DynDOLOD DLL

[sheson]

3 hours ago, tabaras said:

Sorry if this has been already answered elsewhere but I can't seem to find an answer... Do I need to rerun Dyndolod after updating "DynDOLOD DLL NG and Scripts" to the latest version? Thanks in advance

You can just update. No need to rerun LOD generation or do clean saves. Save in interior is a good idea, but shouldn't be strictly necessary either.

[bread-dreams]

Hi. I installed DynDOLOD (for 1.6.1170, with NG, all necessary plugins cleaned and large reference bugs workaround) and generated new LOD recently for my existing save with a tiny mod list and everything was running fine for a while until I started experiencing CTDs upon entering/exiting interiors, especially around Winterhold and the College. I checked the logs and DynDOLOD kept showing up with references to form id 0x00033DCB or 0x00033DCA, which seemingly points to the huge Azura statue.

I tried regenerating LODs, with and without the large reference bugs, but it didn't seem to help much. The CTDs are fairly inconsistent, and I couldn't find a way to make them happen consistently. But it does seem to always happen when entering/exiting an interior, even to another interior (I had a crash happen when exiting Saarthal to Saarthal Excavation). The crashes do seem to happen more often when near the Shrine of Azura but one happened far away, somewhere near Riften.

Thankfully, disabling DynDOLOD in the MCM menu does seem to fix it! At least after a bunch of hours playing I didn't have any crashes, whilst before it wouldn't take long for a crash to happen.

Every single crash log I had seemed like the exact same, many references pointing to 0x00033DCB. In another similar post I found, they also had issues with the Azura statue but they had installed a replacer or something, something I have not done at all, it's just the vanilla statue. Sheson seemed to want the editor ID of that form ID, so preemptively in case it helps here it is: skyrimesm_033DCB_DynDOLOD_REVERT https://i.imgur.com/QjmzVyu.png

Also, I did not run xLODGen before generating LOD, because I absolutely despise the meshes and textures xLODGen creates. Hopefully that's not a problem? The required logs are here: https://ufile.io/slbtft3b Also, sorry the debug log is huge and doesn't correspond to the generated mod I'm actually using because I regenerated a bunch of times trying to fix this even with xLODGen and all but hopefully it's still helpful in case you need it.

Thanks~

[sheson]

3 hours ago, bread-dreams said:

Hi. I installed DynDOLOD (for 1.6.1170, with NG, all necessary plugins cleaned and large reference bugs workaround) and generated new LOD recently for my existing save with a tiny mod list and everything was running fine for a while until I started experiencing CTDs upon entering/exiting interiors, especially around Winterhold and the College. I checked the logs and DynDOLOD kept showing up with references to form id 0x00033DCB or 0x00033DCA, which seemingly points to the huge Azura statue.

I tried regenerating LODs, with and without the large reference bugs, but it didn't seem to help much. The CTDs are fairly inconsistent, and I couldn't find a way to make them happen consistently. But it does seem to always happen when entering/exiting an interior, even to another interior (I had a crash happen when exiting Saarthal to Saarthal Excavation). The crashes do seem to happen more often when near the Shrine of Azura but one happened far away, somewhere near Riften.

Thankfully, disabling DynDOLOD in the MCM menu does seem to fix it! At least after a bunch of hours playing I didn't have any crashes, whilst before it wouldn't take long for a crash to happen.

Every single crash log I had seemed like the exact same, many references pointing to 0x00033DCB. In another similar post I found, they also had issues with the Azura statue but they had installed a replacer or something, something I have not done at all, it's just the vanilla statue. Sheson seemed to want the editor ID of that form ID, so preemptively in case it helps here it is: skyrimesm_033DCB_DynDOLOD_REVERT https://i.imgur.com/QjmzVyu.png

Also, I did not run xLODGen before generating LOD, because I absolutely despise the meshes and textures xLODGen creates. Hopefully that's not a problem? The required logs are here: https://ufile.io/slbtft3b Also, sorry the debug log is huge and doesn't correspond to the generated mod I'm actually using because I regenerated a bunch of times trying to fix this even with xLODGen and all but hopefully it's still helpful in case you need it.

Thanks~

If the CTD also happens with a LOD patch that is either using DynDOLOD DLL SSE and Scripts or PapyrusUtil as you seem to report, also upload a crash log of that. Not need for the DynDOLOD log or debug log for that generation.

To make sure, nothing overwrites textures\clutter\ShrineofAzura.dds or textures\clutter\ShrineofAzura_n.dds?

Unrelated, how are the better terrain LOD Meshes without the vanilla bugs and with almost perfect coast lines a problem? What is the issue with better terrain LOD textures that match full terrain in color and tone? What alternative are you using that was not made with xLODGen? I suggest to read the first post, https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen and/or to follow a modding guide.

[bread-dreams]

12 hours ago, sheson said:

If the CTD also happens with a LOD patch that is either using DynDOLOD DLL SSE and Scripts or PapyrusUtil as you seem to report, also upload a crash log of that. Not need for the DynDOLOD log or debug log for that generation.

Sorry, forgot to mention that the CTDs do not seem to happen with the non-NG DLL, at least as far as I could see, but on the other hand loading times when entering/exiting places seemed a tiny bit longer than usual which was actually annoying though it totally could be some sort of weird momentary issue or placebo or whatever, I should try again later.

12 hours ago, sheson said:

To make sure, nothing overwrites textures\clutter\ShrineofAzura.dds or textures\clutter\ShrineofAzura_n.dds?

Well I'm using Cleaned Skyrim SE Textures which does override the vanilla ShrineofAzura(_n).dds but no other mod overrides it including DynDOLOD.

12 hours ago, sheson said:

Unrelated, how are the better terrain LOD Meshes without the vanilla bugs and with almost perfect coast lines a problem? What is the issue with better terrain LOD textures that match full terrain in color and tone? What alternative are you using that was not made with xLODGen? I suggest to read the first post, https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen and/or to follow a modding guide.

Well to be completely fair, when I did generate with xLODGen I used fairly low quality settings because my computer isn't that powerful so I was worried about performance, but I totally could try again with higher quality settings. One thing I did notice was that the snow colour was way too dark in the world map (honestly looked like it was missing nearly? not sure), whilst in vanilla it's you know, snow coloured, off white. I wasn't feeling like figuring out how to fix that, because when I searched for similar issues it required messing with the brightness or gamma settings or whatever and that's kind of annoying especially when generating takes a long time.

And i'm not using any alternative really, I'm literally just using whatever comes vanilla. So basically I generated billboards with TexGen and then LOD with DynDOLOD, without running xLODGen at all or installing any other sort of terrain textures or lod or whatever beforehand, which seems to work fine for me, I'm not very demanding regards graphics and I'm only using DynDOLOD because it's a neat tool and absolutely improves LOD, but xLODGen's textures didn't do it for me.

Thanks for the help again, your tools are wonderful.

[sheson]

41 minutes ago, bread-dreams said:

Sorry, forgot to mention that the CTDs do not seem to happen with the non-NG DLL, at least as far as I could see, but on the other hand loading times when entering/exiting places seemed a tiny bit longer than usual which was actually annoying though it totally could be some sort of weird momentary issue or placebo or whatever, I should try again later.

Well I'm using Cleaned Skyrim SE Textures which does override the vanilla ShrineofAzura(_n).dds but no other mod overrides it including DynDOLOD.

Well to be completely fair, when I did generate with xLODGen I used fairly low quality settings because my computer isn't that powerful so I was worried about performance, but I totally could try again with higher quality settings. One thing I did notice was that the snow colour was way too dark in the world map (honestly looked like it was missing nearly? not sure), whilst in vanilla it's you know, snow coloured, off white. I wasn't feeling like figuring out how to fix that, because when I searched for similar issues it required messing with the brightness or gamma settings or whatever and that's kind of annoying especially when generating takes a long time.

And i'm not using any alternative really, I'm literally just using whatever comes vanilla. So basically I generated billboards with TexGen and then LOD with DynDOLOD, without running xLODGen at all or installing any other sort of terrain textures or lod or whatever beforehand, which seems to work fine for me, I'm not very demanding regards graphics and I'm only using DynDOLOD because it's a neat tool and absolutely improves LOD, but xLODGen's textures didn't do it for me.

Thanks for the help again, your tools are wonderful.

Can you confirm the CTD still happens if the statue uses the vanilla textures?

Curious, since the vanilla terrain LOD textures basically never match the full landscape textures and snow in particular is just always off. If contrast, gamma and brightness are left alone, then the combined terrain LOD textures generated by xLODGen  have exactly the color and brightness as the full landscape textures. The settings can not make a single texture darker or brighter, it always affects the end result equally. In addition to the noise.dds texture, the map has specific INI settings / overlay textures which are applied in the game onto terrain LOD textures and thus can be changed at any time https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Maps-And-Map-Mods#Snow. If generating all terrain LOD textures takes a long time, then for testing, generate a specific chunk only until satisfied. You may want to check out A Clear Map of Skyrim and Other Worlds.
Instead of vanilla terrain LOD textures, you could use the terrain LDO textures from Terrain LOD Redone. You will have to get rid its terrain LOD meshes though or use xLODGen to generate terrain LOD meshes only in order to overwrite them.

[sheson]

23 hours ago, bread-dreams said:

Sorry, forgot to mention that the CTDs do not seem to happen with the non-NG DLL, at least as far as I could see, but on the other hand loading times when entering/exiting places seemed a tiny bit longer than usual which was actually annoying though it totally could be some sort of weird momentary issue or placebo or whatever, I should try again later.

Get DynDOLOD DLL NG Alpha 18. It hopefully fixes the CTD.

[bread-dreams]

31 minutes ago, sheson said:

Get DynDOLOD DLL NG Alpha 18. It hopefully fixes the CTD.

Hehe this is good timing, I was just testing what you suggested ("Can you confirm the CTD still happens if the statue uses the vanilla textures?"). I hid the modded textures and after a few hours of testing, I could not get a single crash. I unhid them and after a bit of playing I got a crash (leaving Frostflow Lighthouse southeast of Dawnstar) so they do seem to have been the problem somehow? Had a look at the modded textures and nothing seems obviously broken or something about them so I have really no idea why they would be causing crashes. It might be a fluke.

But now I'll try the updated DLL, with the modded textures enabled. I might take a while but I'll report back about whether or not the CTDs happen (hopefully they don't obvs). Would love to know what you changed too. Also below is what I had written before you posted about the new DLL, about xLODGen.

23 hours ago, sheson said:

Curious, since the vanilla terrain LOD textures basically never match the full landscape textures and snow in particular is just always off.

The main issue for me is the world map, which ends up looking fairly ugly to me. Here's a comparison, without xlodgen on the left and with xlodgen on the right.

  

Also, for example, around Morthal, the swamp ends up looking broken.

Is this just because of low quality settings?

23 hours ago, sheson said:

If generating all terrain LOD textures takes a long time, then for testing, generate a specific chunk only until satisfied. You may want to check out A Clear Map of Skyrim and Other Worlds.
Instead of vanilla terrain LOD textures, you could use the terrain LDO textures from Terrain LOD Redone. You will have to get rid its terrain LOD meshes though or use xLODGen to generate terrain LOD meshes only in order to overwrite them.

Cheers, I'll check these out when I can, and I think I must've messed up some settings when using xLODGen but I didn't realise you could generate specific chunks so that will definitely help, thank you.

[sheson]

10 hours ago, bread-dreams said:

Hehe this is good timing, I was just testing what you suggested ("Can you confirm the CTD still happens if the statue uses the vanilla textures?"). I hid the modded textures and after a few hours of testing, I could not get a single crash. I unhid them and after a bit of playing I got a crash (leaving Frostflow Lighthouse southeast of Dawnstar) so they do seem to have been the problem somehow? Had a look at the modded textures and nothing seems obviously broken or something about them so I have really no idea why they would be causing crashes. It might be a fluke.

But now I'll try the updated DLL, with the modded textures enabled. I might take a while but I'll report back about whether or not the CTDs happen (hopefully they don't obvs). Would love to know what you changed too. Also below is what I had written before you posted about the new DLL, about xLODGen.

The main issue for me is the world map, which ends up looking fairly ugly to me. Here's a comparison, without xlodgen on the left and with xlodgen on the right.

  

Also, for example, around Morthal, the swamp ends up looking broken.

Is this just because of low quality settings?

Cheers, I'll check these out when I can, and I think I must've messed up some settings when using xLODGen but I didn't realise you could generate specific chunks so that will definitely help, thank you.

From the changelog: DynDOLOD DLL NG and Scripts - do not reset currently disabled persistent large references

To improve the coastlines of terrain LOD meshes on the map generated by xLODGen, set the Optimized Unseen dropdown to 550 with a quality lower than 10 (0 for best) for LOD level 32 as explained on the first post and https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Generating-Terrain-LOD-Meshes

[bread-dreams]

12 hours ago, sheson said:

To improve the coastlines of terrain LOD meshes on the map generated by xLODGen, set the Optimized Unseen dropdown to 550 with a quality lower than 10 (0 for best) for LOD level 32 as explained on the first post and https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Generating-Terrain-LOD-Meshes

Just tested that, that solved it. I was just using too low a quality setting before. The dark snow "issue" persists, though increasing brightness and contrast and reducing the gamma made it much better, though now grass on the world map looks very yellowish… I'll just keep fiddling with the settings until I find something that works for me.

Edited April 12 by bread-dreams

[sheson]

29 minutes ago, bread-dreams said:

Just tested that, that solved it. I was just using too low a quality setting before. The dark snow "issue" persists, though increasing brightness and contrast and reducing the gamma made it much better, though now grass on the world map looks very yellowish… I'll just keep fiddling with the settings until I find something that works for me.

As I wrote before, the terrain LOD textures for all LOD levels match the full textures in the active cells 1:1 if the brightness, contrast, gamma settings are left alone. The brightness, contrast, gamma affect the end result equally. If you want only a specific texture or two to be different, then you would need to change/replace the full landscape texture temporality. In any case, the differences are because of post processing effects, overlay textures and INI settings applied in the game.

[bread-dreams]

8 minutes ago, sheson said:

As I wrote before, the terrain LOD textures for all LOD levels match the full textures in the active cells 1:1 if the brightness, contrast, gamma settings are left alone. The brightness, contrast, gamma affect the end result equally. If you want only a specific texture or two to be different, then you would need to change/replace the full landscape texture temporality. In any case, the differences are because of post processing effects, overlay textures and INI settings applied in the game.

Well, for curiosity's sake, why are the raw dds files for vanilla and xLODGen so different then? Were the vanilla textures not meant to match active cells at all? I generated a LOD32 texture with the same 256x256 size as vanilla without changing brightness/contrast/gamma and comparing with vanilla, it's much darker (attached below). If I strongly prefer the vanilla LOD32 texture could I simply remove xLODGen's generated LOD32 textures and use vanilla while still using the rest of LOD16/8/4 from xLODGen? Thanks for all the help btw.

[z929669]

2 hours ago, bread-dreams said:

Well, for curiosity's sake, why are the raw dds files for vanilla and xLODGen so different then? Were the vanilla textures not meant to match active cells at all? I generated a LOD32 texture with the same 256x256 size as vanilla without changing brightness/contrast/gamma and comparing with vanilla, it's much darker (attached below). If I strongly prefer the vanilla LOD32 texture could I simply remove xLODGen's generated LOD32 textures and use vanilla while still using the rest of LOD16/8/4 from xLODGen? Thanks for all the help btw.

All I see here is a brightness difference. Are you certain that you didn't change LOD32 gamma?

[sheson]

9 hours ago, bread-dreams said:

Well, for curiosity's sake, why are the raw dds files for vanilla and xLODGen so different then? Were the vanilla textures not meant to match active cells at all? I generated a LOD32 texture with the same 256x256 size as vanilla without changing brightness/contrast/gamma and comparing with vanilla, it's much darker (attached below). If I strongly prefer the vanilla LOD32 texture could I simply remove xLODGen's generated LOD32 textures and use vanilla while still using the rest of LOD16/8/4 from xLODGen? Thanks for all the help btw.

You would have to ask Bethesda why they made terrain LOD textures that do not match the actual full textures and do not match the terrain in the active cells or why they created shaders and post processing effects that make the difference worse or the map have a greenish etc.

Terrain LOD meshes and textures can be added or removed any time. They have standard file names and thus are interchangeable. Note that terrain LOD Level 32 is used in the game in far distance and the map and a brightness difference will be visible unless you increase the terrain LOD multiplier INI setting at the cost of performance.

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Mod-Configuration-Menu#Settings, https://dyndolod.info/Help/Terrain-LOD-and-Water-LOD, https://dyndolod.info/Help/xLODGen#Terrain-LOD-Textures-Brightness, https://dyndolod.info/Mods/Maps-And-Map-Mods

[bread-dreams]

11 hours ago, sheson said:

You would have to ask Bethesda why they made terrain LOD textures that do not match the actual full textures and do not match the terrain in the active cells or why they created shaders and post processing effects that make the difference worse or the map have a greenish etc.

Terrain LOD meshes and textures can be added or removed any time. They have standard file names and thus are interchangeable. Note that terrain LOD Level 32 is used in the game in far distance and the map and a brightness difference will be visible unless you increase the terrain LOD multiplier INI setting at the cost of performance.

Thanks!! that basically answers my questions

By the way I've been playing for several hours with the alpha-18 NG DLL and I haven't had any crashes at all yet, so I think your fix worked. Cheers!

[phpones]

For some reason, your last update on DynDOLOD DLL NG 1.6.11xx and Scripts 3.00 (Alpha 19) is causing a crash when launching the game. It's actually causing another mod to crash, Floating Damage at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com). Same load order, running that mod for 1000+ hours already, but as soon as I updated DynDOLOD, the game launches but crases at title screen. And I can't test Dyndo previous versions because you removed them.

Full callstack: Unhandled exception at 0x7FFE556B53AC KERNELBASE.dll+00653AC nop [rax+rax*1], ea - Pastebin.com