DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 182

[sheson]

1 hour ago, schmurftdurft said:

Hey,

I meticulously studied dyndolod.info for days and read all the pages you posted more than once. I couldnt get EVT or HLT to run smoothly unfortunatly. I have very satisfying results with just SBT though. The transition is almost not visible in a normal gaming session (not starring at the trees all the time).

I am pretty sure I have no third party billboards installed. I should see them in the lod folder in my MO2 data tab right?

The last thing i am fighting is visually distracting terrain and mountain lod popping. But thats another story. Anyways, thank you for this awesome piece of software and your seemingly neverending support for dummy users like me! Great job!

I can not speak to the matching quality of 3rd party billboards or 3D tree LOD models to their full model counter parts, if that is what you mean by "to run smoothly". If you believe there is a problem, double check with the mod author of the 3rd party assets that you have the expected results and/or make a report if there is an issue with the billboards generated by TexGen https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum.

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Tree-Grass-LOD-Billboards#3rd-Party-LOD-Billboards
All LOD billboards files are in ..\Textures\Terrain\LODGen\*.*.
That folder can be checked in MO2 right window data tab.

https://dyndolod.info/Generation-Instructions#Prerequisites
Typically generate terrain LOD meshes and textures with xLODGen before generating the LOD mod with DynDOLOD, as the terrain LOD meshes are used to optimize object LOD meshes.
https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen

[sheson]

@Blackread

The updates to DynDOLOD 3 Alpha-121 and DynDOLOD DLL NG and Scripts 3 Alpha-5 should hopefully fix all the problems you reported in the past week. In case there are still uses, upload new set of logs as usual.

[PRieST]

Thanks for the update, one small question (can't provide you logs, so will add them late if needed).

I made a new install of DynDOLOD and the corresponding resources. From the changelog you didn't changed anything TexGen related, but are there different ini settings with 121?
I'm asking because TexGen with 120 was running about 3 minutes untill it finished and with 121 it lasted over 10 minutes - without any other changes of any mods. TexGen Logs
As now DynDOLOD is running it also seems to be way slower, that's why I can't give you the logs right now.

From start to the message '[08:19] [Tamriel] Generating object LOD' as you can see it were over 8 minutes - this was way faster with my last run with 120.

Again, I am just asking because I think there is something different, maybe I'll have to change a ini setting which had I set before or was at a different value due to the standard installation.

[RainingTacco]

20 hours ago, schmurftdurft said:

Hey,

I meticulously studied dyndolod.info for days and read all the pages you posted more than once. I couldnt get EVT or HLT to run smoothly unfortunatly. I have very satisfying results with just SBT though. The transition is almost not visible in a normal gaming session (not starring at the trees all the time).

I am pretty sure I have no third party billboards installed. I should see them in the lod folder in my MO2 data tab right?

The last thing i am fighting is visually distracting terrain and mountain lod popping. But thats another story. Anyways, thank you for this awesome piece of software and your seemingly neverending support for dummy users like me! Great job!

 

Lod "popping" by popping you mean changing of level of detail will always happen per definition. To lessen the effect, you need LODs that match the full model with geometry and polycount, but that degrade performance. The best course of action would be to have more tiers of LOD, instead of just lod4 and lod8, add more in between with mesh complexity growing the closer the lod to the viewer. 

As for popping, anyone know what's cause LOD/model popping? Like you move camera, and tree loads up. Im not running out of vram and not running out of gpu performance, so im wondering what can cause this? Large references?

Edited March 26, 2023 by RainingTacco

[sheson]

33 minutes ago, PRieST said:

Thanks for the update, one small question (can't provide you logs, so will add them late if needed).

I made a new install of DynDOLOD and the corresponding resources. From the changelog you didn't changed anything TexGen related, but are there different ini settings with 121?
I'm asking because TexGen with 120 was running about 3 minutes untill it finished and with 121 it lasted over 10 minutes - without any other changes of any mods. TexGen Logs
As now DynDOLOD is running it also seems to be way slower, that's why I can't give you the logs right now.

From start to the message '[08:19] [Tamriel] Generating object LOD' as you can see it were over 8 minutes - this was way faster with my last run with 120.

Again, I am just asking because I think there is something different, maybe I'll have to change a ini setting which had I set before or was at a different value due to the standard installation.

The changelog explains what changed between versions. https://dyndolod.info/Changelog. There are obviously no INI changes since the last version. Check the file dates.

https://dyndolod.info/FAQ "Long running time or output several GB in file size"

[sheson]

18 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

As for popping, anyone know what's cause LOD/model popping? Like you move camera, and tree loads up. Im not running out of vram and not running out of gpu performance, so im wondering what can cause this? Large references?

As explained at https://dyndolod.info/How-LOD-Works, LOD is enabled/disabled when the character moves from cell to cell. Turning the camera does not do that.
If LOD or full models disappear when turning the camera it is because of occlusion planes/boxes or view frustum culling. Delayed loading of full models is typically because of resource usage.

There are many INI settings make the engine require more resources when raised. That also includes loading many more full models outside the active cells (large references).

[RainingTacco]

This is why i said i don't know if its active cell models or LODs, obviously i can't write TLL as the transition happens

Im not blaming dyndolod, i was just curious why it happens and how to fix it. 

[PRieST]

22 minutes ago, sheson said:

The changelog explains what changed between versions. https://dyndolod.info/Changelog. There are obviously no INI changes since the last version. Check the file dates.

https://dyndolod.info/FAQ "Long running time or output several GB in file size"

I know these information sites and if there are no ini changes made (it's ovious coresponding to the change log) averything is fine. I was just concerned because TexGen took 3 times longer to finish as with alpha 120.
DynDOLOD instead seemed to take longer, but in the end it was about the same time - so no issues with that.

As there is no bugreport and the run finished successful I don't think this should be looked at any further. Thank you again for the update.

[sheson]

6 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

This is why i said i don't know if its active cell models or LODs, obviously i can't write TLL as the transition happens

Im not blaming dyndolod, i was just curious why it happens and how to fix it. 

As explained at https://dyndolod.info/How-LOD-Works, full models (inside the view frustum) are loaded and LOD is disabled when a cell attaches. There is no transition. Both things happen independently of each other, especially when it comes to object LOD.

You can type tll before or after. If you do it after you will see what loaded in was a full model in the active cells. LOD is always loaded, only parts of it are enabled/disabled. If you do it before, the loading of the full model should happen the exact same way.

[sheson]

15 minutes ago, PRieST said:

I know these information sites and if there are no ini changes made (it's ovious coresponding to the change log) averything is fine. I was just concerned because TexGen took 3 times longer to finish as with alpha 120.
DynDOLOD instead seemed to take longer, but in the end it was about the same time - so no issues with that.

As there is no bugreport and the run finished successful I don't think this should be looked at any further. Thank you again for the update.

A similar post was made before, so I have times from older alphas here https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/17510-dyndolod-300-alpha-121/page/472/#comment-269642. Just for (future) reference:

TexGen 3.0 Alpha-120 x64 - Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) (28FF329B) starting session 2023-03-26 20:05:24
[01:20] TexGen completed successfully

TexGen 3.0 Alpha-121 x64 - Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) (11D61A25) starting session 2023-03-26 20:09:58
[01:18] TexGen completed successfully

[PRieST]

10 minutes ago, sheson said:

A similar post was made before, so I have times from older alphas here https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/17510-dyndolod-300-alpha-121/page/472/#comment-269642. Just for (future) reference:

TexGen 3.0 Alpha-120 x64 - Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) (28FF329B) starting session 2023-03-26 20:05:24
[01:20] TexGen completed successfully

TexGen 3.0 Alpha-121 x64 - Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) (11D61A25) starting session 2023-03-26 20:09:58
[01:18] TexGen completed successfully

I did another few runs and this time they took about 2 minutes (as expected).
So there was something happening with the first run, but I can't tell what it was as I can't replicate the 'slow run' with 10 minutes. Maybe another background process which I haven't noticed. Whatever...I know this for the next time...first test it more than once and after that make a report.

[A_La_Derp]

On 3/22/2023 at 2:05 PM, z929669 said:

If you have assets required in your desktop path, remember that Windows has at least two shortcut links to this path (and anything under %USERPROFILE%) for backward compatibility with legacy apps. It's never a good idea to run programs from %USERPROFILE% paths or that need resources from this path. This is probably why Dyndolod is returning \C:\

Change the location of everything to a path on your C:\ drive like C:\Games or C:\Modding rather than C:\Users\. This path is also under UAC 'protection'

All your problems will likely go away then.

Thanks.

Moving all files outside of a USERPROFILE path has it working.

Much appreciated.

[sheson]

6 hours ago, A_La_Derp said:

Thanks.

Moving all files outside of a USERPROFILE path has it working.

Much appreciated.

https://dyndolod.info/Installation-Instructions
Use 7-Zip to unpack the DynDOLOD Standalone archive into a new and empty 'DynDOLOD' directory that is outside of special OS folders like 'Programs Files' or 'Program Files (x86)', User, Documents, Desktop, Download and also not in SteamApps, game, Data or any mod manager folders. For example C:\Modding\DynDOLOD\.

[RainingTacco]

Is there a way to see which version of dyndolod i have currently installed? The changelog links me to website, but i think each dyndolod pack should have version number .txt file to see what we currently have installed. 

[sheson]

1 hour ago, RainingTacco said:

Is there a way to see which version of dyndolod i have currently installed?

Check the filename of the archive you downloaded.
Right click TexGen/DynDOLOD, exe, properties, details, file version.
Start TexGen/DynDOLOD, check window title bar.
Start TexGen/DynDOLOD, check first line of messages log.
Start TexGen/DynDOLOD, check messages logs after background loader finished for line starting with Program: