Map Snow Shader

[Blackread]

I have another LOD related (not necessarily DynDOLOD though) problem that I was hoping you might be able to help with. I have two different colours of dynamic snow on my map:

From inspecting the .bto files in Nifskope it looks like the bright snow is on objects tagged with objSnow, and the dark snow is on objects tagged with objSnowHD. Ideally I would like to have snow that's somewhere between the two in terms of brightness, but I would take anything that has consistent colours.

I am using Better Dynamic Snow 3.5.0 and the plugin is winning all conflicts for the snow materials so they should be consistent as far as I know. What's more this only happens on the map, i.e., LOD32. The other LOD levels have the right coloured dynamic snow. I generated the LOD with Level32 enabled, and I'm using A Clear Map of Skyrim with all the bells and whistles. I also tried changing uLockedObjectMapLOD to 16 in the INI file and it does fix the dynamic snow colours (while "downgrading" the map to LOD16 of course), so it would seem it's something specific to LOD32.

Here are the logs for the output that the screenshot was taken from: https://mega.nz/file/dGsRXKwJ#_fpzVNJvzMed6VUtOwbSxemUmdG46hFONvZGk2ls6V0

[sheson]

8 hours ago, Blackread said:

Good to know it's fixed. Not playing right now and not planning to start any time soon so don't mind waiting.

I have another LOD related (not necessarily DynDOLOD though) problem that I was hoping you might be able to help with. I have two different colours of dynamic snow on my map:

From inspecting the .bto files in Nifskope it looks like the bright snow is on objects tagged with objSnow, and the dark snow is on objects tagged with objSnowHD. Ideally I would like to have snow that's somewhere between the two in terms of brightness, but I would take anything that has consistent colours.

I am using Better Dynamic Snow 3.5.0 and the plugin is winning all conflicts for the snow materials so they should be consistent as far as I know. What's more this only happens on the map, i.e., LOD32. The other LOD levels have the right coloured dynamic snow. I generated the LOD with Level32 enabled, and I'm using A Clear Map of Skyrim with all the bells and whistles. I also tried changing uLockedObjectMapLOD to 16 in the INI file and it does fix the dynamic snow colours (while "downgrading" the map to LOD16 of course), so it would seem it's something specific to LOD32.

Here are the logs for the output that the screenshot was taken from: https://mega.nz/file/dGsRXKwJ#_fpzVNJvzMed6VUtOwbSxemUmdG46hFONvZGk2ls6V0

See https://dyndolod.info/Help/Snow-Ash-LOD-Shader

[Blackread]

3 hours ago, sheson said:

See https://dyndolod.info/Help/Snow-Ash-LOD-Shader

Alright, that explains why LOD16 works, because it doesn't have HD snow. There are still two things I don't understand though:

First is that in my setup, SnowLODMaterial and SnowLODMaterialHD have identical colours.

The second is that in LOD4 the HD snow has the expected colour.

Really no idea what to do about this. I guess it could be some rendering thing specific to the map? I'll try asking on the Clear Map mod page in case anyone there has any ideas.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Blackread

[sheson]

22 minutes ago, Blackread said:

Alright, that explains why LOD16 works, because it doesn't have HD snow. There are still two things I don't understand though:

First is that in my setup, SnowLODMaterial and SnowLODMaterialHD have identical colours.

The second is that in LOD4 the HD snow has the expected colour.

Really no idea what to do about this. I guess it could be some rendering thing specific to the map? I'll try asking on the Clear Map mod page in case anyone there has any ideas.

If a LOD level or bto contains any HD snow depends on the LOD model/texture being used.

I would test what effects the values have that are different between the two shaders.

The map has additional overlays and settings for snow https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Skyrim_INI/MapMenu
I would have assumed if any of those settings affecting the LOD shaders, they whould apply equally to either snow shader, but that needs to be tested.

[z929669]

7 hours ago, Blackread said:

Alright, that explains why LOD16 works, because it doesn't have HD snow. There are still two things I don't understand though:

First is that in my setup, SnowLODMaterial and SnowLODMaterialHD have identical colours.

The second is that in LOD4 the HD snow has the expected colour.

Really no idea what to do about this. I guess it could be some rendering thing specific to the map? I'll try asking on the Clear Map mod page in case anyone there has any ideas.

 

7 hours ago, sheson said:

If a LOD level or bto contains any HD snow depends on the LOD model/texture being used.

I would test what effects the values have that are different between the two shaders.

The map has additional overlays and settings for snow https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Skyrim_INI/MapMenu
I would have assumed if any of those settings affecting the LOD shaders, they whould apply equally to either snow shader, but that needs to be tested.

This issue was also discussed here on the CMoS topic with some potential things to check or consider in following posts.

[Blackread]

43 minutes ago, z929669 said:

 

This issue was also discussed here on the CMoS topic with some potential things to check or consider in following posts.

Thank you. I tried fidling with the shader and INI settings, but couldn't find anything that made a difference. The terrain LOD is already generated with the CL LODGen snow textures and they were disabled when generating the DynDOLOD output. I think it might just be some quirk with how the map is rendered, after all there is no "HD Snow" in the vanilla map.

[sheson]

25 minutes ago, Blackread said:

Thank you. I tried fidling with the shader and INI settings, but couldn't find anything that made a difference. The terrain LOD is already generated with the CL LODGen snow textures and they were disabled when generating the DynDOLOD output. I think it might just be some quirk with how the map is rendered, after all there is no "HD Snow" in the vanilla map.

Looking at screenshots of ACMO this seems "normal".

 

Typically only LOD level 4 mountain LODs have models that require HD snow, everything else that does not have vertex color alpha must have the non HD shader.
Looking at that I am just not sure if either HD is made too dark or non HD is made too bright?

If you have the time do these tests:

Remove all LOD 32 BTO but one. tamriel.32.0.-32.bto.
Test that the map still works and still exhibits the difference. Make screenshot.
Change all objSnowHD to objSnow. Screenshot.
Change all objectSnow to objSnowHD. Screenshot.
TO define which shader is used it is typically it is not necessary change the LOD_Objects / HD_LOD_Objects flags of the Shader Flags 2 BSLightingShaderProperty but test that as well if it has any effect.
If any of the tests has acceptable results I can add an option to the LOD generation to set things as needed for LOD Level 32 until a better solution can be found.

[Blackread]

2 hours ago, sheson said:

Looking at screenshots of ACMO this seems "normal".

 

Typically only LOD level 4 mountain LODs have models that require HD snow, everything else that does not have vertex color alpha must have the non HD shader.
Looking at that I am just not sure if either HD is made too dark or non HD is made too bright?

If you have the time do these tests:

Remove all LOD 32 BTO but one. tamriel.32.0.-32.bto.
Test that the map still works and still exhibits the difference. Make screenshot.
Change all objSnowHD to objSnow. Screenshot.
Change all objectSnow to objSnowHD. Screenshot.
TO define which shader is used it is typically it is not necessary change the LOD_Objects / HD_LOD_Objects flags of the Shader Flags 2 BSLightingShaderProperty but test that as well if it has any effect.
If any of the tests has acceptable results I can add an option to the LOD generation to set things as needed for LOD Level 32 until a better solution can be found.

I tried to do this in Nifskope, but it "sanitizes" names (forcibly changes the names of all the blocks that have the same name). Is there a way to stop it from doing it, or a better program for editing the .bto files?

Edited July 26, 2023 by Blackread

[DoubleYou]

2 hours ago, sheson said:

Looking at screenshots of ACMO this seems "normal".

 

Typically only LOD level 4 mountain LODs have models that require HD snow, everything else that does not have vertex color alpha must have the non HD shader.
Looking at that I am just not sure if either HD is made too dark or non HD is made too bright?

If you have the time do these tests:

Remove all LOD 32 BTO but one. tamriel.32.0.-32.bto.
Test that the map still works and still exhibits the difference. Make screenshot.
Change all objSnowHD to objSnow. Screenshot.
Change all objectSnow to objSnowHD. Screenshot.
TO define which shader is used it is typically it is not necessary change the LOD_Objects / HD_LOD_Objects flags of the Shader Flags 2 BSLightingShaderProperty but test that as well if it has any effect.
If any of the tests has acceptable results I can add an option to the LOD generation to set things as needed for LOD Level 32 until a better solution can be found.

I edited tamriel.32.0.-32.bto with Nifskope, and it did similarly corrupt it by renaming all the blocks, except for the one I renamed to objSnow. It doesn't appear that it makes a difference to the brightness. Changing the shader flag made no change.

Of note, however, is that since it removed the shader from everything else in the block, I now can see that the High Hrothgar snow might actually use the snow shader instead of, my previous expectation, a snow texture. Perhaps we simply need to alter the vertex color alpha somewhere?

 

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Blackread said:

I tried to do this in Nifskope, but it "sanitizes" names (forcibly changes the names of all the blocks that have the same name). Is there a way to stop it from doing it, or a better program for editing the .bto files?

If you edit the NIF using tools like Sniff, I think you can get around the strings renaming. You can also prefix each name separately. I think all that matters is that the keyword is present in the string. Also, I believe you can prevent this behavior by unchecking this:

[sheson]

8 hours ago, Blackread said:

I tried to do this in Nifskope, but it "sanitizes" names (forcibly changes the names of all the blocks that have the same name). Is there a way to stop it from doing it, or a better program for editing the .bto files?

Uncheck Auto Santize before Save in the file menu.

There is no need to have unique names. The BTOs can be saved as is with this setting disabled.

[Blackread]

18 hours ago, sheson said:

Looking at screenshots of ACMO this seems "normal".

 

Typically only LOD level 4 mountain LODs have models that require HD snow, everything else that does not have vertex color alpha must have the non HD shader.
Looking at that I am just not sure if either HD is made too dark or non HD is made too bright?

If you have the time do these tests:

Remove all LOD 32 BTO but one. tamriel.32.0.-32.bto.
Test that the map still works and still exhibits the difference. Make screenshot.
Change all objSnowHD to objSnow. Screenshot.
Change all objectSnow to objSnowHD. Screenshot.
TO define which shader is used it is typically it is not necessary change the LOD_Objects / HD_LOD_Objects flags of the Shader Flags 2 BSLightingShaderProperty but test that as well if it has any effect.
If any of the tests has acceptable results I can add an option to the LOD generation to set things as needed for LOD Level 32 until a better solution can be found.

I think the non HD is closer to the truth, but whether it's completely correct I'm not sure. Like mentioned earlier I'm using BDS 3.5 which has a slight blueish tint to the dynamic snow, but due to how different the lighting is on the map compared to the rest of the game I find it hard to say whether the blueish tint is present in the non HD snow or if it's completely white. Here's a comparison, with MM (white snow) on the left and BDS 3.5 (blueish tint) on the right:

7 hours ago, sheson said:

Uncheck Auto Santize before Save in the file menu.

There is no need to have unique names. The BTOs can be saved as is with this setting disabled.

Thank you, I managed to finish the tests and here are the results.

Before doing any changes:

All objSnowHD renamed to objSnow:

All objSnowHD renamed to objSnow and changing the HD_LOD_Objects flag to LOD_Objects:

All objSnow renamed to objSnowHD:

All objSnow renamed to objSnowHD and changing the LOD_Objects flags to HD_LOD_Objects:

So in conclusion, changing the names alone seems to have no effect. Switching shader flags from HD to non HD breaks the snow, and only going from non HD to HD swaps the snow shader as intended.

Personally, out of these options I would probably choose the last one.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Blackread

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Blackread said:

I think the non HD is closer to the truth, but whether it's completely correct I'm not sure. Like mentioned earlier I'm using BDS 3.5 which has a slight blueish tint to the dynamic snow, but due to how different the lighting is on the map compared to the rest of the game I find it hard to say whether the blueish tint is present in the non HD snow or if it's completely white. Here's a comparison, with MM (white snow) on the left and BDS 3.5 (blueish tint) on the right:

Thank you, I managed to finish the tests and here are the results.

Before doing any changes:

All objSnowHD renamed to objSnow:

All objSnowHD renamed to objSnow and changing the HD_LOD_Objects flag to LOD_Objects:

All objSnow renamed to objSnowHD:

All objSnow renamed to objSnowHD and changing the LOD_Objects flags to HD_LOD_Objects:

So in conclusion, changing the names alone seems to have no effect. Switching shader flags from HD to non HD breaks the snow, and only going from non HD to HD swaps the snow shader as intended.

Personally, out of these options I would probably choose the last one.

I agree the last option is "most consistent" in appearance between 'real' snow, BDS snow, and ice snow, but the ideal solution is to 'fix' the real and BDS snow in LOD32. The BDS snow has the more correct tint (after objSnow renamed to objSnowHD), but it's still green.

Changing the LOD_Objects flags to HD_LOD_Objects fixes the brighter white ice, but this white is what it all should look like IMO.

[sheson]

2 hours ago, Blackread said:

Personally, out of these options I would probably choose the last one.

I will add an option to set/flag any snow to HD (or non HD, just case someone wants that option) for LOD 32.

[Blackread]

15 minutes ago, sheson said:

I will add an option to set/flag any snow to HD (or non HD, just case someone wants that option) for LOD 32.

Sounds good, thank you.

[skib763]

Hello everyone, how do I get my far snow lods more white? the ground near looks snowy ok, but in the distance lods are much more green, which can be seen both in the distance and on the map with LOD32.

Here are pics with explanation. What do I do?
https://imgur.com/a/abVNrf8