Generating LODs for your worldspace

Edit: I have rewrite this guide a bit.

LODs are made by four file types: meshes (.btr files), textures (.dds files), normal (.dds files) and a .lod file for the world space. There are several ways to create all of these file, you can use the CK or other programs depending on what works on your computer.

The steps in this guide are:

Duplicating textures (optional, see point 2 under Making Meshes), converting to tga
Making Meshes, Textures and Normals
Making .lod file (optional)

Duplicating textures in the CK (optional)

If you have painted the terrain with any texture apart from default texture, you need to do some extra things to make Oscape work properly. This only has to be done in the file used for LOD making.

1. Open your esp and the Skyrim.esm in the CK.
2. In the Object window, under Miscellaneous, TextureSet. Duplicate every texture you would like to have as LOD.
3. In Miscellaneous, LandTexture. Open every LandTexture you duplicated, change the file to your copied TextureSet.
4. Save

Making the Meshes, Textures and Normals

I had problems with the crashes in the CK when I tried generating textures. Oscape will make meshes, normals and diffuse/color, I would recommend using it, much faster than struggling with the CK. For me the CK worked, even with a 16x16 quad world (took several hours!).

You can find Oscape here. 

For working with Oscape I followed this easy to follow tutorial made by Maegfaer.

(Warning, Oscape will not work on Vista. If you are running on a Vista machine, try using the CK to make the LOD files, or contact someone that can make the LOD files for you, like me. I can't promise I will always have time to make them right away.)

For landscape textures to show in LODs they need to be put in the Source folder as tga files.
1. Nico cioN over at AFKmods has been very nice and made all the files you need for Skyrim vanilla files.
http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4079-skyrim-vanilla-lod-source-files/
2. Under Steam\steamapps\common\source\ make a new folder TGATextures. Copy the Landscape folder from the downloaded file.

If you are using custom landscape textures you will need to convert these to TGA files too.
a) Copy you dds texture files to the Source\TGATextures\Landscape folder
b) You can use a command line batch program called Nconvert to make the tga files. Download here http://www.xnview.com/en/nconvert/ (download section is at the end of the page). Put the Nconvert.exe in the folder containing the textures.
c) Make the batch file by create a txt document. Write exactly:
nconvert -out tga *.dds
Change the file extension to .bat (file should change icon to gears).

(you can also download the file here). Put the bat file among the textures to be converted together with the Nconvert.exe file. To run the bat file simply double click on it. Now you should have tga files of all your dds files and you can delete the dds files.

Continue to generate the landscape LODs with Oscape.

1. For Oscape to work, you need to convert your esp into an esm. 
You can use Oblivions Gecko to make an esm from an esp. (TES4Gecko can't do anything else that will work for Skyrim files.) Put the esm in the Data Folder.

2. Start Oscape, under Game, select Skyrim. This will give you a list of all the masters and plugins. Click in the box of your esm.

If you are using any texture apart from default texture, you need to have that TextureSet and TextureSet in your esm (see Duplicating textures in the CK) or select an esm with these resources in Oscape together with the esm you want to make LOD from. 

(Thanks to Hyperactivehild for figuring this out!)

3. Press the Fill button, and in the drop down list next to the button select your world space.

4. Check the feature-map and surface-map boxes.

5. Under Outputs, press Browse and select the output folder, can be any folder. You must rename the raw file to the same name as the worldspace. Press Extract and wait.

6. Oscape will now show you the Preview tab. The blue is the water level. No need to change anything if you can see your land (and sea) as you want, press Accept.
If you only see land or blue water you may need to change the sea level in the “Sealevel” field.

7. Oscape will now show you the Generator tab. The Target of Max resolution value is dependent on how detailed your world is, a completely flat world can have a very high number. Ethatron (the maker of Oscape) has recommended never to use a value over 1000 pts per cell in your worldspace. I have used 8 000 000 for my 16x16 quad world for test proposes, but when I want my finished world I will use more. There are of course limits to how high number you can use depending on amount of memory on your computer. You have to test what works for your world. If a value works, try something higher.

8. Check the Meshes box and then check (1/1), 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, optimize of overdraw, and NIF boxes.

9. Check the Normals box and then check 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and DirectX boxes. Choose low, standard or high resolution textures.

10. Check in the Colors box and then check 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and DirectX boxes. Choose low or standard resolution textures. (If the Color box is grey, you forgot to check the surface-map box in step 4. )

11.  Press Generate and wait for Oscape to generate the files.

12. Oscape will now show you the Installer tab. Make sure your Worldspace is selected. check the boxes of LOD Settings Generate, Level0, Level1, Level2 and Level3. This will transfer the right files to the right folders.

The Oscape settings

If you run into errors, transfer the textures and meshes manually.
The texture files (.dds) should be put in:
Skyrim/Data/Textures/Terrain/"worldspace"
and the mesh (.btr) in to
Skyrim/Data/Meshes/Terrain/"worldspace"

You might have to create the folders if you do not have them already.
Copy all the .btr and .dds files.
Meshes are made at different levels: 4, 8, 16 and 32. All are needed by the game. Level 32 makes up the map.

Alternatively: Meshes with the Creation Kit:

In the Creation kit go to World, World LOD. A new window will open where you can choose between different settings, then press Generate. One of the settings under meshes is Background or High Priority, this determines the speed of generation (use High Priority, it will save you a lot of time). My Creation kit crashed when I minimized it,  but restarting the generation picked up where it left off. There is a tool that will Clear Scratch Files, and I guess that it would clean out any unfinished LODs.The LODs are put under Skyrim/Data/Meshes/Terrain/"worldspace" as .BTR files.

Making the lod file (optional)

Without the .lod file none of the textures or meshes will show up in game. Oscape should make this file, but sometimes you might want to make a .lod file that covers larger areas that your actual worldspace. You can make the .lod file with a simple command line program that will write a lod file for you. Download it here: lodFileGenerator (download from nexus)

Well that's it, you should have LODs now :)

It's easy to see the potential beauty, even with default texture and no flora. I just love the sky :) 

Now the LODs mostly works in game, but I still have some problems with purple textures.

This is due to lacking textures. Some of the texture .dds files had black squares in them, resulting in missing textures purple.










As I said before, the world map is made from the level 32 mesh and textures. First image is with missing normal and color textures, the second with these textures.

A big thanks to all the nice modders figuring these things out at the Bethesda forums :)

Running into troubles?

I made a test on how different problems you can run into would look in the game. First off, if you see no LODs at all, you probably don't have a working YourWorldSpace.lod file in the lodsettings folder. 
1. This is how it looks when everything is working fine :)
2. Missing textures (.dds), you get a purple color over all the LODs.
3. Missing normals (_n.dds), the terrain looks diffuse with no details.
4. Missing meshes (.btr), the LODs that show are black (probably will not fit your terrain).

LODs for objects and trees
If you are making LODs with trees and objects, take a look at this video made by Alexander J. Velicky. It explains everything nicely :)

When it comes to LOD trees, beware that the CK can not do LOD trees for any trees that stand in cells beyond  -/+ 32. This will result in a wall of trees at the edge of that cells. Tes5Edit will solve this problem, have a look here.


/E