[WiP] Community shader PBR support

[Exist]

Hi, writing about support for the new Community Shaders PBR assets. Hopefully not much would be needed from your side. I will mention some facts I believe are causing issues with LODs. Because the PBR textures are incompatible with vanilla, we use unique paths (textures/pbr/ prefix) to avoid unintended meshes from using one of them and looking wrong. Meshes that use PBR can be distinguished by the Unused01 property in Shader Flags 2. PBR albedo is brighter than vanilla diffuse and is saved in dds with the sRGB flag, which converts it to linear on the gpu. Now the problems:

1. Some object LODs seem to be using regular textures, for example mountains. Because LODs won't use the PBR shader, using unmodified PBR textures makes it look wrong. This is our issue and I think authors can just generate lower res textures in the vanilla paths that will only be used for these LODs. I don't know how many LODs actually use regular textures but hope not many.
2. TexGen seems to ignore PBR textures. I suppose TexGen always uses vanilla paths and ignores Texture Set records, otherwise I don't know why this would happen. In this case it would be nice to take texture set paths into account, or check if a PBR path exists before vanilla one. For landscapes we could also have authors generate low res versions at vanilla paths, but it's not viable to do this for everything.
3. DynDOLOD uses PBR textures, but probably because of the sRGB flag (which converts them to linear) the LODs are too dark. This happens to tree LODs, objects such as farmhouses and nordic ruins seem good, but not sure. This would probably happen in the textures in the previous point too if they weren't ignored. From our experiments vanilla diffuse is roughly halfway between usual PBR albedo brightness in linear and sRGB. So it would be best to do something like apply power of 1/1.5 to make the brightness consistent with vanilla. Ideally it could be multiplied with ambient occlusion and adjusted based on metalness which are in another texture, but that's not needed.

Hopefully I got the reasons for why it doesn't work right, I will include some comparison screenshots and links to PBR assets so you can try it yourself. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope this can be supported. Oh and feel free to ping me or others on CS or Cathedral discord, I might forget to check back here for some time.

https://imgsli.com/Mjg5ODQ5
https://imgsli.com/Mjg5ODUy
https://imgsli.com/Mjg5ODU0
https://imgsli.com/Mjg5ODU1

More info about our PBR implementation: https://github.com/doodlum/skyrim-community-shaders/wiki/True-PBR

Some assets to try:

Trees - https://mega.nz/file/dqdzGLwY#jBJFwPIWv7iX314UEKZnHCRvlITLbXI7saLY-4oV6Nw

Farmhouses - https://mega.nz/file/duUxDKiA#mnzDzjBFXEIDq-MFoucOHRJT55wOmbUNHOLZ5JxG3lY

Lots of other stuff - https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!AB5oYH6iqIMDkHM&id=C23FB01B59FA671C!2427&cid=C23FB01B59FA671C

[Bottle]

Hi Sheson,

I've been messing with PBR terrain lods using xLodgen and have been having kind of off results. Landscape sometimes seems very saturated/bright and very tiled. Using the latest build of xLODGen 128.

Here are screen shots of what I'm talking about https://imgur.com/a/C3CCY7i

I've tried with multiple PBR landscapes, the one in the screenshots is Cathedral landscapes PBR. All seem to have the tiling/brightness issue that I've never had with regular landscape textures.

Here is my LODgen log, seemed to run without error besides the off colored output. Generated with default brightness/contrast and gamma settings.

Would it make sense for me to try 2.2 gamma since the PBR textures are sRGB? I saw that xlodgen converts them to linear and was wondering if that had something to do with it. Again I'm sorry if I'm lacking on providing enough info for you. If I am missing anything let me know. Thanks for taking the time on this.

 

Dyndolod seems to work fine though from what I can tell. A bit more flickering during transition than normal but I don't have any video of that right now.

SSELODGen_log.txt

[sheson]

11 hours ago, Bottle said:

Hi Sheson,

I've been messing with PBR terrain lods using xLodgen and have been having kind of off results. Landscape sometimes seems very saturated/bright and very tiled. Using the latest build of xLODGen 128.

Here are screen shots of what I'm talking about https://imgur.com/a/C3CCY7i

I've tried with multiple PBR landscapes, the one in the screenshots is Cathedral landscapes PBR. All seem to have the tiling/brightness issue that I've never had with regular landscape textures.

Here is my LODgen log, seemed to run without error besides the off colored output. Generated with default brightness/contrast and gamma settings.

Would it make sense for me to try 2.2 gamma since the PBR textures are sRGB? I saw that xlodgen converts them to linear and was wondering if that had something to do with it. Again I'm sorry if I'm lacking on providing enough info for you. If I am missing anything let me know. Thanks for taking the time on this.

 

Dyndolod seems to work fine though from what I can tell. A bit more flickering during transition than normal but I don't have any video of that right now.

SSELODGen_log.txt 1.59 MB · 0 downloads

Tiling typically happens because of the full textures. Use better full textures that do not have obvious tiling (when shrunk to 8x8 pixels and then repeated) and/or try larger resolutions.

sRGB textures are already converted to linear with a fixed gamma value by Texconv. Since full terrain uses a different shader now, converting to linear is not aways going to look exactly the same. Make sure to use a neutral noise.dds texture or maybe one that slightly darkens, then test with minute brightness, contrast, gamma adjustment if necessary.

Make use of the specific chunk option to only generate one terrain LOD texture to speed up testing and comparision.

[Bottle]

On 8/27/2024 at 1:10 AM, sheson said:

Also upload bugreport.txt and the normal TexGen log. See https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#Post-Logs

Did you change the load order or is the texture random?

https://imgur.com/a/RQ2b3Mw

 

Was talking about PBR terrain lods in the CS discord and someone (Faultier) brought up a good point, it seems like the tiling goes away the further out you go. I've never seen that before and was wondering if you'd know why something like that would happen?

[sheson]

12 minutes ago, Bottle said:

https://imgur.com/a/RQ2b3Mw

 

Was talking about PBR terrain lods in the CS discord and someone (Faultier) brought up a good point, it seems like the tiling goes away the further out you go. I've never seen that before and was wondering if you'd know why something like that would happen?

The shader for the terrain LOD that used in the LOD area does not make use of mipmaps even if they are generated.

I suppose further "shrinking" of the textures blends the different repeating pixels into one pixel / averages them out, thus the difference/tiling between them goes away. 

[Bottle]

28 minutes ago, sheson said:

The shader for the terrain LOD that used in the LOD area does not make use of mipmaps even if they are generated.

I suppose further "shrinking" of the textures blends the different repeating pixels into one pixel / averages them out, thus the difference/tiling between them goes away. 

Okay I think I understand, would it be incorrect then to assume not using mipmaps at all when generating terrain lod would solve the tiling? Or is that just an incorrect/lazy way to fix the issue?

I have tested without mips and still noticed the same issue, is the only reason I'm asking. Trying to get lods sorted for when PBR is released but even after reading up it's still all very new territory so I have been struggling a bit, mostly with terrain lod and on the dyndolod side its mainly just dark mountain chunks. 

Mountain example : https://imgur.com/a/lRlyCCM

[sheson]

1 hour ago, Bottle said:

Okay I think I understand, would it be incorrect then to assume not using mipmaps at all when generating terrain lod would solve the tiling? Or is that just an incorrect/lazy way to fix the issue?

I have tested without mips and still noticed the same issue, is the only reason I'm asking. Trying to get lods sorted for when PBR is released but even after reading up it's still all very new territory so I have been struggling a bit, mostly with terrain lod and on the dyndolod side its mainly just dark mountain chunks. 

Mountain example : https://imgur.com/a/lRlyCCM

The shader for the terrain LOD that used in the LOD area does not make use of mipmaps even if they are generated. That means mipmaps make no difference to how terrain LOD textures look in the LOD area since they are not used anyways.

If you want to combat the tiling you need make changes to the full textures. You can test without baking normal maps to test if the issue is more related to the diffuse or the normal map full texture.

If you want to report/troubleshoot an issue with object LOD / DynDOLOD see https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#Post-Logs which TexGen and DynDOLOD log and debug logs to upload. Also see https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#In-Game-Screenshots how to make useful screenshot of the full model with more informative console. Double check something is actually object/tree/terrain LOD by toggling it off/on with tll in console as explained in https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#Rudimentary-Troubleshooting

[jepster]

I have an issue with my mountain LoD. It looks very dark until getting closer and full models are loaded: https://imgur.com/a/wH3tvc5

I am using Vanaheimr Mountains which have a PBR option in the fomod, that I use and ERM Complex Parallax + ERM Dyndolod add-on.

Using tll I found out that the dark meshes are object LoDs.

I completed the load order, ran ParallaxGen, TexGen and then Dyndolod (latest versions from Nexus) - all this several times. Dyndolod settings used in latest run: https://imgur.com/a/Sa796YR

There is no bugreport.txt, and I uploaded logs here: https://file.io/32QlRBRJ4wYe

In Nifskope the LoD meshes (Meshes\LOD\Mountains) from ParallaxGen look good: https://file.io/dFZnun7e9d8B

Would appreciate any hint how I could debug further

Edited December 13 by jepster

[sheson]

8 hours ago, jepster said:

I have an issue with my mountain LoD. It looks very dark until getting closer and full models are loaded: https://imgur.com/a/wH3tvc5

I am using Vanaheimr Mountains which have a PBR option in the fomod, that I use and ERM Complex Parallax + ERM Dyndolod add-on.

Using tll I found out that the dark meshes are object LoDs.

I completed the load order, ran ParallaxGen, TexGen and then Dyndolod (latest versions from Nexus) - all this several times. Dyndolod settings used in latest run: https://imgur.com/a/Sa796YR

There is no bugreport.txt, and I uploaded logs here: https://file.io/32QlRBRJ4wYe

In Nifskope the LoD meshes (Meshes\LOD\Mountains) from ParallaxGen look good: https://file.io/dFZnun7e9d8B

Would appreciate any hint how I could debug further

See the couple first posts, in which we clarify that there are no plans for PBR LOD shaders.

https://dyndolod.info/Generation-Instructions#Prerequisites
In case ParallaxGen is used, run it before TexGen and DynDOLOD, as they will use information from its ParallaxGen_Diff.json file in the data folder to properly match certain LOD models. ParallaxGen output should overwrite the full models included in DynDOLOD Resources. Leave the default setting of ParallaxGen to ignore meshes in ..\LOD\.. folder. See Community-Shaders - PBR for more.

https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Community-Shaders#PBR
Since LOD shaders are still vanilla, they do not support parallax and/or PBR textures.
Run ParallaxGen before TexGen and DynDOLOD ... For best results there should be no patched full models in the load when running ParallaxGen, so it can generate the CRC32 information for all original full models. Also keep the default setting of ignoring meshes in ..\LOD\.. folders.

Leave the LOD models alone.

[jepster]

On 12/14/2024 at 8:41 AM, sheson said:

See the couple first posts, in which we clarify that there are no plans for PBR LOD shaders.

https://dyndolod.info/Generation-Instructions#Prerequisites
In case ParallaxGen is used, run it before TexGen and DynDOLOD, as they will use information from its ParallaxGen_Diff.json file in the data folder to properly match certain LOD models. ParallaxGen output should overwrite the full models included in DynDOLOD Resources. Leave the default setting of ParallaxGen to ignore meshes in ..\LOD\.. folder. See Community-Shaders - PBR for more.

https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Community-Shaders#PBR
Since LOD shaders are still vanilla, they do not support parallax and/or PBR textures.
Run ParallaxGen before TexGen and DynDOLOD ... For best results there should be no patched full models in the load when running ParallaxGen, so it can generate the CRC32 information for all original full models. Also keep the default setting of ignoring meshes in ..\LOD\.. folders.

Leave the LOD models alone.

Thanks a lot for the help! I thought I had read all relevant documentation, but your hint pointed me in the right position. I noticed ParallaxGen output had some LOD folders and saw for whatever reason settings to ignore them was not in place. I restored ParallaxGen to default settings and reran Dyndolod and the issue was mostly gone

[had]

I generated terrain lod with xlodgen and Faultier's PBR Landscapes 4k.

It seem to be too bright. How should i fix it?

[sheson]

10 hours ago, had said:

I generated terrain lod with xlodgen and Faultier's PBR Landscapes 4k.

It seem to be too bright. How should i fix it?

Upload the SSELODGen_log.txt when asking questions about terrain LOD generation.

Make sure to use the latest xLODGen terrain LOD beta version.

https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Community-Shaders#PBR
Since LOD shaders are still vanilla, they do not support parallax and/or PBR textures. A simple conversion of PBR sRGB diffuse textures is done by xLODGen, TexGen and DynDOLOD on the fly.
Terrain LOD generation with xLODGen uses Texconv to convert sRGB textures to linear before using them LOD texture generation. The gamma is fixed. In case of terrain LOD consider using the gamma (brightness, contrast) settings for each LOD level for fine tuning. Remember to use a neutral noise texture.

[had]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SAl0ec2tRKQSeZTmHFQ3C3p-_LX9r5bf/view?usp=sharing

Here is log.

Latest xlodgen recognize PBR/landscape folder instead of just landscape, right? So I need to tune gamma manually until it match?

[sheson]

18 minutes ago, had said:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SAl0ec2tRKQSeZTmHFQ3C3p-_LX9r5bf/view?usp=sharing

Here is log.

Latest xlodgen recognize PBR/landscape folder instead of just landscape, right? So I need to tune gamma manually until it match?

Terrain LOD texture generation uses the landscape textures that are defined by the TXST texture set records, which are used by the LTEX landscape texture records, which are used by the LAND record layers - just as the terrain in the active cells. The TXTS records is what Faultier's PBR landscapes.esp changes. Make sure the changes are not undone by other plugins.

If the used texture happens to be an sRGB texture, then it is converted with a fixed gamma to a linear texture by Texconv. It should be pretty close in terms of brightness and may only require a small additional adjustment when using a neutral noise.dds in the game.

Make sure to not forget to install the output as a mod and to deploy.

[had]

Faultier's PBR landscapes.esp wins all conflicts (almost, 2 records overwritten by parallaxgen) and xlodgen output installed and deployed, for test i made run without pbr landscape and it looks different.

Texconv is part of xlodgen, right?

As for noise i use this https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/47057 version 1.0, it should be neutral, right?

My test:

Gamma 1.0

Gamma 1.0 flat noise

Gamma 0.8

No xlodgen

Even gamma 0.8 seems too bright for me and going lower seems strange. On another hand with gamma 1.0 snow seem to be too gray on global map.

I feel like something doesnt work as intended, but unsure how to debug it.

Is it ok im getting lod terrain even outside of lod cell? Disabled lod terrain with console on the first screen.

[sheson]

14 hours ago, had said:

Faultier's PBR landscapes.esp wins all conflicts (almost, 2 records overwritten by parallaxgen) and xlodgen output installed and deployed, for test i made run without pbr landscape and it looks different.

Texconv is part of xlodgen, right?

As for noise i use this https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/47057 version 1.0, it should be neutral, right?

My test:

Gamma 1.0

Gamma 1.0 flat noise

Gamma 0.8

No xlodgen

Even gamma 0.8 seems too bright for me and going lower seems strange. On another hand with gamma 1.0 snow seem to be too gray on global map.

I feel like something doesnt work as intended, but unsure how to debug it.

Is it ok im getting lod terrain even outside of lod cell? Disabled lod terrain with console on the first screen.

Texconv is a command line tool from MS. A custom version of Texconv ships with xLODGen and DynDOLOD.

Just continue adjust the gamma, brightness and contrast until you are satisfied.

The linked noise texture is "neutral". once you are closer with the brightness, you can also experiment with different noise textures. It typically affects darker terrain more than brighter terrain (e.g. snow).

Just keep in mind the full terrain uses a fundamentally different shader technique than LOD, it is probably not going to match as well as the vanilla full terrain shader in all lighting situations.

The map uses it own overlays textures. See bottom of https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Maps-And-Map-Mods and https://dyndolod.info/Help/Snow-Ash-LOD-Shader

The first screenshot shows all LOD being off. The remaining objects are full models. Large references in this case. https://dyndolod.info/How-LOD-Works