TexGen and DynDoLod Settings

[Corinze]

I have a question about TexGen setting. I’ve done so much reading and have started playing with settings but I’m still a little confused on two things.

1) TexGen down the bottom the Diffuse and Specular settings. What is the difference between BC7 Quick and BC7 Max, and the other few settings? I found the BC7 Max is a better file format, but not knowing what it is or what is does, is not much of a help.

2) DynDoLod – Once osculation.esp is generated do I need to keep that checked? Or can I uncheck it and use the one loaded in game? Does it effect with making HD, QHD and 4K files?

What I do know, using my vast 30+ years on construction experience, I ran to google, texgen/dyndoload settings, images and found a pretty picture to follow. Using BC7 Max at 1024 and running Dyn with osculation with QHD settings, I ended up with a 17G file that took 12 HRs to generate. In game everything looked fantastic, I mean WOW, but getting off my horse to scan the sky to find the moons with a 0 to 3 fps, was a little rough. I bet if I could find the moons they would have grass and trees on them – lol.

I know I just need 512 setting with TexGen, but still need a little help with the 2 questions. Thanks

[bLaCkShAd0w]

1) BC7 max would be the better quality texture compression, it will take the longest to generate, use more resources but look better. BC7 quick uses an algorithm to compress the textures and will end up with more distortion or noise compared to BC7 max. Arguably a negligible difference though overall.

Basically if you have resources to spare go max if you have performance concerns go quick.

2). You may be able to re-use occlusion from a previous DynDoLOD run, but if you have changed any mods that affect that then obviously it will be better to replace it when you run DynDoLOD again.

The occlusion plugin is basically telling DynDoLOD which parts of the LOD's can be omitted from rendering if they are blocked from the players current point of view.

Ex: don't load the LOD's for the village behind that mountain, as it is completely obscured from view because the mointain is in the way.

It is just a performance thing and will not affect the texture quality.

https://dyndolod.info/Help/Occlusion-Data

[Corinze]

Thanks, blackShadow for providing a more layman’s friendly definition. I read it but was not total sure what they were trying to convey. I probably should have mentioned that when creating the grass cache file I changed the following from a guide a found. Back-Up video supporting it had very smooth gameplay on just an average PC.

OverwriteGrassDistance = 6000 to 20000
And
OverwriteGrassFadeRange = 3000 to 20000

I was just surprised I went from 30 minutes to an hour, generating the Dyn outputs to an all-night affair. My guess is, using BC7 Max setting killed my FPS on top of the revised grass cach file. I’ll do another full clean run with BC7 Quick, which I’ve used about 20 times so far,since FPS hits were zil or minimum, which follows the Steps format for a QHD file. I did make a standard cache file with stock settings of 6000/3000, so I would not have to role back to 1.5.97 again.

Thanks again.

[bLaCkShAd0w]

No problem and good luck.

I also have revised my DynDoLOD a few times as well trying to get the setup that works best without draining my FPS. I think there is just a bit of trial and error involved to dial it in for your specific setup.

[Corinze]

Ok got everything almost there. I just have to decide if I want to lower DynDoLod setting a hair or swap to a less intense ENB. Dropping to high 40's in the woods/ thick grass areas at a low level which is no good at the start. I'm in the ball park and am happy.

Just sharing before and after pics of why the headaches are worth it. Plus I found out how to add to steam pics folder. Look at all my missing master from vortex - lol. That's why I deleted everything and started this whole process again

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924559897

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924559937

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924559908

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924559924

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924559887

[SgtScum]

What does dyndolod do that an intense redo of the ini files won't? All I have are ini edits that in some cases are pushed even farther than what bethini extreme settings do and my lodding looks almost identical to those I see of dyndolod users. Trees and terrain and objects are rendered in near full detail almost to the horizon.

[bLaCkShAd0w]

Originally posted by SgtScum:

What does dyndolod do that an intense redo of the ini files won't? All I have are ini edits that in some cases are pushed even farther than what bethini extreme settings do and my lodding looks almost identical to those I see of dyndolod users. Trees and terrain and objects are rendered in near full detail almost to the horizon.

It generates proper LOD files so you can view distant objects, it is useful for many reasons, generating non existant LOD's for mods and also generating better LOD's for vanilla objects.

The thing with .ini edits is they can only go so far, and they do not generate actual LOD for anything. If you generate grass from NGIO, then use DynDoLOD to generate grass LOD's then it would kinda be like setting grass distance in the .ini to "the other f***ing side of the map" because with generated LOD's as long as something is line of sight, you can see it from any distance. Without killing performance, as an .ini edit that large would if it was possible.

As an example, I currently am using a mod called Milandriel, a cool valenwood inspired tree home, it is a giant red tree that towers over the other trees in the area, and I can see that sucker from any corner of the map because of the generated LOD's.

Here is a good comparison video:
https://youtu.be/RXgCDYRDA-k

[SgtScum]

Yeah I've seen before and after pics and to be honest I can't really tell much difference. Dyndolod does a better job with really distant terrain detail but that only matters if you are in a really high place with a view of that much area. For the other 95% of the time you can't tell any difference.

This is with ini edits and some graphics mods to pretty up the textures and increase mesh quality overall.

https://i.imgur.com/imb4wvU.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ZYzzUzV.jpg

These actually look way better in game. For some reason taking screenshots in skyrim compresses them or something making them look blurry.

[Corinze]

I’m probably the worst to explain this but
You need a good weather mod and ENB to start, you have to follow the ENB author’s comment for adjustments. Then try tree and grass combos and makes tweaks to those. Then you’ll see the differences better.

Another thing is monitor resolution and game resolution, if everything is running at 720 or 1080 you will not see that much difference. Game looks totally different running 4k to 8k textures at 1080 as compared to all 2k textures running and 1440/2k or 4k textures at 2k/4k resolutions.

[SgtScum]

Yes I have all the required 4k texture mods installed and I did have the climates of tamriel mod installed but eh just too ~much~ weather so I uninstalled it. Might try an enb out sooner or later but no hurry as the game looks crisp and detailed to me its just screenshots that look kinda bland. Also I'm not bashing dyndolod just can't see any reason for me personally to go through all the trouble when ini edits give me most of what dyndolod does anyways. Maybe not as well but good enough for me. Guess after two weeks of sorting out a 100+ mod list so it played nice I didn't want to add in even more layers with a dyndolod install. Thats why I was asking what it did different than ini edits.

[Corinze]

I hear ya Sgt. I’ve always been keen on game play over visuals. Sure, the screen archers and videos of super vids of gorgeous toons walking around in a pristine paradise are great. They are not playing Skyrim, they are modeling Sims. Let’s see them play with mods like Immersive Patrols heavy, fighting 32 soldiers at a time in the Reach as a werewolf and have the kill cam go off all the time as you eat them.

I won’t name a dark shadowy, really helpful person who posted a screen shot of the shoreline between Dawnstar and Solitude with receding snow and some green grass with a few flowers growing from a downed tree. As soon as I saw that, the (See Monkey Do) effect jumped in.

So if you follow all the steps and guides for Seasons of Skyrim, there is no way around DynDoLod. With a 3.5 hour generating time and a 11.6 gig file, this last time around, it is doing way more than tweaking .ini settings. After 2 weeks of messing with this, I just noticed my map has trees too – lol.

[Ilja]

3.5 hours? Wow. I just made a rerun of it in 15 minutes, with full seasonal setup.

No wonder that it is a bit drag for you.

As to what it does, it also animates thing, like waterfalls. If you have SMIM installed, then you will get windmills with proper sails.

I had to rerun it, because last night I saw some ghost buildings, because I swapped between profiles in MO2, thinking that I had those buildings in both profiles. And today I made few significant changes to textures and lights. Let's see, if it was worth it.

[Ozymandias]

It takes a long time on my end too, especially the occlusion I think. Maybe some mods are responsible for that. But probably also because of the grass cache, tho it's definitely worth it. On one of my previous mod list, with many additional wordspaces (falksar, elseweyr, and others), it was really a PITA.

BTW, how big is your dyndolod output? The last one I generated was 6.4 Go (compressed) and nearing 20 Go uncompressed, I feel that it shouldn't be so much.

[Ilja]

With all seasonal stuff, my compressed (7-zip) DynDOLDO output is just 454MB.

Uncompressed 2,52 GB

[Ozymandias]

Yeah that seems much more reasonable to me, and I don't even use the seasonal stuff.

[bLaCkShAd0w]

Did you generate 8K LOD's lol?

Mine is 900MB compressed and about 1.5gb uncompressed. Seasonal with maybe half a dozen moded worldspaces added.