DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 190

[michcio2000]

having the exact same problem as nardo68, and just like him made an account on the forum to post about it 

"run out of memory" pops up after running texgenx64, somewhere in the crashlog it says it cant write/access dyndolod ini 

will post crashlog when I wake up sry lol

 

 

 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by michcio2000

[AlbertH69]

This isn't a question per say, but if anyone has any tips on getting ENB to work well with the grass billboards, let me know. I've spent literally hours trying to get the billboards and the grass to look similar in terms of lighting and colors, but I just haven't been able to get it right. The meshes are simply lit way too differently, and I've tried to modify settings both on the ENB side and on the Dyndolod. Without ENB the billboards blend easily enough with the actual grass. With ENB lighting though, it's a pain in the ass.

So if anyone has any particular settings that work well for their setup, I'd be interested to know what those settings are. For those wondering, I'm currently using Rudy ENB for Cathedral weather. But I'm open to settings from any other ENB and weather mods.

Thanks.

[sheson]

  On 8/16/2021 at 8:46 PM, nardo68 said:

Ran with the x64 , I made sure etxgen and mo2 default to my gpu (I dont have integrated graphics anyway) , ran everything as admin with my AV off and still get the memory error and cant write the ini.

TexGen_SSE_Debug_log.txt 333.31 kB · 1 download TexGen_SSE_log.txt 220.46 kB · 0 downloads bugreport.txt 71.06 kB · 1 download

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Thanks. Check if Alpha-39 fixes the out of memory mesage.

[Phoenix]

Hey there! I've been using DynDOLOD 3 for a few months now with very few difficulties. Since I have to regenerate frequently, the faster generation is a godsent and hugely appreciated (as are all the other new features from 3.x).

What I have been consistently struggling with is hybrid tree LOD. In screenshots like this one distant trees look utterly flat and 2D, not at all as convincing as I remember ultra tree LOD in previous DynDOLOD versions. I am probably missing something very obvious. The settings we are using are all here and the tree mod is Enhanced Vanilla Trees which has the required meshes for hybrid tree LODs as per the DynDOLOD documentation.

I am not certain which logs you need so I only attached the ones related to trees. Please let me know if I should provide anything else.

DynDOLOD_SSE_Tree_Report.txtFetching info...

Edit: In the mesh rules the trees in LOD Levels 8/36 are set to billboards, so that's probably why. I assume setting them to Level0 would yield better results? One thing I am not quite clear on (after reading the documentation) is whether using "Full" under LOD Levels would produce fully 3D (trunk and leaves) tree models while Level0 is hybrid (2D trunk, 3D leaves) LOD.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Phoenix

[sheson]

  On 8/17/2021 at 8:09 AM, Phoenix said:

Hey there! I've been using DynDOLOD 3 for a few months now with very few difficulties. Since I have to regenerate frequently, the faster generation is a godsent and hugely appreciated (as are all the other new features from 3.x).

What I have been consistently struggling with is hybrid tree LOD. In screenshots like this one distant trees look utterly flat and 2D, not at all as convincing as I remember ultra tree LOD in previous DynDOLOD versions. I am probably missing something very obvious. The settings we are using are all here and the tree mod is Enhanced Vanilla Trees which has the required meshes for hybrid tree LODs as per the DynDOLOD documentation.

I am not certain which logs you need so I only attached the ones related to trees. Please let me know if I should provide anything else.

DynDOLOD_SSE_Tree_Report.txt 219.78 kB · 0 downloads

Edit: In the mesh rules the trees in LOD Levels 8/36 are set to billboards, so that's probably why. I assume setting them to Level0 would yield better results? One thing I am not quite clear on (after reading the documentation) is whether using "Full" under LOD Levels would produce fully 3D (trunk and leaves) tree models while Level0 is hybrid (2D trunk, 3D leaves) LOD.

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See the first post which logfiles to include when making posts.

As the DynDOLOD manual explains, the first LOD level 4 starts beyond the loaded cell. The further away LOD level 8 and 16 are typically fine with billboards only.

Use tfc in console to fly close to the LOD trees to check if they are billboards in two planes or if the branches are 3D. It should be obvious.

If a LOD tree does not have 3D branches, get its base record form id via More Informative Console after its full model loaded. Then look up that base record form id in DynDOLOD_SSE_Tree_Report.txt to see if a 3D LOD model was found and assigned to Level0. When [x] ultra is checked, whatever asset type (Level0/1/2 or Billboard1/2/3..) is assigned to LOD4, 8, 16 is used for LOD Level 4, 8, 16.

Based on the report, the tree mesh rule is set to use Billboard1 for LOD Level 4, 8 and 16. If you want 3D tree LOD models to be used for LOD Level 4, update the tree mesh rule to use Level0 for LOD4 as explained in ..\DynDOLOD\docs\trees.ultra\DynDOLOD-Trees.html

Do not use Full. Create proper LOD models instead.

[AlbertH69]

Question, is it possible not to use the grass LOD brightness multipliers ?  I don't see any features to shut it off. But I would like to try to test if I can get more consistent colors in the grass billboards by not having the multiplier applied onto the meshes at all. 

[sheson]

  On 8/17/2021 at 12:00 PM, AlbertH69 said:

Question, is it possible not to use the grass LOD brightness multipliers ?  I don't see any features to shut it off. But I would like to try to test if I can get more consistent colors in the grass billboards by not having the multiplier applied onto the meshes at all. 

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Simple math. Use a multiplier of 1.0

If all 3 multipliers for the 3 color channels are the same, it acts as a brightness multiplier that does not change the color balance.

[AlbertH69]

So this then?

GrassBrightnessTopR=1
GrassBrightnessTopG=1
GrassBrightnessTopB=1
GrassBrightnessBottomR=1
GrassBrightnessBottomG=1
GrassBrightnessBottomB=1

Cause I think I tried putting 1's in the brightnessTop and it made the meshes white. I forgot whether or not I tried it with the BrightnessBottom.

Edited August 17, 2021 by AlbertH69

[sheson]

  On 8/17/2021 at 12:45 PM, AlbertH69 said:

So this then?

GrassBrightnessTopR=1
GrassBrightnessTopG=1
GrassBrightnessTopB=1
GrassBrightnessBottomR=1
GrassBrightnessBottomG=1
GrassBrightnessBottomB=1

Cause I think I tried putting 1's in the brightnessTop and it made the meshes white. I forgot whether or not I tried it with the BrightnessBottom.

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This is not how multiplication works. r * 1.0 = r.

The default values of TexGen generate billboard textures for a multiplier of about ~0.5

As you can see, the default values for the grass multipliers are even lower than that.

[AlbertH69]

My knowledge of math doesn't extend to how colors are produced through software. So let me ask specifically what would be the values to put in those variables in order to make the colors neutral (or equal to not having the effects applied)

[z929669]

  On 8/17/2021 at 1:04 PM, AlbertH69 said:

My knowledge of math doesn't extend to how colors are produced through software. So let me ask specifically what would be the values to put in those variables in order to make the colors neutral (or equal to not having the effects applied)

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If you revert the INI settings back to default, you can set top/bottom to each be identical to highest/lowest/mean value of the three settings. Using a value of 1.0 will likely be too bright though.

You have been saying that grass is white or too bright, so you should generate with an extreme in the other direction to see how each setting impacts (this is what I did). Leave DynDOLOD top/bottom alone for now (after reverting back to default, or use the settings in instructions linked below) and change ambient/direct in 'grass' billboard setting of TexGen. Probably need to lower ambient at least. Look at these settings for an idea of what works well with Cathedral Landscapes. Notice, we have ambient way down. Modify ambient even lower to see almost black LOD grass and higher to tend towards white. Fine tune with the top/bottom tints later after you have a workable brightness. Mean of bottom tints should always be lower than mean of top tints if you want more realistic look.

Re-run TexGen and DynDOLOD after. The instructions I point to give ideas for all settings and grass config ... it's a WIP and is not final though.

[sheson]

  On 8/17/2021 at 1:04 PM, AlbertH69 said:

My knowledge of math doesn't extend to how colors are produced through software. So let me ask specifically what would be the values to put in those variables in order to make the colors neutral (or equal to not having the effects applied)

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If all 3 values for r g b are equal it is a neutral brightness multiplier that does not change the color balance.

If all 3 values are 1.0, then there is no change. In that case the grass LOD billboard textures should be generated with a brightness of 50% or less.

The multiplier is used to multiply the vertex color of the grass placement (which acts as a brightness variance already when the grass placements are generated by the game/NGIO).  Vertex Colors are clamped between 0.0 and 1.0. A vertex color of 1.0 for a color channel means the color channel of the texture is passed to the lighting shader/ENB unmodified.

[AlbertH69]

  On 8/17/2021 at 1:38 PM, sheson said:

If all 3 values for r g b are equal it is a neutral brightness multiplier that does not change the color balance.  If all 3 values are 1.0, then there is no change. In that case the grass LOD billboard textures should be generated with a brightness of 50% or less.

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Yes, I understand color mixing. In concept at least. But in practice when I generate meshes with the value of 1, it creates a mesh with a brightness that is far above what the TexGen preview shows. For example, you mentioned that a value of 1 for all RGB channel should create billboards with a brightness of 50% or less. The question then becomes 50% or less of what ? 

50% of what is previewed in TexGen? 50% of how the texture itself appears when viewed in a texturing software? The reason for my confusion (and why I've been doing this through trial and error) is that I don't know what factors actually determine how the meshes look in the game. Clearly the settings in the BrightnessMax and BrightnessBottom is just some of them.

I've done texturing before for Skyrim, so I know how things like specular, glossiness, glow, etc work. But in this case, it's not really the texture that determines how it will look in-game. Which is why my original question was whether it was possible for this feature to be turned-off, in the hopes that I could make the mesh look more like how the texture file actually appears. Fiddling with the numbers so far has not yielded the desired result. Granted, ENB also plays a factor, which is why I'm also testing different values there too.

  On 8/17/2021 at 1:38 PM, z929669 said:

 Look at these settings for an idea of what works well with Cathedral Landscapes. Notice, we have ambient way down. Modify ambient even lower to see almost black LOD grass and higher to tend towards white. Fine tune with the top/bottom tints later after you have a workable brightness. Mean of bottom tints should always be lower than mean of top tints if you want more realistic look.

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Thank you. I will take a look at that.

[sheson]

  On 8/17/2021 at 2:01 PM, AlbertH69 said:

Yes, I understand color mixing. In concept at least. But in practice when I generate meshes with the value of 1, it creates a mesh with a brightness that is far above what the TexGen preview shows. For example, you mentioned that a value of 1 for all RGB channel should create billboards with a brightness of 50% or less. The question then becomes 50% or less of what ? 

50% of what is previewed in TexGen? 50% of how the texture itself appears when viewed in a texturing software? The reason for my confusion (and why I've been doing this through trial and error) is that I don't know what factors actually determine how the meshes look in the game. Clearly the settings in the BrightnessMax and BrightnessBottom is just some of them.

I've done texturing before for Skyrim, so I know how things like specular, glossiness, glow, etc work. But in this case, it's not really the texture that determines how it will look in-game. Which is why my original question was whether it was possible for this feature to be turned-off, in the hopes that I could make the mesh look more like how the texture file actually appears. Fiddling with the numbers so far has not yielded the desired result. Granted, ENB also plays a factor, which is why I'm also testing different values there too.

Thank you. I will take a look at that.

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DynDOLOD/LODGen does not create billboard textures. TexGen creates billboard textures. 
The preview of TexGen shows exactly how the texture is rendered and how it would look with an image viewer.

The INI settings in the DynDOLOD INI for LODGen do not change the texture. The INI values affect vertex colors in the BTO meshes for the grass LOD shapes. Vertex colors are clamped between 0 and 1. Because of this, vertex colors can only make things darker, never brighter. Whatever increases the brightness happens afterwards in the game with how the shader/ENB works.

The default values of TexGen generate billboard textures in a brightness that is expected to have vertex colors multiplied with ~0.5 as a base, to allow to increase/decrease of brightness with the INI settings. The INI settings are multiplied with the grass placement random vertex color to calculate the final vertex color.

If vertex colors are not used to lower the brightness, then the textures should be generated darker than the default value to compensate. The (grass) LOD does not have or does not support specular, glossiness or glow.

[AlbertH69]

  On 8/17/2021 at 2:20 PM, sheson said:

DynDOLOD/LODGen does not create billboard textures. TexGen creates billboard textures. 
The preview of TexGen shows exactly how the texture is rendered and how it would look with an image viewer.

The INI settings in the DynDOLOD INI for LODGen do not change the texture. The INI values affect vertex colors in the BTO meshes for the grass LOD shapes. Vertex colors are clamped between 0 and 1. Because of this, vertex colors can only make things darker, never brighter. Whatever increases the brightness happens afterwards in the game with how the shader/ENB works.

The default values of TexGen generate billboard textures in a brightness that is expected to have vertex colors multiplied with ~0.5 as a base, to allow to increase/decrease of brightness with the INI settings that are multiplied with the grass placement random vertex color.

If vertex colors are not used to lower the brightness, then the textures should be generated darker.

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Ah, Ok. Now it's clearer. Thank you. I'll just keep fiddling.