DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 190

[Zackmaniac]

  On 5/20/2021 at 10:39 AM, sheson said:

The large references bugs and the warning messages have been discussed plenty of time before and are not new to DynDOLOD 3 alpha.
The large reference bugs have been documented and explained years ago already in ..\DynDOLOD\Docs\SkyrimSELargeRefGrid\SkyrimSE-LargeRefGrid.html
Since ever DynDOLOD prints the list of overwritten large references that trigger these bugs. The main "fix" is still the same: Only ESM flagged plugins should overwrite large references.

 

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Sheson, thanks for your response.

The two posts you linked here were actually the only two mentions of these warnings I could find when I first started looking into this, and neither shed much light on how to fix the issues. (One of them is essentially you saying "yeah, these are errors and you should fix them.")

And while I've read through all of the DynDOLOD documentation, it's very technical for someone who doesn't have a lot of prior experience with how the Skyrim engine works. (SkyrimSE-LargeRefGrid.html is particularly tough to get a handle on.) What may seem self-explanatory to you, the creator of DynDOLOD, is not so for some of us.

It's certainly not your job to explain or teach this stuff to anyone -- it's the user's responsibility to understand how this extremely useful (and free) piece of software works. And the fact you're so active and responsive on this forum is commendable.

But with most areas of knowledge -- languages, science, whatever -- there are tons of resources geared towards all kinds of levels of experience that people can tap into. With Skyrim LOD generation in general and DynDOLOD in particular, I haven't yet found the knowledge resources that bridge the gap between newb-friendly YouTube tutorials and the very comprehensive and technical nature of your documentation. (In fact, most places suggest posting here and asking for help when running into trouble.) But I'll keep looking and trying to learn. Thanks again for the reply.

[Shredxt]

  On 5/20/2021 at 7:49 AM, sheson said:

I would assume it hat to do with the large reference grid, right?

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Yeah, I made some ini tweaks to improve distant mountain/skinned tree lod without realising the consequences... all sorted now!

[sheson]

  On 5/21/2021 at 12:36 AM, Zackmaniac said:

Sheson, thanks for your response.

The two posts you linked here were actually the only two mentions of these warnings I could find when I first started looking into this, and neither shed much light on how to fix the issues. (One of them is essentially you saying "yeah, these are errors and you should fix them.")

And while I've read through all of the DynDOLOD documentation, it's very technical for someone who doesn't have a lot of prior experience with how the Skyrim engine works. (SkyrimSE-LargeRefGrid.html is particularly tough to get a handle on.) What may seem self-explanatory to you, the creator of DynDOLOD, is not so for some of us.

It's certainly not your job to explain or teach this stuff to anyone -- it's the user's responsibility to understand how this extremely useful (and free) piece of software works. And the fact you're so active and responsive on this forum is commendable.

But with most areas of knowledge -- languages, science, whatever -- there are tons of resources geared towards all kinds of levels of experience that people can tap into. With Skyrim LOD generation in general and DynDOLOD in particular, I haven't yet found the knowledge resources that bridge the gap between newb-friendly YouTube tutorials and the very comprehensive and technical nature of your documentation. (In fact, most places suggest posting here and asking for help when running into trouble.) But I'll keep looking and trying to learn. Thanks again for the reply.

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Keep in mind that everything in this is thread is for the alpha test. Many concepts and especially game related things are already part of earlier versions and other the threads.

If the explanations or linked posts so far leave questions, feel free to ask more specific questions.
"Terminilogy" in..\DynDOLOD\Docs\DynDOLOD_Manual.html and ..\DynDOLOD\docs\help\Terminology.html may help.

[gmahadhika91]

  On 5/12/2021 at 4:14 PM, gmahadhika91 said:

Hi Sheson, I've yet again found a bugged mountain. It's just North East of Windhelm, and I can confirm this bug is present with only a handful of mods namely:
- USSEP
- Alternate Start
- Open Cities

Hence, I've made sure there are no .bto files installed. DynDOLOD generation doesn't solve this problem. Also, the mountain in question has no collision and it has no information when clicked. How do I fix this? Thank you again.

https://imgur.com/a/7dkmuYf

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Uuuh...I did. It's this one.

[sheson]

  On 5/21/2021 at 3:13 PM, gmahadhika91 said:

Uuuh...I did. It's this one.

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Oh those foggy screenshots where we can not really see anything. Use console to set a clear weather. Use wait so it is day light. Provide position information form where "the problem" can be seen.
You told use there is no BTO.  Without a BTO there can be no object LOD mountain. The only way terrain LOD is not showing / disabled in the distance  is via occlusion data or the usual fade because the max render distance of about a 100 cells has been reached.

Again, that far out, there is no game data in the games plugins. It has been removed by Bethesda. For the position shown in the screenshot there no BTO files for any of the 3 LOD levels.

xLODGen/DynDOLOD can only generate LOD for data that exists. For the really far away areas beyond the that the game still uses vanilla LOD files.

Test with a vanilla game.

 

[darknightbacca]

Sheson, i need your help, i'm struggling alot to get grass lod's working correctly via most the grass mod's i'm attempting to use, main one is QW's Grass Patch, which combines Veydosebrom Regions, Folkvangr, Cathedral Pine Grass and Depths of Skyrim, i've had an extensive look at the help doc's in DyndoLOD's folder, and tried everything i could and still no solution, 

Here's what i tried :

Looked at OBND - Object Bounds on CK and SSEEdit, ensured they were set, Used NifSkope to fix all the nif's that needed fixing (BSFadeNode) as before i fixed the nif's TexGen64 would spew out <Warning: Root block is NiNode> errors which i eradicated and turned the MinGrassModelVolume & MinGrassModelHeight down as a LAST resort which didn't really help at all,

From what i'm seeing when texgen generates, it's generating the billboards fine, however in the log (TexGen_SSE_Grass_Billboards) it's ignoring a ton of grass stuff and setting it to false, now i'm aware you can force it to generate, which i attempted and couldn't figure out but i don't really understand at all why it's ignoring them, the object bounds are fine, the nif's are all BSFadeNode's, i seriously don't get it,

What makes even less sense is the only mod i can get to work is Cathedral Landscapes (Grass only) and some of it's grass gets ignored by TexGen as well, yet it shows up in game and renders the grass lod's, any of the grass mod's i've tried on their own like Veydosebrom Regions, Folkvangr, Northern Grass, Northern Cathedral Grass, Tamrielic Grass all fail,

My no grass in objects setting is set to DyndoLOD mode = 1, i've also tried 2, to no avail,

If you've got any clue on what could be causing it to fail or any direction you could point me in for a fix, that'd be fantastic, cause frankly i'm happy to troubleshoot but i've run out of ideas of possible causes for this,

 

(Also tested my load order being the issue, settings, e.t.c, reinstalled dyndolod, dyndolod resources, made sure settings are all correct, but i could have slipped up somewhere)

 

Screenshot of LOD : https://gyazo.com/aaf6509e49fbfdb315d3ba86ec5b36e3 (couldn't upload due to size limit)

TexGen_SSE_Grass_Billboards.txtFetching info... TexGen_SSE_Debug_log.rarFetching info... TexGen_SSE_log.rarFetching info... DynDOLOD_SSE_Object_Report.rarFetching info...

[sheson]

  On 5/21/2021 at 6:01 PM, darknightbacca said:

Sheson, i need your help, i'm struggling alot to get grass lod's working correctly via most the grass mod's i'm attempting to use, main one is QW's Grass Patch, which combines Veydosebrom Regions, Folkvangr, Cathedral Pine Grass and Depths of Skyrim, i've had an extensive look at the help doc's in DyndoLOD's folder, and tried everything i could and still no solution, 

Here's what i tried :

Looked at OBND - Object Bounds on CK and SSEEdit, ensured they were set, Used NifSkope to fix all the nif's that needed fixing (BSFadeNode) as before i fixed the nif's TexGen64 would spew out <Warning: Root block is NiNode> errors which i eradicated and turned the MinGrassModelVolume & MinGrassModelHeight down as a LAST resort which didn't really help at all,

From what i'm seeing when texgen generates, it's generating the billboards fine, however in the log (TexGen_SSE_Grass_Billboards) it's ignoring a ton of grass stuff and setting it to false, now i'm aware you can force it to generate, which i attempted and couldn't figure out but i don't really understand at all why it's ignoring them, the object bounds are fine, the nif's are all BSFadeNode's, i seriously don't get it,

What makes even less sense is the only mod i can get to work is Cathedral Landscapes (Grass only) and some of it's grass gets ignored by TexGen as well, yet it shows up in game and renders the grass lod's, any of the grass mod's i've tried on their own like Veydosebrom Regions, Folkvangr, Northern Grass, Northern Cathedral Grass, Tamrielic Grass all fail,

My no grass in objects setting is set to DyndoLOD mode = 1, i've also tried 2, to no avail,

If you've got any clue on what could be causing it to fail or any direction you could point me in for a fix, that'd be fantastic, cause frankly i'm happy to troubleshoot but i've run out of ideas of possible causes for this,

 

(Also tested my load order being the issue, settings, e.t.c, reinstalled dyndolod, dyndolod resources, made sure settings are all correct, but i could have slipped up somewhere)

 

Screenshot of LOD : https://gyazo.com/aaf6509e49fbfdb315d3ba86ec5b36e3 (couldn't upload due to size limit)

TexGen_SSE_Grass_Billboards.txt 29.19 kB · 0 downloads TexGen_SSE_Debug_log.rar 81.99 kB · 0 downloads TexGen_SSE_log.rar 73.25 kB · 0 downloads DynDOLOD_SSE_Object_Report.rar 104.35 kB · 0 downloads

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If there is no billboard for a grass, then it can not have LOD generated for it.
If you wonder why a specific grass record does not have a billboard generated, then you will have be more specific. 

The TexGen log reports missing textures for some, so those are obvious.

There are currently known issues with grasses added by ESL flagged plugins.. Either unflag the plugins or wait for the next alpha version (no ETA) .

The No Grass In Objects INI settings do not affect if grass LOD shows or not, obviously.

[gmahadhika91]

  On 5/21/2021 at 3:57 PM, sheson said:

Oh those foggy screenshots where we can not really see anything. Use console to set a clear weather. Use wait so it is day light. Provide position information form where "the problem" can be seen.
You told use there is no BTO.  Without a BTO there can be no object LOD mountain. The only way terrain LOD is not showing / disabled in the distance  is via occlusion data or the usual fade because the max render distance of about a 100 cells has been reached.

Again, that far out, there is no game data in the games plugins. It has been removed by Bethesda. For the position shown in the screenshot there no BTO files for any of the 3 LOD levels.

xLODGen/DynDOLOD can only generate LOD for data that exists. For the really far away areas beyond the that the game still uses vanilla LOD files.

Test with a vanilla game.

 

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This is with vanilla game. No mods whatsoever, just the official DLCs.
https://imgur.com/a/en4FbPL

It happens when I look over to Solstheim.
https://imgur.com/a/cCfjjP2

Here, you can see the problem from some distance away. Notice there is a "hole" in the distant mountain/terrain. Not as jarring as the first picture, but it's there.
https://imgur.com/a/7NMdOSj

This is what happens when I load my full modlist (including DynDOLOD and Occlusion) on the vanilla save. Notice that the "hole" gets bigger. Updating occlusion didn't fix the problem.
https://imgur.com/a/AMSWt0T

This is the coordinates where I can see the problem, both in vanilla and in modded.
https://imgur.com/a/vgYsA2i

I hope that helps to identify the problem. Thank you again.

[darknightbacca]

  On 5/21/2021 at 6:18 PM, sheson said:

If there is no billboard for a grass, then it can not have LOD generated for it.
If you wonder why a specific grass record does not have a billboard generated, then you will have be more specific. 

The TexGen log reports missing textures for some, so those are obvious.

There are currently known issues with grasses added by ESL flagged plugins.. Either unflag the plugins or wait for the next alpha version (no ETA) .

The No Grass In Objects INI settings do not affect if grass LOD shows or not, obviously.

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Interesting, it could be an esl problem, as cathedral landscapes isn't an esl when i generated it for my lods.. 

I'll test it out, see if it ends up being the fix, thanks.

[sheson]

  On 5/21/2021 at 6:20 PM, gmahadhika91 said:

This is with vanilla game. No mods whatsoever, just the official DLCs.
https://imgur.com/a/en4FbPL

It happens when I look over to Solstheim.
https://imgur.com/a/cCfjjP2

Here, you can see the problem from some distance away. Notice there is a "hole" in the distant mountain/terrain. Not as jarring as the first picture, but it's there.
https://imgur.com/a/7NMdOSj

This is what happens when I load my full modlist (including DynDOLOD and Occlusion) on the vanilla save. Notice that the "hole" gets bigger. Updating occlusion didn't fix the problem.
https://imgur.com/a/AMSWt0T

This is the coordinates where I can see the problem, both in vanilla and in modded.
https://imgur.com/a/vgYsA2i

I hope that helps to identify the problem. Thank you again.

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If there are rectangular holes in the vanilla distance LOD, it is because of the wrong vanilla occlusion data.
If you use tcl and move high enough above the ground, eventually those holes should close and and show the LOD.

If those holes do not close then the first screenshot shows terrain LOD that was generated without the cut content being restored.
Generate terrain LOD meshes and textures with xLODGen and install one of the recommended options SSE-Terrain-Tamriel.esm or  SSE-Terrain-Tamriel-Extend.esm.

[prustr]

Hi,
I would like to ask a question about mesh rules. Is it possible to create a rule for grass? I tried as "level0/billboard1/billboard1/none VWD NearLOD" before "tree" rule but that cause the grass lod dissappear.

I know it's stated some performance loss occurs with grass lod but I'm aiming some performance gain by this. So, if the effect of a mesh rule would be neglectable or irrelevant, I understand. If this gives you some idea about my grass density, I did create my grass cache while my settings are "iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=8" and "iMinGrassSize=40" then my lod with "GrassDensity=30"

---

Also a question about occlusion if that's ok. Do occlusion created by xlodgen and dyndolod are interchangeable or do I need to create it by dyndolod to have a better one.

I guess my understanding on this is not correct.

After dyndolod process I updated my xlodgen's occlusion with the settings of Quality:3 Height:100 radius:100 mode:"+TVDS-flat+Border" with the expectation of grass/tree lod objects won't be placed behind a hill or similar type of terrain if can not be seen by PC. But when I checked with TFC, these objects are there. Is it because this objects are placed onto whole cell or not, so if a cell is partially seen then objects are placed onto whole cell. Also while I'm on TFC on these distant cells I see some of them flickering. Part of these object's textures are turning black and back, part of them just appearing and disappearing and rest of them are placed correctly which my guess is shouldn't be placed.

Can someone also correct me about occlusion?

[Illana]

  On 5/17/2021 at 6:26 PM, z929669 said:

Did you precache grass and set both NGIO 'cache' settings to 'True'? This should all be resolvable, as not using NGIO seems inadvisable even without DynDOLOD. We are currently preparing instructions for all of this and for grass LOD configuration with our next guide iteration. For the time being, you should read the NGIO nexus pages and post over there for help.

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Yes, grass is precached and usecache and onlyloadfromcache are both true

 

This behaviour is reminiscent of having no grass cache (freezing and then grass loading in after a short fade in). Does the mod fallback onto default behaviour when it cannot find cache to load?

[z929669]

  On 5/21/2021 at 8:54 PM, prustr said:

Can someone also correct me about occlusion?

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The general consensus is to use xLODGen for Occlusion. From our guides:

1. Run xLODGen from the MO2 executable drop-down list.
2. Select only the Tamriel and DLC2SolstheimWorld worldspaces.
3. Ensure only the Occlusion box is ticked.
4. Use the following settings:
   • Quality: 3
   • Height: 0
   • Radius: 100
   • Mode: -Flat +Borders
5. Click [Generate] to run the process.
6. Once the completed message has appeared, click the red X to close xLODGen.
   • Occlusion.esp is saved automatically and will be placed in the Overwrite folder in MO.
7. Right-click on the Overwrite mod listing and select, [Create new mod].
8. Name it Step SkyrimSE - Occlusion or anything unique.
9. Ensure the new mod is active (ticked).
10. Ensure the Occlusion.esp is the last plugin in the load order just after DyDOLOD.esp and that it is enabled, else run LOOT and sort plugins.

[z929669]

  On 5/22/2021 at 4:27 AM, Illana said:

Yes, grass is precached and usecache and onlyloadfromcache are both true

This behaviour is reminiscent of having no grass cache (freezing and then grass loading in after a short fade in). Does the mod fallback onto default behaviour when it cannot find cache to load?

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You need to tell NGIO via the INI, but that mod highly advises to use precached grass to avoid stuttering and other issues. I would precache grass always with that mod, regardless of whether or not you are using it for DynDOLOD grass LODGen. This is our WIP instructions for running without grass LOD:

Precaching grass will still benefit performance. To increase performance further, disable grass LOD generation completely by making the following configuration changes prior to generating (or regenerating) object LOD:

1. In MO, make the following changes to No Grass In Objects GrassControl.config.txt:
   • DynDOLODGrassMode = 0
   • OverwriteGrassDistance - Set to something between 4000 and 24000. Higher values decrease performance while increasing quality. Grass will be full-rendered to this value as per default behavior of fGrassStartFadeDistance in Skyrim.ini
   • OverwriteGrassFadeRange - Set to something between 1000 and 18000 (depending on OverwriteGrassDistance) to transition linearly from full grass to no grass. Higher values increase performance while decreasing quality. Grass will begin fading from this value as per default behavior of fGrassFadeRange in Skyrim.ini
   • ExtendGrassCount - Set to 'False' only if OverwriteGrassDistance ≤ 7000
2. Set Grass=0 in ../DynDOLOD/Edit Scripts/DynDOLOD/DynDOLOD_SSE.ini

[sheson]

  On 5/21/2021 at 8:54 PM, prustr said:

Hi,
I would like to ask a question about mesh rules. Is it possible to create a rule for grass? I tried as "level0/billboard1/billboard1/none VWD NearLOD" before "tree" rule but that cause the grass lod dissappear.

I know it's stated some performance loss occurs with grass lod but I'm aiming some performance gain by this. So, if the effect of a mesh rule would be neglectable or irrelevant, I understand. If this gives you some idea about my grass density, I did create my grass cache while my settings are "iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=8" and "iMinGrassSize=40" then my lod with "GrassDensity=30"

---

Also a question about occlusion if that's ok. Do occlusion created by xlodgen and dyndolod are interchangeable or do I need to create it by dyndolod to have a better one.

I guess my understanding on this is not correct.

After dyndolod process I updated my xlodgen's occlusion with the settings of Quality:3 Height:100 radius:100 mode:"+TVDS-flat+Border" with the expectation of grass/tree lod objects won't be placed behind a hill or similar type of terrain if can not be seen by PC. But when I checked with TFC, these objects are there. Is it because this objects are placed onto whole cell or not, so if a cell is partially seen then objects are placed onto whole cell. Also while I'm on TFC on these distant cells I see some of them flickering. Part of these object's textures are turning black and back, part of them just appearing and disappearing and rest of them are placed correctly which my guess is shouldn't be placed.

Can someone also correct me about occlusion?

Expand  

If you do not want a certain grass to have LOD, disable its billboard generation in TexGen and make sure no billboard is installed for it. ATM mesh rules are not intended to work with GRAS records. Check the performance section of the second post.

DynDOLOD is the advanced and easier version of xLODGen. The occlusion calculation use the exact same code, obviously. There is typically no need to change the height. Leave it 0. The advantage is that with DynDOLOD different settings per worldspace can be defined in its INI and there is no extra plugin or having to run a different process. The disadvantage is that the DynDOLOD plugin might have more required masters, which can make it more likely that DynDOLOD needs updating from scratch in case of frequent load order changes.

As is explained in the DynDOLOD manual, LOD quad covers 4x4, 8x8, 16x16,  32x32  cells. Only if all cells are occluded can the entire quad be disabled.
Using TFC in Skyrim Special Edition has the described effect.