DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 196

[PRieST]

5 minutes ago, sheson said:

Rendering side views of tree models for billboard textures means we can render any model to textures. Simple create models that show what you need.

Read "Rendered Object LOD Textures" in DynDOLOD/docs/help/TexGen.html and DynDOLOD/docs/help/TexGenConfiguration.html

I am currently doing the Solitude object LOD textures.

Will look into the documentaton, thanks for pointing it.

Oh nice, I'll look into it

[PRieST]

Me again, maybe found another issue.

Haven't noticed this before, because after coc time of day was always the same and I always changed the weather to 0010e1f0.
Snow on Mountain LOD is very dark and it wasn't so dark with alpha 27:

All DynDOLOD Logs

Haven't change any textures (colors) and I haven't changed anything on the Terrain LOD textures (same as with DynDOLOD Alpha 27) generated with SSE LODGen, but I don't know which beta version it was.

Edited February 17, 2021 by PRieST

[sheson]

7 hours ago, PRieST said:

Me again, maybe found another issue.

Haven't noticed this before, because after coc time of day was always the same and I always changed the weather to 0010e1f0.
Snow on Mountain LOD is very dark and it wasn't so dark with alpha 27:

All DynDOLOD Logs

Haven't change any textures (colors) and I haven't changed anything on the Terrain LOD textures (same as with DynDOLOD Alpha 27) generated with SSE LODGen, but I don't know which beta version it was.

See

 

[PRieST]

6 hours ago, sheson said:

See

 

Ok, that was it, what I don't understand is, why I didn't saw this in any other gamestarts...or as I tidied up a bit, this record was overwritten before <- shame on me

Edit:
It isn't fixed completely, I think I missed one record, I did checked both mentioned in the link. There is still the nearest mountain, where it doesn't match, but SnowLODMaterialHD and SnowLODMaterial are identical now (conerning the snow color).

Edit2:
This might be, because I noticed that there is much less snow on the LODs. If you getting closer and it changes to a lower LOD level/Full Model more snow is applied to it and so it looks brighter all in all.

Edit2:
Had to mess around with Majestic Mountains, but now it looks quite good. Still I don't know why I had to do this, as it doesn't made a difference before and yes I deleted some plugins, but none of them had messed around with the SnowLODMaterials. Of course I had a mod installed, which changed this...oh my god, just irgnore this...damn 😅

Edited February 18, 2021 by PRieST

[eeekie]

Hi Sheson, I'm unable to load my save game after updating Dyndolod, both with 3.0 and 2.92. Everything starts up fine, loading screens are fine, until the first frame of my save where the screen never fades back in from black, and the game freezes. I was in an interior cell before updating, and updated according to the process described in the manual. 

When I disable Dyndolod, the game loads fine. There isn't any unusual issues when loading the save in ReSaver. 

I am not getting any errors when I generate Dyndolod, so I'm a bit lost on where to start troubleshooting.

Here's the latest log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rKaayd7kdh6b2z6P-TT5MtGVv-AHjJ-R/view?usp=sharing

Thank you!

[sheson]

34 minutes ago, eeekie said:

Hi Sheson, I'm unable to load my save game after updating Dyndolod, both with 3.0 and 2.92. Everything starts up fine, loading screens are fine, until the first frame of my save where the screen never fades back in from black, and the game freezes. I was in an interior cell before updating, and updated according to the process described in the manual. 

When I disable Dyndolod, the game loads fine. There isn't any unusual issues when loading the save in ReSaver. 

I am not getting any errors when I generate Dyndolod, so I'm a bit lost on where to start troubleshooting.

Here's the latest log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rKaayd7kdh6b2z6P-TT5MtGVv-AHjJ-R/view?usp=sharing

Thank you!

See ..\DynDOLOD\Docs\DynDOLOD-FAQ.txt  "FAQ: Game: ILS or CTD" and ..\DynDOLOD\Docs\DynDOLOD-README.txt how to troubleshoot CTD.

[eeekie]

Thanks, I did try all those... I'm not sure what the deal was but I loaded my new save (again) without Dyndolod, made another save, and now this one is working. I guess maybe just that particular save at that particular time was borked. 

[Mercury71]

Have ran latest Alpha-30 and i love it! Generatet "Grass Cache" (file ended up being 1,8 Gb) before. The grass is just great. Now i just have to learn to tweak it so it becomes perfect. If you think it is very few trees i am using Lower Tree Line Mod. Ty Sheson for DynDOLOD!

🙂

Edited February 20, 2021 by Mercury71

[ikonomov]

The urge to get the grass LOD has become irresistible and I've finally gotten the nerve to try the "alpha".  

I have a question about the GrassDensity setting.  I've done a number of tests, every time re-generating both textures and DynDOLOD at 100, 50, 30, 10 and 0 and I can't seem to find any visible differences looking at various screenshots I've taken at the same places.  My framerate sometimes goes in the 40 fps range when it is at 100, so I tested lowering that number as per the instructions in the first two posts.  Lowering the setting did improve the framerate proportionally to about 10-15 fps when GrassDensity is set to 0.  I have GTX 1070 and 1440p monitor, and the 0 setting allows me to stay above 60 fps around Whiterun where I found the drop to be the worst having most grass.

I'm using vanilla grass and tress, with the .ini configured with the Ultra settings by the launcher, and no other .ini changes related to grass.  In the No Grass In Objects mod I have the following settings:

RayCast = False
UseGrassCache = True
OnlyLoadFromCache = True
DynDOLODGrassMode = 2

In DynDOLOD_SSE.ini I have changed

Grass=1
GrassLargeReference=1

I also use Terrain LOD redone mod since I use vanilla grass, and because I don't use xLODGen I have

Occlusion=1
OcclusionQuality=3

When I generate the textures and DynDOLOD I leave everything to the default settings with Ultra/HD trees and run DynDOLOD two times as required by Open Cities.

Everything works and looks fantastic, in addition to the grass, I've found the Ultra/HD generated trees to make a significant improvement to distant Juniper trees compared to using the Tree Billboards Vanilla Medium mod.

So if you could, can you elaborate a bit on what GrassDensity setting is supposed to do.  Thank you.

Edited February 20, 2021 by ikonomov

[sheson]

1 hour ago, ikonomov said:

The urge to get the grass LOD has become irresistible and I've finally gotten the nerve to try the "alpha".  

I have a question about the GrassDensity setting.  I've done a number of tests, every time re-generating both textures and DynDOLOD at 100, 50, 30, 10 and 0 and I can't seem to find any visible differences looking at various screenshots I've taken at the same places.  My framerate sometimes goes in the 40 fps range when it is at 100, so I tested lowering that number as per the instructions in the first two posts.  Lowering the setting did improve the framerate proportionally to about 10-15 fps when GrassDensity is set to 0.  I have GTX 1070 and 1440p monitor, and the 0 setting allows me to stay above 60 fps around Whiterun where I found the drop to be the worst having most grass.

I'm using vanilla grass and tress, with the .ini configured with the Ultra settings by the launcher, and no other .ini changes related to grass.  In the No Grass In Objects mod I have the following settings:

RayCast = False
UseGrassCache = True
OnlyLoadFromCache = True
DynDOLODGrassMode = 2

In DynDOLOD_SSE.ini I have changed

Grass=1
GrassLargeReference=1

I also use Terrain LOD redone mod since I use vanilla grass, and because I don't use xLODGen I have

Occlusion=1
OcclusionQuality=3

When I generate the textures and DynDOLOD I leave everything to the default settings with Ultra/HD trees and run DynDOLOD two times as required by Open Cities.

Everything works and looks fantastic, in addition to the grass, I've found the Ultra/HD generated trees to make a significant improvement to distant Juniper trees compared to using the Tree Billboards Vanilla Medium mod.

So if you could, can you elaborate a bit on what GrassDensity setting is supposed to do.  Thank you.

Change GrassDensity=100 to a lower value in ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\DynDOLOD\DynDOLOD_SSE.ini to thin out grass LOD for better performance.

0 to 100%; 0 = no grass - unlike Grass=0, the grass LOD billboards will still be added to the object LOD texture atlas

If a cell has 200 grass placements for a grass type and the grass density is set to 50, then only 100 placements instead of the original 200  are added to the object LOD BTO for that cell.

Make sure to actually look at LOD beyond the uLargeRefLODGridSize. You might also keep more frames by having grass LOD start right beyond the UGridsToLoad.

If no full models/textures or grass base records changed in the meantime, there is no need redo the grass billboards with TexGen.
It is also enough to just do the first pass generating object (and tree LOD) if you just want to update grass LOD.

In fact, you could just edit the export file directly and set the GrassDensity= there and then jist Execute LODGen from DynDOLOD expert mode.

[PRieST]

Nothing which should get a high priority (as it is even barely seen), but I noticed  - while I was wandering around in whiterun and looked from inside the whiterunworld to the exteriors (I was generating grass cache again and wanted to see how it looks ingame) - that first more LODs were shown, just to vanish after some time:
First look:

Some seconds later, after I change position:

Haven't found anything concerning this in the documentation or here (but honestly I have no clue for what I should search).

Logfiles from my last generation.

 

[sheson]

2 hours ago, PRieST said:

Nothing which should get a high priority (as it is even barely seen), but I noticed  - while I was wandering around in whiterun and looked from inside the whiterunworld to the exteriors (I was generating grass cache again and wanted to see how it looks ingame) - that first more LODs were shown, just to vanish after some time:
First look:

Some seconds later, after I change position:

Haven't found anything concerning this in the documentation or here (but honestly I have no clue for what I should search).

Logfiles from my last generation.

 

If LOD "vanishes" it is because active cells attached. LOD only shows outside loaded cells. Explained this many times before.

[PRieST]

Ah got it, so at first the whiterunworld isn't loaded in whole and a few seconds later the whiterunworld cells are getting loaded and so the LODs are vanishing.

Never noticed this before, that's why I was confused.

[sheson]

1 hour ago, PRieST said:

Ah got it, so at first the whiterunworld isn't loaded in whole and a few seconds later the whiterunworld cells are getting loaded and so the LODs are vanishing.

Never noticed this before, that's why I was confused.

5x5 cells are loaded around the player as usual. The player character is simply crossing a cell border, a new row of cells attaches, LOD for those cells is disabled.

[ikonomov]

On 2/20/2021 at 12:36 PM, sheson said:

If a cell has 200 grass placements for a grass type and the grass density is set to 50, then only 100 placements instead of the original 200  are added to the object LOD BTO for that cell.

Make sure to actually look at LOD beyond the uLargeRefLODGridSize. You might also keep more frames by having grass LOD start right beyond the UGridsToLoad.

This is a perfect explanation, thank you.  I have selected the Ultra setting the first time I started the launcher, and in the .ini I saw uLargeRefLODGridSize=11.  It seems 11 is pretty far and the reason why I had a hard time not being able to see the grass density change as I lowered the GrassDensity with GrassLargeReference=1.  Once I knew what to look for I was able to see clearly the grass beyond the large reference distance.  I did some more testing and here is what I found:

1. Using
DynDOLODGrassMode=2 (GrassControl.config.txt)
uLargeRefLODGridSize=11 (SkyrimPrefs.ini)
GrassLargeReference=1 with GrassDensity=30 (DynDOLOD_SSE.ini)
extends the grass very far with framerates dropping to about 60 fps.  The grass does change density at the limit of those 11 grids, but it is so far that unless specifically looking for it it seems almost undetectable.  The No Grass In Objects mod seems to perform very well with DynDOLODGrassMode=2 setting, and the extended grass seems to not change at all regardless of the viewing distance.

2. Using
DynDOLODGrassMode=1 (GrassControl.config.txt)
GrassLargeReference=0 with GrassDensity=100 (DynDOLOD_SSE.ini)
extends the grass without a limit and also results in framerate dropping to about 60 fps in areas with heavy grass like around Whiterun.  There is a visible transition as the active cell loads, but since it is not just the grass that gets rendered, it is the terrain that seems to be the most obvious.  I've played bit with the brightness settings, and I think I've found a slight improvement for more "seamless" transition for the vanilla grass at least.
GrassBrightnessTopR=0.300
GrassBrightnessTopG=0.334
GrassBrightnessTopB=0.337
GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.240
GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.267
GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.270

My next question is regarding tree LODs.

While looking at distant objects, I noticed the HD/Ultra trees having this brightness/highlight parts during certain times of the day.  When they are rendered from up close I can see some of this variation, but it seems to be much less than the images of the billboards.  The real trouble is that when there are many trees in one place this bright crown of the trees seems to become more obvious.  I couldn't find a similar brightness settings for the trees, and I wonder if there is a way to adjust the brightness for the highlights of the tree billboard textures.

Edited February 21, 2021 by ikonomov