DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 196

[ikonomov]

5 hours ago, sheson said:

With a lot of time and NifSkope and experimenting with a couple shader settings or maybe manually editing normal vectors with Blender/3DSMax it might be possible to make the tree LOD a bit less susceptible to low sun directions.

One way to make a shape in a model darker is to use vertex colors.

I just re-run TexGen and DynDOLOD with LOD4 set to Billboards and also LOD4 set to Static LOD4 but without using HD/Ultra trees.  There doesn't seem to be much difference in the trees at LOD4 between Billboards and non Ultra.  The highlights were gone in both cases, just like when using 2.x, but undoubtedly the Ultra trees are higher quality.

I guess it's time to play in NifSkope and check what's possible to do changing shader settings and vertex colors.  A quick question, if I find something that might actually make some difference, would such changes be possible to automate with DynDOLOD with an added setting for some variable in the models that can be changed with NifSkope?

Edit: Also in Data\Meshes\DynDOLOD\lod\trees treepineforest05 for example has three different .nif files in different folders.  Which is the model that I should be testing on for Ultra trees?

Edit2: Ehh, I think it might be best to just accept things as they are.  It must be from the limited LOD shader.  If all that is possible is making the model darker, even being able to affect sections of the models is just not a good solution because under different lighting the darkened parts will look wrong...

If only Bethesda gave us the direct/ambient control for that LOD that you've implemented for the billboards XD

Edited February 24, 2021 by ikonomov

[ikonomov]

I'm really sorry for wasting two pages here.  I noticed this lighting issue so I thought it could be something that might be improved if I reported it.

[sheson]

9 hours ago, ikonomov said:

I just re-run TexGen and DynDOLOD with LOD4 set to Billboards and also LOD4 set to Static LOD4 but without using HD/Ultra trees.  There doesn't seem to be much difference in the trees at LOD4 between Billboards and non Ultra.  The highlights were gone in both cases, just like when using 2.x, but undoubtedly the Ultra trees are higher quality.

I guess it's time to play in NifSkope and check what's possible to do changing shader settings and vertex colors.  A quick question, if I find something that might actually make some difference, would such changes be possible to automate with DynDOLOD with an added setting for some variable in the models that can be changed with NifSkope?

Edit: Also in Data\Meshes\DynDOLOD\lod\trees treepineforest05 for example has three different .nif files in different folders.  Which is the model that I should be testing on for Ultra trees?

Edit2: Ehh, I think it might be best to just accept things as they are.  It must be from the limited LOD shader.  If all that is possible is making the model darker, even being able to affect sections of the models is just not a good solution because under different lighting the darkened parts will look wrong...

If only Bethesda gave us the direct/ambient control for that LOD that you've implemented for the billboards XD

You know which LOD model to edit by checking the DynDOLOD_SSE_Tree_Report.txt, with vanilla trees it would meshes\dyndolod\lod\trees\treepineforest05passthru_lod.nif

That's why I mentioned Blender/3DSMax. It might be necessary to only adjust specific triangle, vertices so not to disturb other parts of the tree.

You might as well just try a different full model/LOD model from one of the many tree mods just for those couple trees to see if they fit your taste.

[ikonomov]

8 hours ago, sheson said:

That's why I mentioned Blender/3DSMax. It might be necessary to only adjust specific triangle, vertices so not to disturb other parts of the tree.

You might as well just try a different full model/LOD model from one of the many tree mods just for those couple trees to see if they fit your taste.

I just made all vertex colors of the mesh to black just to test what effect it'll have.  It doesn't seem to change the trees at all in-game.  I tried editing the other two .nif files for that tree model just to make sure.  I made an autohotkey script so it didn't take long to change all colors to black in NifSkape.  I wonder if the limited shader at LOD4 simply ignores those colors.  I'm attaching the edited .nifs.  Do you have any other explanation for this?  If the game simply ignores those vertex colors at LOD4 I think we have an explanation why the trees don't reflect the light properly at that distance.  I'm thinking, if that's the case maybe a possible solution could be creating separate textures to be used by those lod meshes which could be edited to make the highlights darker.

Finally if we are hopeless to control the lighting with the Ultra trees I have to say that although a bit distracting, I think I've found a way to fool my vision into seeing something else.  Behold, Larch trees!  I think I'll give Flora Overhaul trees another try as well.  I'm really curious how they'll look with Ultra tree LODs.  The only reason I didn't stick with this mod years ago was because it makes the forests a bit dense, making it harder to spot enemies, but I guess that's realistic.

treepineforest05passthru_lod.nif treepineforest05_C36DC7D1passthru_lod.nif treepineforest05_0DAEF807passthru_lod.nif

[sheson]

1 hour ago, ikonomov said:

I just made all vertex colors of the mesh to black just to test what effect it'll have.  It doesn't seem to change the trees at all in-game.  I tried editing the other two .nif files for that tree model just to make sure.  I made an autohotkey script so it didn't take long to change all colors to black in NifSkape.  I wonder if the limited shader at LOD4 simply ignores those colors.  I'm attaching the edited .nifs.  Do you have any other explanation for this?  If the game simply ignores those vertex colors at LOD4 I think we have an explanation why the trees don't reflect the light properly at that distance.  I'm thinking, if that's the case maybe a possible solution could be creating separate textures to be used by those lod meshes which could be edited to make the highlights darker.

Finally if we are hopeless to control the lighting with the Ultra trees I have to say that although a bit distracting, I think I've found a way to fool my vision into seeing something else.  Behold, Larch trees!  I think I'll give Flora Overhaul trees another try as well.  I'm really curious how they'll look with Ultra tree LODs.  The only reason I didn't stick with this mod years ago was because it makes the forests a bit dense, making it harder to spot enemies, but I guess that's realistic.

 

treepineforest05passthru_lod.nif 8.89 kB · 0 downloads treepineforest05_C36DC7D1passthru_lod.nif 8.99 kB · 0 downloads treepineforest05_0DAEF807passthru_lod.nif 8.89 kB · 0 downloads

The game does not ignore vertex colors. If something does not show up in the game, it was not installed/used when generating LOD or the generated LOD is not installed.

This is what I get with your treepineforest05passthru_lod.nif

[ikonomov]

4 minutes ago, sheson said:

The game does not ignore vertex colors. If something does not show up in the game, it was not installed/used when generating LOD or the generated LOD is not installed.

I changed the .nif directly in the data folder, then tried to see a difference in-game.  I assume I need to re-run DynDOLOD then?

Edited February 24, 2021 by ikonomov

[sheson]

2 minutes ago, ikonomov said:

I changed the .nif directly in the data folder, then tried to see a difference in-game.  I assume I need to re-run DynDOLOD then?

Object LOD needs to generated again so the new LOD models are being used when generating the BTO files. Executing LODGen in expert mode will suffice if nothing else changed

[ikonomov]

Got it.  It's interesting to see from your screenshot that the highlights in the other trees trees don't seem as strong and obvious as it is in my game.  It looks like you are using some kind of weather mod or ENB, correct?  I wonder if that might be another solution for me, to just try a weather mod or ENB.

[sheson]

Just now, ikonomov said:

Got it.  It's interesting to see from your screenshot that the highlights in the other trees trees don't seem as strong and obvious as it is in my game.  It looks like you are using some kind of weather mod or ENB, correct?  I wonder if that might be another solution for me, to just try a weather mod or ENB.

Vanilla, with test weather 15e. Time is noon, so the sun shining from top is probably the key.

[ikonomov]

OK.  After some testing I think I've come up with something interesting.  Rather than editing individual vertices, using an autohotkey script I modified the three RGB values for all of them with 0.8 multiplier.  Similar to my small brightness modification to the grass, I am seeing a much better transition between the full model and the Static LOD4.  The model should get progressively darker as it gets closer, hopefully without big jumps in brightness, and with the current 0.8 it doesn't seem to be much change, so perhaps 0.9 or 0.85 might be better.  Most importantly, however, the highlights are not as obvious and distracting.  This tree was the most distracting before, but now the other ones are the ones that stand out having "burned out" or yellow needles.  I'm attaching the .nif if you like to see.

I wonder, is this something that can be automated during DynDOLOD generation?  To have an RGB modifier for all vertices.  In my own game if I'm going to keep this change, I'll have to apply it to all trees I think in order to have all of them have similar brightness.  With the autohotkey script I think I can do it in a reasonable amount of time, but I'm thinking that if this was possible during DynDOLOD generation it can benefit different builds with other trees as well.

treepineforest05passthru_lod.nif

Edited February 25, 2021 by ikonomov

[ikonomov]

I'm attaching a version with 0.9 modifier.  In my game it definitely looks to be an improvement.  Especially when those trees are in front of some darker background the highlights really stand out and look unnatural.  As small of an adjustment as this is, it seems to help make those highlights looking more natural.  I'm not sure if the trunk is a billboard, but if it is it still looks part of the tree being already very dark.  In the autohotkey script I have to run a loop for the number of vertices, but suspect it won't take that long to change it for all trees.  Are all the used tree lod meshes in the main folder Data\Meshes\DynDOLOD\lod\trees, or the subfolders as well?  Hopefully it can be done in DynDOLOD generation, but at least now I know how I can fix the problem in my game.

treepineforest05passthru_lod.nif

Edited February 25, 2021 by ikonomov

[sheson]

1 hour ago, ikonomov said:

I'm attaching a version with 0.9 modifier.  In my game it definitely looks to be an improvement.  Especially when those trees are in front of some darker background the highlights really stand out and look unnatural.  As small of an adjustment as this is, it seems to help make those highlights looking more natural.  I'm not sure if the trunk is a billboard, but if it is it still looks part of the tree being already very dark.  In the autohotkey script I have to run a loop for the number of vertices, but suspect it won't take that long to change it for all trees.  Are all the used tree lod meshes in the main folder Data\Meshes\DynDOLOD\lod\trees, or the subfolders as well?  Hopefully it can be done in DynDOLOD generation, but at least now I know how I can fix the problem in my game.

The problem is to programmatically target only the leafs, but not the 2D or 3D trunks of tree LOD models at the same time, while leaving other object LOD models alone. Also not all models require being modified. Maybe just a few select LOD models always need to be modified. In the end a LOD model should only require to be created once and should work for every occasion, just like the 3D LOD models for buildings or rocks. The tree LOD models included in Alpha 3 are combined from two resources as explained in the manual, maybe that step just needs a feature to avoid manual editing. I  have been pondering over such an feature for  quite some time. We will see.

I sort all 3D tree LOD models included in DynDOLOD Resources into meshes\DynDOLOD\trees. The models for the vanilla trees are all in the main folder.

[RockGodOne]

Is it normal that the MCM for DynDOLOD says the .esp and the .esm are version 2.45 when I'm actually using version 3.0 alpha 30?

I'm also not getting any grass LOD to show up. I've never once got the NGIO mod to work anyway tho. It generates several hundred MBs of grass files and I have them activated in MO2 but nothing ever shows up in game. I thought running DynDOLOD 3.0 would fix that but it didn't. I changed the grass=0 to grass=1 in the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini file and I made sure Grass was checked in TexGen.

Where can I start troubleshooting this?

[sheson]

3 hours ago, RockGodOne said:

Is it normal that the MCM for DynDOLOD says the .esp and the .esm are version 2.45 when I'm actually using version 3.0 alpha 30?

I'm also not getting any grass LOD to show up. I've never once got the NGIO mod to work anyway tho. It generates several hundred MBs of grass files and I have them activated in MO2 but nothing ever shows up in game. I thought running DynDOLOD 3.0 would fix that but it didn't. I changed the grass=0 to grass=1 in the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini file and I made sure Grass was checked in TexGen.

Where can I start troubleshooting this?

2.45 is the "API version" of the scripts and their data files. It didn't need to change in a long time.

You need to ask questions about third party mods on their appropriate forum/discord etc. I suggest to be a bit more descriptive than using the term "not working". 

You can start troubleshooting grass LOD generation by reading Troubleshooting on the second post. Obviously it requires a "working" No Grass In Objects setup.

[ikonomov]

I have been studying those needles for quite some time, as you can imagine 🙂 and I think I might have another explanation for the bright highlights.  I noticed that even when the trees are still in their full model, not in Static LOD4, the highlights start to become progressively stronger the further I move away from them.  I wonder if the problem might not be from the limited shader at LOD4, but from the texture of those branches.  I wish I can test it, but I wonder if the textures have lower resolution if the brightness effect can be minimized.  I'm attaching a picture that sort of shows this idea, I've exaggerated it a bit to make it more clear.

I don't know if this would be something that can be easily done during texgen and dyndolod generation, to generate lower resolution textures for the Ultra trees, and then have the Static LOD4 trees use them, but I thought it might be something else worth exploring.

Edited February 25, 2021 by ikonomov