LoD Research Thread

[berserker66666]

Ok... i know its not the best example but look at the upper building where camera starts...

In first Video the Building leaves the global max render distance and switches to the Proxymesh
The second Video this is not the case...whereelse every building around is popping, my Building stays high poly till high distance

Please ignore shadows and decorations on the building havent looked into that yet.

[video=youtube;puJ-FEh3SLw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJ-FEh3SLw&feature=youtu.be[/video]

WOW. Now that is some revolutionary stuff right there. Well done. I'm really hoping we won't have to suffer all those texture popping for much longer.

---------- Updated at 12:22 AM ----------

Thanks for this! as far as the file structure of the mod, do I just find the proxy mesh for that building and replace it with the high quality mesh? what do I do about textures?

have you tried making proxy meshes for those that don't have proxy meshes, and seeign if the game still utilizes them?

please PM me, I'm almost done exporting the entire game's worth of w2mesh files, and I'll be using a script to edit the LoD info in the xml files. This is the last part that I needed to solve. Once I can get this all set up the mod should be ready to cook relatively quickly. I just need to know my pipeline.

I'm really looking forward to this mod. After Essenthy's mod, your name and mod will go down in history as epic Witcher 3 mods if you get this right and I'm hoping you'll be able to pull through.

 

[CarolKarine]

WOW. Now that is some revolutionary stuff right there. Well done. I'm really hoping we won't have to suffer all those texture popping for much longer.

---------- Updated at 12:22 AM ----------




I'm really looking forward to this mod. After Essenthy's mod, your name and mod will go down in history as epic Witcher 3 mods if you get this right and I'm hoping you'll be able to pull through.

it's going to be a massive fucking thing. if I'm replacing every mesh, 20+ GB, if I'm not replacing actor (monsters, people, and animals) meshes, then 10+ GB. But I'm hoping that this will be the first mod that goes into a load order, just like SMIM is present in every skyrim load order.

 

[berserker66666]

it's going to be a massive fucking thing. if I'm replacing every mesh, 20+ GB, if I'm not replacing actor (monsters, people, and animals) meshes, then 10+ GB. But I'm hoping that this will be the first mod that goes into a load order, just like SMIM is present in every skyrim load order.

My thoughts exactly. It's like SMIM for Witcher 3. Also I don't even care how big the files are. I'll download them all if it means no more pop ins lol

 

[marvelmaster]

at the moment i write a small tutorial and try few easier steps

the filesize may increase by x2^^

 

[CarolKarine]

at the moment i write a small tutorial and try few easier steps

the filesize may increase by x2^^

awesome awesome. I'll incorporate this into the mod for sure. I just need to be sure I don't screw something up before I start the import and cook process, because that... might take a couple days. I've been exporting meshes for over 24 hours at this point.

 

[marvelmaster]

I dont want to fail you but this worked with a short edit of the mesh in blender...

I am trying right now if it would work without

 

[CarolKarine]

I dont want to fail you but this worked with a short edit of the mesh in blender...

I am trying right now if it would work without

so you edited the proxy mesh in blender? what kind of edit?

 

[erxv]

Spoiler

Ok... i know its not the best example but look at the upper building where camera starts...

In first Video the Building leaves the global max render distance and switches to the Proxymesh
The second Video this is not the case...whereelse every building around is popping, my Building stays high poly till high distance

Please ignore shadows and decorations on the building havent looked into that yet.

[video=youtube;puJ-FEh3SLw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJ-FEh3SLw&feature=youtu.be[/video]

im guessing if you do this to every building the game would be literally unplayable right?? as in crashes and fps not over 5 on ANY rig..... (in cities atleast)

 

[CarolKarine]

im guessing if you do this to every building the game would be literally unplayable right?? as in crashes and fps not over 5 on ANY rig..... (in cities atleast)

it would likely ruin every system, yes. That's why I'm planning on other, less drastic versions of the mod which reduce popin, as opposed to removing it from the game altogether.

 

[Vigilance.492]

Obviously there would be some level of performance hit to doing this, but I don't know if it would be quite as drastic as some might think.

Really it comes down to how the game is loading things, because I can only assume that even doing this, Umbra would still be in effect. Which would be effectively culling anything that isn't in the players view, therefore even if all the buildings being loaded are displaying as LOD0, you still are having a lot of stuff culled and only the meshes in sight are the ones being displayed.

As I said, it'd still end up resulting in a performance hit, especially somewhere like Novigrad where plenty of places you're loading in shittons of buildings and 70% of them would all be running at LOD0 compared to Vanilla where 30% are LOD0, 30% LOD1 & 40% LOD2 (Rough example). However I don't think you'd see completely insane FPS drops like 60 > 5. There's some pretty massive structures in Novigrad that pop from PS2 Texture > LOD0, and the FPS difference between the 2 is negligible (Which is what makes the pop so infuriating, because it's not really a worthy performance trade-off). Obviously you'd have to times that by many more buildings that would all be running at LOD0 (And the bigger your FOV and Draw Distance the more that calculation would compound on itself), but I don't think it would be quite the extreme many would think.

 

[erxv]

Obviously there would be some level of performance hit to doing this, but I don't know if it would be quite as drastic as some might think.

Really it comes down to how the game is loading things, because I can only assume that even doing this, Umbra would still be in effect. Which would be effectively culling anything that isn't in the players view, therefore even if all the buildings being loaded are displaying as LOD0, you still are having a lot of stuff culled and only the meshes in sight are the ones being displayed.

As I said, it'd still end up resulting in a performance hit, especially somewhere like Novigrad where plenty of places you're loading in shittons of buildings and 70% of them would all be running at LOD0 compared to Vanilla where 30% are LOD0, 30% LOD1 & 40% LOD2 (Rough example). However I don't think you'd see completely insane FPS drops like 60 > 5. There's some pretty massive structures in Novigrad that pop from PS2 Texture > LOD0, and the FPS difference between the 2 is negligible (Which is what makes the pop so infuriating, because it's not really a worthy performance trade-off). Obviously you'd have to times that by many more buildings that would all be running at LOD0 (And the bigger your FOV and Draw Distance the more that calculation would compound on itself), but I don't think it would be quite the extreme many would think.

wouldnt there be a massive difference in video memory used though? which would make you stutter like crazy

 

[CarolKarine]

Obviously there would be some level of performance hit to doing this, but I don't know if it would be quite as drastic as some might think.

Really it comes down to how the game is loading things, because I can only assume that even doing this, Umbra would still be in effect. Which would be effectively culling anything that isn't in the players view, therefore even if all the buildings being loaded are displaying as LOD0, you still are having a lot of stuff culled and only the meshes in sight are the ones being displayed.

As I said, it'd still end up resulting in a performance hit, especially somewhere like Novigrad where plenty of places you're loading in shittons of buildings and 70% of them would all be running at LOD0 compared to Vanilla where 30% are LOD0, 30% LOD1 & 40% LOD2 (Rough example). However I don't think you'd see completely insane FPS drops like 60 > 5. There's some pretty massive structures in Novigrad that pop from PS2 Texture > LOD0, and the FPS difference between the 2 is negligible (Which is what makes the pop so infuriating, because it's not really a worthy performance trade-off). Obviously you'd have to times that by many more buildings that would all be running at LOD0 (And the bigger your FOV and Draw Distance the more that calculation would compound on itself), but I don't think it would be quite the extreme many would think.

the issue is going from a couple of primitives for most buildings (LOD2/proxy mesh) to a couple hundred/couple thousand polys (LOD0) - I'm willing to bet that it'll hit performance hard. Maybe "5 fps slideshow" is an overstatement, but if you have the entirety of novigrad in view it's entirely possible that this mod will increase the poly count by an order of magnitude.

regardless, we'll see how it goes.

 

[marvelmaster]

I guess fps impact would be massive^^

At the moment i am experimenting to mod it without blender editing

 

[CarolKarine]

I guess fps impact would be massive^^

At the moment i am experimenting to mod it without blender editing

could you quickly explain what you did in blender? did you replace meshes?

 

[Roccogrb]

So now the only method of removing low LOD meshes are editing via mesh which sadly consumes a lot of hard drive space?

As marvelmaster hinted, the files might be 2x bigger and that might be a big problem if we want people to download this mod. Not to mention it would be the game's default models (huge files already) and 20-30gb from the LOD mod on top of it.

 

[marvelmaster]

It worked^^

So it isnt that difficult but firstly I have to say i have not tested yet if we can create proxyfiles for meshes that have non yet...
so at this point this will only work for meshes with a proxymesh file...

!!AFTER UNCOOKING!!

EXAMPLE VERSION TUTORIAL V.V

Spoiler

1. FIND find main_square_corner_building_f3.w2mesh
2. FIND main_square_corner_building_proxy.w2mesh
3. EXTRACT them and get v.v...
4. main_square_corner_building_f3.fbx and find main_square_corner_building_f3.xml
5. main_square_corner_building_proxy.fbx main_square_corner_building_proxy.xml
6. REPLACE main_square_corner_building_proxy.fbx with main_square_corner_building_f3.fbx but keep the name!! "main_square_corner_building_proxy.fbx"
7 REPLACE main_square_corner_building_proxy.xml with main_square_corner_building_f3.xml but keep the name!! "main_square_corner_building_proxy.xml"
8. open the "new" main_square_corner_building_proxy.xml
9. edit values in first lines e.g. like this

Spoiler

<mesh_data autohideDistance="800.00" isTwoSided="false" useExtraStreams="true" mergeInGlobalShadowMesh="true" entityProxy="true">
<LODs>
<LOD_info distance="0.00" />
<LOD_info distance="10.00" />
</LODs>

---the 10 makes shure that the high poly model is loaded very early and so overlays the other lods
---you also can hide lod0 and lod1 of the main model so only the new high Poly Proxy is displayed(ask here for that)
10.cook and reimport the new main_square_corner_building_proxy.fbx and main_square_corner_building_proxy.xml with e.g. Modkitchen
11. put the modxxx folder in you "gamedirectory\mods" folder

SHORT VERSION TUTORIAL V.V

Spoiler

1. FIND find xxx.w2mesh
2. FIND xxx_proxy.w2mesh
3. EXTRACT them and get v.v...
4. xxx.fbx and find xxx.xml
5. main_square_corner_building_proxy.fbx main_square_corner_building_proxy.xml
6. REPLACE xxx_proxy.fbx with xxx.fbx but keep the name!! "xxx_proxy.fbx"
7 REPLACE xxx_proxy.xml with xxx.xml but keep the name!! "x_proxy.xml"
8. open the "new" xxx_proxy.xml
9. edit values in first lines e.g. like this

Spoiler

<mesh_data autohideDistance="800.00" isTwoSided="false" useExtraStreams="true" mergeInGlobalShadowMesh="true" entityProxy="true">
<LODs>
<LOD_info distance="0.00" />
<LOD_info distance="10.00" />
</LODs>

---the 10 makes shure that the high poly model is loaded very early and so overlays the other lods
---you also can hide lod0 and lod1 of the main model so only the new high Poly Proxy is displayed(ask here for that)
10.cook and reimport the new xxx_proxy.fbx and xxx_proxy.xml with e.g. Modkitchen
11. put the modxxx folder in you "gamedirectory\mods" folder

But 3 problems i need help resolving...

1. what we can do for meshes without proxymeshes?
2. finding out the name of a certain Mesh i want is easy beacause i am script noob
3. Proxymeshes are a whole model! but the main meshes itself often consist of multiple parts! Thats why in the video only the upper part of the Building is displayed .
Solution fpr this would be putting all 3 parts of a main mesh together in blender

this Building Part is 300kb...imagine for the whole building 1MB...so consider for 100 Buldings 100MB?

Unbelievable that i got this idea on my own^^

 

[berserker66666]

Obviously there would be some level of performance hit to doing this, but I don't know if it would be quite as drastic as some might think.

Really it comes down to how the game is loading things, because I can only assume that even doing this, Umbra would still be in effect. Which would be effectively culling anything that isn't in the players view, therefore even if all the buildings being loaded are displaying as LOD0, you still are having a lot of stuff culled and only the meshes in sight are the ones being displayed.

As I said, it'd still end up resulting in a performance hit, especially somewhere like Novigrad where plenty of places you're loading in shittons of buildings and 70% of them would all be running at LOD0 compared to Vanilla where 30% are LOD0, 30% LOD1 & 40% LOD2 (Rough example). However I don't think you'd see completely insane FPS drops like 60 > 5. There's some pretty massive structures in Novigrad that pop from PS2 Texture > LOD0, and the FPS difference between the 2 is negligible (Which is what makes the pop so infuriating, because it's not really a worthy performance trade-off). Obviously you'd have to times that by many more buildings that would all be running at LOD0 (And the bigger your FOV and Draw Distance the more that calculation would compound on itself), but I don't think it would be quite the extreme many would think.

THIS

 

[CarolKarine]

It worked^^

But 3 problems i need help resolving...

1. what we can do for meshes without proxymeshes?
2. finding out the name of a certain Mesh i want is easy beacause i am script noob
3. Proxymeshes are a whole model! but the main meshes itself often consist of multiple parts! Thats why in the video only the upper part of the Building is displayed .
Solution fpr this would be putting all 3 parts of a main mesh together in blender

this Building Part is 300kb...imagine for the whole building 1MB...so consider for 100 Buldings 100MB?

for the first one, we may be able to create proxy meshes. I doubt it, but they might be referenced in engine in a way that means we can add them.

for the second, The names line up, right? they only differ in suffix, so finding corresponding models shouldn't be too hard.

for the third, stitching together models in blender or maya might work.... but it would involve re-texturing the entire model, and saving extra textures TOO. And with all the trouble @Dragonbird has had with textures, I don't know if we want to bother with that.

IF we can add proxy meshes, we could add proxy meshes for all of them. I doubt that's the case, but if we can it would solve all our problems.

 

[Vigilance.492]

wouldnt there be a massive difference in video memory used though? which would make you stutter like crazy

Yes, you'd be loading in far more textures/meshes, which is why this would be the kind of thing you wouldn't go near unless you had like 4-6GB+ VRAM (Even at lower resolutions). Much like you wouldn't go using any Skyrim 4K Texture Overhauls unless you've got a reasonable amount of VRAM. TBH I tend to forget about the "VRAM Issue" since I'm running 12GB :S but TW3's vanilla setup is pretty poor, even at its highest only utilizing ~3.5GB of VRAM at 4K (Compared to other games with better texture streaming/quality like GTAV which uses like 6-8GB at 4K), which makes sense considering the extremely harsh LOD restrictions it has.

but if you have the entirety of novigrad in view it's entirely possible that this mod will increase the poly count by an order of magnitude.

Indeed, and that's what I meant by the the "Compounding Effect", but Novigrad is really the only area in the game I see having this as a possible big issue.

At the end of the day you're correct, just have to wait and see exactly what effect it will have after more is done and solid tests can be run. I'm hopeful however that it won't be crazy, but really the method is just pure brute force, so it does have the possibility of being very brutal.

 

[marvelmaster]

@CarolKarine...

The Proble with the Textures are only 2...
1. you put all XML Files of the Meshparty togheter in one file
2. you need to change the Material0-20 numbers and i dont know how^^

---------- Updated at 03:32 AM ----------

Obviously there would be some level of performance hit to doing this, but I don't know if it would be quite as drastic as some might think.

Really it comes down to how the game is loading things, because I can only assume that even doing this, Umbra would still be in effect. Which would be effectively culling anything that isn't in the players view, therefore even if all the buildings being loaded are displaying as LOD0, you still are having a lot of stuff culled and only the meshes in sight are the ones being displayed.

As I said, it'd still end up resulting in a performance hit, especially somewhere like Novigrad where plenty of places you're loading in shittons of buildings and 70% of them would all be running at LOD0 compared to Vanilla where 30% are LOD0, 30% LOD1 & 40% LOD2 (Rough example). However I don't think you'd see completely insane FPS drops like 60 > 5. There's some pretty massive structures in Novigrad that pop from PS2 Texture > LOD0, and the FPS difference between the 2 is negligible (Which is what makes the pop so infuriating, because it's not really a worthy performance trade-off). Obviously you'd have to times that by many more buildings that would all be running at LOD0 (And the bigger your FOV and Draw Distance the more that calculation would compound on itself), but I don't think it would be quite the extreme many would think.

I can Hide the new High Polymesh at the distance i want... i already tested^^
SO MAYBE...we can add lod2 to the new ProxyMesh but i realy dont know if this would work ^^

SO in the END all this would be a workaround to expand the Mesh hide distance that is set globaly somewhere we dont know^^