Octopuss

I've been using it for ages. It's really great.

I think we can understand that as "SKSE is getting an update soon".

Haha! Seriously, what's wrong with good old plain text? I'll check the textures when my brain switches on again :P

It's irrelevant to the content of the mod, but all I can say at this point is the author should suffer for the "font" used in the description. I'd take Comic Sans Ms over this anytime of a day. I seriously cannot read the damn text!! :O_o:

There are some settings that either have weird values to them or there's conflicting or even no explanation at all. Right now I can think of these: b30GrassVS - I have no idea what this does, and there are only assumptions on the internet. iMaxAnisotropy - setting it to off in the launcher actually sets the value to 1, but STEP suggests setting it to 0. Does 0 actually do anything? Does setting AF to 1 disable it? bFloatPointRenderTarget - this shadow guide says it improves lighting, but STEP says it's only for ENB. Does anyone know anything about this stuff?

Oh wait, I do need the json files as well? I thought they were a byproduct of something not directly related. These files (under skse folder) always end up in MO's overwrite folder even if the output is saved elsewhere.

...lol Well, I am all for squeezing as much performance out of my setup as possible. But considering the output seems to be the same no matter how I do it, I think it's all good (of course there still might be something I should have done differently but I can't think of anything). Btw, the amount of generated files is correct? Almost 2000 seems like a TON (and then there are those already present in the default DynDoLOD package).

*facepalm* I'm more stupid than I thought. I repeated the test, now with all loose textures properly unchecked (these 27 minutes long sessions really start to get boring :D), and the result was still exactly the same. I think Aiyen is right, which is great, because that possibly makes the process even simplier.

I know, but I prefer to do it myself with the most up to date batch files. Besides, that wouldn't change anything, would it? It's just the "vanilla vanilla" textures being optimized now...

On slightly different note, I noticed the optimization process for the vanilla textures changed a bit and the DLC textures are untouched now. Where do I place the optimized vanilla textures then? My left panel currently looks like this +Unofficial High Resolution Patch +Hires optimized textures +Unofficial Dragonborn Patch *Unmanaged: Dragonborn +Unofficial Hearthfire Patch *Unmanaged: HearthFires +Unofficial Dawnguard Patch *Unmanaged: Dawnguard +Unofficial Skyrim Patch +Vanilla optimized textures But I am not sure if it's correct. Btw does anyone know why MO inverts the contents of the profile files?

Damnit noob, I wanted to hijack the thread to ask about The Choise is Yours... but you were quicker :P

I did 3 dirty unscientific tests. First time I generated the lods with MO's archive management enabled and without skyrim - textures.bsa and the 3 HRDLC ones physically present anywhere in the folders. 2nd time I just switched MO's archive management off. 3rd time I copied back all the vanilla files and kept MO's archive management off. The output of DynDoLOD was absolutely identical each time (same size, same amount of files). Yes but I am not switching mod managers or even start installing mods manually if that's what you mean.

Jesus f***ing Christ THANK YOU!!!! That's exactly the answer I was looking for. I can stop making myself look like bigger and bigger idiot now. I GET IT.

Now that we have DynDoLOD, I am not sure what to do with the optimized textures anymore. There's lots of conflicting information (for me) about the loading of the textures. Either I need the plugins or I don't. I can't find an answer. What am I supposed to do according to STEP? I deleted the textures.bsa and the 3 HRDLC packages long time ago and everything works fine. I believe back then people said it was safe to do so. Now with DynDoLOD I am simply hopelessly lost. Apparently I am supposed to have the HRDLC loaded through plugins, but then part of the optimization process where useless files are deleted would be lost I guess. Unofficial hires patch, if loaded through plugin, requires the 3 plugins from HRDLC active. I simply don't know anything anymore. Someone please tell me what to do.

Thanks. I am still not sure I understand the hires pack thing. I've read that part of manual several times over and over and still don't get it. Skyrim High Resolution Texture Pack is required to generate object LOD for Dawnguard. Actually... does this mean I just need the textures somewhere in any shape or form? There are no meshes in the hires DLC either. All the talk about plugins and loose files and bsas before confused the hell out of me. Could anyone from the STEP staff (or anyone who knows) confirm the STEP optimized hires package contains all the files necessary for this? Also, I don't even physically have Skyrim - Textures.bsa file on the disk anymore, and apparently everything still works. Again, I have the vanilla STEP optimized textures as loose files as well. I am starting to think most of the confusion comes from the fact MO+STEP users are doing things significantly differently, and the loose textures are very unknown thing. This might be true, but with the "proper" way of handling archives there's no way to install mods in correct order when specific conflict resolution must be achieved for various textures and/or meshes. The question is what bad will happen if I keep MO's system? All the files are loaded anyway, just in different order.

There are some instructions, but apparently those are meant for CK. Anyway, do I understand it correctly that I need this installed all the time and not just during the LOD generation process IF I use the optimized loose files STEP version of HRDLC without plugins? (MO users, please confirm where I need to install this in the left panel) The billboards only need to be activated during the generation process then, right? What I meant with the textures is that DynDoLOD has snow01lod.dds texture in it based on the vanilla snow texture. The snow texture mod I use has a different texture, but because I have it installed higher than DynDoLOD, it apparently gets overwritten. Am I supposed to delete the LOD texture from DynDoLOD then?

What do I achieve by turning off the bsa management though, except for messing up the order at which files are loaded? All the archives are ticked already. I don't understand :( (and the last sentence is missing something, it doesn't make sense)

Do I install this in the same manner as the tree billboards? Where shall I place it - or does it even matter? And can I disable both these "mods" after the generation process is finished? Ok, but... how do I do that when there are no BSAs and no plugins? I am starting to feel a "bit" stupid here :( (and what about the snow LOD texture, there's one in DynDoLOD that overwrites the one from Quality Snow)

fadingsignal MIGHT redo khajiits completely at some point. I noticed a post on reddit some time ago where he said that after doing some work on fur cloaks or something.

I think I managed to solve that one. There seems to be an extra folder in the SFO billboard structure (I do and did have the vanilla one installed). Hopefully sheson can shed some light onto the rest :)

Oh, maybe one more thing. I've looked at \Textures\Terrain\Tamriel\Trees\TamrielTreeLod.dds in the output folder, and the trees there don't match those from SFO 2.1. I downloaded the 2.1 billboard from some pages ago, but now that I think about it, I am not sure where to place it. I installed it as a standalone mod just below DynDoLOD. Am I supposed to do something completely different? Also, vurt's tree LOD texture is humongous 8192x4096 file, which probably makes the trees look much nicer from distance. Is there any way to make DynDoLOD not shrink it so much (the result is 2048x1024).

Ha, now it worked. What I did differently: renamed the dyndolod.esp.bak to dyndolod.esp. No errors whatsoever. No idea why this was important when the file gets overwritten in the end. I can probably replicate the errors by running the whole process again at this point (I can do that if you like). Now, I have some more questions. 1) I semi-carefully read the readme and still don't understand this: "An alternative solution that doesn't require loading the HighRes bsa is explained in the documentation." I couldn't find anything I'd identify as such (that doesn't mean it's not there). 2) What if a mod has its own LOD textures, but is otherwise just a texture replacer? I have two such mods: Quality Snow HD 4K mod which has a snow LOD texture. This texture (vanilla variant obviously) is present in DynDoLOD by default and Vivid Landscapes - Orc and Farmhouses. What do I do? 3) After everything is done, do I simply create a new mod from the output folders and put it under DynDoLOD in MO's left panel? I uploaded the logs anyway in case there's anything interesting about them (I noticed some instances of something supposedly missing somewhere, but it's all in klingon :P). https://www.mediafire.com/view/gbplbgsm43h3htm/LODGen_log.txt https://www.mediafire.com/view/au7g8jarslskfs7/TES5Edit_log.txt P.S. The whole process (when successful) took 26 minutes and the result is 1549 files worth 1.7GB. That right?

...what? Oh LOL!!!!! I have actually never noticed. That's hillarious :D

So I tried it for the first time, and it actually seems pretty idiot friendly. Fairly simple interface (I assume the advanced settings are not required for normal use) that makes sense. The process doesn't stop normally though, and I have no idea what's wrong. Here's what I did: First I downloaded the tree atlases and placed them below DynDoLOD in the installation order (DynDoLOD being at the very bottom before). Then I started TES5Edit, loaded my entire load order (because I have no idea how to tell a mod that can contain LODs), applied the script, selected everything in the next window, clicked on high and let it do its thing. After a few minutes command line windows with lodgen.exe started to appear, but that eventually got stuck. I let it work and left (actually I did it twice to make sure), and when I returned, TES5Edit has time of exactly 5 minutes in the bottom left, and the main window says "Lodgen is still running, please wait. Try again?". The command line is frozen and error popup says the usual "xxx stopped working". What do I do now? Are there any logs I should post here? semi edit: When I closed the crashed command line and clicked yes (I don't even understand what was it asking, yes what?) in TES5Edit window, it seemingly resumed the process and apparently I am not even halfway through. Something is causing a freeze/crash somewhere and I am not sure how serious it is. edit: 3rd and 4th time I get a TES5Edit "out of bounds" error message after a short while. This is what I see in the main window: [00:04:36.766] no Minion for -32_19 Skyrimesm_029B66_DynDOLOD_LOD [REFR:96001572] (places FXWaterfallMistBlast_DynDOLOD_LOD [MSTT:96001339] in GRUP Cell Persistent Children of [CELL:0002A4A4] (in DeepwoodRedoubtWorld "Deepwood Vale" [WRLD:00029AB7]) at -32,19) List index out of bounds (-1)

I talked with him once, and he said he'd consider asking for a permission to use these textures if he decides to do the meshes.