heheloveer

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25577 Stumbled upon this mod while trying to write a new LOD generation guide for Chinese players. There's no need to use this mod if Large Reference Bugs Workarounds are applied, right?

Thanks for the tip. I thought of editing the patch file but for some reason I decided against it. Maybe I was just weirdly more comfortable editing plugins in xEdit. Tested with version 126 and with the Exterior Patch on. Misplaced duplicate waterfalls are gone and the vanilla waterfalls added by the exterior patch are covering up Natural Waterfalls waterfalls, which is pretty much expected. I also looked around to see if the exterior patch was still useful. For now the answer seems largely negative. Most buildings outside the city, like the windmills, have two exact copies in the same place, added by Large Reference Bugs Workarounds and the exterior patch respectively. They don't result in visual glitches since they're exactly the same, but this does make the exterior patch rather meaningless. I did find two buildings and one or two smaller objects only added by the exterior patch, but they are all in places where I don't think you could really see them without tfc or tcl. With me using mods that replaces the vanilla bridges and waterfalls, the Whiterun Exterior Patch seems too much trouble for it's worth at this point. I'll look around solitude next. The Solitude Exterior Patch adjusts placements of occlusion planes, so maybe it's still worth keeping? Edit: checked Solitude and it seems there's some noticeable objects only placed by the exterior patch, so I think I'll keep it. Also it turns out the glowy objects added by the patch like windows and giant campfires can be pretty noticeable at night. Hmm, maybe I'll reconsider.

Always happy to help. I'll test with the new version when it's daytime where I am. Speaking of which, before version 123 I'm pretty sure not having the Exterior Patch could result in some pretty "interesting" visuals, like windmill fans spinning in midair without the windmills themselves. Obviously the windmills were only added by the Exterior Patch but why would the fans be there still? My best guess is that the fans were dynamic lods, but I have to say I have no idea how DynDOLOD treats dynamic lods when it comes to child worldspaces. Now with the newer versions it seems the windmills are there whether or not Exterior Patch is used. In fact I didn't notice any difference at a glance, though I'm not sure if I could really do a super extensive comparison. Could this mean that the Exterior Patches are redundant when Large Reference Bugs Workarounds are applied? Getting rid of them could be beneficial since the two bridges added by Whiterun Exterior Patch conflict with Northern Roads which I use, and I had to delete those references in xEdit every time I reran DynDOLOD.

Redid DynDOLOD without the exterior patch and they are still there. Screenshot of the console information on one of the duplicate waterfalls. There are a few sets of these vanilla waterfalls in the area, together with the waterfalls from Natural Waterfalls. Most of them are obviously misplaced but one set (furthest from the camera) is in the correct place, covering the ones from Natural Waterfalls behind it. I think that's probably a bug related to the new "copy large references from parent world to child world" feature, since these references are apparently added by it. I should also mention that I used WENB/Natural Waterfalls/Whiterun Exterior Patch combo while running version 122 and didn't have this problem. This further proves my point. Logs of the new generation, though I don't think it'll differ too much from the previous ones: https://anonfiles.com/0cabz0oezc/Logs0430_No_2_rar Regarding rules, I mentioned the exact same line you quoted in my question, I was just not sure if I was interpreting it correctly. Since you didn't say I thought wrong, I'll just assume that I assumed right.

Thanks for the huge update Sheson. I didn't do a direct comparison but the scenery outside Whiterun walls seemed much more detailed than what I remembered. Small problem though: DynDOLOD added some misplaced and duplicated waterfalls outside the city, as shown in the video: https://anonfiles.com/se45w3o3z5/Skyrim_Special_Edition_2023_04_30_19_26_52_mp4 FYI I use the Whiterun Exterior patch, Water for ENB and Natural Waterfalls, and I deleted all the waterfall lod files in WENB, as per the instruction on the DynDOLOD website (I don't think it matters in this case, still clarifying though). It seems the duplicate waterfalls are WENB ones. Logs: https://anonfiles.com/H767w6odz5/Logs0430_rar Also a small question about rules: the DynDOLOD website states that Rules at the top match before rules at bottom. Am I correct to assume that this means in case of conflict, rules higher up would overwrite/take precedence over those placed lower? If so, this should mean user-added custom rules are better placed at the top, right?

Another Chinese user asked me about an error: Load order FileID [54] can not be mapped to file FileID for file "Occlusion.esp". This doesn't seem to be in the documents and searching in this thread also yielded little results. DynDOLOD logs and bug report here: https://anonfiles.com/G9a0hfmfz3/logs_0419_rar The bug report contains from what I can tell two instances of the same error.

Figured as much. I personally didn’t really like how 0.5 looked in my game so I guess I’ll keep experimenting. Also I think this grass mipmap thing deserves a mention in the documents, even if strictly speaking it doesn’t have much to do with DynDOLOD itself. I use the complex grass textures provided here and judging from my experiences most textures on the page probably weren’t “correctly” mipmapped, so to say. Complex grass textures for lots of grass mods can only be found there so I imagine lots of people could encounter such issues. Experimenting with the value could also help with matching the density of the distant full grass to that of the grass lods better.

This is quite an essential tip, honestly. I've always noticed that in my game distant full grass tend to fade quite a lot and the shorter grass types can straight-up disappear. I haven't thought much of it until I saw this post. I used the Texconv included in DynDOLOD and experimented a bit. As of now I tried setting the number to 0.5 and 0.2, and sure enough, the full grass at a distance looked much fuller, though they also seem to be "sharper", which I don't like that much. I don't know much about textures but as I understand it, the higher the number, the more lush the distant grass will look. So is there a general recommendation about how much one should set this value?

Welp, it seems the user deleted the 3rd party billboards and got rid of the wrong path file errors but the problem persisted. They were frustrated and decided to switch to HLT, which has full DynDOLOD 3 support thanks to z929669. This time they encountered no such problem and thus the case is closed. We'll never get to know where exactly did the problem lie, but I guess it can't be helped.

It's been a long time since I last used that feature of MO2 and it's indeed useful in this case, thanks for the reminders. I just had a conversation with that user and it seems TexGen did generate that particular billboard, though it most likely overwrote the 3rd party billboard which has a wrong file path. Not sure how this affected things. They seemed to have some trouble understanding not everything included in a zip file named "3D tree lod resources" is a 3D tree lod resource, but now hopefully they have already deleted those pesky 3rd party billboards (and nothing else) and is running TexGen/DynDOLOD anew. If the problem still persists, I'll ask them to check the object report and see if there's anything useful there.

Well, I did tell them to remove all 3rd party billboards and to overwrite everything with TexGen output, though I'm not sure how much they listened. They said they didn't install the billboards provided on S3D Trees' page but I just found out the 3D lod resources on that page also contain billboards (with wrong file paths) for some unfathomable reason. In any case I just told them to find the form ID of that tree type and check it against the TexGen logs, though I'm not sure when they will reply. In the meantime I want to ask, if 3rd party billboards are typically overwritten by TexGen output, in what cases would the 3rd party billboards be used by DynDOLOD?

I wrote a DynDOLOD 3 tutorial (sort of, not my proudest work) some time ago on a Chinese forum. Some Chinese players have been asking questions about DynDOLOD in that thread and I try my best to answer them. Yesterday someone encountered a strange visual glitch with lod trees which looked like this: According to them, these strange black blocks would turn to normal lod trees when seen up close with tfc, but at a distance they would look like this. This only happened to snow pines, not other trees, apparently. They also claimed they ran DynDOLOD several times (with changed load order) and that was the first time they ever saw this. I'm not sure what could have caused this, so I figured I should ask here. The link to the logs: https://anonfiles.com/A0e1zfl1zd/Logs_0415_rar

I suspected it had something to do with Community Shaders and it’s nice to have the confirmation. Thanks for the pointers.

Several builds ago (I think it was alpha 119) an alt3 complex grass billboard was added. I don't think this particular change was mentioned in the changelogs, and the description in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini was pretty vague, aside from "experimental" and "do not use". So what does it do exactly? Is there any information you can disclose right now?

The lod meshes were removed from the mod in Natural Waterfall's latest update.

Thanks for the tip, and there really isn't such a cell in my load order.

1) I know that mod isn't supposed to fix the large reference bugs, but for reasons unknown to me it did on my end. Ultimately it's not important, especially with the large reference bugs workaround applying constantly now. 2) One cell with both full grass and grass lod appearing when seen from inside the city is Cell 6,-6, Block 0,-1, SubBlock 0,-1. I don't think there's any reference of this cell under the Whiterun worldspace. As far as I can tell, outside the city, most places around clickable-in-console objects (and as a result are cells that have references under Whiterun worldspace) don't have the bug, though I can see this bug happening in Cell 3,-4, Block 0,-1, SubBlock 0,-1, which has a record in the Whiterun worldspace in both Skyrim.esm and DynDOLOD.esp. The cell in Skyrim.esm is just an empty header (not sure if this is the right word, in any case there's nothing under it) but DynDOLOD.esp added a set of glowing windows in the cell. No Landscape data for this cell, of course. I'm not sure whether similar examples exist.

Tested with version 122 and the large reference bugs workaround seemed to be applying when loading saves in Tamriel worldspace, since I haven't noticed any large reference bugs happening. However, full grass and grass lods can still overlap outside Whiterun with NGIO/DynDOLOD grass mode 2 and after a closer look I don't think this problem's related to the typical large reference bugs. Here's what I noticed: 1) Applying LOD Unloading Bug Fix could fix the large reference bugs in my experience (I imagine the large reference bugs workaround actively applying during the process) but it changed nothing in this case. 2) After using the tll command, I noticed there weren't many full object models outside the loaded area and upon clicking them in the console, I think these full models were all things added by the Whiterun Exterior patch, not large references. The only "large reference" I could see was the full grass. A video to illustrate my findings: https://anonfiles.com/U0fcE3h2zb/Skyrim_Special_Edition_2023_03_29_19_10_01_mp4 Judging from this, I think there wouldn't be any overlapping if I used grass mode 1, but this is still strange. I think you once said the large reference system works in child worldspaces just like they do in parent worldspaces? Is there any other related setting or something that I'm unaware of? Log and debug log, in case you need them: https://anonfiles.com/F6g4E1h4zf/Logs_0329_rar So you are saying we should remove every lod related mesh/texture in WENB and Natural Waterfalls, or just remove those meshes mentioned in the LOD Model * Has Same CRC32 As Full Model messages?

If I understand it correctly, Level 0/1/2 typically corresponds to a set of lod models named accordingly, with decreasing complexity the higher the level. So when using ultra tree lod, is there any difference between Level 0/1/2 if there's only one 3D tree lod model for each tree type?

Welp, that sucks. This also explains why models from different mods can lessen/exacerbate this issue. Thanks for the explanation, at least now I know it's not my fault lol.

1) Can the grass brightness settings in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini be raised above 1? I once tried raising them above 1 and it didn't seem to work. 2) Unrelated to DynDOLOD probably but I don't know where else to ask. In my game the moss/snow on buildings, mountains, etc. would creep up when seen from further away and sometimes would appear on neighboring surfaces that aren't suppose to have them, as shown in the video. Is there a way to disable/lessen this effect? I've set both fDecalLODFadeEnd and fDecalLODFadeStart to 1.

Indeed it's unrelated to large references, just something I suddenly thought of. Once I generated grass cache and DynDOLOD but only saw grass lods, no full grass outside Whiterun. Never encountered that again after I made a plugin which removes the nograss flag for Whiterun worldspace and made it overwrite every other plugin except DynDOLOD.esp. Well, whether it's actually useful or not, it never hurts to include a placebo.

Thanks for the clarification. There's one thing that I want to add though: you generate grass cache before running DynDOLOD, while the WhiterunExteriorGrass patch, as I understand it, makes sure the Whiterun worldspace record in DynDOLOD.esp doesn't have the nograss flag. But if in the original load order the Whiterun worldspace has that flag, then NGIO wouldn't generate grass cache for it, right? So theoretically could this resulting in the grass outside the city still not appearing after running DynDOLOD with WhiterunExteriorGrass patch installed?

Is it possible to make the large reference bugs workaround apply every time you load a save? From what I understand, if it is possible, it probably would resolve most of the large reference issues I've encountered. If I understand what you're saying correctly, typically there's no large references outside the city, and the overlapping full building was probably added by the option in DynDOLOD resources (didn't thought about clicking on it with the console open and now I'm off my PC, will have to check later). If that's the case, why would it happen? I thought that option would only add things outside the city that can't have a lod? Also, how does this rule apply to grass outside the city? Is there any particular reason for the overlapping grass lod and full grass? Everything I tested was on a completely new save made after installing the new DynDOLOD output, unfortunately. I mean, I once thought the windmill fan/temple tree not appearing was because they were outside the FarGrid area, so I increased it. Guess that wasn't the case. Now that I think about it, maybe it's a performance related issue. I think I'll have to test some more after tuning down some of my DynDOLOD settings.

Tested with Alpha 120 and had some interesting discoveries. I made saves on the Whiterun Watchtower and near Angi's camp, and every time I opened the game and loaded these saves, the large reference bugs would show up in the same old cells. Walking to other cells would make large reference bugs appear in cells that newly enter the uGridsToLoad - uLargeRefLODGridSize range. Fast traveling to nearby cells has the same effect. However, it seems fast traveling to a sufficiently faraway cell could make the large reference bugs go away for good until you load a save. Sometimes loading a save would make the large reference bugs show up again and sometimes it wouldn't. I'm not sure why this was the case. As for the distance you have to fast travel to make the large reference bugs disappear, I would guess "outside the uLargeRefLODGridSize range". Just a guess though, not sure if there's any way to prove that. I also don't know if the earlier versions behaved like this since I never tested it thoroughly until now. Another curious thing: the first time I loaded a save after opening the game, I could see large reference bugs disappearing in some cells while remaining in others, as shown in the video. Not sure if this is relevant though. This time I also found out that in Whiterun City, looking outside the walls, there were also grass lods and full grass overlapping. At least one building outside also had the full model/lod z-fighting going on. How does the large reference system work in child worlds anyway? Do they even work at all? Lastly I changed the grid settings of Whiterun Temple Tress and the windmill fans to NeverFade LOD but they just refused to appear most of the time. In fact in one of my other DynDOLOD generations with version 119 I didn't change their grid setting (Far LOD) but set FarGridsToLoad to 31 instead. That time I also couldn't see them most of the time despite them being absolutely in that range. As usual, the logs and stuff: https://anonfiles.com/Sakc74f5ze/Logs_and_Stuff_20230319_rar