FEEDBACK v2.2.0 - Feedback & Bug Reports

[DoubleYou]

39 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

Who said it was a bug? Nobody. This is the Feedback and Bug Reports topic.

If the guide's goal is to educate and serve as a "best in class" modding reference to STEP users and potentially to the community at large, but it provides incorrect, wasteful advice, it's a problem. Not a critical issue, though, I agree.

I'm not following. Terrain LOD textures are generated from scratch by xLODGen from the full landscape textures. Nothing else uses the terrain LOD textures beside the terrain LOD meshes. How does it matter if the landscape textures are mipmapped or not? That has no bearing on whether the terrain LOD textures should/shouldn't have mipmaps, or whether the game uses them.

Agreed. Sorry if my commentary seemed reproving.

xLODGen has option to create mipmaps or not. It is impossible to tell if the game uses the mipmaps without alterring the individual mipmaps to represent different colors so you can see them switch at different distances. Say you make the top mipmap level green, and all other mipmap levels red, blue, yellow, etc. If it is green at all distances, the mipmaps are unused. If they are any other colors based off distance, the mipmaps are used. It is simply a testing technique. See this video as an example of utilizing this technique:

 

[Mousetick]

47 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

It is impossible to tell if the game uses the mipmaps without alterring the individual mipmaps to represent different colors so you can see them switch at different distances.

But we already know, at least going by what sheson tells us, that the game uses diffuse mipmaps at LOD Level 4. That is not disputed. The guide enables this option, so it's all good. The question is about normal mipmaps, which are not used by the game at LOD Level 4, but are enabled by the guide.

There's also the question of mipmaps at LOD Level 32, which are enabled by the guide, but are not used by the game (again, according to sheson). This is less of an issue since there are only a few textures, but they're pretty large.

47 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

Say you make the top mipmap level green, and all other mipmap levels red, blue, yellow, etc. If it is green at all distances, the mipmaps are unused. If they are any other colors based off distance, the mipmaps are used. It is simply a testing technique.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken: using different colors at different mipmap levels would be done in the diffuse mipmaps, it wouldn't make sense to have multicolored normal mipmaps. Then such a test would be useless to determine if the game uses normal mipmaps or not for LOD 4.

[TechAngel85]

7 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

But we already know, at least going by what sheson tells us, that the game uses diffuse mipmaps at LOD Level 4. That is not disputed. The guide enables this option, so it's all good. The question is about normal mipmaps, which are not used by the game at LOD Level 4, but are enabled by the guide.

There's also the question of mipmaps at LOD Level 32, which are enabled by the guide, but are not used by the game (again, according to sheson). This is much less of an issue since there are few of them and they're small.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken: using different colors at different mipmap levels would be done in the diffuse mipmaps, it wouldn't make sense to have multicolored normal mipmaps. Then such a test would be useless to determine if the game uses normal mipmaps or not for LOD 4.

I want to say my testing (forever ago) revealed no difference with normalmaps. I did not test the map.

7 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

Please correct me if I'm mistaken: using different colors at different mipmap levels would be done in the diffuse mipmaps, it wouldn't make sense to have multicolored normal mipmaps. Then such a test would be useless to determine if the game uses normal mipmaps or not for LOD 4.

In the way explained, yes, but if you understand the technique then you can understand it can be adjusted to fit the scenario. Simply make your diffuses a solid color (sheson has plugin for this) and then use the generated normalmaps (from an texture, not solid color) as usual. If the maps are used, you'll see the height in the solid colored diffuses.

A simple enough test to do, but would take some time.

[Mousetick]

11 minutes ago, TechAngel85 said:

Simply make your diffuses a solid color (sheson has plugin for this) and then use the generated normalmaps (from an texture, not solid color) as usual.

I think I get what you're saying: make the diffuse solid and the normal flat, but make the normal mipmaps bumped. If the texture is bumped at a distance, the normal mipmap is used.

[AveraxH]

04-Foundation FOMOD Instructions for Particle Patch for ENB, second option should say "Light Shafts" not "ENB Helper"

[AveraxH]

05-Animation and Physics XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended FOMOD Installer been updated since the Guide's version. (I think Guide is 4.x and current is 5.x) Lots of windows are different.

[z929669]

On 8/27/2023 at 4:04 AM, Mousetick said:

In case you miss it: 

 

 

On 8/27/2023 at 6:05 AM, DoubleYou said:

I wouldn't consider this a bug so much as an opportunity for improvement that requires testing to ensure it all works as expected on our build. 

Testing of mipmaps is something I want to do with a mipmapped multicolor texture before I make a change. Probably can use one from my Mushroom mod. 

It's probably best to keep it untoggled for normals in LOD4 using testing to validate toggling them simply because it should theoretically reduce gen time, given that it's likely it doesn't matter either way. I just forgot to pay attention to that setting when updating the images. My guess is that untoggled for normals and diffuse on the map probably won't make any difference either.

I'll add it to my list of to-dos if you don't object.

14 hours ago, AveraxH said:

05-Animation and Physics XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended FOMOD Installer been updated since the Guide's version. (I think Guide is 4.x and current is 5.x) Lots of windows are different.

Yes, this and Embers XD haven't been updated yet. I still haven't had a chance (taken the time) to look at either one. Embers gets updated all the time, and it's a pain to keep pace with the alterations of that FOMOD.

[DoubleYou]

I don't object. Just want to test it. 

[Mousetick]

Before/After data points for Terrain LOD settings change:

• Optimize Unseen 500 changed to Optimize Unseen OFF for LOD 4
• Normal Mipmaps turned off for LOD 4
• Diffuse and Normal Mipmaps turned off for LOD 32

                              Before     After    +/-
Tamriel generation time*      12 min.    8 min.   -33%
Tamriel meshes total size     216 MB     273 MB   +26%
Tamriel textures total size   582 MB     476 MB   -18%

[*] Generation time to be taken with a grain of salt due to light multitasking and operating conditions not identical between before and after.

The mesh measurements can't be extended to random load orders, as they depend on the landscape of worldspaces. For example, my load order contains 55 worldspaces:

*** My specific load order ***    Before      After     +/-
Terrain LOD meshes total size      855 MB      970 MB   +13%
Terrain LOD textures total size   6.29 GB     5.14 GB   -18%

[z929669]

13 hours ago, Mousetick said:

Before/After data points for Terrain LOD settings change:

• Optimize Unseen 500 changed to Optimize Unseen OFF for LOD 4
• Normal Mipmaps turned off for LOD 4
• Diffuse and Normal Mipmaps turned off for LOD 32

                              Before     After    +/-
Tamriel generation time*      12 min.    8 min.   -33%
Tamriel meshes total size     216 MB     273 MB   +26%
Tamriel textures total size   582 MB     476 MB   -18%

[*] Generation time to be taken with a grain of salt due to light multitasking and operating conditions not identical between before and after.

The mesh measurements can't be extended to random load orders, as they depend on the landscape of worldspaces. For example, my load order contains 55 worldspaces:

*** My specific load order ***    Before      After     +/-
Terrain LOD meshes total size      855 MB      970 MB   +13%
Terrain LOD textures total size   6.29 GB     5.14 GB   -18%

Thanks. The gen time difference looks to be significant even considering MOE of random variables that might impact this. Obviously, a lot more data would be needed for any robust statistical analysis, but these results are instructive, because they are expected. I'm adjusting the guide screens now for LOD4/32 (removing normal mipmap toggle).

PS: According to the xLODGen OP ...

Quote

Use DXT1 for diffuse and 565 (DXT1 if on Windows 7) for normal maps. If generating for Skyrim Special Edition and VRAM is not of concern use BC7. Uncheck mipmaps, raise steepness and Bake normal maps.

... so I will disable these as well, since this is the advice from @sheson, and I doubt there are testing results warranting they be toggled. So far, it's tentative "best practice" for these reasons. Again, I've not found discernible quality differences back when I was testing this stuff ... and terrain LOD is most important for full-LOD transitions of landscape heights and shoreline contours anyway. Object LOD is far more impacting as long as terrain LOD geometry is as accurate as possible compared to loaded cells. VRAM is just not that important any more, given GPUs these days and system requirements of the guide. People have access to this info and can make changes using their own judgement if they care to RTFM.

[TheAimlessMage]

Just started working through the guide and found that the instructions for Particle Patch for ENB FOMOD in the 04-Foundations section are no longer accurate. The newest version of the mod (1.2.6) No longer has the ENB Helper option in the installer and has a lights shafts option not covered by the STEP guide. The last version of the mod that matches the guide instructions is 1.2.4. I'm completely new here and newer to modding but If I had a suggestion Id suggest updating guide to support the 1.2.6 version of the mod or specify the correct version to use for the guide in the detailed instructions section. Pictures of instructions, v1.2.6 and v1.2.4 FOMOD installers attached.

[TechAngel85]

On 7/30/2023 at 9:29 AM, tadastalalas said:

When I stand farther away from a Cow, textures of cow's fur loose their transperency and become blocky, when I come closer textures transform in to good looking. See images.

 

On 7/30/2023 at 12:06 PM, z929669 said:

The alpha threshold in the texture is too low, I think. I re-saved with alpha threshold 127, and that seems to resolve. Place this in that mod at textures\actors\highlandcow\ and let us know if it resolves: highlandcow.7z

@TechAngel85 upscaled Bellyache's in Bellyaches Animal and Creature Pack Revamp of these textures, so maybe he can verify this change. I would also check other furry creatures that mod covers. It really depends on NiAlphaproperty in the mesh. This mesh is provided by Highland Cows More Wooly and has a value of 109 in the mesh (same as the vanilla mesh).

I'm taking a look at this. NVTT doesn't do as good as a job as I'd like. It clips a lot of the edge detail. I will work on getting the original alpha more to a black/white state that it needs to be so not as much detail is lost.

[TheAimlessMage]

Found another instruction that doesn't match latest mod release. In the 05-Animation and Physics sections The XP32 Extended FOMOD instructions match the mod version 4.8.1 (located in the old files section of the mod)  but are no where close to the latest release of the XP32 (5.0.4) FOMOD where there are many more options and completely different menu option vs the 4.8.1 version.

[CorneliusC]

1 hour ago, TheAimlessMage said:

Just started working through the guide and found that the instructions for Particle Patch for ENB FOMOD in the 04-Foundations section are no longer accurate. The newest version of the mod (1.2.6) No longer has the ENB Helper option in the installer and has a lights shafts option not covered by the STEP guide. The last version of the mod that matches the guide instructions is 1.2.4. I'm completely new here and newer to modding but If I had a suggestion Id suggest updating guide to support the 1.2.6 version of the mod or specify the correct version to use for the guide in the detailed instructions section. Pictures of instructions, v1.2.6 and v1.2.4 FOMOD installers attached.

 

The forum thread related to this mod might be helpful.

(If you'd like to continue with your install, for the time being i'd choose 'Loose Files' - Light Shafts' - Yes - 'Custom Textures' - Yes, and hide / disable the esp.)

[TheAimlessMage]

4 minutes ago, CorneliusC said:

 

The forum thread related to this mod might be helpful.

(If you'd like to continue with your install, for the time being i'd choose 'Loose Files' - Light Shafts' - Yes - 'Custom Textures' - Yes, and hide / disable the esp.)

Okay, thanks! One quick question though. I did just use the last viable version of the mod that matched the instructions. hopefully that isn't going to cause problems I also did the same in regard to this post of mine as well