DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 170

[AlbertH69]

Question, is it possible not to use the grass LOD brightness multipliers ?  I don't see any features to shut it off. But I would like to try to test if I can get more consistent colors in the grass billboards by not having the multiplier applied onto the meshes at all. 

[sheson]

36 minutes ago, AlbertH69 said:

Question, is it possible not to use the grass LOD brightness multipliers ?  I don't see any features to shut it off. But I would like to try to test if I can get more consistent colors in the grass billboards by not having the multiplier applied onto the meshes at all. 

Simple math. Use a multiplier of 1.0

If all 3 multipliers for the 3 color channels are the same, it acts as a brightness multiplier that does not change the color balance.

[AlbertH69]

So this then?

GrassBrightnessTopR=1
GrassBrightnessTopG=1
GrassBrightnessTopB=1
GrassBrightnessBottomR=1
GrassBrightnessBottomG=1
GrassBrightnessBottomB=1

Cause I think I tried putting 1's in the brightnessTop and it made the meshes white. I forgot whether or not I tried it with the BrightnessBottom.

Edited August 17, 2021 by AlbertH69

[sheson]

20 minutes ago, AlbertH69 said:

So this then?

GrassBrightnessTopR=1
GrassBrightnessTopG=1
GrassBrightnessTopB=1
GrassBrightnessBottomR=1
GrassBrightnessBottomG=1
GrassBrightnessBottomB=1

Cause I think I tried putting 1's in the brightnessTop and it made the meshes white. I forgot whether or not I tried it with the BrightnessBottom.

This is not how multiplication works. r * 1.0 = r.

The default values of TexGen generate billboard textures for a multiplier of about ~0.5

As you can see, the default values for the grass multipliers are even lower than that.

[AlbertH69]

My knowledge of math doesn't extend to how colors are produced through software. So let me ask specifically what would be the values to put in those variables in order to make the colors neutral (or equal to not having the effects applied)

[z929669]

42 minutes ago, AlbertH69 said:

My knowledge of math doesn't extend to how colors are produced through software. So let me ask specifically what would be the values to put in those variables in order to make the colors neutral (or equal to not having the effects applied)

If you revert the INI settings back to default, you can set top/bottom to each be identical to highest/lowest/mean value of the three settings. Using a value of 1.0 will likely be too bright though.

You have been saying that grass is white or too bright, so you should generate with an extreme in the other direction to see how each setting impacts (this is what I did). Leave DynDOLOD top/bottom alone for now (after reverting back to default, or use the settings in instructions linked below) and change ambient/direct in 'grass' billboard setting of TexGen. Probably need to lower ambient at least. Look at these settings for an idea of what works well with Cathedral Landscapes. Notice, we have ambient way down. Modify ambient even lower to see almost black LOD grass and higher to tend towards white. Fine tune with the top/bottom tints later after you have a workable brightness. Mean of bottom tints should always be lower than mean of top tints if you want more realistic look.

Re-run TexGen and DynDOLOD after. The instructions I point to give ideas for all settings and grass config ... it's a WIP and is not final though.

[sheson]

31 minutes ago, AlbertH69 said:

My knowledge of math doesn't extend to how colors are produced through software. So let me ask specifically what would be the values to put in those variables in order to make the colors neutral (or equal to not having the effects applied)

If all 3 values for r g b are equal it is a neutral brightness multiplier that does not change the color balance.

If all 3 values are 1.0, then there is no change. In that case the grass LOD billboard textures should be generated with a brightness of 50% or less.

The multiplier is used to multiply the vertex color of the grass placement (which acts as a brightness variance already when the grass placements are generated by the game/NGIO).  Vertex Colors are clamped between 0.0 and 1.0. A vertex color of 1.0 for a color channel means the color channel of the texture is passed to the lighting shader/ENB unmodified.

[AlbertH69]

15 minutes ago, sheson said:

If all 3 values for r g b are equal it is a neutral brightness multiplier that does not change the color balance.  If all 3 values are 1.0, then there is no change. In that case the grass LOD billboard textures should be generated with a brightness of 50% or less.

Yes, I understand color mixing. In concept at least. But in practice when I generate meshes with the value of 1, it creates a mesh with a brightness that is far above what the TexGen preview shows. For example, you mentioned that a value of 1 for all RGB channel should create billboards with a brightness of 50% or less. The question then becomes 50% or less of what ? 

50% of what is previewed in TexGen? 50% of how the texture itself appears when viewed in a texturing software? The reason for my confusion (and why I've been doing this through trial and error) is that I don't know what factors actually determine how the meshes look in the game. Clearly the settings in the BrightnessMax and BrightnessBottom is just some of them.

I've done texturing before for Skyrim, so I know how things like specular, glossiness, glow, etc work. But in this case, it's not really the texture that determines how it will look in-game. Which is why my original question was whether it was possible for this feature to be turned-off, in the hopes that I could make the mesh look more like how the texture file actually appears. Fiddling with the numbers so far has not yielded the desired result. Granted, ENB also plays a factor, which is why I'm also testing different values there too.

33 minutes ago, z929669 said:

 Look at these settings for an idea of what works well with Cathedral Landscapes. Notice, we have ambient way down. Modify ambient even lower to see almost black LOD grass and higher to tend towards white. Fine tune with the top/bottom tints later after you have a workable brightness. Mean of bottom tints should always be lower than mean of top tints if you want more realistic look.

Thank you. I will take a look at that.

[sheson]

30 minutes ago, AlbertH69 said:

Yes, I understand color mixing. In concept at least. But in practice when I generate meshes with the value of 1, it creates a mesh with a brightness that is far above what the TexGen preview shows. For example, you mentioned that a value of 1 for all RGB channel should create billboards with a brightness of 50% or less. The question then becomes 50% or less of what ? 

50% of what is previewed in TexGen? 50% of how the texture itself appears when viewed in a texturing software? The reason for my confusion (and why I've been doing this through trial and error) is that I don't know what factors actually determine how the meshes look in the game. Clearly the settings in the BrightnessMax and BrightnessBottom is just some of them.

I've done texturing before for Skyrim, so I know how things like specular, glossiness, glow, etc work. But in this case, it's not really the texture that determines how it will look in-game. Which is why my original question was whether it was possible for this feature to be turned-off, in the hopes that I could make the mesh look more like how the texture file actually appears. Fiddling with the numbers so far has not yielded the desired result. Granted, ENB also plays a factor, which is why I'm also testing different values there too.

Thank you. I will take a look at that.

DynDOLOD/LODGen does not create billboard textures. TexGen creates billboard textures. 
The preview of TexGen shows exactly how the texture is rendered and how it would look with an image viewer.

The INI settings in the DynDOLOD INI for LODGen do not change the texture. The INI values affect vertex colors in the BTO meshes for the grass LOD shapes. Vertex colors are clamped between 0 and 1. Because of this, vertex colors can only make things darker, never brighter. Whatever increases the brightness happens afterwards in the game with how the shader/ENB works.

The default values of TexGen generate billboard textures in a brightness that is expected to have vertex colors multiplied with ~0.5 as a base, to allow to increase/decrease of brightness with the INI settings. The INI settings are multiplied with the grass placement random vertex color to calculate the final vertex color.

If vertex colors are not used to lower the brightness, then the textures should be generated darker than the default value to compensate. The (grass) LOD does not have or does not support specular, glossiness or glow.

[AlbertH69]

11 minutes ago, sheson said:

DynDOLOD/LODGen does not create billboard textures. TexGen creates billboard textures. 
The preview of TexGen shows exactly how the texture is rendered and how it would look with an image viewer.

The INI settings in the DynDOLOD INI for LODGen do not change the texture. The INI values affect vertex colors in the BTO meshes for the grass LOD shapes. Vertex colors are clamped between 0 and 1. Because of this, vertex colors can only make things darker, never brighter. Whatever increases the brightness happens afterwards in the game with how the shader/ENB works.

The default values of TexGen generate billboard textures in a brightness that is expected to have vertex colors multiplied with ~0.5 as a base, to allow to increase/decrease of brightness with the INI settings that are multiplied with the grass placement random vertex color.

If vertex colors are not used to lower the brightness, then the textures should be generated darker.

Ah, Ok. Now it's clearer. Thank you. I'll just keep fiddling.

[TheDude]

10 hours ago, AlbertH69 said:

This isn't a question per say, but if anyone has any tips on getting ENB to work well with the grass billboards, let me know. I've spent literally hours trying to get the billboards and the grass to look similar in terms of lighting and colors, but I just haven't been able to get it right. The meshes are simply lit way too differently, and I've tried to modify settings both on the ENB side and on the Dyndolod. Without ENB the billboards blend easily enough with the actual grass. With ENB lighting though, it's a pain in the ass.

So if anyone has any particular settings that work well for their setup, I'd be interested to know what those settings are. For those wondering, I'm currently using Rudy ENB for Cathedral weather. But I'm open to settings from any other ENB and weather mods.

Thanks.

Hm, I dont know of I could provide any support in this matter, but since my grass looks perfect you could perhaps try the same setup as me?

grassmod: Verdant

Enb: Silent Horizons for Cathedral Weathers

grass brightness multipliers: all default

Edited August 17, 2021 by TheDude

[nardo68]

11 hours ago, sheson said:

Thanks. Check if Alpha-39 fixes the out of memory mesage.

Was able to run texgen all the way but had to lower all the quality settings to a minimum otherwise it says "insufficient memory" and shut downs. But it still cant write the version.ini file. Any workaround that? Can I just copy someone else version.ini?

 

Here is the debug log (to big toupload) : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K55VcxWOfIsqMNl2TNMF9W8TpeZvpWaI/view?usp=sharing 

bugreport.txt TexGen_SSE_log.txt

[sheson]

51 minutes ago, nardo68 said:

Was able to run texgen all the way but had to lower all the quality settings to a minimum otherwise it says "insufficient memory" and shut downs. But it still cant write the version.ini file. Any workaround that? Can I just copy someone else version.ini?

 

Here is the debug log (to big toupload) : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K55VcxWOfIsqMNl2TNMF9W8TpeZvpWaI/view?usp=sharing 

bugreport.txt 28.81 kB · 3 downloads TexGen_SSE_log.txt 236.6 kB · 2 downloads

Define which settings were set to what. Run with defaults and upload bugreport and debug log of the memory error.

As explained earlier, if a file can not be created it is because the OS, UAC, antiv or or some other process blocks access.

[AlbertH69]

I'm posting this in the hope that it might help anyone who had trouble like I did with ENB and the grass billboard. After much testing, I discovered that the setting that truly screwed up the grass billboard colors is the ENB feature of Image Based Lighting. Any other ENB preset that doesn't use IBL will likely not encounter any issues with getting the grass billboard to look right.

IBL can look nice, but personally, I prefer having long distance grass that stretches to the horizon

Some of IBL's looks can be simulated using a combination of tweaking bloom, direct lighting, and ambience. Worst come to worst, there are certain effects from Reshade that you can add on top of ENB that can achieves similar look without screwing up the grass billboard colors at little to no cost in fps. After tweaking Rudy's ENB without IBL, the grass billboard looks great.

Thank you to everyone who provided answers and advice. Your help was appreciated.

[CrunchyApple]

I'm having this error

Can not find file meshes\bsmorrowind\daedric\rtmstatueazura_lod.nif.
Make sure the DynDOLOD Resources SE archive downloaded completely and all the required Core Files have been installed.

I have redownloaded the files several times, but the error still comes. This error didn't occur when I had the normal resources (not the 3.0)

Can I get some help?