DynDOLOD 3 - Is This As Good As Trees Get?

[mooit]

I looked at everything you posted, and made all the changes, and that is how it looked with the Whiterun Forest Borealis mod.

This is also with DynDOLOD3 Alpha 95

By the way, my TexGen zip archive is 75MB is it this small?

Yes I certainly have slight changes to my setup, but, it's not like it's going to break things, it's just finding the mods that play nicely with DynDOLOD is all I see going on at this point. Every other setting I have is properly done with Bethini, my INI files, xLODGen, TexGen, DynDOLOD, etc...

I'm removing Whiterun Forest Borealis and running DynDOLOD over to see how it looks, brb.

THANKS

Edited June 30, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

40 minutes ago, mooit said:

I looked at everything you posted, and made all the changes, and that is how it looked with the Whiterun Forest Borealis mod.

This is also with DynDOLOD3 Alpha 95

By the way, my TexGen zip archive is 75MB is it this small?

Yes I certainly have slight changes to my setup, but, it's not like it's going to break things, it's just finding the mods that play nicely with DynDOLOD is all I see going on at this point. Every other setting I have is properly done with Bethini, my INI files, xLODGen, TexGen, DynDOLOD, etc...

I'm removing Whiterun Forest Borealis and running DynDOLOD over to see how it looks, brb.

THANKS

TexGen output size is what it is depending on the LO.

As mentioned in this post, my advice for next step is to save out your game INIs somewhere, delete them from the source location (should be in MO profile, but I have no idea in your setup), reset them to default via Stem launcher, delete all files in ..\DynDOLOD\...\Presets\, and revert all changes in DynbDOLOD_SSE.ini (keep TexGen_SSE.ini alpha threshold change at 144). This gets you back to default INI settings that impact DynDOLOD.

Then run BethINI using 'Ultra' according to the guide instructions. This gets your game INIs in order with valid changes only.

Then disable all tree mods other than EVT Lush and configure/run DynDOLOD according to the guide instructions. This gets you an apples:apples so that we have a known baseline. My guess is that your trees will look just like mine less the ENB. Then you can post a screen as proof and what you don't like, and I can make reasonable recommendations to get you where you need to be.

Then you can consider that advice and revert to your old game INIs and DynDOLOD INIs as you see fit.

If you don't want to do all of this, then I have pointed to config tweaks that do have drastic impact on your LOD, and you can play with these until you optimize your result for how you want it.

[mooit]

Here's a screen shot now, much better. (This is without an ENB)

 

 

THANKS

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by mooit

[mooit]

I think I made a mistake with the EVT recommended with 'Lush', I used the lush small trees in the 'SE Custom Trees 2K.

I'm assuming when you said lush for EVT you meant to download 'Enhanced Vanilla Trees SE-Lush Trees'?

THANKS

Edited June 30, 2022 by mooit

[mooit]

Can TexGen_SSE.ini alpha threshold go above 144 to increase clarity, and if so, what increments would you change it by?

They still are a little blotchy, but not as bad as before.

THANKS

Edited June 30, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

3 hours ago, mooit said:

Can TexGen_SSE.ini alpha threshold go above 144 to increase clarity, and if so, what increments would you change it by?

They still are a little blotchy, but not as bad as before.

THANKS

That screen looks much better ... I would test threshold of 164 or so, but keep in mind that your aspens and other deciduous trees may not look so good if you go too high. You may want to try increasing direct lighting a bit and lowering ambient for Tree and HD Tree in TexGen to fine tune for consistency ... just a tad from defaults though. Maybe +10/-10, respectively. I have yet to fine tune this myself but was going to test that.

Any of the EVT flavors from the latest version should look good. Custom Trees uses lush meshes, but some texture variants may not play so nicely in LOD without more aggressive tweaks. I forget which ones offhand.

The Step ENB works nicely without making drastic changes. All the benefits of ENB without the crazy stuff. I will be pushing out an update of this though at next release of the guide, and it fixes many things, including the dark faces. You can use these tweaks for that:

[SUBSURFACESCATTERING]
IgnoreWeatherSystem=false
IgnoreWeatherSystemInterior=false

Amount=0.5
AmountInterior=0.5
EnableOldSSS=false
EnableSeparateInteriorParameters=true
EpidermalAmount=1.5
EpidermalAmountInterior=1.2
EpidermalDiffuseSaturation=0.15
EpidermalDiffuseSaturationInterior=0.05
EpidermalMix=0.1
EpidermalMixInterior=0.05
Quality=1.0
Radius=5.0
RadiusInterior=3.0
SubdermalAmount=1.0
SubdermalAmountInterior=1.0
SubdermalDiffuseSaturation=0.85
SubdermalDiffuseSaturationInterior=0.85
SubdermalMix=0.05
SubdermalMixInterior=0.02
SubdermalPhase=0.0
SubdermalPhaseInterior=0.0
SubdermalTranslucency=0.5
SubdermalTranslucencyInterior=0.5
SurfaceBrightness=1.6
SurfaceBrightnessInterior=1.1

 

[mooit]

Ok on the info...

THANKS

 

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by mooit

[mooit]

Well I'm almost there, but one odd thing I'm not sure what's causing this, the top half of the trees in the distance is brighter than the bottom half.

The only changes I made were to the TexGen_SSE.ini alpha threshold at 144 and these settings below.

 

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

 

I placed a red box around trees in the distance, if you look closely, you'll notice the top half of all the trees is brighter than the bottom half, more noticeable on the group of trees on the right.

Using an ENB, now it's more noticeable.

THANKS

Edited July 12, 2022 by mooit

[Phlunder]

That's caused by your direct/ambient lighting changes. The defaults are fine here, and work with every tree shape I've come across. As recommended by z929669 in an earlier post, don't do such drastic changes if you wanna tweak billboard lighting, maybe -10/+10 at most.

[z929669]

8 hours ago, mooit said:

Well I'm almost there, but one odd thing I'm not sure what's causing this, the top half of the trees in the distance is brighter than the bottom half.

The only changes I made were to the TexGen_SSE.ini alpha threshold at 144 and these settings below.

 

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

 

I placed a red box around trees in the distance, if you look closely, you'll notice the top half of all the trees is brighter than the bottom half, more noticeable on the group of trees on the right.

Using an ENB, now it's more noticeable.

THANKS

Your ENB definitely exacerbates many graphical issues for one.

The light tops are caused by normal faces on the meshes. They don't point up but at the top but rather sideways on pine trees, which causes differences in lighting at tops of trees. You can lower the Lighting Effect on the NIF of the LOD models < 0.5 (not the tree itself or you will break the LOD connection), or you can try different textures for EVT, which may help a bit.

Otherwise, you need to increase ambient and lower direct lighting for HD tree in TexGen as Phlunder suggests. This has nothing to do with the alpha threshold.

EDIT: you can also change top/bottom lighting of HD tree in TexGen which may help

[mooit]

Sorry if these were talked about before, but where do I lower the Lighting Effect on the NIF of the LOD models < 0.5?

And where do you change top/bottom lighting of HD tree in TexGen? Is this what the TB means in these settings?

TreeBillboardsDirectTB

TreeHDBillboardsDirectTB

THANKS

Edited August 9, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

4 hours ago, mooit said:

That's not my ENB LOL...

I also see this with no ENB, using default settings on all the apps.

Sorry if these were talked about before, but where do I lower the Lighting Effect on the NIF of the LOD models < 0.5?

And where do you change top/bottom lighting of HD tree in TexGen? Is this what the TB means in these settings?

TreeBillboardsDirectTB

TreeHDBillboardsDirectTB

THANKS

The effect is only barely visible wihtout your ENB, and your ENB exacerbates the issue dramatically more than other ENBs.

 

Yes, those settings for TB. Preview in TexGen to see the effect on a tree.

[mooit]

I  increaseed the ambient and lowered the direct lighting, by 10, for HD tree in TexGen, and it made no difference.

Yes the ENB exacerbates the tree lighting, but the tree tops are still brighter and the bottoms darker without an ENB.

Hmm

THANKS

Edited July 14, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

1 hour ago, mooit said:

I  increaseed the ambient and lowered the direct lighting, by 10, for HD tree in TexGen, and it made no difference.

Yes the ENB exacerbates the tree lighting, but the tree tops are still brighter and the bottoms darker without an ENB.

Hmm

THANKS

You need to test with values of like 135/55 (default I think), 155/75. 110/75, etc. Ten isn't really enough to tell much difference. That's why there is a preview in TexGen. Use it for a better idea of the degree of difference.

[mooit]

Phlunder said; maybe -10/+10 at most

And you said to follow Phlunder... LOL 

Well darker is what I want, 110/75, I guess is the way to test for now, but what about the Top/Bottom setting?

It's still hard to tell with this preview if the top of the tree is going to be darker, and blend with the bottom... hmm

HD Tree is the only one I'm changing, not Tree, making them both 110/75?

 

THANKS

P.S. After making this reply, 110/75 on HD Tree did nothing, trees still look the same.

Edited July 14, 2022 by mooit