esp or esm >> then the rest of the steps BSAopt unpacking >> placing the files/folders to the required destination, converting to TGA etc ..
This results in having object tree lod but no land, water or texture lod.

oscape last, both ways, with esm or esp with all the steps before it... that results in land, water and textures with no objects or trees..???

So it may stem down to my worldspace scale, since I am using just a tiny little 'testworld'

My question is "how do I make sure I'm using the correct scale"? I tried putting in -32, 32 -32, 32 but recall seeing somewhere I forget where because I have deleted and started over numerous times that it went -32 32 -28 28 ?

keep in mind I am very new to modding,
I have picked up the pace in being able to run through the lod setup since I have done it sooo many times

Try this:

Backup your esp/esm before proceeding!

Open the Creation kit and load your world!

Navigate to the Region Editor (World -> Regions...).

Select your world in the drop down list, and create a new region (right-click -> "New Region")!

Rename it, and tick "No Color" and "Border Region" (only if you don't already have a border region).

Now zoom out in the region preview window (scroll)! (You should see something like this:
i46.tinypic.
com/10xy8ld.png
). (Web address, combine the two lines)

You will need to expand that white box (or white cells) into something that scales to 32 (and it needs to form a square)!

So the proces is pretty simple! In the bottom left corner of the region window, you can see which cell your cursor is hovering over (in the above picture mine is on Cell: ( 39 , -1 ))

In my test world I've used -64;-64 to 64;64 as my outer boundaries, as 32;32 was too small for me, but for the case of this example I'll just use -32;-32 to 32;32!

So now start by moving your cursor to Cell -32; -32 and click once! You should get a red X on the spot you clicked (if you misclick simply rightclick in the window and choose "Clear Last point")!
Now move your cursor to Cell 32; -32 and click once again! Now you have two red X's and a red line connecting them! Great!
Move your cursor to 32; 32 and click again!
And at last move your cursor to -32; 32 and click again!
Now you should have 4 X's with red lines connected 3 of them! To finish your box simply right click in the window and choose "done"!

That will now complete your box, and generate several new "white" cells!
Now under "Edge Fall-Off (World Units)", change the number from 1024 to 0, and click "Apply"!

Your box should look something like this now;
i50.tinypic.
com/2imb61g.png
(Web address, combine the two lines)


With this done, you should be ready to generate your lods with oscape and the CK (objects/trees), and the lodfile from Oscape should work with both distant terrain, textures and objects (mountains/trees) as well!

Hope this helps!

^^ Links ^^

http://i46.tinypic.com/10xy8ld.png
http://i46.tinypic.com/2imb61g.png

Thanks for that KDashnaw. I finally have terrain and objects working. Woohoo!!
..lost the trees though. Will run a few more tests...it may just stem down to the order I am doing things.

Hey everyone - I wrote that CK tutorial a long time ago, close to the CK's release when we were all still trying to figure out how to do anything. I wrote it as a base thinking that since it was a wiki people would expand on it and fix it, so please please please update and clarify the wiki article! LOD generation is one of those things that Bethesda will probably never fix, so we're stuck using a myriad of third party tools, which naturally get very confusing and complicated.

...and then there shall be LOD Thankyou guys for all the help given in this thread, very muchly appreciated. http://imageshack.us/f/220/worldlod01.jpg/ (testworld)

If I may just ask a few more questions (though I am mostly satisfied with the results thus far)...

Is this >> http://imageshack.us/f/696/worldlod02.jpg/ the way yours is?? and from a couple different angles:

http://imageshack.us/f/189/worldlod03.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/f/266/worldlod04.jpg/

and as I near the um...holes they disappear >> http://imageshack.us/f/600/worldlod05.jpg/

yours truly
happy and delighted

Thorsaken:

I have had those errors too! However I haven't been able to isolate them to anything specific, but I will still tell you what has worked for me, as I am currently NOT experiencing these errors anymore!

+ Build your objects with the CK (Objects and Trees)!
+ Build your terrain with oscape, make sure to choose as high a resolution for your terrain as possible [under "Target of max. resolution:" in the generator window) (although still limiting it at max 1.000 pr. tile)!
Try for example with 800.000, if it crashes reduce to 700.000, and if it crashes again reduce to 600.000, continuing this proces until it succeeds, and then install the lods and see if it helps on your terrain!

Alternatively, if this does not correct the problem, try with a low resolution and see if that by any chance fixes it!




As for the tree problem you've been having, make sure that you have a "....Terraintreelod.dds" file in your Skyrim/Data/Textures/Terrain/YourWorld/Trees/ directory.
If you don't then simply copy the one from the tamriel folder, renaming it "YourWorldTerraintreelod.dds", where "YourWorld" of course is the name of your worldspace (the name of the folder)
Then regenerate the tree lod in the CK, and trees should be showing ingame now!

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I have been using 1000000 (3/3 of vanilla skyrim).

EDIT: Tried oscaping in different resolutions, no luck. I think it was around (I accidently deleted my notes ) 600000 the problem shrank in size but was still there, tried lower resolutions and it just reverted to the same as higher resolutions..
I also tried renaming tamriel.lod to myworld.lod also with no luck..
anyhooo...tired of this so maybe I'll come back to it after I actually do some more work in the ck on my worldspace...lots to do, lots to do

Trees are not a problem