Why?

Generating/installing new LOD is not a requirement, but it will add detail in the distance by increasing the amount of objects that appear in the distance while also making all LOD match your modded textures. Naturally, this also means a minor performance hit.

You can also generate terrain LOD, which will allow mods that edit the game's landscape to have LOD that reflects their changes. Terrain LOD creates a much larger file size and will take longer to generate.

What is LOD?

LOD stands for Level Of Detail.
In the context of Bethesda games, LOD mainly refers to Cell LOD, not geometry LOD. It's used to represent whole cells (the game's "chunks" of land) in the distance.

Cell LOD is not based on distance - it's a binary state of whether cell is either loaded or not. The LOD Block distance settings control the max draw distance of LOD itself, not the point where it begins.
This means that you will see LOD pop-in at the same distance regardless of the settings.

Cell LOD is split into 2 categories (3 with Tree LOD in earlier titles):

1. Object LOD - All flagged objects in a group of cells are represented as one geometry block. This LOD has only one constant quality level. Fast generation time.
2. Terrain LOD - These blocks represent landscape of cell groups. This is the only LOD that has quality levels that change with the distance - higher levels cover more cells (LOD4 - 4x4, LOD8 - 8x8, etc.). Due to the sheer size and texture count, it takes the longest to generate.

Why generate LOD?

Bethesda's LOD relies on pregenerated meshes, and thus is inherently static. This decision is due to offering better performance, since game doesn't have to combine meshes and textures of individual objects on the fly. The drawback is obvious - the game can't reflect any changes made to the landscape or objects on its own. That's where LOD generation comes in.

Thanks to LODGen, you are able to generate LOD meshes that reflect your modded game, and thus have a much more consistent experience.

Another reason for generation is due to the fact that the original LOD is pretty low quality, and many objects lack LOD meshes entirely, which causes them to appear out of thin air on cell load. This is covered by individual LOD mods, which add LOD meshes to objects that lack it and/or improve the quality of existing ones.

Creating a Separator in MO2

1. Right-click the empty space in the left pane of MO2 and select Create separator.
2. Name the separator LOD.

Installing LOD Resources

Install in the following order:

1. FO4LODGen Resources
   • Main Files - FO4LODGen Resources
   • You will be prompted with a FOMOD installer:
     1. FO4LODGen.esp
     2. Install
2. HD LOD Textures
   • Main Files - HD LOD Textures
   • Optional Files - LOD Fixes and Additions
   • Optional Files - LOD Terrain Noise and Detail Normals - Variant 1
     (You can get a different version of the terrain noise based on preference)
   • After installing LOD Fixes and Additions, open the mod in Mod Organizer, and hide LOD Fixes and Additons.esp file.

   How to hide files and folders:

   1. Open the mod in Mod Organizer 2 by double-clicking it on the left pane.
   2. Go to the Filetree tab.
   3. Right-click the file or folder you want to hide and click Hide.

3. ModernHouseLOD
   • Main Files - ModernHouseLOD
4. Far Object LOD Improvement Project
   • Main Files - Far Object LOD Improvement Project
   • You will be prompted with a FOMOD installer:
     1. Next
     2. Install
5. Far Harbor 3D Tree LODs
   • Main Files - Far Harbor 3D Tree LODs
   • You will be prompted with a FOMOD installer:
     1. Next
     2. Install
6. Optimized Vanilla Tree LODs
   • Main Files - Optimized Vanilla Tree LODs
   • You will be prompted with a FOMOD installer:
     1. Next
     2. Enable all options with an asterisk appended, Next
     3. Enable all options with an asterisk appended, Next
     4. Enable all options with an asterisk appended, Install
7. Northern Foothills Rocks Fix
   • Main Files - NF_Rocks_Fix_Packed

Pre-Generated LOD

If you use a TMRE modlist with no changes to textures or the game world, you can skip manual LOD generation by using this file. It includes both Object and Terrain LOD and was generated with Force LOD8 enabled.

Simply install it as a normal mod in MO2 and put it under the resources listed in the previous section (which you still need), then move the following plugins to the bottom of your load order:

1. PRP.esp
2. No Puddle Cubemaps TMR.esp

FOLIP Before Generation

1. Setup xEdit according to the ModdingLinked Setup instructions here.
2. Launch xEdit with any plugin loaded, then go in the settings and disable Simple Records.
3. Download FOLIP xEdit Scripts and drag the archive's contents into xEdit's Edit Scripts folder.
4. Restart xEdit and load all of the plugins.
5. Once everything has loaded, right-click any of them and Apply Script..., then select the FOLIP - Before Generation.pas file and click OK.
6. Optionally, enable Force LOD8 for better visuals at a small performance cost.
7. Click Start.
8. Let the script finish then exit xEdit and save the plugin when prompted.
9. In MO2, right-click on the Overwrite folder at the bottom of the left pane and select All Mods -> Create empty mod above.
10. Title the mod FOLIP - Before Generation.
11. Double-click Overwrite and drag FOLIP - Before Generation.esp to the newly created mod, then enable it (both in the modlist and load order).

TexGen

1. Download the latest DynDOLOD 3 Alpha.
2. Once the download has finished, extract the contents of the archive to any location of your choice (do not use a UAC protected folder or the game folder).
3. In MO2, select the button at the top of MO2 to open the executables menu.
4. Click the + at the top of the window and the select Add from file...
5. From the pop-up, navigate to where TexGen is installed and select TexGenx64.exe.
6. In the Arguments box in the right pane, enter -FO4.
7. Select TexGen from the executables drop-down in the top right of MO2 and click Run.
8. Once the program has loaded, click Start.
9. When complete, you will see a message saying "TexGen completed successfully", click Zip and Exit.
10. Install the TexGen output by clicking the button at the top of MO2.
11. From the new window, navigate to the DynDOLOD folder you installed in step 2, then double-click TexGen_Output.zip and install it.

xLODGen

xLODGen is an xEdit-based tool that allows you to generate LOD meshes for your game. Similarly to xEdit, it has a single executable that can be be turned into a game specific version by adding arguments.

1. Download the latest xLODGen from here.
2. Once the download has finished, extract the contents of the archive anywhere outside of the default Windows folders.
3. In MO2, select the button at the top of MO2 to open the executables menu.
4. Click the + at the top of the window and the select Add from file...
5. From the pop-up, navigate to where xLODGen is installed and select xLODGenx64.exe.
6. In the Arguments box in the right pane, enter -FO4 -O:"C:\Output"

This argument will send the LOD output to a folder called Output on your C drive (the drive Windows is installed on).
You can change this path if you would prefer the files to be generated elsewhere (do not use a UAC protected folder or the game folder).

Make sure that the output folder is empty before generating LOD.

7. Select xLODGen from the executables drop-down in the top right of MO2 and click Run.
8. Copy all settings from the image below:


Generating LOD for the DLC03VRWorldspace is a waste of time and disk space as you won't be able to see any LOD in that location.

Terrain LOD Generation instructions (Optional but Recommended)



Generating Terrain LOD is very time consuming and CPU intensive.

It's needed only if you have mods that edit the landscape or landscape textures. But the visual improvement is big regardless.

1. In the right pane, check Terrain LOD.
2. Lansdcape LOD has 4 quality levels for different distances (with LOD4 being the closest to you, and LOD32 being the farthest).

   All LOD levels are generated at once! You don't have to do anything besides configuring every level!
   This is not something that you pick and choose - those are not quality "settings", just how the game works.

   Copy the settings for each LOD level from images below:
   • LOD 4:
   
   • LOD 8:
   
   • LOD 16:
   
   • LOD 32:
   

Settings Explanation



Objects:

• Atlas size: The atlas is what contains all textures for the Object LOD meshes, increasing its size means that you can have more textures on the atlas (from the new resources) and they could also be higher resolution.
  Keep in mind that the tool will create this atlas with just the resolution it ends up needing (e.g. if you only need 1024x512 for your atlas, that will be the final resolution of it, what we set is simply the max allowed).
• Max texture size: Object textures above this resolution will not be allowed on the atlas, we increase this to make sure everything makes it there.

Landscape

• Protect borders: Prevents ugly terrain drops at the cell borders.
• Size: As a result of using mipmaps, the benefit of high terrain LOD resolutions will be miniscule, 512 on LOD4 and 256 on the next levels will suffice.
• Bake normal-maps: Roughens the terrain LOD textures to match the actual terrain's normal map.
• Mipmap: Mipmapping textures prevents pixel crawling artifacts at a minor VRAM and storage utilization cost.
• Quality: This controls the amount of detail in the LOD's geometry. Lower values have more detail and have a minor performance cost because of the amount of triangles in the mesh.
9. Click Generate.
10. When complete, the log will stop and at the end you will see a message saying "LOD generation done", you can now close xLODGen.

Installing the LOD

1. In MO2, right-click on the Overwrite folder at the bottom of the left pane and select All Mods -> Create empty mod above.
2. Title the mod FO4LODGen Output.
3. Navigate to where the LOD files were generated and select both the textures and meshes folders.
4. Cut them to the FO4LODGen Output mod you just created (right-click on the mod and select Open in Explorer).

FOLIP After Generation

1. Just like before, open xEdit and load all of the plugins.
2. Once everything has loaded, right-click any of them and Apply Script..., then select the FOLIP - After Generation.pas file and click OK.
3. Let the script finish then exit xEdit and save the plugin when prompted.
4. In MO2, right-click on the Overwrite folder at the bottom of the left pane and select All Mods -> Create empty mod above.
5. Title the mod FOLIP - After Generation.
6. Double-click Overwrite and drag FOLIP - After Generation.esp to the newly created mod, then enable it (both in the modlist and load order).

LoadOrder

Move the following plugins to the bottom of your load order:

1. PRP.esp
2. No Puddle Cubemaps TMR.esp