SE Guide 1.0.0 with DynDOLOD 3.00

[z929669]

Thought I'd share a couple of nice shots. My grass texture, density, and draw settings are overly high, as the FPS indicates. Pre-caching grass took me about 1:45, and just doing this with adjustments to No Grass In Objects (as described by sheson in the 3.00 OP2) looks great as well (adding that to our current DynDOLOD 2.xx setup). I had my grass draw distances at BetINI 'Ultra' default, so if using LOD for precached grass, I am probably defeating the purpose. I think using short draw distances corresponding to lower-than-ultra LOD fade settings would basically be the same look with much better performance.

https://imgbox.com/g/kKlpc3UMT7

Terrain gen settings are from the guide but for the mips and steepness at LOD 4, which I have activated. sheson had mentioned somewhere that LOD 4 mips were used in fade at LOD 4. No evidence that it matters.

I suspect TexGen at 512 or even the default 256 would be almost identical to what I used. I also think leaving the default Units per pixel at 8.00 would be wise.

The DynDOLOD Ultra tick probably costs a lot. I will post back once I know more.

 

UPDATE 4-5-2021

I re-ran TexGen and DynDOLOD 3.00 again using lower settings:

Gallery link above contains new screens for comparison. From left: 2 latest screens for lower settings, 2 earlier screens for higher settings.

As can be seen, my FPS and VRAM did not benefit at all from the lower settings. Maybe some benefit for system RAM, but I never trust RAM or VRAM use at any point in time, since they are allotted dynamically and are not really comparable across game sessions.

I will run again at high settings and begin some comparisons for LOD quality optimizations.

[TechAngel85]

Shots look good, as do most of them that I've seen with v3.0. Haven't had any time to play with it.

[Mercury71]

On 4/4/2021 at 10:10 AM, z929669 said:

Thought I'd share a couple of nice shots. My grass texture, density, and draw settings are overly high, as the FPS indicates. Pre-caching grass took me about 1:45, and just doing this with adjustments to No Grass In Objects (as described by sheson in the 3.00 OP2) looks great as well (adding that to our current DynDOLOD 2.xx setup). I had my grass draw distances at BetINI 'Ultra' default, so if using LOD for precached grass, I am probably defeating the purpose. I think using short draw distances corresponding to lower-than-ultra LOD fade settings would basically be the same look with much better performance.

https://imgbox.com/g/kKlpc3UMT7

Terrain gen settings are from the guide but for the mips and steepness at LOD 4, which I have activated. sheson had mentioned somewhere that LOD 4 mips were used in fade at LOD 4. No evidence that it matters.

I suspect TexGen at 512 or even the default 256 would be almost identical to what I used. I also think leaving the default Units per pixel at 8.00 would be wise.

The DynDOLOD Ultra tick probably costs a lot. I will post back once I know more.

How did you go about? Ran the grass patcher and then xLODGen, TexGen, DynDOLOD, Occlusion just like in the guide? Any changes?

[z929669]

I followed exactly as instructed in the DynDOLOD 3.00 OP1 and OP2 posts. I used the settings corresponding to using "DynDOLODGrassMode = 2" in No Grass in Objects mod. Otherwise, my run settings are as posted (basically mirroring what we have in the current SE 1.0.0 guide where there is overlap).

Ran Terrain and Occlusion as in SE 1.0.0 guide but with 3.00 resources and pre-gen grass (which gets placed into SKSE64 > /grass in my setup).

This config was quite taxing on my system, which is high-end (see sig). My limitation is only my GPU, which is pretty much near top of the line for Radeon, but Nvidia hardware probably is better. I am also running some 4K stuff that I probably don't need to be running. I'm only mildly overclocking my system and not overclocking my GPU beyond it's base config OOtB.

I am regenning LOD again now with lower settings and will post once I have data finalized.

[z929669]

OP updated

[Mercury71]

My result with (if i understand it right) the same settings. Generating grass cache took only 34 minutes.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Mercury71

[z929669]

So since your grass precache took only 1/3 the time it took me, I must assume that skyrim INI view distance and settings in addition to No Grass in Objects (NGiO) and DynDOLOD 3.00 INI settings play a factor. I have turned off NGiO 'master' grass fade/distance/render settings in favor of letting skyrim INI keep that control. I have also set NGiO 'use' precache grass settings to True. My relevant BethINI distance settings:

 

EDIT:

1. What kind of FPS are you getting when you are taking that shot?
2. What are your skyrim INI settings (i.e., BethINI)
3. If you restore your TexGen and DynDOLOD 2.xx mods and resources (and properly reinitialize DynDOLOD) with pre-cached grass, so you see any difference than with DynDOLOD 3.00? I ask because the precached grass is still in effect, and it also improves 2.xx as far as I can tell.

[Mercury71]

I used the STEP 1.0 BethINI settings to the point (only different i dont clamp fps to 60, i have a 165 monitor and like to run SSE at around 80 fps with ENB).

I run a Nvidia RTX 2080Ti 11 Gb, Intel  Core i7 3,7GHz, 32 Gb RAM... What matters most? GPU or CPU when precaching grass?

In GrassControlConfig i set values: OverwriteGrassDistance = 10000 and OverwriteGrassFadeRange = 5000

[z929669]

18 minutes ago, Mercury71 said:

I used the STEP 1.0 BethINI settings to the point (only different i dont clamp fps to 60, i have a 165 monitor and like to run SSE at around 80 fps with ENB).

I run a Nvidia RTX 2080Ti 11 Gb, Intel  Core i7 3,7GHz, 32 Gb RAM... What matters most? GPU or CPU when precaching grass?

In GrassControlConfig i set values: OverwriteGrassDistance = 10000 and OverwriteGrassFadeRange = 5000

See my appended Qs in previous post ...

GPU is the limiting factor, and your GPU is better than mine, so that explains some/most of it. What i7 are you running?
I think my grass settings are a good deal higher than yours set via NGiO, but I am not sure how that thing works, so that's why I disabled all of those and let BethINI handle it:

OverwriteGrassDistance = -1
OverwriteGrassFadeRange = -1
OverwriteMinGrassSize = -1

Almost forgot:

What monitor resolution are you running? I cap FPS at my monitor refresh (144) and at 60 in load/menu screens. Outdoors, I get between 30 and 144 FPS, depending on where I am. Indoors, I am always maxed out. Monitor res is 2560x1440

NOTE on precaching grass: While I ran this for about 1:45, the game loaded to a loading screen, and I had my Radeon metrics monitor up. Game restarted about 20x and GPU was working hard at some points, maxing fan and clock. No issues though.

[Mercury71]

My CPU is Intel Core i7 3,70 GHZ Coffe Lake  14nm, so it has 6 cores

My monitor resolution is just like yours 2560x1440 and can run at 165Hz but i run it at 144. So i get around 80-90 outdoors (less in battle) and up to 144 indoor.

I also lowered grass density from 100 to 80 in dyndolod ini as stated by Sheson in his first post in 3.0 thread.

 

[z929669]

ok, so your lower grass density will impact length of time to pregen, but possibly so will your grass distance and LOD distance settings (I'm guessing here). All things being equal, you should be able to generate in less time than me, but almost certainly not 1/3 of the time. I'd think like 4/5 or 3/4 or possibly even 2/3 would be more expected.

If you are getting 80 FPS when taking that shot, my guess is that this will go down a bit if you have 100% grass (like me) and possibly if you increase the distance settings similar to my own.

Would you mind pregenning with the settings I used to test at a time when convenient for you? No rush at all. Just changing grass density to 100 and your INI settings and to mirror my own as I described should be all that is necessary. If you are also running SE 1.0.0, we don't need to consider mod diffs for objects, trees, and grass. This will give us a "high-end GPU" grass pregen baseline for the 'ideal' ultra settings. I will search for changes that get my FPS up to 45+ or 60 if possible, but first I need to get my performance with 2.xx DynDOLOD and maybe tweak some things to get to the 45+ lower threshold outdoors!

[z929669]

I played around with distance INI settings for LOD and grass, and reducing to "BethINI Low" quality from "BethINI Ultra" had almost no perceptible impact on my FPS. Same for shadows and a couple of other INI tweaks. I finally recovered about 10 FPS by reducing the LOD distance settings of DynDOLOD via the MCM menu (using defaults now with extended LOD16 and tree view distances). Previously, I had doubled all distances for LOD levels and trees, so going back to default for LOD4/8 gave me some frames back without affecting in-game quality.

[Mercury71]

Have not found the energy to rebuild grass cache and LODs yet, but did e few simple videos...

No ENB:

Truth ENB:

Truth ENB Locked 60 fps:

 

[z929669]

No worries, but if you ever do rebuild grass cache, please do share details

Vids look good.

[RogueRim]

Hey guys, 

I've been trying to generate grass in my lods and failing for a few days now. I was wondering if you, z929669 or Mercury71, would be willing to help me troubleshoot?

I've been following the original posts step by step as best as I can. I'm kind of at a loss. I changed the two values in the dyndolod ini, and the 1 value in the grasscontrol ini. The texgen previewer is showing me grasses. First I successfully cache the grass in MO2 and send it a new mod. Then I run texgen, followed by dyndolod following z929669's settings, except I hit generate Object & tree, instead of just object as I don't have other tree lods. I put dyndolod .esm at top and .esp at bottom. 

If the details I've given here are insufficient, my discord is Travis#6644 if either of you gents could spare a few minutes. I can of course reply here as well. I would really appreciate any help at all at this point. Thanks!