Caution: This here guide has been made outdated by recent developments in the xLODGen project and the Fallout 4 modding community producing more LOD-enhancing mods. It is still correct and will have you generate working LOD but there is a new guide by luxor8071 that covers more ground (pun intended) and produces better looking results.
Why regenerate object LOD?
LOD follows the rule of one: The last overriding file wins a conflict. In case you have two mods that both deliver LOD, they will conflict and you will either only see the LOD of mod A or of mod B, depending on their load order. In some cases you will see really weird artifacts (you might have come to this article because of that). You likely know this behavior from ESP plugins. Regenerating LOD for your mod setup is akin to creating a compatibility patch - some may also call this merged or bashed patch - for your load order. It is good practice if your load order is longer and contains more than just one or two mods that deliver LOD.
Now, "object LOD" is to be seen separately from "terrain LOD" ("terrain" is how landscape, the very shape of the ground, is internally called) - FO4LODGen currently only has experimental support for terrain LOD and I'm going to write this guide for a stable version. Generating object LOD works very fine so we're good. Object LOD is the LOD for architecture, flora and other static objects. Side note: Before Fallout 4, Creation Engine also had Tree LOD but in Fallout 4 trees are treated as static objects. Their animations are baked into their meshes as vertex weights.
If you are not certain if you actually want to regenerate - but you want to be certain, because this isn't voodoo or black magic - check your Data folder and all "ModName - Main.ba2" archives for this path (I suggest using B.A.E. to search inside the BA2 archive):
- \Meshes\terrain\Commonwealth\Objects
OR, obviously, if you have funky LOD in Far Harbor or Nuka World (or a custom worldspace), you want to search for their respective names, which would be:
- \Meshes\terrain\NukaWorld\Objects
- \Meshes\terrain\DLC03FarHarbor\Objects
... you get the picture.
A lot of environmental mods are suspect of this but also consider that any mod that places larger objects (which often have proper LOD assigned to them) in a worldspace and does not deliver updated object LOD will cause ugly object pop-in for the objects it places. That is, unless you generate object LOD for it on your end.
Alright, how do I do this?
First of all, I am assuming you have the Creation Kit for Fallout 4 installed, which we're going to need for the archive creation tool. It is not necessary to start CreationKit.exe for this guide. We just need one part of it that sits in a separate tool. There are plenty of great tutorials out there on how to set up the Creation Kit, I suggest asking your favorite search engine for "fallout 4 creation kit installation".
Second, download the latest stable version of xLODGen (FO4LODGen is a "operation mode" of xLODGen) from here. Follow the instructions in the forum to make it start in Fallout4 mode. Start it, to check out if it actually starts and can "see" your load order - if it does, do not push any buttons and simply hit the "X" in the startup dialog. Otherwise, troubleshoot accordingly.
Also download the LODGen Resources from the same forum thread and install them. Use whichever plugins suit your setup, read the ReadMe file contained to find out what each plugin does. It has nice preview screenshots too.
Third, and this is important, I am assuming you have a workable, ready-to-play setup with a sane load order that is conflict-free or mostly conflict-free. If you do not know where your conflicts are, you should check this out before continuing as results may vary wildly on broken setups. Fix your stuff. Seriously. Get a copy of xEdit and check it out - teaching how to build a load order is outside of the scope of this guide.
Fourth, for NeuraLOD users, Better LOD users or LuxorLOD users, now is the time to install your custom LOD resources. NeuraLOD users can use BAE to peek into the Resource - you can see it contains no "terrain" folder because it holds the "source" textures that FO4LODGen compiles a large "atlas" texture from. Make sure the plugin(s) is/are active or FO4LODGen will not read the textures it replaces in the vanilla game. Its load order does not really matter as it will never be active in a gameplay scenario and it does not contain any records. Also, no other mod touches these textures, at least not that I'm currently aware of.
Let's get started, shall we?
Start FO4LODGen again. You will see a dialog box:
The settings you see are what I used to generate LOD for the 1.0 release version of NeuraLOD (using xLODGen 4.0.2 64bit). Mods that add static objects from DLCs to the Commonwealth might require setting the atlas size to 8192x8192 as the atlas for the worldspace will have to hold more textures. This includes Boston Natural Surroundings, for example. Friendly warning because the 8192x4096 atlas NeuraLOD ships for the Main file is almost completely filled. Some objects LOD textures will end up missing if you have more LOD source material than you can fit on 8192x4096 (or even smaller atlas sizes). You might want to experiment with different texture compression settings and Alpha Thresholds.
Select any worldspace that you want updated LOD for, usually that is the Commonwealth and if you have the DLCs, Far Harbor and Nuka World. Hit "Generate" - and wait for it to finish. It will take some time, lots of data to process. Grab a coffee or something.
After FO4LODGen has finished its thing (it will tell you so) you will find the output at
- Fallout4\Data\Meshes\terrain\WorldspaceName\Objects
- Fallout4\Data\Textures\terrain\WorldspaceName\Objects
(You can go for a quick test at this point and see if the output is valid and if not, troubleshoot accordingly. We are not done yet though.)
Now go and create a scratch folder somewhere else. I use my Desktop for that but literally any place will do, you just do not want it to clutter up your data folder later.
Move (yes, do not copy, move it) the FO4LODGen output into that scratch folder. You want to recreate the entire folder structure of the output here, so you have
- yourScratchFolder\Meshes\terrain\WorldspaceName
- yourScratchFolder\Textures\terrain\WorldspaceName
again. You move it so the game will load the LOD output from a BA2 archive (which you are going to create now) to conserve performance. Loose files always take priority, remember?
Start Archive2.exe located in Fallout4\Tools (if the folder is missing, you have no Creation Kit installation). Click File > New. Select General Format with Default Compression, hit OK. Then, drag the "Meshes" folder from your scratch folder into Archive2 (or add the folder through the menu) and select File > Save As. Save the file as "myLOD - Main.ba2". Click File > New again, select DDS Format with Default Compression, hit OK. Drag or otherwise add the Textures folder from your scratch folder, save as "myLOD - Textures.ba2".
You now need an empty dummy plugin to make the game load your Archive files and the file overrides they contain. NeuraLOD users can create a copy of NeuraLOD_Resources.esp (it's an empty dummy ESP and perfect to just load some BA2 files containing overrides) and rename the copy to "myLOD.esp". Alternatively, this mod has you covered.
Put all 3 files (myLOD.esp plus its "Main" and "Textures" archive BA2s) into your Data folder and use your mod manager to sort the ESP plugin near the end of your load order overriding other mods that include object LOD.
Remove NeuraLOD_Resources.esp and NeuraLOD_Resources - Textures.ba2 (and/or whatever other LOD resources you have been using) after having verified everything is in working order. They should not be present for gameplay usage simply because they take up an ESP slot and do not have any gameplay function.
61 comments
Data\LODSettings\<WorldspaceEditorID>.LOD
file present. You can copy such a file from the base game and rename it.
EDIT: To be clear though you should still pack that output into BA2s as described in the guide.
It's very unlikely to be a problem of too little VRAM. That would cause stutter and not objects not getting drawn.
1. I'm using Barren Wasteland mod, but I still see trees in the distance (before building my own LOD this problem was not present).
2. Grass isn't visible in the distance at all (I'm using several grass mods).
I tried loading Barren Wasteland's esp after the myLOD esp but then LOD stopped working at all (everything in the distance was vanilla).
Any ideas what I'm missing?
Immersive Windows at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community
You'd need to hack the source mesh of those windows and force the material change to carry forward into LOD, i.e. you'd need to replace the material on the LOD mesh that xLODGen uses for LOD generation (which is probably some kit piece in Meshes\Architecture\) so it glows.
This is assuming Creation Engine will actually render a glow shader on LOD Objects, which it might simply not. Glow shaders in Creation Engine are somewhat of an edge case.