glarthirs_body

Thanks Sheson, this solves my issue. I did not know that the BTO files have their own format for VR, but it is definitely the case as I can see several things are different in the oldrim BTO files and the SkyrimVR BTO files. Anyways this is just as efficient of a way of generating LOD for VR so I can't complain. Cheers!

Hello, I have a very specific / unique issue that may not find an answer on these forums, so don’t waste too much energy if this problem looks too foreign to you and / or outside of the scope of dyndolod. I am having an issue with custom LOD billboards not working at all in skyrimvr (SSE), in other words they are missing entirely when you load up the game. However, these same billboards work in oldrim, so I believe the problem is related to custom billboards and SSE. To preface this, I am a mod author currently in work on a new lands mod with custom trees. These trees have 3D LOD for near LOD, and billboards for far LOD. With me having followed various guides, I was able to successfully install the near (3D) and far (billboard) LOD into oldrim. Ingame for oldrim, everything looks great and works as intended. I have a VR headset, and I periodically convert my oldrim mod to skyrim special edition to use in skyrimvr. To try to make the conversion process efficient for mod testing purposes, I do not run DYNDOLOD again specifically for SSE, instead I copy the oldrim DYNDOLOD output files and manually install them in my skyrimvr data directory (I assume this would be much more efficient than installing DYNDOLOD once for oldrim, and then again for skyrimvr). This method of installation is convenient and works great, EXCEPT that in VR, my custom trees billboards do not load at all. The custom 3D LOD near models load finein VR, and the original billboards for vanilla skyrim trees work fine in VR in this worldspace as well… so the problem may just be specifically regarding billboards and custom trees. If one goes into the DYNDOLOD created BTR files for far LOD (e.g. level 8), and plops one of these into nifskope, you would see that the custom tree billboards are right there in the file, so for some reason, they are just not loaded in the vr version of the game. I wonder if there may be some “flag†not enabling them, which I am missing by bypassing installing DYNDOLOD conventionally for skyrimvr.

It worked! Thank you Shenson and I apologize for missing that detail. Cheers!

I am a mod author that has made custom trees for my custom worldspace. With my trees, I have also made 3D LOD versions of these trees, and I was originally successful in using DYNDOLOD to generate tree LOD using these 3D LOD models. Because the 3D LOD models are relatively expensive, I still want to use billboards for the farther distance LOD. For all of my trees I have made billboards, and placed the billboards and respective txt. documents in the correct folder "Skyrim\Data\Textures\Terrain\LODGen\MYMOD.esp". For each of my trees, I set the LOD rules in DYNDOLOD to "static lod 4" for LOD level 1, billboards for LOD level 2, and blank for LOD level 3. I ran DYNDOLOD, and was able to generate working LOD using these billboards. HOWEVER, there is now a problem where DYNDOLOD says that it could not locate the 3D LOD trees. I checked the log, and this is an example of the message generated for a single tree: exampletree "exampletree" [TREE:021A61B8] meshes\mymod\my mod trees\exampletreefolder\exampletree.nif Billboard found, new tree, 3D LOD not found <exampletree_46832375> fallback Billboard LOD4: textures\terrain\lodgen\mymod.esp\exampletree_001a61b8.dds using internal LOD8: textures\terrain\lodgen\mymod.esp\exampletree_001a61b8.dds using internal So DYNDOLOD is saying that it is not finding my 3D LOD trees. Again, previously when I had these 3D LOD meshes named for instance "exampletreepassthru_lod" for the highpoly model "exampletree", and when I was not using billboards, DYNDOLOD was able to find the 3D LOD trees and use them. But now once trying to use 3D LOD and billboards together, DYNDOLOD does not find the 3D LOD trees. I noticed that the log output mentioned a label "exampletree_46832375", so I tried renaming the 3D LOD tree this name, and tried running DYNDOLOD again, but however the same log messages showed up and the problem remains.

Good to know these things, I'll try another mipmap gen tool at some point once I figure out what a mipmap is. I used blender to bake my LOD glow windows from the original highpoly windows, and I note that if you do this, you will need to play with the emissive multiple, like you are saying. Where the original windows had an emissive multiple around 1-2, I am needing to bump up to between 9 and 12, otherwise they always start out too dim (blender doesn't bake the correct brightness). But this otherwise helps to ameliorate my previous problem of the dimness of the windows at a distance. Fixing the emissive multiple in combination with setting it to a neverfade is a good solution.

After following these directions, everything works beautifully! I have only tried this for a single house, using the NIF naming conventions: house01 (for the base highpoly model) house01_lod (for the LOD model) house01glow_lod_1 (for the LOD glow windows), with 1 meaning assigned to FarGrid. I am not using external emittance and am deciding on just using the glow windows as static LOD for now. Once I am more confident in how I can liberally use the various features within dyndolod, I will experiment. However, with static LOD only (only checking [x] Windows and leaving the rest of the stuff to the right of that unchecked), I can confirm that everything works beautifully, and now my building's LOD model has working LOD windows. I should note that for the LOD window mesh, I also as you recommended for improved visibility at far distances, "also setting Decal, Dynamic_Decal on Shader Flag 1 and No_Fade on Shader Flag 2 as that will be help with the long distance visibility and z-fighting." I first did it without this, and decided I couldn't see the glow at all from a very far distance, so then I added these flags. Regardless if these flags are checked or not, for many weathers where there is even a very slight mist / fade at a distance, I am getting the window glow to not be visible, where the silohuette of the rest of the building is still visible. I'll play around with this more to see differences in visibility performance, but as things stand now I am very happy and content with the results. You sir are a pillar to this community. The credit will be yours when someday my mod finally gets out there.

I have designed a custom building model, and with it, I have a custom LOD model for my building. As my building has exterior windows with glow, I have additionally made LOD models for the windows. I want to use DYNDOLOD to thus enable my LOD building model to also use the LOD window model. There are no guides for this in the manual, as the section dedicated to describing LOD glow is only written for skyrim models (e.g. enabling LOD glow for High Hrothgar), but there is nothing there for modmakers who want their custom buildings to have LOD glow. So as I spend some time trying to figure out how for instance the High Hrothgar LOD glow windows work, I am assuming that there may be many hidden variables that I am completely missing that I would never be able to figure out myself. So for Shenson or anyone out there who have themselves successfully gotten LOD glow to work on models that previously have not had LOD glow, I would appreciate any guidance I can get.