LOD stands for Level Of Detail and refers to the distant scenery – land, trees and objects. There are different kinds of LOD files needed to get it all displayed correctly, and they are generated by different programs and scripts.
Many mods come with their own LOD data, so that you would not have to generate your own. However, it is not always possible to isolate the LOD that only affects the modified areas, so LOD for other areas is also included, and normally it corresponds to the basic Oblivion. But what if you have other mods that put structures in those areas? Well, that LOD gets lost. Therefore, if you have several mods that require LOD, it is best to generate your own to get everything included correcty.
LOD is generated separately for each worldspace. The main worldspace in Oblivion is Tamriel, but there are many others, independent of it. The Shivering Isles is one such example. Mods that create their own worldspaces can safely provide their LOD because it does not interfere with Tamriel. If you are only using such mods, there is no need to regenerate anything.
LOD files
Standard Oblivion LOD files are stored in the BSA archives that come with the game: “Oblivion – Meshes.bsa” and “Oblivion – Textures – Compressed.bsa”. This does not include the Shivering Isles data – that comes in its own corresponding archives. Every mod can add its own data too, but the directory paths must match those of the standard Oblivion. When you generate your own LOD, new files are created in Oblivion\Data folder following the same pattern. They take precedence over those found in the standard archives.
The following folders in Oblivion\Data contain LOD files:
- DistantLOD
- Meshes\Landscape\LOD
- Textures\LandscapeLOD\generated
Tools
You need several tools to generate your own LOD data. They are available on Nexus.
- TES4Edit – install in Oblivion
- TES4LL – install in Oblivion\Data
- TES4LL Missing Textures Patch – install in Oblivion\Data
Note that TES4Edit can be (should be?) installed in folder Oblivion – that’s the same folder that contains Oblivion.exe, while TES4LL must be installed in folder Oblivion\Data to work correctly. The patch adds missing textures that TES4LL complains about.
Using a graphical GUI
Download a graphical front-end: Multi Purpose GUI. Install it in Oblivion folder. Start it and open batch file Oblivion\Data\Ini\tes4ll\tes4ll_all.mpb. Wait for it to load your mods, then you should be able to select a worldspace for which to generate LOD. Go through the tabs to check the settings and start the process.
Generating LOD manually
Now for the actual generation!
Open your favourite mod manager and enable all the mods that you want to have in your game. Make sure their load order is correct too – it makes a difference for LOD. If you make significant changes there later, you will need to regenerate LOD. But now that you know how to do it, it’s no longer such a big deal!
TES4LL installs a number of batch files in your Oblivion\Data filder, as well as a new folder tes4qlod_tex. The latter contains land textures in BMP format necessary for generation. If you have mods that change or add land textures, you need to update that folder first – run this (double-click it):
- tes4ll_tes4qlod_cache.bat
The next step is to generate LOD meshes – the landscape structures. TES4LL comes with three batch files for different resolutions. Choose one of these:
- tes4ll_midres.bat
- tes4ll_highres.bat
- tes4ll_ultimate.bat
I have a rather low end computer, so I use “midres”, it is still better than vanilla default. If you change your mind, you won’t need to rerun any other elements of the LOD generation as they appear to be quite independent.
Next, generate textures. This step won’t work correctly if you haven’t updated your tes4qlod_tex folder on the first step. So go back and do it. If unsure, do it. Then run this:
- tes4ll_tes4qlod.bat
If you start getting errors like “Unable to find BMP texture…” – that means that you need to update the cache. Go back and run the first step.
Next, generate normal maps. Run this:
- tes4ll_normalmaps.bat
The above steps should have generated your land structures and textures – they generate files in folders Meshes\Landscape\LOD and Textures\LandscapeLOD. Finally, you need to populate folder DistantLOD. This is done using TES4Edit.
- Start TES4Edit and load all the mods in your load order. They should all be already selected as you start the program.
- Wait for the background loader to finish loading everything – watch the messages.
- You should now have all your mods in the left pane. Right-click any of them to bring up the context menu. Select Other -> Generate LOD.
This should do it!