DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 190

[bob124]

Hello, I am using the latest alpha 65 version of Texgen/Dyndolod and am having trouble getting the grass LODs to match the color/brightness of my loaded grass. Please see the screenshot below to see the issue, I've read several posts in this thread about using the direct/ambient settings in Texgen and brightness multipliers in Dyndolod_SSE.ini but honestly I'm not smart enough to understand what those settings do (I don't know anything about texturing and the like) and can't get any closer to where I need even after multiple tweaks and attempts. Here are my most recent settings that generated the LODs in the screenshot, can anyone explain in simplified terms what these settings do and if possible how I can get the LODs to match the loaded grass? If it helps I'm using NAT 3.0 ENB and Folkvangr grass. I appreciate any help you can provide.

https://imgur.com/a/ZYX5Mqp

Texgen settings:

Ambient 160, Direct 13

Brightness multipliers:

GrassBrightnessTopR=0.300
GrassBrightnessTopG=0.445
GrassBrightnessTopB=0.300

GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.200
GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.223
GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.225

[sheson]

  On 1/31/2022 at 3:13 PM, bob124 said:

Hello, I am using the latest alpha 65 version of Texgen/Dyndolod and am having trouble getting the grass LODs to match the color/brightness of my loaded grass. Please see the screenshot below to see the issue, I've read several posts in this thread about using the direct/ambient settings in Texgen and brightness multipliers in Dyndolod_SSE.ini but honestly I'm not smart enough to understand what those settings do (I don't know anything about texturing and the like) and can't get any closer to where I need even after multiple tweaks and attempts. Here are my most recent settings that generated the LODs in the screenshot, can anyone explain in simplified terms what these settings do and if possible how I can get the LODs to match the loaded grass? If it helps I'm using NAT 3.0 ENB and Folkvangr grass. I appreciate any help you can provide.

https://imgur.com/a/ZYX5Mqp

Texgen settings:

Ambient 160, Direct 13

Brightness multipliers:

GrassBrightnessTopR=0.300
GrassBrightnessTopG=0.445
GrassBrightnessTopB=0.300

GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.200
GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.223
GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.225

Expand  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_color

R = red 
G = green
B = blue

Images/textures use values between 0.0 and 1.0 for each color channel. 0 means no intensity and 1 means full intensity. All channel = 0 is black, all channel 1 is white.

Simplified, the brightness multiplier values are multiplied with the RGB values of the texture.
GrassBrightnessTopR=0.5 means the red color channel of the texture is multiplied by 0.5, so the intensity of the red color channel is now half.

If the grass seems too bright, set lower multipliers. If the grass seems to have a red tinge for example, set the R multiplier lower than the GB multipliers to "remove" more red.

And/Or disable/adjust ENB image based lighting.

[bob124]

  On 1/31/2022 at 3:44 PM, sheson said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_color

R = red 
G = green
B = blue

Images/textures use values between 0.0 and 1.0 for each color channel. 0 means no intensity and 1 means full intensity. All channel = 0 is black, all channel 1 is white.

Simplified, the brightness multiplier values are multiplied with the RGB values of the texture.
GrassBrightnessTopR=0.5 means the red color channel of the texture is multiplied by 0.5, so the intensity of the red color channel is now half.

If the grass seems too bright, set lower multipliers. If the grass seems to have a red tinge for example, set the R multiplier lower than the GB multipliers to "remove" more red.

And/Or disable/adjust ENB image based lighting.

Expand  

Thank you, this is helpful. I'll give it a shot!

[Admiral30]

Title says it all. Tree LOD is noticeably more yellow than normal trees. Generated using Dyndolod 3.0 with 3.0 Resources.

Screenshot

I'm using Happy Little Trees. 3D Trees seems to create no issues, but I wanted to switch. TexGen output textures look fine when viewed outside of the game, which implies issue is on Dyndolod's side.

Ofc I can provide all info you need.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Admiral30

[sheson]

  On 2/1/2022 at 12:01 AM, Admiral30 said:

Title says it all. Tree LOD is noticeably more yellow than normal trees. Generated using Dyndolod 3.0 with 3.0 Resources.

Screenshot

I'm using Happy Little Trees. 3D Trees seems to create no issues, but I wanted to switch. TexGen output textures look fine when viewed outside of the game, which implies issue is on Dyndolod's side.

Ofc I can provide all info you need.

Expand  

See the first post of the DynDOLOD 3 Alpha thread where to make posts. I moved the post.

DynDOLOD does not change the color of texture when they are added to the texture atlas. E.g. the billboard texture on the atlas texture should look exactly the same unless you told DynDOLOD to change its brightness. Changing brightness should not change color tone.

Standard tree LOD uses a limited shader that does not react well to lighting. Weather mods and ENB can dramatically change appearance of tree LOD.

Use ultra tree LOD either with Billboard4 (requires HD billboards) for best results or with the 3D tree LODs.

[Admiral30]

  On 2/1/2022 at 7:22 AM, sheson said:

See the first post of the DynDOLOD 3 Alpha thread where to make posts. I moved the post.

DynDOLOD does not change the color of texture when they are added to the texture atlas. E.g. the billboard texture on the atlas texture should look exactly the same unless you told DynDOLOD to change its brightness. Changing brightness should not change color tone.

Standard tree LOD uses a limited shader that does not react well to lighting. Weather mods and ENB can dramatically change appearance of tree LOD.

Use ultra tree LOD either with Billboard4 (requires HD billboards) for best results or with the 3D tree LODs.

Expand  

May I ask what is Billboard4? Tutorial says to use TexGen and then Dyndolod because 3.0 no longer requires billboards.

[sheson]

  On 2/1/2022 at 11:27 AM, Admiral30 said:

May I ask what is Billboard4? Tutorial says to use TexGen and then Dyndolod because 3.0 no longer requires billboards.

Expand  

From https://dyndolod.info/Help/Ultra-Tree-LOD

While Billboard1 is suitable for standard tree LOD billboards and HD tree LOD billboards, consider using Billboard4 with HD tree LOD billboards for even better visuals. Billboard1 has 4 triangles per tree, while billboard 4 has 8 triangles per tree. The additional triangles allows for better reactions to light sources from all directions together with the HD tree LOD billboards. It is a good alternative to 3D tree LOD models in case performance or resource usage is of concern or as fallback for individual trees in case 3D tree LOD models are not available.

[Admiral30]

  On 2/1/2022 at 12:09 PM, sheson said:

From https://dyndolod.info/Help/Ultra-Tree-LOD

While Billboard1 is suitable for standard tree LOD billboards and HD tree LOD billboards, consider using Billboard4 with HD tree LOD billboards for even better visuals. Billboard1 has 4 triangles per tree, while billboard 4 has 8 triangles per tree. The additional triangles allows for better reactions to light sources from all directions together with the HD tree LOD billboards. It is a good alternative to 3D tree LOD models in case performance or resource usage is of concern or as fallback for individual trees in case 3D tree LOD models are not available.

Expand  

I have changed the settings to optimal settings mentioned on HLT Dyndolod 3.0 addon (LOD4/Level0, LOD8/Billboard4, LOD16/Billboard(1)). LOD quality is way better, no more yellow trees, but ofc life is not so easy. Now there is very aggressive z-fighting during LOD transition + z-fighting on all LOD trees.

https://streamable.com/8yy2zn

https://streamable.com/pj4cmw

Edited February 1, 2022 by Admiral30

[sheson]

  On 2/1/2022 at 2:41 PM, Admiral30 said:

I have changed the settings to optimal settings mentioned on HLT Dyndolod 3.0 addon (LOD4/Level0, LOD8/Billboard4, LOD16/Billboard(1)). LOD quality is way better, no more yellow trees, but ofc life is not so easy. Now there is very aggressive z-fighting during LOD transition + z-fighting on all LOD trees.

https://streamable.com/8yy2zn

https://streamable.com/pj4cmw

Expand  

DynDOLOD does not change how LOD works

https://dyndolod.info/How-LOD-Works

Having to wait for the full models to load before being able to disable the object LOD can take a noticeable time, in which the full models and their object LOD are both rendered for a brief time. In case the full model and the LOD model occupy the same 3D space (which for example can be the case for structures), their different lighting and textures can noticeable z-fight (texture flicker).

https://stepmodifications.org/forum/search/?&q="brief time"&type=forums_topic&nodes=223

[Admiral30]

  On 2/1/2022 at 4:23 PM, sheson said:

DynDOLOD does not change how LOD works

https://dyndolod.info/How-LOD-Works

Having to wait for the full models to load before being able to disable the object LOD can take a noticeable time, in which the full models and their object LOD are both rendered for a brief time. In case the full model and the LOD model occupy the same 3D space (which for example can be the case for structures), their different lighting and textures can noticeable z-fight (texture flicker).

https://stepmodifications.org/forum/search/?&q="brief time"&type=forums_topic&nodes=223

Expand  

Ok, I have regenerated dyndolod with the same textures, but with lower quality options ("performance" instead of "optimal"). Weird transitions gone, z-fighting gone, I have also noticed low quality trees within player's range, this is also now gone. No idea why, but it works.

So far all problems solved, thanks for mentioning that I had to regenerate lod with higher quality to fix the yellow trees issue.

[sheson]

  On 2/1/2022 at 4:41 PM, Admiral30 said:

Ok, I have regenerated dyndolod with the same textures, but with lower quality options ("performance" instead of "optimal"). Weird transitions gone, z-fighting gone, I have also noticed low quality trees within player's range, this is also now gone. No idea why, but it works.

So far all problems solved, thanks for mentioning that I had to regenerate lod with higher quality to fix the yellow trees issue.

Expand  

Since Billboards do not occupy the same 3D space as the full models, there is no brief flickering (typically it is because shadows on full model and no shadows on LOD) when they both show at the same time 

[1erCru]

Feel like I should know this ..

How does one get grass to render in what looks like the farthest section before the horizon line. I use NGIO grass mode 2. The grass renders quite a ways but the last section of what it viewable just looks like it has some clumps of grass. its so far away it doesnt matter really but was wondering if maybe I have missed something.

Maybe I missed something in the INi files ?

[sheson]

  On 2/2/2022 at 5:13 AM, 1erCru said:

Feel like I should know this ..

How does one get grass to render in what looks like the farthest section before the horizon line. I use NGIO grass mode 2. The grass renders quite a ways but the last section of what it viewable just looks like it has some clumps of grass. its so far away it doesnt matter really but was wondering if maybe I have missed something.

Maybe I missed something in the INi files ?

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https://dyndolod.info/Help/Grass-LOD Grass LOD is generated for LOD level 4 only.

You can use the https://dyndolod.info/Help/Mod-Configuration-Menu#Settings to change object LOD distances.

If grass LOD seems to be missing for certain types of grasses, they probably do not have billboards generated. See the https://dyndolod.info/Help/Grass-LOD#No-Grass-LOD-Check-List

[duffB]

Hi Sheson, 

first of all thanks for your hard work. I have been using dyndolod with ngio quite a while and cant imagine running skyrim without.

I wanted to generate new textures with Texgen for Alpha 65 but i keep getting an error for a missing file. 

when generating temp files im getting this error:

Error: File not found textures\dlc01\landscape\icelakesurface.dds.

I have checked mo2 data folder structure and the file is not provided by resources archive

I am using the latest resource alpha 19. 

I have disabled my virus protection just to make sure nothing is getting blocked but getting the same error.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by duffB

[sheson]

  On 2/2/2022 at 10:19 AM, duffB said:

Hi Sheson, 

first of all thanks for your hard work. I have been using dyndolod with ngio quite a while and cant imagine running skyrim without.

I wanted to generate new textures with Texgen for Alpha 65 but i keep getting an error for a missing file. 

when generating temp files im getting this error:

Error: File not found textures\dlc01\landscape\icelakesurface.dds.

I have checked mo2 data folder structure and the file is not provided by resources archive

I am using the latest resource alpha 19. 

I have disabled my virus protection just to make sure nothing is getting blocked but getting the same error.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

Expand  

textures\dlc01\landscape\icelakesurface.dds is a vanilla texture in Skyrim - Textures3.BSA

As the TexGen options window says: "In case of file not found errors verify the log that all the required BSA files are loaded."