DynDOLOD 3 - Is This As Good As Trees Get?

[z929669]

4 hours ago, mooit said:

128 THANKS

144 makes them less blotchy, and direct/ambient brightness settings handle color. The defaults are usually ok, but ambient can be lowered and direct raised to lend more color variation to match Level0. Works with either Billboard1 or Billboard4.

[mooit]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

144 makes them less blotchy, and direct/ambient brightness settings handle color. The defaults are usually ok, but ambient can be lowered and direct raised to lend more color variation to match Level0. Works with either Billboard1 or Billboard4.

Thanks

[mooit]

I put TreeMSAlphaThreshold on 144, standing in the same spot at Whiterun, looking at the trees off in the far distance and mountains, they still look the same/blotchy.

I put red boxes around some different areas, like on the left, where these trees are even closer distance, and still look blotchy.

 

P.S. I'm using EVT and for this screen shot, I had the Billboard brightness on -5, notice how bright looking a lot of the pine trees are, like a lime green color, I have to use like -7 to make them look more natural...

Edited June 29, 2022 by mooit

[Phlunder]

I have to agree that a TreeMSAlphaThreshold of 144 really works well, so thanks to z929669 for the suggestion. But its mostly visible in lower mip map steps. At the distance you view those trees (LOD8-16) you only see much higher mip map steps, which alpha threshold/coverage will lead to a different outcome in terms of visuals appearance. I also think the lighting changes you did were too much, maybe tone it down a bit or revert to defaults of TexGen.

[z929669]

7 hours ago, mooit said:

I put TreeMSAlphaThreshold on 144, standing in the same spot at Whiterun, looking at the trees off in the far distance and mountains, they still look the same/blotchy.

I put red boxes around some different areas, like on the left, where these trees are even closer distance, and still look blotchy.

P.S. I'm using EVT and for this screen shot, I had the Billboard brightness on -5, notice how bright looking a lot of the pine trees are, like a lime green color, I have to use like -7 to make them look more natural...

You have Billboard 4 really close. Test with this in SkyrimPrefs.INI (same as BethINI in Step guide):

[TerrainManager]
bShowLODInEditor=1
fBlockLevel0Distance=57344.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=147456.0000
fBlockMaximumDistance=327680.0000
fSplitDistanceMult=1.0000
fTreeLoadDistance=0.0000

Set your Billboard brightness in DynDOLOD back to default 0.

Before you run TexGen, change ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\DynDOLOD\Presets\DynDOLOD_SSE_TexGen_Default.ini like so (first will impact Billboard1 at LOD16, and second will impact Billboard4 at LOD8 (which are too bright):

TreeBillboards=1
TreeBillboardsDirect=175
TreeBillboardsDirectLR=0
TreeBillboardsDirectFB=0
TreeBillboardsDirectTB=-100
TreeBillboardsAmbient=75

TreeHDBillboards=1
TreeHDBillboardsDirect=100
TreeHDBillboardsDirectLR=0
TreeHDBillboardsDirectFB=0
TreeHDBillboardsDirectTB=-100
TreeHDBillboardsAmbient=85

This should make distant billboards a bit brighter and more variant and closer billboards less bright with a bit less brightness variation.

Also, try lowering slightly default (FlatLODVertexColor=0.55) in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini (but not at same time as the above changes, or you won't know the cause of the change for better/worse ... this setting will conflate with previous).

It seems like you may have changed this from default (FlatLODColorVariance=0.1), since your billboards vary wildly from too dark to too bright.

4 hours ago, Phlunder said:

I have to agree that a TreeMSAlphaThreshold of 144 really works well, so thanks to z929669 for the suggestion. But its mostly visible in lower mip map steps. At the distance you view those trees (LOD8-16) you only see much higher mip map steps, which alpha threshold/coverage will lead to a different outcome in terms of visuals appearance. /snip

Yes, this is true, but it can help with the blotchiness when set just right (but it can also cause them to change shape with higher mips). It works really well with HLT and AA billboards to set it a bit higher than the defaults ... I run with 144 by default (EVT).

I would try a value like 172 next so see if that helps or play with this setting further using higher/lower values.

[maramsp]

quick question.

Does it help at all if putting dyndolod on an ssd or m2 drive, and having skyrim also on such one?

Or is dyndolod purely cpu speed limited?

Was wondering this, cause i own both normal drives, ssd drives and one m2 drive

[z929669]

34 minutes ago, maramsp said:

quick question.

Does it help at all if putting dyndolod on an ssd or m2 drive, and having skyrim also on such one?

Or is dyndolod purely cpu speed limited?

Was wondering this, cause i own both normal drives, ssd drives and one m2 drive

'Help' in terms of what, generation time? probably not. The limiting factor is most likely CPU and system RAM. Probably also GPU clock/RAM in some cases. I run a pair of RAID striped M.2, and my read/write speeds are as fast as it gets, but it still takes upwards of 40 min to gen full DynDOLOD with terrain/occlusion with a fill mod build.

Game loading, system boot, and file transfer times are definitely better though.

[maramsp]

Here it takes 58 minutes with occlusion.

And also having a raid setup here, but my m.2's are not.

I do have 32gb ram and a ryzen 7 1800x, so its still pretty decent still.

Nevertheless thank you

[TechAngel85]

6 hours ago, maramsp said:

Here it takes 58 minutes with occlusion.

And also having a raid setup here, but my m.2's are not.

I do have 32gb ram and a ryzen 7 1800x, so its still pretty decent still.

Nevertheless thank you

For some reason I think Intel CPUs perform better vs AMD on this front. I haven't regen my LODs in forever, but I remember getting much better times vs Z. I could be misremembering, though, as it was quite a while ago.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, TechAngel85 said:

For some reason I think Intel CPUs perform better vs AMD on this front. I haven't regen my LODs in forever, but I remember getting much better times vs Z. I could be misremembering, though, as it was quite a while ago.

Its the NVIDIA GPU tech (CUDA, IIRC) that Radeon doesn't have I think that made Texconv much faster for faster TexGen processing. This is no longer an issue with latest DynDOLOD alpha releases.

[mooit]

On 6/29/2022 at 3:15 AM, maramsp said:

quick question.

Does it help at all if putting dyndolod on an ssd or m2 drive, and having skyrim also on such one?

Or is dyndolod purely cpu speed limited?

Was wondering this, cause i own both normal drives, ssd drives and one m2 drive

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by mooit

[mooit]

@z929669 I made all the changes you mentioned, except I didn't change FlatLODVertexColor= as you mentioned to test first.

Trees still look the same, to lime green bright, and same blotchy distant look.

Hmm

 

The trees on the far distance left, in the green box, notice the dark and light colors, hmm, shouldn't this look more uniform, is that what you meant about blotchy, or the trees straight ahead in the view, in the red boxes, the farthest distance out in the mountains, with no definition to them, or is that the blotchy you meant?

THANKS

P.S. FlatLODVertexColor=0.55 - is on the default setting, I didn't change it. So what test it on?

Edited June 30, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

1 hour ago, mooit said:

@z929669 I made all the changes you mentioned, except I didn't change FlatLODVertexColor= as you mentioned to test first.

Trees still look the same, to lime green bright, and same blotchy distant look.

Hmm

The trees on the far distance left, in the green box, notice the dark and light colors, hmm, shouldn't this look more uniform, is that what you meant about blotchy, or the trees straight ahead in the view, in the red boxes, the farthest distance out in the mountains, with no definition to them, or is that the blotchy you meant?

THANKS

P.S. FlatLODVertexColor=0.55 - is on the default setting, I didn't change it. So what test it on?

I'd say it's a very different result from your first image:

You also have a lot more trees in the distance than I'd expect, so something is definitely amiss that I cannot speak to. I also don't see any difference in your Terrainmanager settings.

This is my result using the tree settings recommended in the Step guide with EVT Lush and the Step ENB. This is from just to the north of the spot your screens were taken and looking west like you:

So you have some INI settings or mods that need fixing. You should revert all DynDOLOD settings back to default, and use BethINI exactly as the guide mentions. I recommend saving your current INIs and removing them entirely. Then run Skyrim from the Steam launcher to reset to default INIs. Then follow our BethINI recommendations. Then install EVT Lush as the guide mentions. Then run DynDOLOD as the guide specifies.

I'm afraid there are too many unknown variables in your current build for me to speculate further.

MO loads your INIs from your profile, and BethINI expects them there as well. I'm betting none of this is configured as we might expect, since you are using MO in a non-standard way. I'd recommend strictly following our guide using our methods so that you can see for yourself what is possible. Otherwise, you will need to independently troubleshoot what is happening in your setup. All I know is that your results are completely unexpected based on what you have shared thus far (other than the impact of the settings I recommended, which is expected).

[mooit]

Sorry, my bad for not bringing this up in the beginning.

I'm using Whiterun Forest Borealis;

Whiterun Forest Borealis at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)

I'm assuming now, this mod isn't working good with DYNDOLOD3.

I really like seeing more tree density, otherwise it looks quite naked... LOL

Anyone know anything about Whiterun Forest Borealis and DynDOLOD3 support?

I'll remove the mod and run DynDOLOD over.

THANKS

[z929669]

See my previous post. I edited it quite a bit after posting, because I wanted to compare the images before speculating further.

I think that mod is only placing more of the vanilla trees, so it should work basically the same in terms of LOD (and kill performance in the meantime!).