DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 173

[z929669]

Updated both previous posts

[z929669]

Just finished testing with 128k diffuse/normals resized with mipmaps @127 alpha test from original full textures used in AA main mod. Hopefully, you can see that the alpha transparency is best when the source textures used by DynDOLOD for these trees is 128:

I;m not showing changes in NiAlphaProperty, since it doesn't really have any impact. All are default AA values of 128 as full crowns.

4k  >>  256  >>  128

PS: You can see where full trees transition to LOD when switching between these screens. Full is obviously at bottom of screen nearest the PC. Most apparent alpha diff in LOD are those trees at lower right, which are obviously LOD trees.

---

For reference, this is an earlier screen I captured using the main mod AA textures (Autumnal Variety w/bigger treeaspen01-02) including normal with alpha opacity). Notice how the alpha is much too thick in LOD for these trees in comparison to lower res. I think this is apparent in the screens.

 

All mesh rules used for all testing as follows:

[Skyrim aspensablazeesp]
LODGen1=cceejsse001-hstead.esm;08000BC2,Level0,Level1,Billboard4,Level2,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen2=cceejsse001-hstead.esm;08000BEB,Level0,Level1,Billboard4,Level2,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen3=cceejsse001-hstead.esm;08000B90,Level0,Level1,Billboard4,Level2,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen4=cceejsse001-hstead.esm;08000BD5,Level0,Level1,Billboard4,Level2,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen5=treeaspen05,Level0,None,None,None,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen6=treeaspen06,Level0,None,None,None,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen7=treeaspen07,Level0,None,None,None,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen8=treeaspen08,Level0,None,None,None,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen9=treeaspen09,Level0,None,None,None,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset
LODGen10=treeaspen,Level0,Level1,Billboard4,Level2,FarLOD,Unchanged,1,Aspens Ablaze High Preset

 

[Mephitic]

Asking here mostly 'cause I'm a lazy and impatient bastid so here goes...
As you can see from this image the NGIO-generated cached grass LOD has a lighter tint than the nearer grass.

The notes I can find about this say

Quote

In case the grass LOD brightness or color seems off (it might depend on weathers or ENB settings), try different Direct/Ambient settings for grass LOD billboards in TexGen. In addition or alternatively change the GrassBrightnessTop* and GrassBrightnessBottom* settings in ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\DynDOLOD\DynDOLOD_SSE.ini - those settings help if the color tone is off. Especially the image based lighting effect from ENB has a big impact on the brightness and color tone of the grass LOD.

I will guess that the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini settings are the way to go here, but how much to change them and in what direction?

These are my current settings (I believe they're default):

; grass LOD brightness multipliers
GrassBrightnessTopR=0.400
GrassBrightnessTopG=0.445
GrassBrightnessTopB=0.450
; make bottom darker to fake shadowing
GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.200
GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.223
GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.225

I know I can experiment with these but that is a tedious and time-consuming endeavor.
I'm hoping that you'll have a bit of insight to shortcut that process.

Other perhaps relevant info - Vivid Weathers, ENB .475 - Silent Horizons preset, Direct/Ambient settings for grass LOD billboards in TexGen are at default 160/25.

Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Mephitic

[z929669]

54 minutes ago, Mephitic said:

Asking here mostly 'cause I'm a lazy and impatient bastid so here goes...
As you can see from this image the NGIO-generated cached grass LOD has a lighter tint than the nearer grass.

The notes I can find about this say

I will guess that the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini settings are the way to go here, but how much to change them and in what direction?

These are my current settings (I believe they're default):

; grass LOD brightness multipliers
GrassBrightnessTopR=0.400
GrassBrightnessTopG=0.445
GrassBrightnessTopB=0.450
; make bottom darker to fake shadowing
GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.200
GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.223
GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.225

I know I can experiment with these but that is a tedious and time-consuming endeavor.
I'm hoping that you'll have a bit of insight to shortcut that process.

Other perhaps relevant info - Vivid Weathers, ENB .475 - Silent Horizons preset, Direct/Ambient settings for grass LOD billboards in TexGen are at default 160/25.

Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.

Have a look at this post for a fairly fool-proof way to match grass LOD to full with almost any grass. The tint settings are mostly for edge cases or for non-linear ENB shader effects.

[Mephitic]

42 minutes ago, z929669 said:

Have a look at this post for a fairly fool-proof way to match grass LOD to full with almost any grass. The tint settings are mostly for edge cases or for non-linear ENB shader effects.

Will do, and thank you very much for your help.

[sheson]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

Images are correct order. The differences you note in the screen are subtle (Obsidian Mountain Fogs can impact brightness in some places). In game, they are more apparent. Changing NiAlphaProperty in the second test did result in a small change to brightness, but alpha was still quite 'blotchy' in game. no apparent increase in transparency. Reduced resolution does increase transparency marginally, but NiAlphaProperty change in the final test had no visible impact at all.

Best transitions and LOD matching full is in last two screens, since last two tests use the 256 px textures (first two use 4K from main mod). The main issue is color-bleeding in branches/leaves due to alpha scaling. Full trees get slightly thinner in loaded cells as distance increases, and the same is true in LOD4 as distance increases.

I'm currently testing with diffuse at 128 px res. Will share result when finished.

Main mod textures

Reduced textures (open DDS, resize 4k to 256 in Ps, save using NVIDIA TT) - these LOD mod variants are also available for download from Nexus (linked previously)

There is clearly a visual difference between the tree LOD of screenshot #1 and #2 which were made the 4k source textures if I am not mistaken. If the only change is the alpha threshold, then this is the result of the increased transparency. DoubleYou reported "no observable difference" however.

The screenshots #3 and #4 made with the resized texture seem to be more or less the same, despite the change in the threshold. DoubleYou reported "way too thin" for the 224 threshold with 256 pixel texture, which would be the expected result when increasing the threshold.

I do not know what blotchy alpha is supposed to look like.

Wasn't the goal to have less transparency so the leaves appear to be thicker when further away?

"Bleeding" means neighborly pixels affect each other. Which happens when shrinking. The alpha information should not cause bleeding of color, unless you mean if something is more transparent, something behind it shines through.

[z929669]

41 minutes ago, sheson said:

There is clearly a visual difference between the tree LOD of screenshot #1 and #2 which were made the 4k source textures if I am not mistaken. If the only change is the alpha threshold, then this is the result of the increased transparency. DoubleYou reported "no observable difference" however.

The screenshots #3 and #4 made with the resized texture seem to be more or less the same, despite the change in the threshold. DoubleYou reported "way too thin" for the 224 threshold with 256 pixel texture, which would be the expected result when increasing the threshold.

I do not know what blotchy alpha is supposed to look like.

Wasn't the goal to have less transparency so the leaves appear to be thicker when further away?

"Bleeding" means neighborly pixels affect each other. Which happens when shrinking. The alpha information should not cause bleeding of color, unless you mean if something is more transparent, something behind it shines through.

I think the difference between 1 and 2 is a fluke maybe caused by the fogs but could possibly be due to some marginal effect of increasing NiAlphaProperty; however, since there is no change freom 3 to 4, I think its not NiAlphaProperty increase. Changes to NiAlphaProperty are not apparent in my testing. DoubleYou was testing some things in part based on a texture he had created with his own custom mips, and given he hasn't presented evidence to support, we can't really say that with a 256 resolution, increasing NiAlphaProperty from 128 to 224 has any impact. Clearly, from my evidence it does not (unless we question my evidence, which I do not).

Did you find anything in the LOGs to illuminate?

Blotchy alpha is my way of saying it's too think and washed out as demonstrated by the screens. The issue is that branches in LOD are too thick, aned making them thinner can only be done by decreasing AlphaFactor in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini to 0.125, or by reducing the texture resolution of the LOD diffuse. I think this is because the the change between mips with lower base resolution is more apparent. Regardless, changing NiAlphaProperty just isn't working ... I have taken that advice many times in the past, and it doesn't work with other trees either in my XP. Kojak747 had the same XP when we work working on his Scott pine. he finally resolve with texture changes. NiAlphaProperty had no impact. This was long ago, so I'm wondering if this behavior is just not working as expected.

As you mentioned, using AlphaFactor is not viable for several reasons, and using custom LOD textures isn't either. I'd like to figure out why NiAlphaProperty isn't working as expected.

My results should be entirely repeatable if you try yourself. I've linked to all files I used, and I put the 128k textures on the AA DynDOLOD Nexus page as well.

[sheson]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

I think the difference between 1 and 2 is a fluke maybe caused by the fogs but could possibly be due to some marginal effect of increasing NiAlphaProperty; however, since there is no change freom 3 to 4, I think its not NiAlphaProperty increase. Changes to NiAlphaProperty are not apparent in my testing. DoubleYou was testing some things in part based on a texture he had created with his own custom mips, and given he hasn't presented evidence to support, we can't really say that with a 256 resolution, increasing NiAlphaProperty from 128 to 224 has any impact. Clearly, from my evidence it does not (unless we question my evidence, which I do not).

Did you find anything in the LOGs to illuminate?

Blotchy alpha is my way of saying it's too think and washed out as demonstrated by the screens. The issue is that branches in LOD are too thick, aned making them thinner can only be done by decreasing AlphaFactor in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini to 0.125, or by reducing the texture resolution of the LOD diffuse. I think this is because the the change between mips with lower base resolution is more apparent. Regardless, changing NiAlphaProperty just isn't working ... I have taken that advice many times in the past, and it doesn't work with other trees either in my XP. Kojak747 had the same XP when we work working on his Scott pine. he finally resolve with texture changes. NiAlphaProperty had no impact. This was long ago, so I'm wondering if this behavior is just not working as expected.

As you mentioned, using AlphaFactor is not viable for several reasons, and using custom LOD textures isn't either. I'd like to figure out why NiAlphaProperty isn't working as expected.

My results should be entirely repeatable if you try yourself. I've linked to all files I used, and I put the 128k textures on the AA DynDOLOD Nexus page as well.

The screenshots only show if there is a difference or not. I can not tell what is supposed to match better or look better. I have no idea what screenshots are supposed to show "washed out" textures. How are they washed out? Do they loose color?

What I can say is this: screenshot #1 and #2 have clearly different tree LOD. Can fog only affect tree LOD? So far the screenshots and the different statements are just more confusing to me than being helpful. In part because I probably need to see and move the camera in game myself.

Lets forget for a moment how things look in the game and really check the textures.

Get a feel how changing the threshold from 128 to 244 actually affects how the model/leaves looks in NifSkope.

Then compare the textures added to the texture atlas. As long as you do not change the threshold of all 3D tree LOD models, the diffuse texture should be added to the object LOD atlas texture at least twice, once for the 128 threshold and once for the 224 for example. You can find their pixel coordinates in..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\Export\LODGen_SSE_ObjectAtlasMap_Tamriel.txt. The threshold is divided by 16 and part of the first column in case it is not the default of 128.  So there are two rows for the texture with their different coordinates on the atlas

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds ...
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14 ...

If you use an image program to cut those textures out of the atlas you can then directly compare their alpha channels side by side or by switching back and forth to see if they are different and by how much.

I would be interested in directly;y comparing the actual texture the 4k input to 256 input and if 4k has no change or just a very small change in the alpha channel. Use pipette to get the alpha value of a pixel.

If changing the alpha threshold has a stronger effect on smaller source textures, then it means a step might be missing in the processes or maybe something is done on the wrong order.

[z929669]

38 minutes ago, sheson said:

The screenshots only show if there is a difference or not. I can not tell what is supposed to match better or look better. I have no idea what screenshots are supposed to show "washed out" textures. How are they washed out? Do they loose color?

What I can say is this: screenshot #1 and #2 have clearly different tree LOD. Can fog only affect tree LOD? So far the screenshots and the different statements are just more confusing to me than being helpful. In part because I probably need to see and move the camera in game myself.

Lets forget for a moment how things look in the game and really check the textures.

Get a feel how changing the threshold from 128 to 244 actually affects how the model/leaves looks in NifSkope.

Then compare the textures added to the texture atlas. As long as you do not change the threshold of all 3D tree LOD models, the diffuse texture should be added to the object LOD atlas texture at least twice, once for the 128 threshold and once for the 224 for example. You can find their pixel coordinates in..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\Export\LODGen_SSE_ObjectAtlasMap_Tamriel.txt. The threshold is divided by 16 and part of the first column in case it is not the default of 128.  So there are two rows for the texture with their different coordinates on the atlas

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds ...
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14 ...

If you use an image program to cut those textures out of the atlas you can then directly compare their alpha channels side by side or by switching back and forth to see if they are different and by how much.

I would be interested in directly;y comparing the actual texture the 4k input to 256 input and if 4k has no change or just a very small change in the alpha channel. Use pipette to get the alpha value of a pixel.

If changing the alpha threshold has a stronger effect on smaller source textures, then it means a step might be missing in the processes or maybe something is done on the wrong order.

Great. I will take a look just as you say rather than continue with the logs/screens route. This approach is more certain.

[KaktuZHD]

Is It possible to increase LOD distance? I mean when I came closer to the trees - it became full quality, so is it possible to do it in a far distance ? I've already generated LOD. Maybe any settings ?

Edited August 26, 2022 by KaktuZHD

[z929669]

47 minutes ago, KaktuZHD said:

Is It possible to increase LOD distance? I mean when I came closer to the trees - it became full quality, so is it possible to do it in a far distance ? I've already generated LOD. Maybe any settings ?

[TerrainManager] INI settings or DynDOLOD distance settings in MCM menu

[KaktuZHD]

49 minutes ago, z929669 said:

[TerrainManager] INI settings or DynDOLOD distance settings in MCM menu

I've already tried, but nothing changed 

[sheson]

1 hour ago, KaktuZHD said:

Is It possible to increase LOD distance? I mean when I came closer to the trees - it became full quality, so is it possible to do it in a far distance ? I've already generated LOD. Maybe any settings ?

https://dyndolod.info/How-LOD-Works

1 hour ago, KaktuZHD said:

I've already tried, but nothing changed 

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Object-LOD#Settings
https://dyndolod.info/Help/Tree-LOD#Settings
https://dyndolod.info/Help/Terrain-LOD#Settings

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Mod-Configuration-Menu#Settings

I can guarantee that these settings control  how far LOD (Levels) are shown and changing them has an immediate visible effect how far LOD (levels) show in the game.

[z929669]

3 hours ago, sheson said:

The screenshots only show if there is a difference or not. I can not tell what is supposed to match better or look better. I have no idea what screenshots are supposed to show "washed out" textures. How are they washed out? Do they loose color?

What I can say is this: screenshot #1 and #2 have clearly different tree LOD. Can fog only affect tree LOD? So far the screenshots and the different statements are just more confusing to me than being helpful. In part because I probably need to see and move the camera in game myself.

Lets forget for a moment how things look in the game and really check the textures.

Get a feel how changing the threshold from 128 to 244 actually affects how the model/leaves looks in NifSkope.

Then compare the textures added to the texture atlas. As long as you do not change the threshold of all 3D tree LOD models, the diffuse texture should be added to the object LOD atlas texture at least twice, once for the 128 threshold and once for the 224 for example. You can find their pixel coordinates in..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\Export\LODGen_SSE_ObjectAtlasMap_Tamriel.txt. The threshold is divided by 16 and part of the first column in case it is not the default of 128.  So there are two rows for the texture with their different coordinates on the atlas

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds ...
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14 ...

If you use an image program to cut those textures out of the atlas you can then directly compare their alpha channels side by side or by switching back and forth to see if they are different and by how much.

I would be interested in directly;y comparing the actual texture the 4k input to 256 input and if 4k has no change or just a very small change in the alpha channel. Use pipette to get the alpha value of a pixel.

If changing the alpha threshold has a stronger effect on smaller source textures, then it means a step might be missing in the processes or maybe something is done on the wrong order.

 

I set things up to test in a single run due to your suggestion to change NiAlphaProperty of specific aspen LOD models rather than all at once. This way, I should see a mix of the LOD trees I want to examine:

1. Treeaspen01 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c.dds, birch03_n.dds (4k)
2. Treeaspen02 - NiAlphaProperty=224, textures=birch03_c.dds, birch03_n.dds (4k)
3. Treeaspen03 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
4. Treeaspen04 - NiAlphaProperty=224, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
5. Treeaspen05 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
6. Treeaspen06 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
7. Treeaspen07 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
8. Treeaspen08 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
9. Treeaspen09 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)

To confirm the above, these are the LOD meshes used for this run: meshes.7z

The texture appears 3x on the atlas (I'm not uncertain about the second line even though you attempted to explain). I also don't understand which is associated with what NiAlphaProperty. I expected two versions for each texture corresponding to the test list above (four scenarios). Is something off here?:

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds	256	256	12032	3840	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14	256	256	11776	3840	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\mx\birch03_c_lod.dds,textures\mx\birch03_lod_n.dds	128	128	13328	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192

Here's the three cutouts from the atlas saved as TGA so you can see the alphas (they are pretty similar):

aspenAtlasCutouts.7z

 

From LODGen_SSE_TexturesUsed_Tamriel.txt (not sure what this tells us):

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,14,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds,
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,8,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds,
textures\mx\birch03_c_lod.dds,8,textures\mx\birch03_lod_n.dds,

I started a new game to test. Here's the screen showing what I could identify as the thinner trees likely associated with #4 Treeaspen04 ... tough to tell with the overlap of trees, but I think it's evident that there are some transparency diffs among the LOD trees. The thick alpha trees are pretty evident and likely associated with treeaspen01-02:

 

 

---

Completely different question/comment:

Billboards were only atlased for 1-5 (although TexGen produces billboards in it's output for all of them). I'm uncertain how to interpret this:

textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_1_n.dds	344	512	3524	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_2_n.dds	340	512	3868	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_1_n.dds	324	512	4548	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_2_n.dds	340	512	4208	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_1_n.dds	288	512	5832	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_2_n.dds	320	512	5196	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_1_n.dds	324	512	4872	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_2_n.dds	316	512	5516	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_1_n.dds	104	128	13784	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_2_n.dds	120	128	13456	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192

 

 

[Mephitic]

5 hours ago, z929669 said:

Have a look at this post for a fairly fool-proof way to match grass LOD to full with almost any grass. The tint settings are mostly for edge cases or for non-linear ENB shader effects.

I sincerely appreciate your help but unfortunately that didn't work. In fact it made things worse.
 

I'll try futzing with the tint settings to try to improve the difference.

Thanks again!

Edited August 26, 2022 by Mephitic