DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 182

[jwisser]

4 minutes ago, sheson said:

The screenshot from "inside" the tower shows that the model of the tower is loaded and showing. It is the same model and from id for outside the tower.

Explain or show how DynDOLOD makes this same full model disappear, while being in the same cell and DynDOLOD does nothing to the full model.

I can not replicate the issue with a vanilla load order + the mod.

The screenshots from inside the tower are taken with LOD generated by the old (December) version of DynDOLOD and without using DynDOLOD respectively. It's when I use Alpha-64 that the model vanishes. Something has changed between the December release and Alpha-64 that causes this tower to disappear.

Based on the "DynDOLODx64.exe, Version: 3.0.0.0, Date: 2021-12-15 09:05:25" message it prints to the log and the 12/15 date on a "DynDOLOD 3.00-32382-Alpha-58-1639558310.7z" file in my Downloads folder, I believe the working version to be Alpha-58.

Aside from testing on my end with only Fortified Whiterun and DynDOLOD, is there any additional proof/information I can provide?

[sheson]

7 minutes ago, jwisser said:

The screenshots from inside the tower are taken with LOD generated by the old (December) version of DynDOLOD and without using DynDOLOD respectively. It's when I use Alpha-64 that the model vanishes. Something has changed between the December release and Alpha-64 that causes this tower to disappear.

Based on the "DynDOLODx64.exe, Version: 3.0.0.0, Date: 2021-12-15 09:05:25" message it prints to the log and the 12/15 date on a "DynDOLOD 3.00-32382-Alpha-58-1639558310.7z" file in my Downloads folder, I believe the working version to be Alpha-58.

Aside from testing on my end with only Fortified Whiterun and DynDOLOD, is there any additional proof/information I can provide?

Here is a screenshot with DynDOLOD active that I generated with Alpha 64.

Nothing changed how DynDOLOD will treat this reference (unset IsFullLOD, generate static object LOD for it) in years.

Generate LOD for the current load order with either version and compare.

[jwisser]

7 minutes ago, sheson said:

Here is a screenshot with DynDOLOD active that I generated with Alpha 64.

Nothing changed how DynDOLOD will treat this reference (unset IsFullLOD, generate static object LOD for it) in years.

Generate LOD for the current load order with either version and compare.

With respect, I have spent hours today repeatedly generating LOD for this load order with Alpha-64 and Alpha-58 and testing the results so that I could provide a useful report of the issue. I am telling you, and have provided screenshots showing, that under my full load order, the tower is there with Alpha-58 and not there with Alpha-64. Asking me to do the same thing yet again isn't going to do anything but waste both our time.

With that said, after generating LOD with Alpha-64 for the Tamriel worldspace only, with a vanilla game plus ONLY Fortified Whiterun, the tower does indeed appear as expected. That indicates to me that this must be an interplay between some other mod I'm using and a seemingly-unrelated change in DynDOLOD that did happen between Alpha-58 and Alpha-64. Is it possible Noble Skyrim or a similar texture replacer could be affecting this?

Alpha-58 has been a more reliable experience for me overall than the more recent versions. If I stay on Alpha-58, should I stick with the current version of the DLL, scripts, and resources? Or is it safe/advisable to upgrade those as updates become available?

[sheson]

21 minutes ago, jwisser said:

With respect, I have spent hours today repeatedly generating LOD for this load order with Alpha-64 and Alpha-58 and testing the results so that I could provide a useful report of the issue. I am telling you, and have provided screenshots showing, that under my full load order, the tower is there with Alpha-58 and not there with Alpha-64. Asking me to do the same thing yet again isn't going to do anything but waste both our time.

With that said, after generating LOD with Alpha-64 for the Tamriel worldspace only, with a vanilla game plus ONLY Fortified Whiterun, the tower does indeed appear as expected. That indicates to me that this must be an interplay between some other mod I'm using and a seemingly-unrelated change in DynDOLOD that did happen between Alpha-58 and Alpha-64. Is it possible Noble Skyrim or a similar texture replacer could be affecting this?

Alpha-58 has been a more reliable experience for me overall than the more recent versions. If I stay on Alpha-58, should I stick with the current version of the DLL, scripts, and resources? Or is it safe/advisable to upgrade those as updates become available?

Check if any other plugins overwrite the reference or base record.

With the full model not showing, open console and use "prid xx00aa28" (xx = load order id of the plugin) and then "enable" and if nothing happens "recycleactor"

Otherwise try to check if there is a mod or plugin that adds occlusion planes/boxes "blocking" the view maybe.

Zip and upload the entire logs folder and ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\Export\ folder of both version if you can't compare those yourself.

If you suspect another mods/plugin to interfere, try to test that theory by adding them to the vanilla + mod test.

[jwisser]

17 minutes ago, sheson said:

Check if any other plugins overwrite the reference or base record.

With the full model not showing, open console and use "prid xx00aa28" (xx = load order id of the plugin) and then "enable" and if nothing happens "recycleactor"

Otherwise try to check if there is a mod or plugin that adds occlusion planes/boxes "blocking" the view maybe.

Zip and upload the entire logs and ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\Export\ folder of both version.

If you suspect another mods/plugin to interfere, try to test that theory by adding them to the vanilla + mod test.

Just tried adding Noble Skyrim and regenerating the LOD with Alpha-64, and bang: the tower was gone again. The combination of Fortified Whiterun, Noble Skyrim textures, and DynDOLOD 3 Alpha-64 does seem to be what triggers it. `prid 1000AA28` and disable/enable and recycleactor resulted in no change.

Curious to hear if you're able to reproduce when you add Noble Skyrim to the mix; if not, something very strange is happening on my end, and I'll stop bugging you about this. If you do see this issue, please try walking into the tower area; you should also find that the tower's collision is gone as well as the visual model.

For now, I'm off to bed--it's 4am and I have work in a few hours. Thanks for looking into this!

EDIT: As I went to log off, it occurred to me: if the Noble Skyrim's textures trigger this, is it possible that the relevant change between Alpha-58 and Alpha-64 was in TexGen rather than DynDoLOD? I don't understand enough about their inner workings to know if that's plausible, but I'll try using old TexGen/new DynDOLOD and new TexGen/old DynDOLOD tomorrow when I have a chance.

Edited January 19, 2022 by jwisser
Added fridge moment thought.

[sheson]

5 hours ago, jwisser said:

Just tried adding Noble Skyrim and regenerating the LOD with Alpha-64, and bang: the tower was gone again. The combination of Fortified Whiterun, Noble Skyrim textures, and DynDOLOD 3 Alpha-64 does seem to be what triggers it. `prid 1000AA28` and disable/enable and recycleactor resulted in no change.

Curious to hear if you're able to reproduce when you add Noble Skyrim to the mix; if not, something very strange is happening on my end, and I'll stop bugging you about this. If you do see this issue, please try walking into the tower area; you should also find that the tower's collision is gone as well as the visual model.

For now, I'm off to bed--it's 4am and I have work in a few hours. Thanks for looking into this!

EDIT: As I went to log off, it occurred to me: if the Noble Skyrim's textures trigger this, is it possible that the relevant change between Alpha-58 and Alpha-64 was in TexGen rather than DynDoLOD? I don't understand enough about their inner workings to know if that's plausible, but I'll try using old TexGen/new DynDOLOD and new TexGen/old DynDOLOD tomorrow when I have a chance.

I was able to replicate and fix thanks to that information.

Test with Alpha 65.

[Zanderat]

Using Alpha 64.  I did some searching and found similar question, but no definitive answer beyond adjust the RGB values.  My tundra grass LOD is green.  Not greenish, it is green like a summer grass green.  The tundra grass is the brown autumn variety from  Tamrielic Grass mod.  As you approach, the LOD grass fades and is replaced by the correct color (non LOD) grass.  I am stumped as to what is going on here.  I have no other grass mods installed and did regenerate the grass cache just in case.  Thanks.

Green grass LOD:

A few steps closer (non LOD grass):

 

[sheson]

21 minutes ago, Zanderat said:

Using Alpha 64.  I did some searching and found similar question, but no definitive answer beyond adjust the RGB values.  My tundra grass LOD is green.  Not greenish, it is green like a summer grass green.  The tundra grass is the brown autumn variety from  Tamrielic Grass mod.  As you approach, the LOD grass fades and is replaced by the correct color (non LOD) grass.  I am stumped as to what is going on here.  I have no other grass mods installed and did regenerate the grass cache just in case.  Thanks.

 

What is the significance of Alpha 64 compared to grass LOD generated in the past year with all the other versions?

Grass LOD uses the billboards generated by TexGen, e.g. the textures which are added to the object LOD texture atlas which the BTO refers to. So make sure the billboard texture match the full model grass.
The RGB values of the DynDOLOD INI set the vertex color of the billboard planes in the BTO. These can be used trying to match the simple grass shader which is not available in LOD.

Weather, image space, ENB effect and whatnot are outside the control of the BTO and textures.

The grass cache contains the placements and brightness variants of the different grass models. Nothing else.

[Zanderat]

Thanks, @sheson.  So that means that I should look at the grass mod, if you feel TexGen picked the colors up correctly?

[sheson]

7 minutes ago, Zanderat said:

Thanks, @sheson.  So that means that I should look at the grass mod, if you feel TexGen picked the colors up correctly?

Check if the billboard texture generated/used for a grass base record actually matches the full model.

Other than that, the defaults setting are for vanilla weather and no ENB.

[Zanderat]

Ok.  Thanks again.  I will fiddle around and see what I get.

[jwisser]

3 hours ago, sheson said:

I was able to replicate and fix thanks to that information.

Test with Alpha 65.

Can confirm Alpha 65 resolves this issue for me. If you're able to share more details than included in the changelog, I admit I'm curious what the issue was here. Thanks again for your attention and the speedy fix!

[burnersaurus]

Finally managed to get DynDOLOD working on a consistent basis (despite my ineptitudes).
Thanks again for making it, it's a really nice and usefull tool

I have one question about the grass LODs though, something I cant figure out, and thats about the gap between the pop-out of the LODs and the fade-in of the loaded grass.
I've seen a lot of images and videos that show seemingly uninterrupted grass from the character all the way to the horizon, but no matter what I try, I still get the gap between the LODs and the loaded grass...
I tryed both grass modes in the DynDOLOD advanced menu. I tryed tweeking uGridsToLoad and all of the fGrassFade settings in the Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini. I tryed doing the same in BethINI and with the overwrite function in No Grass In Objects... but none of it makes any difference at all, as close as I can tell.

So what am I missing?

I'm sorry if this is the wrong topic to pose this question in, but I figure it's related to getting the most out of the awesome Grass LOD featrure in DynDOLOD 

[sheson]

13 minutes ago, burnersaurus said:

Finally managed to get DynDOLOD working on a consistent basis (despite my ineptitudes).
Thanks again for making it, it's a really nice and usefull tool

I have one question about the grass LODs though, something I cant figure out, and thats about the gap between the pop-out of the LODs and the fade-in of the loaded grass.
I've seen a lot of images and videos that show seemingly uninterrupted grass from the character all the way to the horizon, but no matter what I try, I still get the gap between the LODs and the loaded grass...
I tryed both grass modes in the DynDOLOD advanced menu. I tryed tweeking uGridsToLoad and all of the fGrassFade settings in the Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini. I tryed doing the same in BethINI and with the overwrite function in No Grass In Objects... but none of it makes any difference at all, as close as I can tell.

So what am I missing?

I'm sorry if this is the wrong topic to pose this question in, but I figure it's related to getting the most out of the awesome Grass LOD featrure in DynDOLOD 

From https://dyndolod.info/Help/Grass-LOD

Grass LOD can either start right beyond the active exterior cells (uGridsToLoad) which equals to Mode/DynDOLODGrassMode = 1 or beyond the large reference distance (uLargeRefLODGridSize) which equals to Mode/DynDOLODGrassMode = 2.

Set the desired Mode in the advanced mode of DynDOLOD under the Grass LOD checkbox and for DynDOLODGrassMode in ..\NetScriptFramework\Plugins\GrassControl.config.txt. While the DynDOLODGrassMode can be changed at any time, the Mode used to generate grass LOD is baked into the object LOD meshes.

[z929669]

4 hours ago, Zanderat said:

Ok.  Thanks again.  I will fiddle around and see what I get.

It looks like the green grass LOD shown is entirely different grass LOD that what you are using, but it could also be your ENB I guess. This is pretty stark though.

Using cathedral landscapes, which also has brown grass, the following settings in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini work nicely to correct the green LOD grass. You may need to adjust a bit lower, but give this a shot:

; grass LOD brightness multipliers
GrassBrightnessTopR=0.295
GrassBrightnessTopG=0.315
GrassBrightnessTopB=0.300
; make bottom darker to fake shadowing
GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.170
GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.175
GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.180