ACCEPTED Better Dynamic Snow SE ( by SparrowPrince)

[TechAngel85]

Discussion topic:

Better Dynamic Snow SE by SparrowPrince

Wiki Link

 

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[Kattmandu]

Patch when using with Majestic Mountains...

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20102?tab=description

[z929669]

Mod page Fomod updated to reflect BDS 3.x options.

 

TESTING HELP NEEDED

We will need someone to test these settings in game, each of the three plugins will need to be tested with each of the three Projected Diffuse Texture options and the Optional Addon.

 

Post some screen compares if possible on this mod thread. Thanks!

[TechAngel85]

Just use the "Brighter Material" option and skip installing the projected diffuse. The "No Glacial Snow" is user choice.

[z929669]

@TechAngel85 For some reason, neither BDS or SoS mentions the other on the Nexus mod description. These mods essentially do the same thing, but neither mentions the other in terms of compatibility or makes this clear in any obvious way (nor how they differ). Reddit has a somewhat dated discussion, but the info there is completely unreliable (as is most of what I find on Reddit ... PS: I hate Reddit).

It would be great if you or Sparrow (or wSkeever) could shine a light on this really obvious discrepancy. I think it would clear up a lot of confusion and prevent people from running both or deciding on one or the other.

PS: This came up in my realization that @Mousetick seems to be using SoS and cannot get snow on vanilla firewood meshes, due to NiAlphaProperty ... BDS doesn't have this issue, BTW.

[TechAngel85]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

@TechAngel85 For some reason, neither BDS or SoS mentions the other on the Nexus mod description. These mods essentially do the same thing, but neither mentions the other in terms of compatibility or makes this clear in any obvious way (nor how they differ). Reddit has a somewhat dated discussion, but the info there is completely unreliable (as is most of what I find on Reddit ... PS: I hate Reddit).

It would be great if you or Sparrow (or wSkeever) could shine a light on this really obvious discrepancy. I think it would clear up a lot of confusion and prevent people from running both or deciding on one or the other.

PS: This came up in my realization that @Mousetick seems to be using SoS and cannot get snow on vanilla firewood meshes, due to NiAlphaProperty ... BDS doesn't have this issue, BTW.

I have to look at wSkeever's mod to see what is and isn't compatible. If their mod is doing things the old way that BDS did, then it's technically compatible, though may be a bit redundant..or they may compliment one another. The point is, I don't know because I have never looked at his mod. I'll have to dive into it to see.

[Navih]

I was performing a brand new clean install (no settings changes or other addons); it seems that Better Dynamic Snow has been updated recently (22 July 2022 to 3.5.0) resulting in the following error during DynDOLODx64 generation. (The issue did not show up in LOOT, or while frametesting before generating LODs unfortunately ).

Quote

[01:55] Error: Unresolved FormID [1B00FFD4] Better Dynamic Snow SE.esp might be the wrong version. Error in Step Patch - Conflict Resolution.esp [REFR:000D3B98] (places [1B00FFD4] < Error: Could not be resolved 1 >NAME - Base in GRUP Cell Temporary Children of NightgateInnExterior01 [CELL:0000905D] (in Tamriel "Skyrim" [WRLD:0000003C] at 17,11))

Upon rolling back BDS to 3.4.0, DynDOLOD didn't fall the first hurdle and completed successfully .

Anyways, I thought that might be useful for folks to know. (I hope I've posted this in the right place, sorry if it isn't )

[Mousetick]

22 hours ago, z929669 said:

It would be great if you or Sparrow (or wSkeever) could shine a light on this really obvious discrepancy. I think it would clear up a lot of confusion and prevent people from running both or deciding on one or the other.

From SoS' FAQ:

Quote

Q: Is this compatible with other snow shader mod?
A: No. This is not compatible with BDS2, or BDS3, or any thing similar.

Q: Does this mod change anything other than snow shader?
A: No. It doesn't change snow landscape textures, or snow drifts, or footprints on snow, or snowy weather, or ice magic, or anything else.

Q: Is this compatible with NSUTR?
A: No. This mod already removes snow from under roofs.

The main differences that I know of between SoS and others:

• It uses a non-single pass (which makes it a multipass I guess?) shader. No idea how that translates in practical terms, whether it's better or worse.
• It uses a very small plugin that doesn't edit any reference in the world, so it's compatible with any mod that edits the world. Compared to BDS for instance, which edits several hundreds references, and so requires patches with other mods, and workarounds for large-reference bugs.

[TechAngel85]

3 hours ago, Mousetick said:

From SoS' FAQ:

The main differences that I know of between SoS and others:

• It uses a non-single pass (which makes it a multipass I guess?) shader. No idea how that translates in practical terms, whether it's better or worse.
• It uses a very small plugin that doesn't edit any reference in the world, so it's compatible with any mod that edits the world. Compared to BDS for instance, which edits several hundreds references, and so requires patches with other mods, and workarounds for large-reference bugs.

So SoS (we need to come up with a better acronym. SoS has been taken for years and years and every time I see it I read the original...Schlongs of Skyrim )...anyway, Simplicity is basically a light version of BDS, while BDS is more complete. That's all I'm reading. In other words, I could take the extras out of BDS and basically be left with Simplicity.

BDS's edited reference exist because they are either the non-snowy version of the reference in a snowy region or because a snowy version doesn't exist in vanilla and BDS has added it so that those references would blend into the snowy environments. Simplicity sounds like it skips all that and it mainly just providing a handful for fixed meshes to support multi-pass. Multi-pass will not work with an unknown number of objects for whatever reason...Sparrow always took care of that so I'm not fully aware of single vs multi-pass on the snow shader. As for the large refs in BDS, they shouldn't be an issue for anyone as nothing has been touched that actually requires the large refs to be rebuilt (running the script provides no actual large ref data to the BDS plugin). What that means is the ESM only exists to switch them out, but if my understanding is correct they should be shown for all with or without DynDOLOD.

[TechAngel85]

The mod was updated with some installer changes and a few fixes. Wiki mod page has been updated for installer changes.

[Mercury71]

Found THIS mod today called "Better Dynamic Snow 2.11 - Definitive Edition"

According to author it looks the same as the original mod ingame but being more compatible.

Anyone here with more knowledge than me in this kind of mods might take a look.

 

[ButchDiavolo]

10 minutes ago, Mercury71 said:

Found THIS mod today called "Better Dynamic Snow 2.11 - Definitive Edition"

According to author it looks the same as the original mod ingame but being more compatible.

Anyone here with more knowledge than me in this kind of mods might take a look.

 

@TechAngel85 might want to have a look.

[TechAngel85]

On 3/10/2024 at 6:51 AM, ButchDiavolo said:

@TechAngel85 might want to have a look.

Looks like a re-imagined version of BDS that uses Better Object Swapper and PO3's Papyrus Extender. Whereas BDS does all this in the plugin, my guess is that mod's plugin mainly houses new references; which BOS uses to swap references to snowy versions. Papyrus Extender is used because they are applying a Material Shader with a script to items that you couldn't typically apply a shader to, like furniture. That's going to be the main differences. It doesn't need patches because BOS is swapping out reference at runtime. It's a clever way to design a BDS variant and should be a good alternative to anyone running with Better Object Swapper in their setups.

Full disclosure, I didn't look at the plugin or run the mod. It's just my guess from looking at the files.

 

[CaptainKumquat]

Late as usual.

Yeah, I have never heard of any of that, so don't know what to say.

I did come across this that was posted by T4 last year. He seems to be recommending use of BDS 3 now, I guess? I assume Complex Parallax is the Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM) technique that is better than regular parallax, but it looks like I'll need to provide 3 versions of Enhanced Rocks and Mountains now instead of 2. *grumbles* No one has asked me though, so I assume it's confusing to the average user. You may want to run BDS 3.0 through this script though and create a POM version of that, from what I can tell.

T4's article and script mod link below:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/5172

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/96777/?