Large grass cache causing long running times

[DIYDank]

Mods I'm using

1. Flora Orientalis    
2. Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul    
3. Skoglendi - A Grass Mod
4. Vinland Grass Patch
5. HLT (Ultra trees, level 0, BB 0, BB0 are the settings for it)
6. Enhanced Landscapes
7. Nature of the Wildlands (Forest Debris only plugin)

PC specs

• RTX 3080FTW3
• Ryzen 5 3600
• 16gb DDR3 2600 RAM
• N.VME drive with over 120gb left to spare

Dyndolod settings are default high, Occlusion generation disabled HD Grass/HD Trees enabled.

Grass Cache generated and verified to be working in-game.

Task manager shows CPU and Disk usage as high with fluctuating resources being used for all 3 LODGENX64 sub windows in Dyndolod and the exported files are still being generated.

Should I let it run still?

Is Dyndolod bugged?

What's going on here?

[sheson]

https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum

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

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Grass-LOD#LODGen takes a long time or uses a lot of memory

[DIYDank]

1 hour ago, DIYDank said:

Mods I'm using

1. Flora Orientalis    
2. Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul    
3. Skoglendi - A Grass Mod
4. Vinland Grass Patch
5. HLT (Ultra trees, level 0, BB 0, BB0 are the settings for it)
6. Enhanced Landscapes
7. Nature of the Wildlands (Forest Debris only plugin)

PC specs

• RTX 3080FTW3
• Ryzen 5 3600
• 16gb DDR3 2600 RAM
• N.VME drive with over 120gb left to spare

Dyndolod settings are default high, Occlusion generation disabled HD Grass/HD Trees enabled.

Grass Cache generated and verified to be working in-game.

Task manager shows CPU and Disk usage as high with fluctuating resources being used for all 3 LODGENX64 sub windows in Dyndolod and the exported files are still being generated.

Should I let it run still?

Is Dyndolod bugged?

What's going on here?

Can't edit: still waiting, it's now 30.4gb up from 25.xgb and hasn't moved for some time. Not sure if I should end the process and revisit my choice of grass mods. Something in this setup is causing serious, serious issues. I've got like...8gb of grass cache files or close to it.

 

[z929669]

It's probably related to GFX bloatware or Textconv not being allowed to finish. Read the DynDOLOD FAQs and search the DynDOLOD Alpha topic for changes you can make to resolve.

[DIYDank]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

It's probably related to GFX bloatware or Textconv not being allowed to finish. Read the DynDOLOD FAQs and search the DynDOLOD Alpha topic for changes you can make to resolve.

Define bloatware please? That's a super nebulous term. Only GPU-related software I run is GeForce Experience and Precision X and they don't launch unless I manually launch them. I've read the FAQ, I'm aware of what typically causes huge Dyndolod file sizes and gigantic generation times but 8.5 hours (before I pull the plug) seems a bit out of the ordinary here. Dyndolod's file size reached 30.4gb before it wouldn't create anything else.

Best guess is that the problem was with the Flora Orientalis mod I mentioned in combination with everything else. My Grass cgrid files were just shy of 8gb. Would that do it? Heavily unoptimized assets (mod author's words, not mine) and a huge amount of grass cache files?

[DoubleYou]

Easy way to check if it is the grass lod that is causing the issue is to simply untick the grass lod setting. Generate only for Tamriel and see if all works fine. Then do same with grass LOD, if that works. More often it is the tree LODs that cause issues with DynDOLOD generation IME, but 8gb of grass cache is quite a lot considering it is a lot smaller on my setup.

[z929669]

41 minutes ago, DIYDank said:

Define bloatware please? That's a super nebulous term. Only GPU-related software I run is GeForce Experience and Precision X and they don't launch unless I manually launch them. I've read the FAQ, I'm aware of what typically causes huge Dyndolod file sizes and gigantic generation times but 8.5 hours (before I pull the plug) seems a bit out of the ordinary here. Dyndolod's file size reached 30.4gb before it wouldn't create anything else.

Best guess is that the problem was with the Flora Orientalis mod I mentioned in combination with everything else. My Grass cgrid files were just shy of 8gb. Would that do it? Heavily unoptimized assets (mod author's words, not mine) and a huge amount of grass cache files?

Only the GFX drivers are necessary. The driver-soft apps are considered 'bloat' by sheson ... and they are in most cases, but they do provide some support for custom texture optimization and filters during gameplay ... but really mostly junk with respect to a game like Skyrim. I kill all of my AMD GPU-related background processes when running TexGen/DynDOLOD, and that resolves for me.

Given your grass cache is huge, that is likely the issue. I can't imagine why it would be that big unless those mods add grass pretty much everywhere and you have really high density and related settings in NGIO. See our Grass LOD guide for some tricks to limiting the unnecessary worldspaces. Also set grass density to ≤ 70 in DynDOLOD. Anything over that gives no noticeable benefit.

I also know that some tree mods can really tax LODGen (e.g., Veydogolt), because the trees and their LOD counterparts are not optimized suitably for this game. AA is another example, but we made optimized LODs for that, which resolves all but the loaded full trees.

[DIYDank]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

Only the GFX drivers are necessary. The driver-soft apps are considered 'bloat' by sheson ... and they are in most cases, but they do provide some support for custom texture optimization and filters during gameplay ... but really mostly junk with respect to a game like Skyrim. I kill all of my AMD GPU-related background processes when running TexGen/DynDOLOD, and that resolves for me.

Given your grass cache is huge, that is likely the issue. I can't imagine why it would be that big unless those mods add grass pretty much everywhere and you have really high density and related settings in NGIO. See our Grass LOD guide for some tricks to limiting the unnecessary worldspaces. Also set grass density to ≤ 70 in DynDOLOD. Anything over that gives no noticeable benefit.

I also know that some tree mods can really tax LODGen (e.g., Veydogolt), because the trees and their LOD counterparts are not optimized suitably for this game. AA is another example, but we made optimized LODs for that, which resolves all but the loaded full trees.

OK I get the intention thing with the bloatware. Thanks for the clarification!

I ended up removing that Flora Orientalis mod I mentioned, it's the grass version of Veydogolt x10. Totally unoptimized.

Too bad, it's beautiful but if it's giving me an 8gb grass cache compared to the usual 1-4gb...it's just not going in my load order. Not worth it!

Anyhow finished my Dyndolod, texgen and grass cache once I took Flora Orientalis out of the equation.

Thanks for your time, have a good one!

2 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

Easy way to check if it is the grass lod that is causing the issue is to simply untick the grass lod setting. Generate only for Tamriel and see if all works fine. Then do same with grass LOD, if that works. More often it is the tree LODs that cause issues with DynDOLOD generation IME, but 8gb of grass cache is quite a lot considering it is a lot smaller on my setup.

That woulda been smart wish I would have thought of that before lol, I just re-did the process without Flora Orientalis and the vinland patch/Folk. Cache went down to 2gb, Dyndolod completed 2 hours later at around 20ish gb.

[z929669]

17 hours ago, DIYDank said:

OK I get the intention thing with the bloatware. Thanks for the clarification!

I ended up removing that Flora Orientalis mod I mentioned, it's the grass version of Veydogolt x10. Totally unoptimized.

Too bad, it's beautiful but if it's giving me an 8gb grass cache compared to the usual 1-4gb...it's just not going in my load order. Not worth it!

Anyhow finished my Dyndolod, texgen and grass cache once I took Flora Orientalis out of the equation.

Thanks for your time, have a good one!

That woulda been smart wish I would have thought of that before lol, I just re-did the process without Flora Orientalis and the vinland patch/Folk. Cache went down to 2gb, Dyndolod completed 2 hours later at around 20ish gb.

I actually made the Veydogolt grass cache pregen LOD that's out there, and it was only a little over 2 Gb (compressed). It's not necessarily unoptimized, but VO has lots of other mods incorporated, so it's really an assemblage of many mods.

[ericnguyener]

On 7/12/2023 at 2:11 PM, DIYDank said:

Mods I'm using

1. Flora Orientalis    
2. Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul    
3. Skoglendi - A Grass Mod
4. Vinland Grass Patch
5. HLT (Ultra trees, level 0, BB 0, BB0 are the settings for it)
6. Enhanced Landscapes
7. Nature of the Wildlands (Forest Debris only plugin)

PC specs

• RTX 3080FTW3
• Ryzen 5 3600
• 16gb DDR3 2600 RAM
• N.VME drive with over 120gb left to spare

Dyndolod settings are default high, Occlusion generation disabled HD Grass/HD Trees enabled.

Grass Cache generated and verified to be working in-game.

Task manager shows CPU and Disk usage as high with fluctuating resources being used for all 3 LODGENX64 sub windows in Dyndolod and the exported files are still being generated.

Should I let it run still?

Is Dyndolod bugged?

What's going on here?

If you don't mind me asking—would you happen to have the grass cache file for Vinland Grass Patch for download?