Snow "Paint" Effect

[thunderclam]

Hi. I'm aware that on many textures, in modded and vanilla, the white snow in Skyrim has kind of a paint-like look. Today my issue is specifically a sort of low-res white "paint spatter" snow texture visible most readily in Windhelm and Windhelm's docks. This snow effect flickers much like some of the other "transparency AA" textures do on my system. They vibrate, shimmer, ripple, flicker... whatever word seems appropriate to describe it.

 

I'm not sure what the issue is, was hoping someone could enlighten me. I've had it before but that was when I was playing whack-a-mole with Skyrim graphical problems (shaders, transparency AA, alpha transparency, etc) with very little victory. I'm trying again and have had better luck thus far fixing some of the stuff that plagued me 2 years ago.

 

Screenshots (where the effect is subtle because I'm not moving, please try zooming in):

 

https://i.imgur.com/bthYlzz.png (on the stone blocks)

https://i.imgur.com/wJYqYMb.png (more readily visible here)

https://i.imgur.com/wJYqYMb.png (really shows up if you zoom in on this one)

 

Specs:

 

Windows 7 64-bit

AMD Radeon 6950 2GB

(dxdiag says Approx Total Mem is 1768mb, which seems wrong as I remember 2048 last I checked)

8GB RAM

Intel i5-2500k @3.30GHZ (4 cores)

Direct X 11

 

Monitor is a Samsung 32" LCD HDTV w/ 1360x768 native resolution

Mod Organizer w/ extensions, fixes, and 3rd party exes as per 2.2.9 Guide

GPU settings (Multisampling) and .ini tweaks as per 2.2.9 Guide w/ additional Z-fighting/Shadow Tweaks as per a Step Thread on the subject.

 

Install:

 

STEP Extended w/ Arthmoor's LAL  (for testing purposes)

 

EDIT: Now with video, though admittedly it doesn't really do the effect justice.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nWYyd-tnhk&feature=youtu.be

Edited April 14, 2015 by thunderclam

[TechAngel85]

Have you messed with any bias settings anywhere?

[thunderclam]

My vanilla Profile is fShadowBiasScale=0.1500

 

My STEP extended Profile is fShadowBiasScale=0.2500 (but I did not change this... it is not in the STEP recommended .ini tweaks so I have no idea why it's a different value or how this could happen).

 

My STEP+ (personal mods and experimentation) is fShadowBiasScale=1 as per a tweak that has given me some relief from the shadow/stripe line that follows you around issue. I still see it, but not as bad.

 

Are there other Bias settings to check? I will try a Vanilla Skyrim save in Windhelm and confirm if this problem persists there. I have only checked with STEP so far and will have to play quite a bit to get to Windhelm. :P

 

EDIT: Tested with vanilla. Issue is a bit different, but not better. Not sure if this is what these textures are supposed to look like or not. Still getting texture flashes, but a little less noticeably due to the larger patches of white. Nearby water textures flash a lot, but the ice in the river does not flash/flicker as much as in my STEP Extended profile... makes me think that's a shadows issue perhaps tied to the Bias setting? I should also mention that my Vanilla install only runs with ENBoost since that's embedded in the Skyrim folder.

 

https://i.imgur.com/SWA4I0j.png

https://i.imgur.com/B9CpYwk.png

Edited April 14, 2015 by thunderclam

[TechAngel85]

I was thinking more of LOD bias in the graphic drivers or in ENB. This would sharpen the textures to make them look like this when AF is used.

[Aiyen]

Looks a lot like it is the specular settings of the textures. Skyrim does not have a detailed enough engine to really pull off various materials without it looking sorta plastic like. 

 

Either that or it would be the snow decal overlay on those textures... But I am thinking it is specular since it is affected by you moving around. 

[thunderclam]

I was thinking more of LOD bias in the graphic drivers or in ENB. This would sharpen the textures to make them look like this when AF is used.

 

Those settings are untouched and at default. My graphics card doesn't have a "LOD Bias" setting that I can see, though.

 

Looks a lot like it is the specular settings of the textures. Skyrim does not have a detailed enough engine to really pull off various materials without it looking sorta plastic like. 

 

Either that or it would be the snow decal overlay on those textures... But I am thinking it is specular since it is affected by you moving around. 

Okay. That may also explain other horribly flashing/flickering/shimmering textures like grass shadows and the like. How can I fix it?

[Aiyen]

Get different textures. Or turn down the specular intensity in ENB... if that does not do it, then it is most likely not specular that is the reason. 

[thunderclam]

The textures I'm using are STEP recommended. The problem persists in vanilla as I said. Can you elaborate?

 

I am not using an ENB preset. Can you elaborate on what you mean about turning down specularity?

[Aiyen]

ENB presets have a setting under Environment that is called specular intensity.. it can be used to adjust the specular component of the game. 

 

Alternatively you would have to alter the meshes involved with that particular texture to turn down how the specular settings work.. but that is a bit of a more elaborate solution I would say. 

 

Best thing I can suggest is that you try any ENB preset and verify if it is in fact specular settings or something else. You can adjust it ingame using the GUI on any of the newer ENB binaries. 

[TechAngel85]

This is specular or at least the textures. I've checked into it. SRO is providing the textures:

• textures/architecture/windhelm/whstreetstone01.dds
• textures/architecture/windhelm/whstreetstone01_m.dds
• textures/architecture/windhelm/whstreetstone01_n.dds

@aiyen,

I thought the specular was built into the alpha channel of the diffuse map not the meshes? If this is the case, one could simply open the texture, turn down the brightness on the alpha channel and resave the texture.

[Aiyen]

The specular is the alpha of the normal map, not the diffuse. The alpha of the diffuse is transparency. (unless it is a landscape texture and you use ENB, then it can be the parallax texture.)

 

Each model have its own lighting shader properties (some have more) that deals with how lighting affects that particular model. You can set the specular intensity to 0 and never have any specular regardless of what you have in your textures. 

 

 

Also if the model has an env map attached it can be what is visible.. reflections have a hard cap of .. 512 in resolution and only pre baked env maps can be used, so those will always look bad. In that case you adjust curves or levels to make the env map darker and it will have less of a visible effect. 

 

 

Finally since this is a snow related issue there is the issue of image spaces, most snow + sun weathers have a really high sun scale which means that speculars are even more lit up... so one could also try to simply adjust the image space of the relevant weathers and lower the sun scale... ofc. this will be a rather radical change overall, and might make snow look too bland and grey without any glowing in the sun. 

[thunderclam]

ENB presets have a setting under Environment that is called specular intensity.. it can be used to adjust the specular component of the game. 

 

Alternatively you would have to alter the meshes involved with that particular texture to turn down how the specular settings work.. but that is a bit of a more elaborate solution I would say. 

 

Best thing I can suggest is that you try any ENB preset and verify if it is in fact specular settings or something else. You can adjust it ingame using the GUI on any of the newer ENB binaries. 

 

I will try this. I think the best way to do it is to use that near-vanilla Preset I've seen discussed here. I'll track that down and give it a whirl.

 

 

This is specular or at least the textures. I've checked into it. SRO is providing the textures:

• textures/architecture/windhelm/whstreetstone01.dds
• textures/architecture/windhelm/whstreetstone01_m.dds
• textures/architecture/windhelm/whstreetstone01_n.dds

@aiyen,

I thought the specular was built into the alpha channel of the diffuse map not the meshes? If this is the case, one could simply open the texture, turn down the brightness on the alpha channel and resave the texture.

 

The specular is the alpha of the normal map, not the diffuse. The alpha of the diffuse is transparency. (unless it is a landscape texture and you use ENB, then it can be the parallax texture.)

 

Each model have its own lighting shader properties (some have more) that deals with how lighting affects that particular model. You can set the specular intensity to 0 and never have any specular regardless of what you have in your textures. 

 

 

Also if the model has an env map attached it can be what is visible.. reflections have a hard cap of .. 512 in resolution and only pre baked env maps can be used, so those will always look bad. In that case you adjust curves or levels to make the env map darker and it will have less of a visible effect. 

 

 

Finally since this is a snow related issue there is the issue of image spaces, most snow + sun weathers have a really high sun scale which means that speculars are even more lit up... so one could also try to simply adjust the image space of the relevant weathers and lower the sun scale... ofc. this will be a rather radical change overall, and might make snow look too bland and grey without any glowing in the sun. 

 

There seems to be a general problem with my system and this specularity issue. If so, I would need to alter many textures this way and would only do that as an extreme last resort. For now, I'll check into ENB presets and report back if I fix the issue or discover anything else.

 

EDIT:

 

Tested with ELEP Performance version (Aliasing option) and the snow looks a ton better. However, I could not find a specific "specularity intensity" setting. Rather, there were many specularity settings split up between sunrise, day, sunset, and night. I changed a few of these as a test, turning them down to 0 and monitoring for any effect. There was no effect on the texture shimmer/flicker/flashing I experience the snowy ground, much less the chunks of ice in the river, wood on the boats, rims on the barrels, etc. This again seems to be some sort of general aliasing problem with my setup or hardware. I can never figure it out, but at the very least the snow doesn't look like white paint spatters any more.

 

Is there any advice you guys can offer about the shimmering textures? That is much more distracting than the bad snow, but its effect has been somewhat lessened on said snow at this point.

Edited April 14, 2015 by thunderclam