Dynamic Distant Objects LOD - DynDOLOD 2.18

[sheson]

DynDOLOD 2.18 condensed update post

 

What’s New?

 

This is a simple maintenance update to address a bug and add updates for a couple mods.

See Full update post for 2.xx update instructions

 

---

 

Some Assembly Required

 

Caranthir Tower Reborn - DynDOLOD Resources contains an optimized full model of the tower for a little bit more performance friendly Neverfade LOD. Mesh rules also add LOD for the stone dragon and the portal building.

Optional: to sync concealing/revealing the tower from far distances install and overwrite the two original scripts with the ones from DynDOLOD Patches.

 

Verified working out of the box - included rules

Trollstigen

 

Verified working out of the box - added/updated meshes and/or textures

Killian Castle

Lyngwi - A Nordic Village

 

Fixes include

Fixed sometimes not falling back to billboard when generating ultra trees by Monobloc

 

[spoiler=Changelog DynDOLOD 2.18]DynDOLOD.exe - fixed sometimes not falling back to billboard when generating ultra trees

DynDOLOD.exe - add the worldspace Master as activate parent for Never Fade LOD/Full LOD objects

DynDOLOD.exe - set VWD on original base records used for dynamic LOD only as well

TexGen.exe - sync updates with DynDOLOD.exe

TexGen.exe - fixed generation of dlc01castlefortlod.dds

TexGen.exe - generation for impwood01lod.dds

Papyrus Scripts - activate worldspace Master in case the activate all function is called

DynDOLOD_Manual.html - updated compatibility information for several mods

DynDOLOD Resources - updated/added meshes/textures for better compatibility with mods

DynDOLOD Patches - added script patches for Caranthir Tower Reborn

 

 

See Full update post for full changelog, fully detailed update instructions and updated compatibility information for Skryim mods.

 

DynDOLOD 2.17

[dunc001]

So I'm having some really weird issues since updating to 2.18.  For starters and most significantly my LOD textures aren't unloading.  When I load into a game, or fast travel to a new location everything is good, but as soon as I travel far enough to leave the initial cell I am encountering LOD textures, low res LOD trees, floating LOD roads (above the actual roads) and so on. I mean the trees I can walk up to and touch are LOD trees, not what I'm seeing in the distance.  I am also now getting bad glow from light sources, and from outside Whiterun when I look up I have the Dragonsreach windows but no Dragonsreach!  I have tried re-running DynDOLOD three times and I am getting the same result every time.  Any suggestions what I might be doing wrong?

Edited August 28, 2016 by dunc001

[Monobloc]

Existing tamrieltreelod.dds does not matter. You need to install a billboard for every tree base record that you want to have LOD for.

You only require billboards for plugins that add or update tree base records.

Alright yeah, did the trick.

 

But honestly I feel like 2.18 is def broken.

 

Like even with ultra trees I had no level 8/16 at ALL.

 

Had to revert to 2.17 + your fixed exe for fallback trees to have stuff working without issue.

[dunc001]

So I'm having some really weird issues since updating to 2.18.  For starters and most significantly my LOD textures aren't unloading.  When I load into a game, or fast travel to a new location everything is good, but as soon as I travel far enough to leave the initial cell I am encountering LOD textures, low res LOD trees, floating LOD roads (above the actual roads) and so on. I mean the trees I can walk up to and touch are LOD trees, not what I'm seeing in the distance.  I am also now getting bad glow from light sources, and from outside Whiterun when I look up I have the Dragonsreach windows but no Dragonsreach!  I have tried re-running DynDOLOD three times and I am getting the same result every time.  Any suggestions what I might be doing wrong?

OK, redownloaded and reinstalled everything to do with DDL (tool, resources, patches), deleted my ini files and recreated them from vanilla then BethINI.  All is good now.  However how do I change the distance at which buildings load in because I am still seeing the odd floating roof or window, etc and I also seem to get fairly close before the true textures take over from the LODs, resulting in quite a bit of texture popping?

[baronaatista]

One time after updating to 2.18 while running through Riverwood I did encounter a complete LOD worldspace, where nothing other than LOD's were loading (as far as I could tell) frozen-screen death shortly thereafter.  This was on a testing run so I rebooted, deleted saves, started new game and all was good.  I too had just installed the new SRLE LOTDB tree craziness.

 

Oh and I did catch part of a building in Solitude floating in air at one point after that, but I intended to investigate a bit more before I mentioned - only saying now as it seems related.  

Edited August 29, 2016 by baronaatista

[sheson]

So I'm having some really weird issues since updating to 2.18.  For starters and most significantly my LOD textures aren't unloading.  When I load into a game, or fast travel to a new location everything is good, but as soon as I travel far enough to leave the initial cell I am encountering LOD textures, low res LOD trees, floating LOD roads (above the actual roads) and so on. I mean the trees I can walk up to and touch are LOD trees, not what I'm seeing in the distance.  I am also now getting bad glow from light sources, and from outside Whiterun when I look up I have the Dragonsreach windows but no Dragonsreach!  I have tried re-running DynDOLOD three times and I am getting the same result every time.  Any suggestions what I might be doing wrong?

 

 

OK, redownloaded and reinstalled everything to do with DDL (tool, resources, patches), deleted my ini files and recreated them from vanilla then BethINI.  All is good now.  However how do I change the distance at which buildings load in because I am still seeing the odd floating roof or window, etc and I also seem to get fairly close before the true textures take over from the LODs, resulting in quite a bit of texture popping?

 

 

One time after updating to 2.18 while running through Riverwood I did encounter a complete LOD worldspace, where nothing other than LOD's were loading (as far as I could tell) frozen-screen death shortly thereafter.  This was on a testing run so I rebooted, deleted saves, started new game and all was good.  I too had just installed the new SRLE LOTDB tree craziness.

 

Oh and I did catch part of a building in Solitude floating in air at one point after that, but I intended to investigate a bit more before I mentioned - only saying now as it seems related.

2.18 is a minor update that creates the same LOD and data. Test with a new game and if that works correctly, make sure to follow the save game update routine.

 

If you fast traveled and have such LOD issue, turn on autosave on fast travel. If you use crash fixes MSAllocators with the custom memory verify in console that it is not filling 100%. I also read reports that fast travel into cities can sometimes put the player outside the walls in the child worldspace.

Edited August 29, 2016 by sheson

[sheson]

Alright yeah, did the trick.

 

But honestly I feel like 2.18 is def broken.

 

Like even with ultra trees I had no level 8/16 at ALL.

 

Had to revert to 2.17 + your fixed exe for fallback trees to have stuff working without issue.

I just tested high + ultra tree generations with vanilla trees and then two EVT setups, one with and one without the included RAT trees. All three generations worked without a problem in 2.18. All generations have hybrids for all trees in LOD4 and use the installed billboards for LOD 8/16 as expected.

 

As expected the TES5Edit_log.txt showed no tree fallback messages when scanning base records since all trees have hybrids, so the fix doesn't matter. The generation of the flat texture atlas showed the usual suspects for tree billboards normal maps, which is an indicator billboards have been installed correctly and are being used.

 

The log LODGen_Tamriel_log.txt for LODGen.exe shows static LOD was generated without error.

 

Everything appears to be working fine on my end.

 

Make sure to install the tree LOD resources from EVT correctly, exactly matching the full model setup.

Edited August 29, 2016 by sheson

[Sezuel]

Hey I just ran DynDOLOD, everything was going smoothly until I tried to 'save and exit' which resulted in the following

 

[00:14:48.656]    DynDOLOD Worlds completed successfully.
[00:15:01.165]    [00:00] Saving: DynDOLOD.esp
[00:15:01.859]    [00:00] Error saving DynDOLOD.esp: Invalid pointer operation
[00:15:01.884]    [00:00] Errors have occured. At least one file was not saved.
[00:15:08.890]    [00:00] Saving: DynDOLOD.esp.save.2016_08_29_11_40_35
[00:15:09.177]    [00:00] Error saving DynDOLOD.esp.save.2016_08_29_11_40_35: Access violation at address 9D177200 in module 'DynDOLOD.exe'. Read of address 9D177200
[00:15:09.204]    [00:00] Errors have occured. At least one file was not saved.

 

any help would be appreciated

 

Edit: Added a few more lines of the logs

Edited August 29, 2016 by Sezuel

[sheson]

Hey I just ran DynDOLOD, everything was going smoothly until I tried to 'save and exit' which resulted in the following

 

[00:14:48.656]    DynDOLOD Worlds completed successfully.

[00:15:01.165]    [00:00] Saving: DynDOLOD.esp

[00:15:01.859]    [00:00] Error saving DynDOLOD.esp: Invalid pointer operation

[00:15:01.884]    [00:00] Errors have occured. At least one file was not saved.

[00:15:08.890]    [00:00] Saving: DynDOLOD.esp.save.2016_08_29_11_40_35

[00:15:09.177]    [00:00] Error saving DynDOLOD.esp.save.2016_08_29_11_40_35: Access violation at address 9D177200 in module 'DynDOLOD.exe'. Read of address 9D177200

[00:15:09.204]    [00:00] Errors have occured. At least one file was not saved.

 

any help would be appreciated

 

Edit: Added a few more lines of the logs

Are you using MO? Which version?

What is the installation path of DynDOLOD.exe.

What is the games installation path?

Is there a ..\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\skyrim\Data\TES5Edit Backups\ folder?

Edited August 29, 2016 by sheson

[Flobur]

Hi

Since DynDOLOD is for LODs and graphics stuffs, if I add mods that only affect gameplay I don't have to run it again?

If so, I can leave gameplay mods unchecked before running DynDOLOD?

[sheson]

Hi

Since DynDOLOD is for LODs and graphics stuffs, if I add mods that only affect gameplay I don't have to run it again?

If so, I can leave gameplay mods unchecked before running DynDOLOD?

From the manual

 

Updating

There is no need to generate LOD just because a new mod was added. New objects may be missing LOD, but that is only a visual problem.

 

Generating LOD

Tip: If the load order changes often, consider generating LOD only for the base install of Skyrim Legendary and only the mods which are considered essential. There is no technical requirement to update LOD just because a mod was added. The worst that can happen is that LOD is missing for new objects. This will make it easier to remove non essential mods from the load order without having to generate LOD from scratch.

[Flobur]

I guess I missed that part sorry.

Well thank you for your time and thank you for this fantastic mod   

[ZenHeadshot]

So i've been having some interesting issues with DynDOLOD for a few days now, and it feels like the only solution at this point is to stop using DynDOLOD all together even though I would really like to use it. You guys are kind of my last hope at this point so heres everything thats been tried up until now.

[sheson]

So i've been having some interesting issues with DynDOLOD for a few days now, and it feels like the only solution at this point is to stop using DynDOLOD all together even though I would really like to use it. You guys are kind of my last hope at this point so heres everything thats been tried up until now.

What is the issue?

[ZenHeadshot]

At first, Getting near a town would make the game CTD. Tes5edit cleaning cleared my issue, but anytime I used a crafting interface I would CTD again. Editing these lines

 fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=10000000.0000<----- set to 8192

 fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000<----12000

 fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000<----16896 

in my SkyrimPrefs.ini fixed my issue until I tried to load a save made after the change, in which I would again CTD, but if I loaded a save before I made the change, I was notified that None.json and DynDOLOD_Worlds.json was missing. From there I started a new game on a whim hoping it may fix it, but when I was still in helgen, just as the game was going to let me control my character, I would CTD. So I tried again with DynDOLOD inactive until I left the cave, and everything seemed fine until I got to riverwood where I had missing textures and some faces were darker than others with neckseams clearly visible on only some NPCs. I then verified my game cache with 5 files missing, loaded back in again everything seemed fine until I got near winterhold, where I was missing certain stone pillar looking textures, some textures for the windmills, wooden step textures, and even an armor texture from another mod. in an attempt to fix the stair textures and base game textures that were still missing, I verified once again, with 1 missing file, and noticed after every start of the game, if I verified, it would download the same size file and leave me with the same textures missing. I was then asked to try installing the mod without DynDOLOD.esp and everything involving DynDOLOD with SKSE, which then led me to CTD when I load any save made after that change yet again..

Edited August 31, 2016 by ZenHeadshot

[sheson]

At first, Getting near a town would make the game CTD.

Read the FAQ Skyrim: ILS or CTD.

 

So, for all the rest, to put it nicely, I suggest to stop messing around doing random and unrelated things and rather follow installation guides like STEP that teach how to setup the game with SKSE, Memory Patch or crash fixes OSAllocators, ENBoost, correct INIs and how to install mods while learning about RAM/VRAM limits. For example, the ini settings you quoted have nothing, really absolutely nothing to do with the type of LOD DynDOLOD is doing. Follow proper modding and troubleshooting procedures, always do these tests with new games until everything works.

 

DynDOLOD in the game is a very simple mod. It needs RAM/VRAM and it needs valid nifs that exist. It needs all the files and data that was generated by DynDOLOD.exe in the correct location and intact. Whatever other problems you have with NPCs, dark textures, missing files or problems with armor textures are unrelated to DynDOLOD and are most likely mod installation/uninstallation/load order errors.

Edited August 31, 2016 by sheson