[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

[had]

  On 1/6/2025 at 9:29 AM, sheson said:

do you always test the same area and it happens sometimes?

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This.

Its not very noticeable and i only caught it because i compared screens from my grass generation attempts.

[sheson]

  On 1/6/2025 at 1:53 PM, had said:

This.

Its not very noticeable and i only caught it because i compared screens from my grass generation attempts.

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Test if it is more consistent with this version https://mega.nz/file/xZAmQC5B#SHTVR46pUtfI1MW5S7NaLLKk5hJ2DLmgMjuCvHpKVpE

[had]

Hmm, first like 6-7 loads was fine, after it i started to get this bug more often than not, roughly 50-50. Probably game keep no data between sessions and it is just random?

Previous dll was fine first tries too. Not sure if latest version is better.

[sheson]

  On 1/6/2025 at 8:20 PM, had said:

Hmm, first like 6-7 loads was fine, after it i started to get this bug more often than not, roughly 50-50. Probably game keep no data between sessions and it is just random?

Previous dll was fine first tries too. Not sure if latest version is better.

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Edit ..\SKSE\plugins\DynDOLOD_Data\DynDOLOD_NG_Worlds.txt in the installed DynDOLOD output and change to debug=true and add a new line right underneath it debuglevel=2

Then start the game and reproduce the issue as usual.
Upload c:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\SKSE\DynDOLOD.log.

[leostevano]

Here's the logs and screenshots of some purple lods issue.

Logs : https://fastupload.io/8385ab0190fd9a10 

Screenshots :

https://postimg.cc/VJhTbGL4 

https://postimg.cc/njbP3XmD 

https://postimg.cc/CBG6XwC6 

https://postimg.cc/f30P7cVs 

 

[sheson]

  On 2/15/2025 at 2:28 AM, leostevano said:

Here's the logs and screenshots of some purple lods issue.

Logs : https://fastupload.io/8385ab0190fd9a10 

Screenshots :

https://postimg.cc/VJhTbGL4 

https://postimg.cc/njbP3XmD 

https://postimg.cc/CBG6XwC6 

https://postimg.cc/f30P7cVs 

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Can you upload a screenshot of xEdit showing one of the used base records. For example xx115599 in DynDOLOD.esm
It should link a TextureSet. Upload a screenshot of  it as well.

Unfold all elements so everything can be fully seen.

[leostevano]

  On 2/15/2025 at 7:47 AM, sheson said:

Can you upload a screenshot of xEdit showing one of the used base records. For example xx115599 in DynDOLOD.esm
It should link a TextureSet. Upload a screenshot of  it as well.

Unfold all elements so everything can be fully seen.

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Like this?

 

[sheson]

  On 2/15/2025 at 11:48 AM, leostevano said:

Like this?

 

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Those 2 screenshots are base records.

For the first base record, the tent, CTRL + left click onto the field smallimperialtent_DynDOLOD_TXST [TXST:2111559A] to open the texture set record.
Or just enter the form id 2111559A top left and hit he enter key to bring it up.
Upload a screenshot of the texture se record, everything unfolded as well.

[leostevano]

  On 2/15/2025 at 12:02 PM, sheson said:

Those 2 screenshots are base records.

For the first base record, the tent, CTRL + left click onto the field smallimperialtent_DynDOLOD_TXST [TXST:2111559A] to open the texture set record.
Or just enter the form id 2111559A top left and hit he enter key to bring it up.
Upload a screenshot of the texture se record, everything unfolded as well.

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Oh my bad. Here

[sheson]

  On 2/15/2025 at 12:56 PM, leostevano said:

Oh my bad. Here

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Generate LOD with this test version https://mega.nz/file/IBQRlB6Z#mo9d3ks4f4Yv_c7tH9zMEa5O-lJVYmZe_2AlvNSh4iM

It should create the missing linear versions for these texture sets.

Report results.

[leostevano]

  On 2/15/2025 at 4:52 PM, sheson said:

Generate LOD with this test version https://mega.nz/file/IBQRlB6Z#mo9d3ks4f4Yv_c7tH9zMEa5O-lJVYmZe_2AlvNSh4iM

It should create the missing linear versions for these texture sets.

Report results.

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it works sheson, many thanks!

[sheson]

  On 2/15/2025 at 6:12 PM, leostevano said:

it works sheson, many thanks!

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Thanks for letting us know. The fix will be included in the next alpha version.

[cornmeal]

Hey sheson, I'm struggling to make PBR landscape textures apply to LOD glacier models, am I meant to be using any specific rules? Thanks!

[sheson]

  On 2/17/2025 at 2:31 PM, cornmeal said:

Hey sheson, I'm struggling to make PBR landscape textures apply to LOD glacier models, am I meant to be using any specific rules? Thanks!

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See https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#Post-Logs which TexGen and DynDOLOD log and debug log to upload when making posts.
Also upload ..\DynDOLOD\Logs\DynDOLOD_SSE_Object_Report.txt

Make a useful screenshot of the full model with more informative console and a close up of the LOD with tfc as explained in https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#In-Game-Screenshots

With the base record form id we can look up the used LOD model and its used textures in DynDOLOD_SSE_Object_Report.txt. 

https://dyndolod.info/Help/TexGen#Rendered-Object-LOD-Textures
Note that the list of rendered object LOD textures is not covering all vanilla rendered object LOD textures. It can update the rendered object LOD textures for the walled cities and most structures. However, far away mountains, icebergs and glaciers are not yet covered. If a mod makes changes to these relevant full textures, it should also include updated pre-rendered object LOD textures.

The shown LOD might be using one of those rendered LOD textures that currently would require manual updating.

In case this is about the LOD snow shader covering the LOD, see https://dyndolod.info/Help/Snow-Ash-LOD-Shader

[cornmeal]

  On 2/17/2025 at 2:37 PM, sheson said:

See https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#Post-Logs which TexGen and DynDOLOD log and debug log to upload when making posts.
Also upload ..\DynDOLOD\Logs\DynDOLOD_SSE_Object_Report.txt

Make a useful screenshot of the full model with more informative console and a close up of the LOD with tfc as explained in https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum#In-Game-Screenshots

With the base record form id we can look up the used LOD model and its used textures in DynDOLOD_SSE_Object_Report.txt. 

https://dyndolod.info/Help/TexGen#Rendered-Object-LOD-Textures
Note that the list of rendered object LOD textures is not covering all vanilla rendered object LOD textures. It can update the rendered object LOD textures for the walled cities and most structures. However, far away mountains, icebergs and glaciers are not yet covered. If a mod makes changes to these relevant full textures, it should also include updated pre-rendered object LOD textures.

The shown LOD might be using one of those rendered LOD textures that currently would require manual updating.

In case this is about the LOD snow shader covering the LOD, see https://dyndolod.info/Help/Snow-Ash-LOD-Shader

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Logs @ https://ufile.io/alt0vcnp
 

I've tried rerunning Dyndolod with updated glacier/iceberg mesh rules but it did not help