DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 190

[sheson]

  On 3/1/2023 at 3:16 PM, heheloveer said:

I'm sure I have complex grass effect enabled in ENB, have installed complex grass textures and have used DynDOLOD_flat_4x2alt_lod.nif as grass billboard, though it will have to wait for some time before I can produce some before/after screenshots to prove my claim. Do you plan to verify this yourself at some point?

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No DynDOLOD logs. No information which grass mods are being used. No information which ENB version is used. No information which ENB complex grass settings are used.

[heheloveer]

  On 3/1/2023 at 3:24 PM, sheson said:

No DynDOLOD logs. No information which grass mods are being used. No information which ENB version is used. No information which ENB complex grass settings are used.

 

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I already said I use Qw's Grass Patch (and of course all the grass mods it combines), Rudy Cathedral Zangdar version and latest ENB binary. The logs and ENB complex grass settings would have to wait but I don't think I edited the complex grass parameters from Rudy's preset. Also I'm pretty sure DynDOLOD behaved the way it should and it's only a model problem, but if you insist I could run with both versions of the billboard model and provide the respective logs.

Edited March 1, 2023 by heheloveer
Typo.

[sheson]

  On 3/1/2023 at 3:33 PM, heheloveer said:

I already said I use Qw's Grass Patch (and of course all the grass mods it combines), Rudy Cathedral Zangdar version and latest ENB binary. The logs and ENB complex grass settings would have to wait but I don't think I edited the complex grass parameters from Rudy's preset. Also I'm pretty sure DynDOLOD behaved the way it should and it's only a model problem, but if you insist I could run with both versions of the billboard model and provide the respective logs.

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What I need would be the links to the actual mod/ENB with information which version and options are installed. The logs/debug logs typically provide the load order and settings.

The default non complex settings/assets are for the vanilla game/grass, the default complex grass settings/assets are for the vanilla game/grass with Vanilla complex grass for ENB and default ENB settings. If other grasses, ENBs (weather mods) are used, the settings/assets most likely need to be adapted.

if it works better without backlighting for you, then just do it...

[heheloveer]

  On 3/1/2023 at 3:46 PM, sheson said:

What I need would be the links to the actual mod/ENB with information which version and options are installed. The logs/debug logs typically provide the load order and settings.

The default non complex settings/assets are for the vanilla game/grass, the default complex grass settings/assets are for the vanilla game/grass with Vanilla complex grass for ENB and default ENB settings. If other grasses, ENBs (weather mods) are used, the settings/assets most likely need to be adapted.

if it works better without backlighting for you, then just do it...

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Grass mod is QW's Grass Patch (main version) with complex grass textures from https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/67304. ENB preset is Rudy Cathedral Zangdar's version. I meticulously followed the installation guides provided by their authors and have installed all their prerequisites.

I mean, DynDOLOD should support all kinds of modded content, right? Maybe it's just because I messed up somewhere but the grass mods I use are popular. If what I saw in my game can be replicated, it would mean lots of other people might be experiencing the same problem, and they deserve a more... well, officially supported way to solve this. Editing the ini files? Sure. But I don't think users should resort to editing the mesh themselves, or at least, there should be some mention in the official documents that editing the meshes are in some cases necessary. I will provide the logs, screenshots and any other relevant information I can think of sometime later and you could decide what to do with them.

[sheson]

  On 3/1/2023 at 4:31 PM, heheloveer said:

Grass mod is QW's Grass Patch (main version) with complex grass textures from https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/67304. ENB preset is Rudy Cathedral Zangdar's version. I meticulously followed the installation guides provided by their authors and have installed all their prerequisites.

I mean, DynDOLOD should support all kinds of modded content, right? Maybe it's just because I messed up somewhere but the grass mods I use are popular. If what I saw in my game can be replicated, it would mean lots of other people might be experiencing the same problem, and they deserve a more... well, officially supported way to solve this. Editing the ini files? Sure. But I don't think users should resort to editing the mesh themselves, or at least, there should be some mention in the official documents that editing the meshes are in some cases necessary. I will provide the logs, screenshots and any other relevant information I can think of sometime later and you could decide what to do with them.

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How is DynDOLOD supposed to include settings/assets for all possible combinations of grass, weather or whatever mods, INI settings, ENB, ENB settings?

Default settings are for the vanilla game, simple as that.

How is DynDOLOD not supporting all kinds of modded content? You said you change the setting to get the desired effect? 

> they deserve a more... well, officially supported way to solve this

For things to get easier or be simplified, they first need to be reported or asked for. Maybe also monetary support helps adding convenience features.

The documentation already explains that weather, ENB etc. affect brightness and what settings to use to counter that. Like the tools, the documentation is in ALPHA, so not all aspects might be covered, yet.

[heheloveer]

  On 3/1/2023 at 4:41 PM, sheson said:

How is DynDOLOD supposed to include settings/assets for all possible combinations of grass, weather or whatever mods, INI settings, ENB, ENB settings?

Default settings are for the vanilla game, simple as that.

How is DynDOLOD not supporting all kinds of modded content? You said you change the setting to get the desired effect? 

> they deserve a more... well, officially supported way to solve this

For things to get easier or be simplified, they first need to be reported or asked for. Maybe also monetary support helps adding convenience features.

The documentation already explains that weather, ENB etc. affect brightness and what settings to use to counter that. Like the tools, the documentation is in ALPHA, so not all aspects might be covered, yet.

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Yes, so I'm doing what I can by reporting this potential problem and a potential solution that I have. Also you reminded me that I could support you monetarily. I will consider this when it's not 1 AM where I am lol.

I understand default settings are for the vanilla game, users have to make adjustments to make it suit their game better; what I'm trying to say is that editing meshes isn't the same as changing a setting, either in the UI or in the ini files. If, I mean if we can establish that billboard without Back_Lighting flag is in some scenarios preferred, I would suggest including one such mesh in the files, make it billboard 3 or something so that users could switch to it just by editing the ini file, not the mesh itself. Anyway this discussion has all been rhetorics and I don't have anything else useful to say right now. I'll be back with the information I promised.

Edited March 1, 2023 by heheloveer

[sheson]

  On 3/1/2023 at 5:05 PM, heheloveer said:

Yes, so I'm doing what I can by reporting this potential problem and a potential solution that I have. Also you reminded me that I could support you monetarily. I would consider this when it's not 1 AM where I am lol.

I understand default settings are for the vanilla game, users have to make adjustments to make it suit their game better; what I'm trying to say is that editing meshes isn't the same as changing a setting, either in the UI or in the ini files. If, I mean if we can establish that billboard without Back_Lighting flag is in some scenarios preferred, I would suggest including one such mesh in the files, make it billboard 3 or something so that users could switch to it just by editing the ini file, not the mesh itself. Anyway this discussion has all been rhetorics and I don't have anything else useful to say right now. I'll be back with the information I promised.

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Now that this has been reported/asked for, this will be looked into.

[mytreds]

Using TexGen for the first time, it stops around 7 minutes. I've watched this happen 3 times, it's working and then suddenly stops. I verify in the Task Manager that its cpu use is 0% after a certain point each time. I've added TexGen to my exceptions for my windows security. I am wondering how I can solve this problem before I give up.

TexGen_SSE_log.txtFetching info...

[z929669]

  On 3/1/2023 at 4:31 PM, heheloveer said:

Grass mod is QW's Grass Patch (main version) with complex grass textures from https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/67304. ENB preset is Rudy Cathedral Zangdar's version. I meticulously followed the installation guides provided by their authors and have installed all their prerequisites.

I mean, DynDOLOD should support all kinds of modded content, right? Maybe it's just because I messed up somewhere but the grass mods I use are popular. If what I saw in my game can be replicated, it would mean lots of other people might be experiencing the same problem, and they deserve a more... well, officially supported way to solve this. Editing the ini files? Sure. But I don't think users should resort to editing the mesh themselves, or at least, there should be some mention in the official documents that editing the meshes are in some cases necessary. I will provide the logs, screenshots and any other relevant information I can think of sometime later and you could decide what to do with them.

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I know that ENB-CG settings themselves can exacerbate issues. Some presets have the CG settings optimized, and some do not. Some of the CG settings only apply to 'basic' (non-CG grass) and others only impact CG grass. LOD grass obviously cannot be impacted by this, so we've found that keeping the settings moderate is best for LOD compatibility. Also, if certain grasses are not using a CG-compatible atlas, they will be overly bright in full grass. As I understand, you are saying that it's the LOD grass than can be very bright at certain ToD with respect to loaded grass.

I can corroborate that this is indeed true with Step SSE as well, and it sounds like the Back_Lighting flag may be part of the issue. We use Cathedral Landscapes Complex Grass for ENB and our own custom ENB preset (Heavy version), which is drastically simpler than many presets. ENB for SSE 0.488.

If I find the time, I can test with these two mods over vanilla and see if I can't mitigate with the flag setting. I'm swamped with work, RL, and multiple projects right now, so no promises. For now, this is the effect with all settings optimized for CG-LOD compatibility:

While the sun is overhead or even still peeking over the mountain and lighting up both foreground and background, things look as expected:

... but as it dips behind the mountain, one expects the shadow to creep from the mountain to the player, which indeed it does, but it doesn't impact LOD grass much at all, only the loaded grass:

The LOD grass will stay lit up until most of the ambient sunlight is gone. This is also true of other LOD objects, but it's not as pronounced/obvious (e.g., distant mountains, trees, and objects are a bit brighter than those in the loaded foreground but its pretty acceptable, IMO ... I think the loaded area is pretty obvious from the second screen).

EDIT: the so-called 'optimized' settings for our CG-LOD config are partly TexGen Direct/Ambient as indicated here, DynDOLOD grass T/B brightness all at 0.500, and ENB-CG settings moderate (with EFFECTs UseOriginalBloom=true UseOriginalPostProcessing=true). We are using Cathedral Weathers in those shots with Ambiance.

This must partly be a game limitation, but I'm intrigued if the grass LOD flag can mitigate without messing things up in full daylight or when the sun is behind the PC.

[sheson]

  On 3/2/2023 at 1:21 AM, mytreds said:

Using TexGen for the first time, it stops around 7 minutes. I've watched this happen 3 times, it's working and then suddenly stops. I verify in the Task Manager that its cpu use is 0% after a certain point each time. I've added TexGen to my exceptions for my windows security. I am wondering how I can solve this problem before I give up.

TexGen_SSE_log.txt 327.64 kB · 2 downloads

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Moved to the DynDOLOD 3 Alpha thread. Also upload the debug log that should save together with the log when closing the program via X.

Otherwise add RealTimeLog=1 under [TexGen] to ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\DynDOLOD\TexGen_SSE.INI run again and upload that log.

Check the task manager for Texconvx64.exe processes TexGen might be waiting for.

[adhocspamdie]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I wasn't able to find an answer directly from dyndolod.info or a quick search here.

Normally the recommendation is to run xLodgen, then Texgen and finally Dyndolod. If I am only updating the textures by installing texture mods, is it sufficient to just rerun Texgen, or do I have to run the others too?

[heheloveer]

  On 3/1/2023 at 5:08 PM, sheson said:

Now that this has been reported/asked for, this will be looked into.

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  On 3/2/2023 at 4:24 AM, z929669 said:

I know that ENB-CG settings themselves can exacerbate issues. Some presets have the CG settings optimized, and some do not. Some of the CG settings only apply to 'basic' (non-CG grass) and others only impact CG grass. LOD grass obviously cannot be impacted by this, so we've found that keeping the settings moderate is best for LOD compatibility. Also, if certain grasses are not using a CG-compatible atlas, they will be overly bright in full grass. As I understand, you are saying that it's the LOD grass than can be very bright at certain ToD with respect to loaded grass.

I can corroborate that this is indeed true with Step SSE as well, and it sounds like the Back_Lighting flag may be part of the issue. We use Cathedral Landscapes Complex Grass for ENB and our own custom ENB preset (Heavy version), which is drastically simpler than many presets. ENB for SSE 0.488.

If I find the time, I can test with these two mods over vanilla and see if I can't mitigate with the flag setting. I'm swamped with work, RL, and multiple projects right now, so no promises. For now, this is the effect with all settings optimized for CG-LOD compatibility:

While the sun is overhead or even still peeking over the mountain and lighting up both foreground and background, things look as expected:

... but as it dips behind the mountain, one expects the shadow to creep from the mountain to the player, which indeed it does, but it doesn't impact LOD grass much at all, only the loaded grass:

The LOD grass will stay lit up until most of the ambient sunlight is gone. This is also true of other LOD objects, but it's not as pronounced/obvious (e.g., distant mountains, trees, and objects are a bit brighter than those in the loaded foreground but its pretty acceptable, IMO ... I think the loaded area is pretty obvious from the second screen).

EDIT: the so-called 'optimized' settings for our CG-LOD config are partly TexGen Direct/Ambient as indicated here, DynDOLOD grass T/B brightness all at 0.500, and ENB-CG settings moderate (with EFFECTs UseOriginalBloom=true UseOriginalPostProcessing=true). We are using Cathedral Weathers in those shots with Ambiance.

This must partly be a game limitation, but I'm intrigued if the grass LOD flag can mitigate without messing things up in full daylight or when the sun is behind the PC.

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I just spent a lot of time testing and the results are very very interesting. Not many screenshots though since I tested way too many things to record down one by one, and you'll have to trust my words for it. In any case, a key culprit for the phenomenon I encountered (LOD grass lighting up at dawn/dusk when facing the sun while full grass doesn't) was EVLAS. I also believe EVLAS is also responsible for the phenomenon shown in z929669's screenshots.

The summary to my findings is, EVLAS makes grass lods react to dawn/dusk lighting much more aggressively, as in, they can become very, very bright. With my ENB preset it isn't much of a problem when facing the direction opposite to the sun, since the full grass is also lit up, but when you're facing the sun, the effect becomes quite jarring, especially when EVLAS makes terrain and full grass turn darker. The screenshots were all taken with grass lods generated with the default billboard (with Back_Lighting flag). Without EVLAS, grass lods with or without Back_Lighting work more or less fine to me, but with EVLAS it seems Back_Lighting has to be removed so that grass lods won't become an eyesore when facing the sun, at least in my case.

The other interesting problem is the one illustrated in z929669's screenshots. We weren't really describing the same phenomenon, since in his screenshots the camera was facing the sun but the full grass was also quite bright, at least when the sun hadn't been obstructed by the mountains. He noticed that when the sun was obstructed but not yet sunk below the horizon, the full grass became dark but the grass lods remained bright, and I think this is also a behavior brought about by EVLAS. Step Guide does include EVLAS so I'm assuming he was using it. Anyway, without EVLAS, both the full grass and the grass lods would, as he described, "stay lit up until most of the ambient sunlight is gone". With EVLAS, sunlight can be obstructed by terrain and objects, and the full grass would not light up when the mountains are casting shadows on them. But grass lods behave the same as before: they begin to gradually light up when it's sunrise time, regardless of whether there's actually sunlight present. With Skyrim as mountainous as it is, this could create some quite confusing visuals when the sun is over the horizon but not over the mountains. Removing Back_Lighting flag doesn't really help in this case, since the grass lods would still light up when they think "it's time", albeit only on one side, instead of on all sides. z929669 thought it's likely an engine limitation and I'm inclined to agree. In any case this is for sure far beyond me to find some sort of fix.

Another thing I noticed is that, as I mentioned, in z929669's screenshots the full grass were bright when the camera was facing the sun, but in my game it would only light up when the camera is facing the opposite direction. I'm not very sure what makes the our games behave this differently. I found increasing SubSurfaceScatteringAmount parameter in ENB complex grass settings could make the grass somewhat brighter in backlighting conditions, but in the ENB preset he used this value isn't very high. This is worth considering however. If I understand it correctly, in some setups the full grass are darker when the camera's facing the sun, while in others they are brighter. This would mean some people have to resolve this "overly bright grass lods when facing the sun" issue while others don't, since the full grass are also bright anyway.

Anyway here's the logs and the ENB setting I used. I ran DynDOLOD two times with the same setting and TexGen textures. Only the billboard meshes were changed. https://anonfiles.com/B4Vdz1b2z1/Logs_and_ENB_setting_zip

[sheson]

  On 3/2/2023 at 12:57 PM, adhocspamdie said:

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I wasn't able to find an answer directly from dyndolod.info or a quick search here.

Normally the recommendation is to run xLodgen, then Texgen and finally Dyndolod. If I am only updating the textures by installing texture mods, is it sufficient to just rerun Texgen, or do I have to run the others too?

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https://dyndolod.info/Updating#New-or-Updated-Mods-or-Plugins
In case a new mod only updates textures or tree full models (and standard tree LOD is used) relevant to to LOD, remove old TexGen output, then use TexGen to generate new output and install it as usual. Start DynDOLOD in expert mode, select all or only the affected worldspaces and click the Rebuild Atlas button to update the atlas textures. Then install the DynDOLOD output, overwriting the existing DynDOLOD output. See expert mode for more.

If landscape textures are updated, and terrain LOD does not match full terrain anymore, then it should be obvious that terrain LOD textures need to be updated.

[sheson]

  On 3/2/2023 at 4:24 AM, z929669 said:

I know that ENB-CG settings themselves can exacerbate issues. Some presets have the CG settings optimized, and some do not. Some of the CG settings only apply to 'basic' (non-CG grass) and others only impact CG grass. LOD grass obviously cannot be impacted by this, so we've found that keeping the settings moderate is best for LOD compatibility. Also, if certain grasses are not using a CG-compatible atlas, they will be overly bright in full grass. As I understand, you are saying that it's the LOD grass than can be very bright at certain ToD with respect to loaded grass.

I can corroborate that this is indeed true with Step SSE as well, and it sounds like the Back_Lighting flag may be part of the issue. We use Cathedral Landscapes Complex Grass for ENB and our own custom ENB preset (Heavy version), which is drastically simpler than many presets. ENB for SSE 0.488.

If I find the time, I can test with these two mods over vanilla and see if I can't mitigate with the flag setting. I'm swamped with work, RL, and multiple projects right now, so no promises. For now, this is the effect with all settings optimized for CG-LOD compatibility:

While the sun is overhead or even still peeking over the mountain and lighting up both foreground and background, things look as expected:

... but as it dips behind the mountain, one expects the shadow to creep from the mountain to the player, which indeed it does, but it doesn't impact LOD grass much at all, only the loaded grass:

The LOD grass will stay lit up until most of the ambient sunlight is gone. This is also true of other LOD objects, but it's not as pronounced/obvious (e.g., distant mountains, trees, and objects are a bit brighter than those in the loaded foreground but its pretty acceptable, IMO ... I think the loaded area is pretty obvious from the second screen).

EDIT: the so-called 'optimized' settings for our CG-LOD config are partly TexGen Direct/Ambient as indicated here, DynDOLOD grass T/B brightness all at 0.500, and ENB-CG settings moderate (with EFFECTs UseOriginalBloom=true UseOriginalPostProcessing=true). We are using Cathedral Weathers in those shots with Ambiance.

This must partly be a game limitation, but I'm intrigued if the grass LOD flag can mitigate without messing things up in full daylight or when the sun is behind the PC.

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Something must have changed since September. The backlighting also wrongly affects the Vanilla Complex Grass for ENB with the default ENB complex grass setting s (mulitpliers at 1.0 or amounts at 0.0). So next Alpha version will probably use a NIF without backlighting for complex grass by default. Since it is also possible to control the amount/percentage of backlighting with a gray scale texture, e.g. black = off, white = on, an INI setting that creates a x% gray scale texture might be added as well in case someone wants to use backlighting and control it.

By default LOD does not cast or receive shadows, so with a mod like EVLaS that makes the game cast long shadows from full models it becomes very obvious what is LOD and what isn't. It seems the ENB distant shadow effect does not make full shadows cast on LOD either. It probably just makes LOD cast shadows on LOD.

[heheloveer]

  On 3/2/2023 at 2:50 PM, sheson said:

Something must have changed since September. The backlighting also wrongly affects the Vanilla Complex Grass for ENB with the default ENB complex grass setting s (mulitpliers at 1.0 or amounts at 0.0). So next Alpha version will probably use a NIF without backlighting for complex grass by default. Since it is also possible to control the amount/percentage of backlighting with a gray scale texture, e.g. black = off, white = on, an INI setting that creates a x% gray scale texture might be added as well in case someone wants to use backlighting and control it.

By default LOD does not cast or receive shadows, so with a mod like EVLaS that makes the game cast long shadows from full models it becomes very obvious what is LOD and what isn't. It seems the ENB distant shadow effect does not make full shadows cast on LOD either. It probably just makes LOD cast shadows on LOD.

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Glad to see you already have some potential changes in mind. I think I should mention two other smaller problems I've encountered before you make an update:

1) When I was testing grass lods I noticed sometimes when I fast travel to Whiterun watchtower or load a save there, the grass lods would appear in some cells that should be inhabited by full grass. More specifically, I use grass lod mode 2 so the grass lods should only exist outside the uLargeRefLODGridSize area, but for some reason they can also appear inside it. This doesn't happen for all the cells in the area, only some of them, and I'm pretty sure the actually loaded cells weren't affected. In the affected cells grass lods coexist with the full grass that should be there. If not for the obvious color mismatches that we've been discussing I probably wouldn't have noticed them. Using LOD Unloading Bug Fix fixes this temporarily.

2) The Whiterun Exterior Patch in DynDOLOD Resources may conflict with mods that replaces the two bridges near Whiterun, like Lux Via and Northern Roads. After running DynDOLOD, lod meshes that match these mods' models would appear outside the city, but since the Whiterun Exterior Patch places full model vanilla bridges in the same places, there would be an overlap of bridges. This could be easily solved by removing some lines in the patch file or removing the added bridges in the DynDOLOD plugin though. Do you think you should include some kind of patch to this or that the patches should be provided by the mods' authors?

In case logs are needed, just use the ones I included with my previous post: https://anonfiles.com/B4Vdz1b2z1/Logs_and_ENB_setting_zip