DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 182

[sheson]

4 hours ago, MITSUYOMI said:

Hello, im trying to create some 3d lod resources for some pine trees in NotWL but I seem to have some issues with the distant LOD4 trees having transparent foliage. 

I have checked the 3d Tree Lod manual, and it says that I have to make sure that UV is between zero and one? I have checked nifskope and there is a edit UV option. What do I need to do to make it between zero and one?

You can drag and move the UV coordinates that are outside the 0.0 to 1.0 range inside. Inside 0.0 and 1.0 is typically the center of the UV edit window.
You can also just set the Texture Clamp Mode to CLAMP_S and CLAMP_T in the shader settings.

[sheson]

6 hours ago, slanglois said:

Just wondering is anybody else had noticed an issue with Gildergreen Regrown when using NG DLL v4?

If I build my LOD using DynDOLOD 3 Alpha-118 and SE DLL 2.45 with Scripts 2.82.4, the LOD for Gildergreen works for all growth stages, but for some reason, if I build the LOD using NG DLL v4 and scripts instead, the LOD for stage 4 (final stage) of the Gildergreen growth is missing.  I'm still on SSE 1.5.97.

Moved to the DynDOLOD 3 Alpha thread. See the first post which log and debug log to upload when making posts.

Also upload ..\skse\plugins\DynDOLOD_Data\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.txt, DynDOLOD_Tamriel_Objects.txt and DynDOLOD_Worlds.txt from the DynDLOD output.

[MITSUYOMI]

I have already drag the uv's inside the box and it seems that the problem persists. As for the usemipmaps tag i use it on the name for the leaves but i dont know if the naming convention is ok though.

As for the clamp_s or _t is that assigned on the shader flags? And for the textures how do i fix the existing textures, and use for LOD. I use mainly paint.net for editing textures.

[sheson]

1 hour ago, MITSUYOMI said:

I have already drag the uv's inside the box and it seems that the problem persists. As for the usemipmaps tag i use it on the name for the leaves but i dont know if the naming convention is ok though.

As for the clamp_s or _t is that assigned on the shader flags? And for the textures how do i fix the existing textures, and use for LOD. I use mainly paint.net for editing textures.

What problem persists exactly? If you are just referring to how things look in the game, then do actual troubleshooting by checking the UV coordinates and used textures of a BTO object LOD mesh. If they use the full texture, then check the actual UV coordinates values in the LOD model NIF with NifSkope to make sure they are all really inside 0.0 and 1.0. Set Verbose=1 ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\DynDOLOD\DynDOLOD_SSE.ini, then check the LODGen_Tamriel_log.txt in the log folder for out of range messages.

As I wrote, the CLAMP_S and CLAMP_T is set in the shader settings Texture Clamp Mode. Very easy to edit with NifSkope when looking at the BSLightingShaderProperty.

[MITSUYOMI]

53 minutes ago, sheson said:

What problem persists exactly? If you are just referring to how things look in the game, then do actual troubleshooting by checking the UV coordinates and used textures of a BTO object LOD mesh. If they use the full texture, then check the actual UV coordinates values in the LOD model NIF with NifSkope to make sure they are all really inside 0.0 and 1.0. Set Verbose=1 ..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\DynDOLOD\DynDOLOD_SSE.ini, then check the LODGen_Tamriel_log.txt in the log folder for out of range messages.

As I wrote, the CLAMP_S and CLAMP_T is set in the shader settings Texture Clamp Mode. Very easy to edit with NifSkope when looking at the BSLightingShaderProperty.

Im sorry if i was not too Clear about the explanation. The problem that persists is the trees with the edited and fixed uvs still have transparent foliage. Ill try the the clamp_s and _t this time. For checking if the uv coordinates is not within 0 to 1, i just made sure that the uvs are inside the box, i dont know where to look for the actual uv values. For verbose=1 ill check again and ran dyndo.

Edited March 10, 2023 by MITSUYOMI

[sheson]

38 minutes ago, MITSUYOMI said:

Im sorry if i was not too Clear about the explanation. The problem that persists is the trees with the edited and fixed uvs still have transparent foliage. Ill try the the clamp_s and _t this time. For checking if the uv coordinates is not within 0 to 1, i just made sure that the uvs are inside the box, i dont know where to look for the actual uv values. For verbose=1 ill check again and ran dyndo.

If the UV is inside 0.0 and 1.0, then the shapes for the leaves in the object LOD BTO should be using the object LOD atlas generated by DynDOLOD which should have properly made mipmaps. Have you verified what texture the leaves in the BTO are using? If they are still using the full texture with bad mipmaps, then it is typically because of the UV being outside 0.0 and 1.0.

The UV data is either in the NiTriShapeData block or the BSTrIshape and can be checked with NifSkope.

[MITSUYOMI]

I have already set the clamp mode to clamp_s and _t, have verified the UV sets to be in between 0 and 1, but the leaves are still transparent. The BTO of the trees with transparent foliage use the same textures as the original tree model and also upon checking the UVs of the BTO it also has UV sets in between 0 and 1.

[sheson]

8 minutes ago, MITSUYOMI said:

I have already set the clamp mode to clamp_s and _t, have verified the UV sets to be in between 0 and 1, but the leaves are still transparent. The BTO of the trees with transparent foliage use the same textures as the original tree model and also upon checking the UVs of the BTO it also has UV sets in between 0 and 1.

Check the verbose LODGen log for out of range messages.
Upload the 3D tree LOD model and the used textures.

[z929669]

@sheson Question about new features in latest update:

Quote

DynDOLOD.exe - added GrassGlowMap, GrassBacklightMask, ComplexGrassGlowMap, ComplexGrassBacklightMask INI setting for better control with billboard NIF used for grass LOD generation

Is the documentation on these features pending?

[sheson]

33 minutes ago, z929669 said:

@sheson Question about new features in latest update:

Is the documentation on these features pending?

See the explanations in the INI above those settings.

[z929669]

17 minutes ago, sheson said:

See the explanations in the INI above those settings.

That's the first thing I tried ... not seeing those settings in the 119 DynDOLOD_SSE.ini

My fault. I made a mistake in updating my upgrade INI

[sheson]

8 minutes ago, z929669 said:

That's the first thing I tried ... not seeing those settings in the 119 DynDOLOD_SSE.ini

GrassGlowMap, GrassBacklightMask, ComplexGrassGlowMap, ComplexGrassBacklightMask are in the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini and DynDOLOD_ENDERALSE.ini under 4 lines of explanations for them in the DynDOLOD-Standalone.3.0-Alpha-119.7z archive.

[z929669]

On 3/2/2023 at 7:54 AM, heheloveer said:

 

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

 

On 3/2/2023 at 8:50 AM, 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.

Tested latest features in Alpha 119 using defaults for grass (backlighting flag unset using external billboard). Following are screen compares with my previous under 118:

 

Left to right: Alpha 118  >>  Alpha 119

So this looks great when the sun is down. While the sun still shows over the mountain though, matching is a bit worse. Should I play with ComplexGrassBacklightMask then? Keep using ComplexGrassBillboard=4 or switch to 5?

 

[sheson]

12 minutes ago, z929669 said:

 

Tested latest features in Alpha 119 using defaults for grass (backlighting flag unset using external billboard). Following are screen compares with my previous under 118:

 

Left to right: Alpha 118  >>  Alpha 119

So this looks great when the sun is down. While the sun still shows over the mountain though, matching is a bit worse. Should I play with ComplexGrassBacklightMask then?

If the side facing away from the light direction is too dark it can be brightened with the backlightmask.

ComplexGrassBillboard=5
ComplexGrassBacklightMask=50

50 = 50% of the light makes it through

[z929669]

3 hours ago, sheson said:

If the side facing away from the light direction is too dark it can be brightened with the backlightmask.

ComplexGrassBillboard=5
ComplexGrassBacklightMask=50

50 = 50% of the light makes it through

Testing with these changes for Alpha 119. Default is using ComplexGrassBillboard=4, ComplexGrassBacklightMask=0

L to R: Default  >>  ComplexGrassBillboard=5, ComplexGrassBacklightMask=50

This doesn't seem right. First images show as expected, but I did not expect that these changes would affect loaded grass, so I'm verifying ... wait one.

---

I confirmed that EVLaS has no impact. No shadow is cast my the distant mountain. It should creep along towards the PC as the sun is occluded.

Any ideas? Terrain underside not working maybe? Logs

---

Disregard previous compare. I was lazy and loaded up the game on my save without clean saving first. Using a clean save or new game resolved EVLaS interaction:

L to R: Default  >>  ComplexGrassBillboard=5, ComplexGrassBacklightMask=50  >>  ComplexGrassBillboard=5, ComplexGrassBacklightMask=25

Better, but I think ComplexGrassBacklightMask=25 may be the best trade-off