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z929669

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Everything posted by z929669

  1. z929669
    Good to know ... I missed that. Will update instructions.
  2. z929669
    I added the missing instructions for the Metallurgy patch.
  3. z929669
    The FOMOD should detect active plugins in the load order under MO and make selections as appropriate (except what we mention should be unticked). The result should be 'good'. I added the change tot he log.
  4. z929669
    You will get z fighting in certain areas no matter what you do, but there are ways to minimize. If you are not using CL, then you shouldn't need any gamma correction ... that's for the STEP build using CL and MM. However, from the images in your previous post, the gamma correction yields the best result. Terrain LOD snow matches objects and the landscape in your last image. The vanilla snow in your first image may match pretty well in vanilla, but I assume that your replaces or lighting weathers are making mountains/rocks mismatch terrain, so it looks like fuzzy day-glow snow to me. Terrain LOD in the second image looks like volcanic ash, so you either need a lighter noise map or the xLODGen brightness/gamma correction, because -- for whatever reason, your LOD terrain doesn't match up to the landscape, IMO. ... anyway, please follow sheson's advice. I just chimed in here, since you are using xLODGen settings recommended by the STEP guide (which expects that you are using CL/MM).
  5. z929669
    Apparently, that (crappy) vanilla snow LOD is only white because of the vanilla version of /textures/terrain/noise.dds in combination with the vanilla terrain LOD... With Cathedral Landscapes (CL) and Majestic Mountains (MM) installed (as in STEP), CL provides the noise map. The gamma correction noted in the STEP guide results in the terrain snow LOD (as well as other terrain) matching the rest of the mountains/rocks objects as well as the full terrain (as in your third image, which IMHO looks correct and consistent with the rest of the landscape). Sheson has told us again and again that the brightness/gamma corrections technically should not be used, because xLODGen is using the full (base) terrain textures to produce the terrain LOD. This should ensure that all terrain matches whether near or far IF the noise map is compatible (note that the 'flat' noise map should be totally compatible with any terrain LOD; although, you will see the terrain tiling). No noise texture edit that Tech and I have played with result in a 'good' result with CL and MM ... this includes the 'flat' noise map that sheson provides in the OP. The terrain textures are always too dark, and ONLY a brightness correction (or gamma) achieves the desired result with the CL noise map and landscapes ... Tech and I have tested and tested, regenerating terrain LOD over and over again to no avail. Ultimately, the issue lies with the CL mod in that they designed a dark-ish noise map and used xLODGen for the terrain LOD to work with that (again, brightening that CL noise map using various methods does not look as good as the brightness correction ... the noise map would need to be redesigned to maintain the white-gray-black steepness and granularity, which we did NOT do in our testing). And yes --contrary to sheson's advice-- they did use a brightness correction in their LOD gen that ships with their mod, so we are technically deviating from best practice by using a brightness correction in our LOD gen methods simply because we are trying to get everything to look consistent and must replicate CL methodology (note that we are using gamma rather than brightness, because it preserves more of the LOD color saturation).
  6. z929669
    This is all good to know. I will take a closer look at your examples. Thanks for the input. EDIT: I have tested with/without mipmaps for generating terrain LOD (compares earlier in this thread), and cannot see any difference. I also did not detect any consistent VRAM diff with/without, so we are not recommending them.
  7. z929669
    Our wiki is powered by Semantic, which means that all mod tables are inserted into the guide as templates pointing to our mod pages and a number of other things. The only way to reproduce it in German would be to create duplicates of a great many pages in German and assemble it all independently. Users can always use Google translate though. Mods themselves are obviously a different story.
  8. z929669
    Agree, I just didn't want to type all the details. Either way, it still provides 27 textures to compare against vanilla. The rest need to be compared to the conflicting mods I guess.
  9. z929669
    I think he said that mips are only used within uGridsToLoad and only for diffuse. After that, they aren't used for either (basically most LOD if I'm not mistaken). Image 3 looks much better in comparison to the rest now :) I don't think we need brightness but a small increase to gamma to about 1.26/7. What I'd really like to understand it what the hell is happening to the LOD textures in Skyrim SE xLODGen ... I understand what sheson is saying, but I have really tried everything: no noise, light noise, flat noise (yes, still too dark but without ... noise, so you see tiling on a too-dark LOD in comparison to source)... the LOD textures simply do not have the same color hue or brightness as the source textures (as seen in foreground of that first shot in Tech's an my compares previously). Also, xLODGen doesn't incorporate any active noise textures into the result. If any noise texture is active/inactive, the xLODGen result is the same.
  10. z929669
    27/46 textures have no conflicts in STEP.
  11. z929669
    This looks promising ... any takers?
  12. z929669
    I get it. Projects grow and change over time, and the developer shouldn't document the prerequisite info (and mis-info) Documentation is very difficult to upkeep for a single project, much less a suite of them ... That's what we try to do so that people like you can focus on the raw doc and the software ;)
  13. z929669
    So then the CL mod is providing LOD assets (LODGEN Textures for v3) that may have a b/g correction applied, so they appear darker than they would otherwise?Is it redundant to activate these assets during terrain LOD gen?Should we even be using LODGEN assets provided by other mods?EDIT: So I generated terrain LOD again using new optimized settings as described above but without any gamma correction. I did this with and without the CL xLODGen add-on active, and the results are way too dark either way. As Tech mentioned, changing the noise map brightness helps, but not as well as the gamma correction on the LOD itself. My testing reveals that the color of xLODGen-generated landscape LOD does not match the landscape (see terrain on ground in foreground vs LOD in the very first image in this post). I've tried everything I can think of, and the only way to get the correct terrain blending is to 1) use the CL mod's native LOD or 2) do xLODGen with the b/g correction. (The Majestic Mountains optional landscape pack for lightside also corrects). If xLODGen is using the base terrain landscape texture to produce the LOD, then why is it so much darker than the base texture as seen in the foreground mentioned above? Again, only a lightened noise map fixes ... CL noise map, flat noise map, vanilla noise map, SRO noise map are all too dark. Also, I don't understand what you are getting at here: ... how does this relate to darkened terrain LOD? I was talking about blending with the rocks and other objects rather than terrain fill --> LOD blending ... and from those images, it would seem that the diffuse mipmapping causes the foreground to possibly appear darker rather than the reverse.
  14. z929669
    RE 'image 3': Any image I provided isn't going to be a direct compare against your own. Way too many factors are introducing diffs between the two. I never had any DynDOLOD 'resource' mods active in my compares (only for LOD gen), so my compare labels are accurate (no other diffs among the compares). Any diff is due to software/hardware diffs. You should generate the gamma 1.25 LOD yourself and replace image 3.
  15. z929669
    I saw you mentioned this in the doc as well as a couple of other reminders in your posting. I think that I intuitively understand the reasoning, but I couldn't explain it intelligibly other than that I suspect the noise pattern (granularity, black/white 'steepness', etc) is important. Could it be that the compares I posted, which are not using any LOD gen but for terrain (all else is vanilla or replacers ... no object LOD gen included), may be compensating for vanilla object LOD brightness? In other words, if I was showing those compares using DynDOLOD object LOD, would they be darker, too and match the terrain better without brightness correction?
  16. z929669
    I'm good with dropping this in favor of the old version.
  17. z929669
    Glad that cleaning isn't the issue. It is also possible that something could go wrong in the cleaning process if the instructions aren't followed to the letter (or if they are unclear). Did you follow these cleaning instructions? Could you try them again from scratch and let us know if the problem persists or not after? If this is what you had followed, then you should have all of the original masters in the game directory. You may want to clean out any files from the xEdit Output to avoid conflating old/new.
  18. z929669
    I think he/she is saying that the issue would be corrected by xLODGen, but d1ebels doesn't want to go through the LOD gen process.
  19. z929669
    Just one for any of the components that disappeared.
  20. z929669
    One of our past moderators is Polish, and he translated the 2.2.1 LE guide but never finished. It's a big job. Just saying that you can create content on the wiki.
  21. z929669
    Tech is looking for the FormID to check ... do you have it per chance?
  22. z929669
    OK. Just so you know, we've hosted guide translations as well on this wiki, so you could do so in your User area (or whatever else in German).
  23. z929669
    It looks like it's available on Nexus ... is your translation just of the patches or the whole guide + mods?
  24. z929669
    It's probably terrain, but you didn't seem to want to run the LOD gen, so I suggested the possibility that those snow textures came with a mountain mod or snow mod and could thus be objects. Taking about one minute of your time to check presented the possibility of verifying and fixing your game in no time at all or to verify that you only need to run xLODGen rather than DynDOLOD. Curious why you don't want to run LOD gen steps. It's easy and only takes a bit of time for a drastic improvement to visual quality (which you seem to be concerned about).
  25. z929669
    I get the differences between the LOD types and what app handles those, but I was confused as to how uLockedTerrainLOD worked. I think I see now from your explanation. It sounds like this setting cannot equal any number like scale data but it is discrete data that only accepts LOD level values? That clears it up for me if we can just ell the map to use LOD level 4/8/16 if we don't care for 32. I thought the map was limited exclusively to using LOD level 32, so couldn't understand your statement "[The map] ... is easily changed to better LOD quality". Anyway, it still seems preferable to just use a level 32 treatment that makes the map look good, since people are running xLODGen. I think it would be interesting to experiment with it though. Thanks for the tip!
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