Understanding LOD

LOD stands for Level Of Detail - a system used to represent distant objects with simplified meshes and textures to improve performance. In Bethesda games, LOD primarily refers to Cell LOD, which represents whole "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 divided into three main categories:

1. Object LOD - Simplified versions of buildings, rocks, and other static objects. Has only one quality level and generates relatively quickly.
2. Terrain LOD - Represents the terrain of cell groups, with multiple quality levels that change based on distance (LOD4 4x4, LOD8 8x8, etc.). Takes the longest to generate due to its complexity.

Tree LOD is unused in Fallout 4, all trees are included in the Object LOD.

Why Generate Custom LOD?

The vanilla game's LOD is pre-generated and static, which means it can't reflect changes made by mods to terrain or objects. Custom LOD generation creates meshes that match your modded game, providing:

• Increased visual consistency between nearby and distant objects.
• More objects visible in the distance.
• LOD textures that match your installed texture mods.
• Improved quality over the low-detail vanilla LOD.
• Filled gaps where objects previously appeared out of nowhere during cell transitions.

LOD Comparison

Drag the slider handle to compare how the game looks with generated LOD. Use the dropdown to select different comparison sets.

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. Far Object LOD Improvement Project
   • Main Files - Far Object LOD Improvement Project
   • You will be prompted with a FOMOD installer:
     1. Next
     2. Next
     3. Install
3. Far Harbor 3D Tree LODs
   • Main Files - Far Harbor 3D Tree LODs
   • You will be prompted with a FOMOD installer:
     1. Next
     2. Install
4. 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
5. 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 these files. Note that the Object LOD file was generated with FOLIP's Force LOD8 enabled.

Simply install both the Object and Terrain Pre-Generated LOD as normal mods in MO2 and put them under the resources listed in the previous section (which you still need), then set up the load order as follows:

• FOLIP - Master.esm (as last ESM) should be the last ESM plugin (written in bold).
• FOLIP - Patch.esp at the bottom.

FOLIP Patch

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 FOLIP and click OK.
6. Optionally, enable Force LOD8 for better visuals at a small performance cost.
7. Click Start.
8. When complete, you will see a message saying "Patch generated successfully!", click OK.
9. Exit xEdit and save the plugin when prompted.
10. An Explorer window should have opened showing the .zip output file. Take it and drag it to the bottom of your LOD separator in your modlist to install it.
11. Once the output is installed, make sure the following plugins are enabled in your load order:
    • FOLIP - Master.esm (as last ESM)
    • FOLIP - Patch.esp (at the very bottom)

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 the tool is 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, make sure that Base Size is set to 256 (1440p). Higher resolutions are unsupported due to game engine mipmap bugs associated with exceeding the Object LOD atlas.
9. Click Start.
10. When complete, you will see a message saying "TexGen completed successfully", click Zip and Exit.
11. Install the TexGen output by clicking the button at the top of MO2.
12. 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 the tool is 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 CPU intensive and can take a long time depending on the settings and your CPU's multithreaded performance.

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. Landscape 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, 1024 suffices.

Landscape

• Protect borders: Prevents ugly terrain drops at the cell borders.
• Size: 512 on LOD4 and 256 on the next levels will suffice for most cases (especially in a list such as TMR), but high resolutions and retextured terrain may benefit from higher settings. Note that this setting can increase the generation time and file size of the output considerably.
• 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.
• Optimize Unseen: Reduces the amount of triangles of geometry below a configurable height, this is meant to optimize unseen areas underwater.
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, click the tiny wrench icon at the top, next to the mod counter, then click Create empty mod.
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).
5. Press F5 while you are on MO2 without any menu open, then make sure the new mod is enabled by ticking its checkbox.

Packing LOD

This step is not necessary, but will reduce loading time of LOD assets by the game by packing them into optimized archive files (BA2s). This translates to less stuttering when entering new areas.

1. Download Cathedral Assets Optimizer.
2. Once the download has finished, extract the contents of the archive.
3. Run Cathedral_Assets_Optimizer.exe.
4. Switch to the FO4 profile
5. Tick the Create BSA box.
6. In Mod Organizer 2, right-click on your FO4LODGen Output mod and select Open in Explorer.
7. From from newly opened window, copy the file path, then paste it into CAO (right below the profile drop-down).
8. Click the Run button.
9. Once the process is complete, you will see a message saying "Done" at the bottom.
10. Click F5 while you are on MO2 without any menu open, and make sure the new plugin (it loads the archives) is enabled in your load order.