Happy Little Trees (by T4gtr34um3r)

[z929669]

50 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

No I didn't try with with CL brighter snow because at the time I wasn't aware of its existence. I shall try it when I get the chance.

Any tree that have snow on them, painted or piled, or on the trunks. Look at the texture atlases in textures/landscape/trees/Northern Hemispheres, e.g. DeadAtlas.dds, PineAtlas.dds, SnowBark_Atlas.dds. 

I suspected as much and will do. Thanks for confirming. Saves me a step. I will load up HLT over the next week or so and do some texture work color matching that with CL (regular and brighter) as well as Hyperborian and vanilla (no need to post additional screens).

T4 is fine with me posting an update/compat file for this and some of the other issues reported. None of this work will impact LOD models as long as none of the models with LOD imposters need modification (doesn't seem to be the case).

[z929669]

Beta update with fixes uploaded to Nexus

[Mousetick]

I recently updated from 1.01 main to beta3 update - yes, I'm very late to the party  Nice work, Z. Thanks for fixing all the bugs and providing all the snow variants. 

You may be interested in one more bark discrepancy I found. The bark texture for snowy wood pile on the left is still vanilla:

There are 2 textures that would need tweaking:
textures/landscape/trees/treepineforestbarkcompsnow.dds
textures/landscape/trees/treepineforestbarkcompsnowl.dds

Let me know if you want me to write a bug report on Nexus.

[z929669]

14 hours ago, Mousetick said:

I recently updated from 1.01 main to beta3 update - yes, I'm very late to the party  Nice work, Z. Thanks for fixing all the bugs and providing all the snow variants. 

You may be interested in one more bark discrepancy I found. The bark texture for snowy wood pile on the left is still vanilla:

There are 2 textures that would need tweaking:
textures/landscape/trees/treepineforestbarkcompsnow.dds
textures/landscape/trees/treepineforestbarkcompsnowl.dds

Let me know if you want me to write a bug report on Nexus.

Thanks You can copy this out there if you like so I don't forget about it.

[z929669]

On 5/29/2022 at 7:06 PM, Mousetick said:

I recently updated from 1.01 main to beta3 update - yes, I'm very late to the party  Nice work, Z. Thanks for fixing all the bugs and providing all the snow variants. 

You may be interested in one more bark discrepancy I found. The bark texture for snowy wood pile on the left is still vanilla:

There are 2 textures that would need tweaking:
textures/landscape/trees/treepineforestbarkcompsnow.dds
textures/landscape/trees/treepineforestbarkcompsnowl.dds

Let me know if you want me to write a bug report on Nexus.

Updated this one to v1.02. This removes the deleted plugin reference in treescale.esm and fixes the snowy firewood you posted previously. It also fixes a couple of other bugs reported. See changelog for details.

Also updated the Add-On mod, as there were two problem LOD models in those..

[Mousetick]

I just updated to 1.04. Thanks for all the updates, Z.

I hate to be a pain in the firewood once again, but I'd like to share a couple of issues I've encountered. They're not new, but I didn't want to report anything before I could spend the time to test and investigate, that is until now. All tests were made using 1.04.

The following is quite long. Apologies for the flood of information, but I'd rather err on the side of too much than not enough. 

 

1. "Shiny" bark textures on firewood piles painted with Snow material.

First let's see what we're going to be looking at:

• FirewoodPileLarge01_LightSN: firewoodpilelarge01.nif using snowy bark texture and painted with Snow material shader.

• FirewoodPileMedium01_LightSN: firewoodpilemedium01.nif using non-snowy bark texture and painted with Snow material shader.

Next, comparison screenshots showing different combinations of meshes and textures, and resulting more or less shiny bark. Vanilla/HLT mixed combinations look weird due to UV mismatch but they're provided for completeness. The shots were taken using Cathedral Landscapes' snow shader, Cathedral Snow 'Brighter' snow textures, and HLT's 'Alternate Snow Texture 2' snowy textures. From left to right:

Vanilla mesh + textures > HLT mesh + textures > Vanilla mesh + HLT textures > HLT mesh + Vanilla textures

The shiny effect can be more or less pronounced depending on weather/ambient lighting. (Differences of direct lighting in the shots above were caused by a guard who kept walking behind me with a torch in hand.)

There are too many factors involved and I'm not knowledgeable enough to pinpoint the cause of the issue, but I suspect there may be some bad interaction between the HLT bark textures and the snow shading that is applied to it. I should note that the issue is present with the non-snowy (medium pile) and snowy variants (large pile) of the bark textures, as can be seen in the screenshots above, and that in my experience the bark doesn't look shiny on "normal" piles (i.e. not snow-shaded).

 

2. Compatibility of firewood pile meshes with Simplicity of Snow.

Simplicity of Snow is the snow shader I'm actually using in-game, but I disabled it in the previous tests above to eliminate one more factor and avoid conflating multiple issues.

The following screenshot shows that snow is not painted on the wood:

Cathedral Snow Shader > SoS Snow Shader

The issue is caused by HLT's firewood meshes which have a NiAlphaProperty. As explained on SoS' compatibility section:

Quote

.Nifs with BSTriShape/NiTriShape nodes with NiAlphaProperty will not have snow cover.
If the NiAlphaProperty property was added by mistake on a mesh that doesn't actually have transparency, just remove the NiAlphaProperty property.

After removing the NiAlphaProperty in NifSkope, the results are correct:

Before > After

Is there a specific reason that the wood needs to have transparency in the HLT firewood meshes? If not, could this be removed so they can work with SoS?

 

---

And now for something completely different... or is it? 

Have you seen this newly released mod: Happy Little Shrubs? It's a set of shrub meshes designed to work with HLT's textures.

Check it out: Vanilla > Happy Little Shrubs

Seeing the mod on Nexus got me excited, I thought it was a great idea, but after checking it in-game, I'm going to wait until it's improved. My concerns are:

• For some unfathomable reason, the shrub replacers are all much smaller than vanilla. There is too large of a gap in size between the shrubs and the grown trees, especially if using the larger trees.
• The snowy variants don't look too good, especially up-close. Trying to UV-map the original textures onto the shrubs must be hard and the results are pretty messy IMHO.

 

That's all. For now... anyway... 

Thanks for reading.

[z929669]

21 hours ago, Mousetick said:

I just updated to 1.04. Thanks for all the updates, Z.

I hate to be a pain in the firewood once again, but I'd like to share a couple of issues I've encountered. They're not new, but I didn't want to report anything before I could spend the time to test and investigate, that is until now. All tests were made using 1.04.

The following is quite long. Apologies for the flood of information, but I'd rather err on the side of too much than not enough. 

 

1. "Shiny" bark textures on firewood piles painted with Snow material.

First let's see what we're going to be looking at:

• FirewoodPileLarge01_LightSN: firewoodpilelarge01.nif using snowy bark texture and painted with Snow material shader.

• FirewoodPileMedium01_LightSN: firewoodpilemedium01.nif using non-snowy bark texture and painted with Snow material shader.

Next, comparison screenshots showing different combinations of meshes and textures, and resulting more or less shiny bark. Vanilla/HLT mixed combinations look weird due to UV mismatch but they're provided for completeness. The shots were taken using Cathedral Landscapes' snow shader, Cathedral Snow 'Brighter' snow textures, and HLT's 'Alternate Snow Texture 2' snowy textures. From left to right:

Vanilla mesh + textures > HLT mesh + textures > Vanilla mesh + HLT textures > HLT mesh + Vanilla textures

The shiny effect can be more or less pronounced depending on weather/ambient lighting. (Differences of direct lighting in the shots above were caused by a guard who kept walking behind me with a torch in hand.)

There are too many factors involved and I'm not knowledgeable enough to pinpoint the cause of the issue, but I suspect there may be some bad interaction between the HLT bark textures and the snow shading that is applied to it. I should note that the issue is present with the non-snowy (medium pile) and snowy variants (large pile) of the bark textures, as can be seen in the screenshots above, and that in my experience the bark doesn't look shiny on "normal" piles (i.e. not snow-shaded).

 

2. Compatibility of firewood pile meshes with Simplicity of Snow.

Simplicity of Snow is the snow shader I'm actually using in-game, but I disabled it in the previous tests above to eliminate one more factor and avoid conflating multiple issues.

The following screenshot shows that snow is not painted on the wood:

Cathedral Snow Shader > SoS Snow Shader

The issue is caused by HLT's firewood meshes which have a NiAlphaProperty. As explained on SoS' compatibility section:

After removing the NiAlphaProperty in NifSkope, the results are correct:

Before > After

Is there a specific reason that the wood needs to have transparency in the HLT firewood meshes? If not, could this be removed so they can work with SoS?

 

---

And now for something completely different... or is it? 

Have you seen this newly released mod: Happy Little Shrubs? It's a set of shrub meshes designed to work with HLT's textures.

Check it out: Vanilla > Happy Little Shrubs

Seeing the mod on Nexus got me excited, I thought it was a great idea, but after checking it in-game, I'm going to wait until it's improved. My concerns are:

• For some unfathomable reason, the shrub replacers are all much smaller than vanilla. There is too large of a gap in size between the shrubs and the grown trees, especially if using the larger trees.
• The snowy variants don't look too good, especially up-close. Trying to UV-map the original textures onto the shrubs must be hard and the results are pretty messy IMHO.

 

That's all. For now... anyway... 

Thanks for reading.

FIrst: Based on those screens, the only "shininess" I see is due to the vanilla textures. The HLT stuff doesn't look shiny to me where vanilla textures aren't in play. Looking in game, I also don't see the issue.

The firewood meshes are vanilla with UV tweaks ... that's all. I think the issue may be with the alpha of the diffuse. Eliminating that should resolve if you want to give it a try to test. These are in the trees, so I kept it for the firewood. Otherwise, removing the NiAlphaProperty or lowering the alpha threshold to like 50 would probably also resolve. This is an issue with stumps at Fort Dunstad for same reason (although the UV on that needs fixing if the NiAlphaproperty is removed).

I will likely remove the diffuse alpha and the NiAlphaProperty from the mesh. T4 is back working on the mod though, so I don't want to 'collide' with any changes he's making.

I cannot speak to the shrubs. Some dude recently asked for perms to use HLT assets for that one I think.

---

@Mousetick The NiAlphaProperty is only an issue with SoS. BDS works as expected in my testing. I don't know yet why these meshes have it, because removing it doesn't cause any noticeable clipping (as is the case in other situations I have tested (see my explanation in the recently reported HLT Bug "Tree snow stump tops")

---

Tested a few things:

HLT+BDS (textues with alpha, NiAlphaProperty exists)  >>  HLT+BDS (textues wo alpha, NiAlphaProperty exists)    >>  HLT+BDS (textues with alpha, NiAlphaProperty removed) 

There is no difference I can see

This is clear weather at about 10 AM with sun at about 2 o'clock ... I suppose there is some shininess, but not really 'shiny', IMO

[Mousetick]

On 7/24/2022 at 9:55 PM, z929669 said:

Tested a few things:

HLT+BDS (textues with alpha, NiAlphaProperty exists)  >>  HLT+BDS (textues wo alpha, NiAlphaProperty exists)    >>  HLT+BDS (textues with alpha, NiAlphaProperty removed) 

There is no difference I can see

To clarify:

• The NiAlphaProperty is on the wood nodes, not the bark. So it has no bearing when looking at and comparing effects on bark.
• These all look "shiny" to me. Maybe shiny is not the right qualifier, I don't know how to describe it well. It looks like the bark is made of metallic material, not of wooden material. Compared to the wood pieces, which are also covered in snow: those look 'dull' in comparison, not reflective, as would be expected of wooden material.

[TechAngel85]

3 hours ago, Mousetick said:

To clarify:

• The NiAlphaProperty is on the wood nodes, not the bark. So it has no bearing when looking at and comparing effects on bark.
• These all look "shiny" to me. Maybe shiny is not the right qualifier, I don't know how to describe it well. It looks like the bark is made of metallic material, not of wooden material. Compared to the wood pieces, which are also covered in snow: those look 'dull' in comparison, not reflective, as would be expected of wooden material.

That sounds like it's just the specular being too high on the mesh.

[z929669]

3 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

That sounds like it's just the specular being too high on the mesh.

Specular/glossiness and all other parameters on the mesh were vanilla, and changing them to same values for HLT trunk bark meshes shows no difference (glossiness reduced from 80 to 10, emmissive multiple reduced from 1 to 0). In fact, looking at the vanilla stuff shows similar 'shininess' if you look closely at the bark in small areas (the contours of these barks are flatter) ... I think it's the normal maps personally. No alpha on those. I can test, but I doubt T4 will want to change his normals.

[DoubleYou]

NiAlphaProperty is required for textures used that contain alpha. If the texture has alpha, and the mesh doesn't, it will appear bugged in game in some situations, but not all situations. If you remove the alpha from the texture, you can remove the alpha from the mesh, but consider that there may be a reason for the alpha on it. If Simplicity of Snow cannot handle alpha, then I would consider that to be an issue with the use of that mod over BDS. It looks like you are trading invisible conflicts for visible ones using that mod.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, DoubleYou said:

NiAlphaProperty is required for textures used that contain alpha. If the texture has alpha, and the mesh doesn't, it will appear bugged in game in some situations, but not all situations. If you remove the alpha from the texture, you can remove the alpha from the mesh, but consider that there may be a reason for the alpha on it. If Simplicity of Snow cannot handle alpha, then I would consider that to be an issue with the use of that mod over BDS. It looks like you are trading invisible conflicts for visible ones using that mod.

For some meshes, NiAlphaProperty is definitely required to get the effects; however, for the firewood NIFs, I can see no relevance whatsoever, since the mesh polys align with the vanilla textures in terms of UV mapping and the physical dimensions of the meshes. If someone were to create a replacer with a sloppy alpha opacity, it would probably still look okay on firewood.

Contrast that with some other meshes that are basically relying on the texture alpha opacity to look right, because the mesh is basically wrong:

 

... this mesh actually uses textures\landscape\trees\treepineforestbarkcompsnow.dds as an alternate for this, and since that texture has no alpha opacity (it's bark), it looks wrong. This is something T4 will need to fix by either removing the texture set (and letting mods like BDS handle snow), or create a proper alternate snowy texture with proper alpha cutout.

PS: My guess is that this mesh was derived from vanilla, as I doubt the MA would have done it. I don't know though.

[TechAngel85]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

Specular/glossiness and all other parameters on the mesh were vanilla, and changing them to same values for HLT trunk bark meshes shows no difference (glossiness reduced from 80 to 10, emmissive multiple reduced from 1 to 0). In fact, looking at the vanilla stuff shows similar 'shininess' if you look closely at the bark in small areas (the contours of these barks are flatter) ... I think it's the normal maps personally. No alpha on those. I can test, but I doubt T4 will want to change his normals.

Yeah, no alpha = white alpha = full strength specular.

[z929669]

On 7/26/2022 at 8:45 AM, Mousetick said:

To clarify:

• The NiAlphaProperty is on the wood nodes, not the bark. So it has no bearing when looking at and comparing effects on bark.
• These all look "shiny" to me. Maybe shiny is not the right qualifier, I don't know how to describe it well. It looks like the bark is made of metallic material, not of wooden material. Compared to the wood pieces, which are also covered in snow: those look 'dull' in comparison, not reflective, as would be expected of wooden material.

Well, I was wrong. Adding specularity to normal alpha changes nothing on firewood or trees. I did change from using a copy of the pine atlases for specific barks to treepineforestbarkcomp*.dds to using the pine atlases directly and revising the UVs. I think this looks much better and ads some realistic variation as well:

Also fixed the stump problem by getting rid of the senseless alternative texture set that vanilla applies to treepineforestcutstump02 using same treepineforestbarkcomp*.dds. Why would the cut part of a stump have bark on it anyway?? BDS takes care of the snow, and the alpha cutout of the default texture works fine:

before  >>  after

[z929669]

Mod updated to v2.02 with all bugs/issues addressed. Theoretically, it's in a polished state at this point.