Creating 3D Hybrid LODs for trees, there seems to be 2 trunks per tree.

[3ncanis]

I've attatched screenshots of the tree LODs and of the actual rendered tree, as you can see the LOD seems to have a straight, skinny trunk, and a normal sized trunk which appears to be the actual tree trunk. I've followed the STEP guide on creating 3D hybrid LODs (https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Creating_Tree_LOD_Models) where you separate the trunk from the crown into separate nifs and everything. Any help would be appreciated on how to make that straight skinny trunk not appear in the lod, thank you.

[sheson]

If you have problems following 3rd party guides like the one you linked, then you need to ask its authors on its forum section.

This is the xLODGen/DynDOLOD support forum for problems with the and/or their documentation. No actual information or files were provided that could help indentintify the problem, only a question was asked. https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum

Read https://dyndolod.info/Help/3D-Tree-LOD-Model how to generate hybrid 3D tree LOD models.
A 3D tree LOD model is an optimized and/or low poly version of a full model tree, similar to any other object LOD model. A hybrid tree LOD model specifically means a mixture of 2D billboard trunks and 3D leafs/crowns from the full model trees.

If following the instructions and if everything is working how it should be, the 2D trunk planes should intersect in their middle, just like with the billboard tree LOD or the hybrid tree LOD models included in DynDOLOD Resources.

If you do not want 2D trunks, then do not create a hybrid 3D tree LOD model with a 2D trunk. Use typical decimation/optimization methods on the shapes and make sure the UV of the of the (stitched) object LOD texture can be atlassed.

[z929669]

12 hours ago, 3ncanis said:

I've attatched screenshots of the tree LODs and of the actual rendered tree, as you can see the LOD seems to have a straight, skinny trunk, and a normal sized trunk which appears to be the actual tree trunk. I've followed the STEP guide on creating 3D hybrid LODs (https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Creating_Tree_LOD_Models) where you separate the trunk from the crown into separate nifs and everything. Any help would be appreciated on how to make that straight skinny trunk not appear in the lod, thank you.

Why would you not want the trunk to appear in the LODs? That kind of defeats the purpose of LOD.

If you mean that you mostly only see the trunks in LOD masking the crowns, then your issue is probably due to the branch texture alpha and mipmapping: re-save the crown branch textures using a higher alpha mipmap coverage threshold using Texconv or NVIDIA Texture Tools or the like. 127/8 is usually best, but it varies.

If you see artifacts of trunk billboards, you can do just as sheson has indicated, skipping the hybrid piece as described in Standard LOD models of that guide. Sheson also mentions the 'decimation' process to reduce the triangles of LOD (in addition to stripping out the wasted NIF nodes and data). This is a more advanced process requiring some modeling skills in Blender or the like and not practical for most people.

Also note that that guide explains one method for constructing the hybrid assets and works well for < 10 trees or so. It's better to use the 'strip-from' method for doing a lot of trees (and DynDOLOD xEdit scripts). That guide is not updated to completely explain that process, but it's alluded in the Hybrid LOD models section.

[3ncanis]

Ok, thanks, yeah I think the problem is the trunk is not straight up/down and has slight curvature, so the intersecting trunks do not align properly, since this is the case I will be doing what Sheson recommends and lowering the polygon count of the .nif and using that as the 3D LOD. Thank yall!