DynDOLOD 3.00 Alpha 190

[z929669]

  On 8/26/2022 at 7:42 PM, KaktuZHD said:

Is It possible to increase LOD distance? I mean when I came closer to the trees - it became full quality, so is it possible to do it in a far distance ? I've already generated LOD. Maybe any settings ?

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[TerrainManager] INI settings or DynDOLOD distance settings in MCM menu

[KaktuZHD]

  On 8/26/2022 at 7:57 PM, z929669 said:

[TerrainManager] INI settings or DynDOLOD distance settings in MCM menu

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I've already tried, but nothing changed 

[sheson]

  On 8/26/2022 at 7:42 PM, KaktuZHD said:

Is It possible to increase LOD distance? I mean when I came closer to the trees - it became full quality, so is it possible to do it in a far distance ? I've already generated LOD. Maybe any settings ?

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

  On 8/26/2022 at 8:14 PM, KaktuZHD said:

I've already tried, but nothing changed 

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https://dyndolod.info/Help/Object-LOD#Settings
https://dyndolod.info/Help/Tree-LOD#Settings
https://dyndolod.info/Help/Terrain-LOD#Settings

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Mod-Configuration-Menu#Settings

I can guarantee that these settings control  how far LOD (Levels) are shown and changing them has an immediate visible effect how far LOD (levels) show in the game.

[z929669]

  On 8/26/2022 at 6:54 PM, sheson said:

The screenshots only show if there is a difference or not. I can not tell what is supposed to match better or look better. I have no idea what screenshots are supposed to show "washed out" textures. How are they washed out? Do they loose color?

What I can say is this: screenshot #1 and #2 have clearly different tree LOD. Can fog only affect tree LOD? So far the screenshots and the different statements are just more confusing to me than being helpful. In part because I probably need to see and move the camera in game myself.

Lets forget for a moment how things look in the game and really check the textures.

Get a feel how changing the threshold from 128 to 244 actually affects how the model/leaves looks in NifSkope.

Then compare the textures added to the texture atlas. As long as you do not change the threshold of all 3D tree LOD models, the diffuse texture should be added to the object LOD atlas texture at least twice, once for the 128 threshold and once for the 224 for example. You can find their pixel coordinates in..\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\Export\LODGen_SSE_ObjectAtlasMap_Tamriel.txt. The threshold is divided by 16 and part of the first column in case it is not the default of 128.  So there are two rows for the texture with their different coordinates on the atlas

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds ...
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14 ...

If you use an image program to cut those textures out of the atlas you can then directly compare their alpha channels side by side or by switching back and forth to see if they are different and by how much.

I would be interested in directly;y comparing the actual texture the 4k input to 256 input and if 4k has no change or just a very small change in the alpha channel. Use pipette to get the alpha value of a pixel.

If changing the alpha threshold has a stronger effect on smaller source textures, then it means a step might be missing in the processes or maybe something is done on the wrong order.

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I set things up to test in a single run due to your suggestion to change NiAlphaProperty of specific aspen LOD models rather than all at once. This way, I should see a mix of the LOD trees I want to examine:

1. Treeaspen01 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c.dds, birch03_n.dds (4k)
2. Treeaspen02 - NiAlphaProperty=224, textures=birch03_c.dds, birch03_n.dds (4k)
3. Treeaspen03 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
4. Treeaspen04 - NiAlphaProperty=224, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
5. Treeaspen05 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
6. Treeaspen06 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
7. Treeaspen07 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
8. Treeaspen08 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
9. Treeaspen09 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)

To confirm the above, these are the LOD meshes used for this run: meshes.7z

The texture appears 3x on the atlas (I'm not uncertain about the second line even though you attempted to explain). I also don't understand which is associated with what NiAlphaProperty. I expected two versions for each texture corresponding to the test list above (four scenarios). Is something off here?:

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds	256	256	12032	3840	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14	256	256	11776	3840	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\mx\birch03_c_lod.dds,textures\mx\birch03_lod_n.dds	128	128	13328	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192

Here's the three cutouts from the atlas saved as TGA so you can see the alphas (they are pretty similar):

aspenAtlasCutouts.7zFetching info...

 

From LODGen_SSE_TexturesUsed_Tamriel.txt (not sure what this tells us):

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,14,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds,
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,8,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds,
textures\mx\birch03_c_lod.dds,8,textures\mx\birch03_lod_n.dds,

I started a new game to test. Here's the screen showing what I could identify as the thinner trees likely associated with #4 Treeaspen04 ... tough to tell with the overlap of trees, but I think it's evident that there are some transparency diffs among the LOD trees. The thick alpha trees are pretty evident and likely associated with treeaspen01-02:

 

 

---

Completely different question/comment:

Billboards were only atlased for 1-5 (although TexGen produces billboards in it's output for all of them). I'm uncertain how to interpret this:

textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_1_n.dds	344	512	3524	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen01_0006a9e6_2_n.dds	340	512	3868	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_1_n.dds	324	512	4548	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen02_0006c9d5_2_n.dds	340	512	4208	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_1_n.dds	288	512	5832	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen03_0006c9d4_2_n.dds	320	512	5196	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_1_n.dds	324	512	4872	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen04_0005fada_2_n.dds	316	512	5516	2560	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_1.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_1_n.dds	104	128	13784	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_2.dds,textures\terrain\lodgen\skyrim.esm\treeaspen05_0007614b_2_n.dds	120	128	13456	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192

 

 

[Mephitic]

  On 8/26/2022 at 5:37 PM, z929669 said:

Have a look at this post for a fairly fool-proof way to match grass LOD to full with almost any grass. The tint settings are mostly for edge cases or for non-linear ENB shader effects.

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I sincerely appreciate your help but unfortunately that didn't work. In fact it made things worse.
 

I'll try futzing with the tint settings to try to improve the difference.

Thanks again!

Edited August 26, 2022 by Mephitic

[DoubleYou]

 

  On 8/26/2022 at 10:51 PM, Mephitic said:

I sincerely appreciate your help but unfortunately that didn't work. In fact it made things worse.
 

I'll try futzing with the tint settings to try to improve the difference.

Thanks again!

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I think @z929669 linked an old version of our settings. Try 95 for Direct and 8 for ambient. Then set the grass brightness modifiers in the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini all to 1.

[Mephitic]

  On 8/27/2022 at 12:01 AM, DoubleYou said:

I think @z929669 linked an old version of our settings. Try 95 for Direct and 8 for ambient. Then set the grass brightness modifiers in the DynDOLOD_SSE.ini all to 1.

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Thank you very much, I'll certainly try it.

[DoubleYou]

No alterations to the normal texture besides resizing to 128 for the 128 size tests was performed. This is for consistency, as I want to only highlight the alpha transparency tree leaf issues for this set of tests to show how they affect the tree here.

Tree mod is Aspen's Ablaze, Autumnal version. Tree LODs were made based on the 0.1 meshes on the Aspen's Ablaze DynDOLOD Addon page. I have not checked to see what @z929669 has done with the other two versions as of yet, but I don't believe there is much deviation other than alteration of textures.

Videos:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224

 

Screens:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224

   

 

Map color issue:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224

   

 

Logs:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128: https://mega.nz/file/sVpQQIQI#QDBge9xU5H1Hd1VrBrkRkUTHxzNYGp6IVuIbbrefxpw

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224: https://mega.nz/file/ZBZEyZhK#TtlLb9dqNALK5GSAZbSSj36OqkJSXNCMcnBv5hVfQGQ

128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128: https://mega.nz/file/oUQgkSyA#i4iQqgj581fOlaL7j2eE6wttheMT1QMxD-CWPstrt5I

128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224: https://mega.nz/file/cZI0EZAS#usFfKTc1VYs3qYfMKEFpwgpcskJma2bwML0Hgq0ARTw

 

My Conclusions:

Thresholding the 4k texture does not appear to provide enough alpha transparency for trees. Instead, the only apparent change is to color, which is only affecting some of the trees. My current belief is that is the tree with the errant Specular flag in the full model, and also the LOD model. I hadn't noticed this color change in previous testing, but given the discussions above, I made a point to look for it. This is best seen in screens 1 and 2.

Looking at the alpha transitions in the videos, the trees are just as thick with NiAlphaProperty set to 224 as it is set to 128. This is the main thing I want to tighten up, as the trees look very blocky due to the thicker alpha.

Also notice that the full texture suffers from a problem on the map where the texture changes from orange to red as you zoom out.

Next, I resized the texture via Paint.NET to 128 size, using SuperSampling as the method of scaling. Naturally, since scaling removes the amount of pixels, more pixels are semi-transparent, and therefore, more effectively manipulated via alpha threshold settings. You can clearly see this in that the 128 size texture itself is nearly, although not perfectly, a match for the transition in the video, alpha wise. Obviously, 224 threshold is given for completeness and to display that changing it clearly affects the result to a much greater degree.

The 128 textures on the map is more resistant to the color change, but is turning more desaturated on the map. I will provide information on the fix for this later, as this is the reasoning behind the normal map changes that I have briefly mentioned.

There are other little nuances about these very simple changes that can be noticed as well, but the main focus of this compare is the alpha transparency.

[mooit]

  On 8/26/2022 at 5:37 PM, z929669 said:

Have a look at this post for a fairly fool-proof way to match grass LOD to full with almost any grass. The tint settings are mostly for edge cases or for non-linear ENB shader effects.

Expand  

I see a huge difference in the hues of the grass, based on the angle and height you are looking at the grass.

Stand on the walkways outside of Whiterun and take screen shots looking down and out at the grass in the distance. This height and angle, is where I've noticed the greatest contrast differences between the grass up close and in the distance, espeically sunrise and sunset hours.

You showed me before that the best way was to use 1.0 for all the settings, then adjust the Direct/Ambient in TexGen, which I've been using for the grass; Direct 50 Ambient 5.

; grass LOD brightness multipliers
GrassBrightnessTopR=1.0
GrassBrightnessTopG=1.0
GrassBrightnessTopB=1.0
; make bottom darker to fake shadowing
GrassBrightnessBottomR=1.0
GrassBrightnessBottomG=1.0
GrassBrightnessBottomB=1.0

These have worked the best for me, and I've tried these settings on around 7 different grass mods.

The only issue I see, but maybe this is normal, based on the weather/light conditions, the hues between the near and distance grass will be different at times, especially sunrise and sunsets.

I'm not sure with the game engine, the distance grass can always look quite similar to the grass that is near, based on the weather and lighting.

Edited August 27, 2022 by mooit

[DoubleYou]

  On 8/27/2022 at 1:58 AM, mooit said:

You showed me before that the best way was to use 1.0 for all the settings, then adjust the Direct/Ambient in TexGen, which I've been using for the grass; Direct 50 Ambient 5.

 

; grass LOD brightness multipliers
GrassBrightnessTopR=1.0
GrassBrightnessTopG=1.0
GrassBrightnessTopB=1.0
; make bottom darker to fake shadowing
GrassBrightnessBottomR=1.0
GrassBrightnessBottomG=1.0
GrassBrightnessBottomB=1.0

 

 

Expand  

Yeah, I believe @z929669 is mistakenly linking to older settings he was using before more of our in-depth testing.

[mooit]

  On 8/27/2022 at 2:00 AM, DoubleYou said:

Yeah, I believe @z929669 is mistakenly linking to older settings he was using before more of our in-depth testing.

Expand  

Ok, I re edited the post, look at what I mentioned about height and angle when looking at grass, this is the biggest area of problem I'm trying to tackle. When standing up high, looking down and out at the grass closeup and far away, having a better match.

THANKS

[mooit]

  On 8/25/2022 at 5:56 PM, sheson said:

The settings affect all (alpha) textures on the object LOD or tree LOD atlas.

1. is explained by reading the explanations above the setting. AlphaCoverage is used if texconv is used to generate mipmaps. AlphaFactor is used for the internal mipmap generation
2. AlphaCoverage = texconv command line argument -keepcoverage, AlphaFactor = factor used for internal or internal alpha-to-coverage scaled algorithm.

Instead of changing these values here, I suggest to change the alpha threshold of the 3D tree LOD model. It will have direct impact on the texture and mipmap when the full texture added to the atlas. Think of it as the initial setting for the first mipmap with the highest resolution from which all other mipmaps with lower resolution are derived.

https://dyndolod.info/Help/3D-Tree-LOD-Model
Note that LOD only has binary alpha with a fixed threshold of 128. DynDOLOD reads the alpha threshold from the NiAlphaProperty from the models used for LOD and adjusts the textures before it is added to the atlas texture. The final result in game may be to thick or thin like certain objects seem to be missing or transparency looks off. Try adjusting the NiAlphaProperty in the 3D LOD model. Again, note that the UV texture coordinates need to be >= 0.0 and <= 1.0 for LOD being able to use the atlas texture. If the UV is outside those limits, LOD will use the texture directly.

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Sorry for being dense here, where do you change this Alpha Threshold at?

It was suggested to me, to just reduce the AlphaFactor, to try this, to see if Happy Little Trees might look a little better detailed in the distance.

But I noticed shenson mentioning to change the Alpha Threshold instead.

I've been reading around, I don't see, or understand where, if someone could be so kind as to just tell me what to adjust is all?

THANKS

Edited August 27, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

  On 8/27/2022 at 2:00 AM, DoubleYou said:

Yeah, I believe @z929669 is mistakenly linking to older settings he was using before more of our in-depth testing.

Expand  

I meant this post. sorry.

[z929669]

  On 8/27/2022 at 1:48 AM, DoubleYou said:

No alterations to the normal texture besides resizing to 128 for the 128 size tests was performed. This is for consistency, as I want to only highlight the alpha transparency tree leaf issues for this set of tests to show how they affect the tree here.

Tree mod is Aspen's Ablaze, Autumnal version. Tree LODs were made based on the 0.1 meshes on the Aspen's Ablaze DynDOLOD Addon page. I have not checked to see what @z929669 has done with the other two versions as of yet, but I don't believe there is much deviation other than alteration of textures.

Videos:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224

 

Screens:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224

   

 

Map color issue:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128 --> 128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224

   

 

Logs:

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128: https://mega.nz/file/sVpQQIQI#QDBge9xU5H1Hd1VrBrkRkUTHxzNYGp6IVuIbbrefxpw

Full Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224: https://mega.nz/file/ZBZEyZhK#TtlLb9dqNALK5GSAZbSSj36OqkJSXNCMcnBv5hVfQGQ

128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 128: https://mega.nz/file/oUQgkSyA#i4iQqgj581fOlaL7j2eE6wttheMT1QMxD-CWPstrt5I

128 Texture, NiAlphaProperty 224: https://mega.nz/file/cZI0EZAS#usFfKTc1VYs3qYfMKEFpwgpcskJma2bwML0Hgq0ARTw

 

My Conclusions:

Thresholding the 4k texture does not appear to provide enough alpha transparency for trees. Instead, the only apparent change is to color, which is only affecting some of the trees. My current belief is that is the tree with the errant Specular flag in the full model, and also the LOD model. I hadn't noticed this color change in previous testing, but given the discussions above, I made a point to look for it. This is best seen in screens 1 and 2.

Looking at the alpha transitions in the videos, the trees are just as thick with NiAlphaProperty set to 224 as it is set to 128. This is the main thing I want to tighten up, as the trees look very blocky due to the thicker alpha.

Also notice that the full texture suffers from a problem on the map where the texture changes from orange to red as you zoom out.

Next, I resized the texture via Paint.NET to 128 size, using SuperSampling as the method of scaling. Naturally, since scaling removes the amount of pixels, more pixels are semi-transparent, and therefore, more effectively manipulated via alpha threshold settings. You can clearly see this in that the 128 size texture itself is nearly, although not perfectly, a match for the transition in the video, alpha wise. Obviously, 224 threshold is given for completeness and to display that changing it clearly affects the result to a much greater degree.

The 128 textures on the map is more resistant to the color change, but is turning more desaturated on the map. I will provide information on the fix for this later, as this is the reasoning behind the normal map changes that I have briefly mentioned.

There are other little nuances about these very simple changes that can be noticed as well, but the main focus of this compare is the alpha transparency.

Expand  

Thanks for this. In all of my testing, I suppose it's possible I mucked something up in one of my iterations. Back to the drawing board to reproduce on my end.

[sheson]

  On 8/26/2022 at 9:20 PM, z929669 said:

I set things up to test in a single run due to your suggestion to change NiAlphaProperty of specific aspen LOD models rather than all at once. This way, I should see a mix of the LOD trees I want to examine:

1. Treeaspen01 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c.dds, birch03_n.dds (4k)
2. Treeaspen02 - NiAlphaProperty=224, textures=birch03_c.dds, birch03_n.dds (4k)
3. Treeaspen03 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
4. Treeaspen04 - NiAlphaProperty=224, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
5. Treeaspen05 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
6. Treeaspen06 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
7. Treeaspen07 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
8. Treeaspen08 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)
9. Treeaspen09 - NiAlphaProperty=128, textures=birch03_c_lod.dds, birch03_lod_n.dds (128px)

To confirm the above, these are the LOD meshes used for this run: meshes.7z

The texture appears 3x on the atlas (I'm not uncertain about the second line even though you attempted to explain). I also don't understand which is associated with what NiAlphaProperty. I expected two versions for each texture corresponding to the test list above (four scenarios). Is something off here?:

textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds	256	256	12032	3840	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\mx\birch03_c.dds,textures\mx\birch03_n.dds=14	256	256	11776	3840	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192
textures\mx\birch03_c_lod.dds,textures\mx\birch03_lod_n.dds	128	128	13328	4096	Textures\DynDOLOD\LOD\DynDOLOD_Tamriel.dds	16384	8192

Here's the three cutouts from the atlas saved as TGA so you can see the alphas (they are pretty similar):

aspenAtlasCutouts.7z 73.99 kB · 3 downloads

 

Expand  

Do not use "lod" in the name of textures if you want them to be treated like full textures being downsized and adjusted for the object LOD atlas.

I would be interested in directly comparing the actual texture of the 4k input to 256 input and if 4k has no change or just a very small change in the alpha channel. Use pipette to get the alpha value of a pixel.

So, with this we know that the 4k input has an alpha change that is ever so slightly making things thinner. Looking forward to the 256 pixel input to compare to.

Also upload the 256 input textures again together with the output so I do not have to wonder I got the right one from earlier posts.