TES Skyrim SE 0.484

[Phlunder]

Hey Boris, thanks for fixing the bug with bright sky meshes! I still have one issue with the latest build, that was reported before. It seems to be connected to Skylighting. Some parts of landscape/terrain are very dark with it enabled. I am not sure when this issue started appearing. You could try "coc mistwatchexterior02" and just go into the fort, the ground there shows the issue clearly:

Skylighting disabled

https://i.imgur.com/hjm9Wlb.jpg

Skylighting enabled

https://i.imgur.com/ERqAD5I.png

[ENBSeries]

Phlunder
I tested old version, something from early 4xx and same issue. Visualized depth data at skylighting computation and it looks correct. Forcing skylight colors to white and black also confirms shader looks fine on that mesh. So this is something game do to the shadows of such meshes, not fixable on my side.

speaker-60
I answered such things several times. People don't understand that some other engine with source code and premade features is always superior to modding of the game which already made and you have to deal with it's limitations, especially if lot of people can do changes to it and you have no control of what they do. Terrain blending have nothing in common with effect from your links, they are absolutely different and there is no way to apply that one. There are compatibility issues with other game objects and mods, so things you recommend are bad on practice. Some people say "who cares? game have many wrong places where meshes mismatch". But i just can't do that, it's wrong to add unfixable issues.

[Phlunder]

Phlunder
I tested old version, something from early 4xx and same issue. Visualized depth data at skylighting computation and it looks correct. Forcing skylight colors to white and black also confirms shader looks fine on that mesh. So this is something game do to the shadows of such meshes, not fixable on my side.

Alright, thanks for taking the time to look into it either way!

[speaker-60]

@Boris
So i wasnt talking about the exact method just showing those links as a reference to the effect so you knew what i was talking about, i would assume with skyrim things would have to be done in a more creative way then what other engines would do.

Years ago the idea of fixing the lighting on grass was mostly unheard of then came enb particle lights then now the complex grass has solved it completely
Grass collision is now a thing, never say never i guess is the key thing lol I know you know your stuff but im sure theres things you have done you might not of thought you would in the past

But i dont think i phrased my question properly to begin with
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... /image.png
This image is from this texture pack - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecial ... mods/83011
You can see the complex parallax is pretty much doing this fade effect on the skill as it intersects the terrain, i gather this is more of a side effect and wasnt the intention
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... /image.png
here you see the stone material can be seen overlaying over the part of the tusk, overall this skill looks blended into the terrain and has not sharp intersecting lines
So complex parallax is effectively achieving this effect even if that wasnt the point of the effect

So this image i showed
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... /image.png
Cant remember which texture pack this was but is a mod using complex parallax, it shows in some cases it is doing this fade effect and in some case its not
Which could be due to the texture itself not quite doing the parallax right or something.

So really the question is, as complex parallax technically achieves this effect at least in some cases, what can we do to make it always achieve this effect in all cases
So rather then the effect being coincidental its more intended and deliberate, anything that could be changed coding wise to force this effect more for example
Or is it more to do with the texture creation and less to do with the code, if anything i wanted to highlight this effect and concept and the fact that complex parallax can somewhat achieve this so people can know about.

https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mo ... 706541.png
Another example from the same texture pack, you can see the two rocks in the center the one on the right is blended but the one of the left isnt. I get the feeling view angle is also important in this case and also the one thats blended as the stones where as the none blended one dosnt have much stones, so the blend effect is caused by a part of the parallax texture that adds height. So the rock thats not blended is probably over a part of the parallax texture thats adding no or very little height, which makes sense. So im wondering if simply make a parallax texture always push upwards across the whole texture regardless of the texture details so that it might add this blending effect over the whole texture regardless of the specific bump details like the stones in this case. This could be part of the code, we have a setting the pushes up as a whole regardless of the texture information, so like it forces a parallax texture to never be fully black so it always adds in some height. Maybe theres a better way to do this im just spitballing as i dont know the mechanics and limitations of this, i just hope to give you ideas that might work.

Is it possible to use that noise texture that the lod terrain uses and apply it to all terrain so we can apply an overall noise parallax on any and every landscape material
This noise would be used to add a tiled parallax effect that extends across landscape materials, which tbh would help blend different landscape materials even better then just the simple fade that vanilla has
This noise is used on the lod meshes aswell as the lods specific textures but i understand lod is one thing and full rendered terrain is another so thats the question can we add in the noise overaly on rendered terrain and use parallax on it or is that simply out of the question due to differences and limitations that are unavoidable?

[ENBSeries]

Oh man... Do you know how many times i answered this thing to other people with describing all details? If it would be so simple, already be done. Stone which is not blended is not blended because of how terrain blending works, it is just big luck it works at all and i found way to make it work by various tricks, there is no cheap way (and not difficult to make for me) to make that stone blended. Blending by height or parallax or by big noise texture will make blending non functional in the places where it's important - patches of static meshes on the terrain which placed there to match textures. Modders who place objects on the terrain, especially flat ones like roads, will hate this feature because have no control and when they want to put something in certain area, noise will force it to not be visible. Or on the contrary, showing edges of their mesh not match terrain in other place. It took me lot of time to search in various places of the game how blending happens to find balance for hardcoded deepness of blending to have it actually useful while not make too many bugs. Still i know where bugs happen and got reports too.

[speaker-60]

Well sorry for bringing it up, i didnt know if it had been ever discussed before as i have never seen anything about it
I can understand if your asked about it alot it gets frustrating though, i guess you could have a topic page about so people talking about could be redirected there so you dont have to repeat, so it just states all the information and issues ect so anyone else looking can either see it before asking or just be redirected to it

But what your saying sounds interesting, so you can do it but comes with its own issues and bugs and add some limitation that some may not like
I mean everything about enb is optional so it can always be turned off, i guess i personally would rather not see the harsh lines over seeing something blended that shouldn't be.
We technically have the feature already with parallax just not in a consistent or controllable way

Maybe you had thought of this, but if you needed to flag a mesh to not be blended maybe some sort of shader flag could be used on the nif. Some flag that basically dose nothing and isnt really used but you could detect and use to cull that mesh from the blend, your outline shader only working on meshes that has the subsurface flag for example. The any mod author could add the flag and know it wount be blended if they wanted to support the feature, nifs have to be edited for enb lights so its no different in that respect. Could have it blend on only the flagged meshes or on everything as a setting, then rock meshes, tree meshes mountain meshes, landscape can all be flagged and have the blend effect

For me the edges has always been an eyesore and i think holds back the visuals, with complex parallax that adds totally next gen visuals i forget skyrim is an old game but when i still see the harsh lines it brakes that illusion. I am quite fussy and and a high attention to details on a ocd level so i dont exactly expect anyone to cater to that

I was manly asking because i didnt know it had been discussed before and seeing complex parallax kinda do it really intrigued me
But sorry for pushing a topic your not too fond of, the features you have done and all the work you have dedicated are well appreciated

[ENBSeries]

Things are different from what you think how effect works. It is depth based like soft particle effect, there is no way to mark any object as blendable or not with terrain, everything depends only on the sorting order of objects how game engine do it.

[Anubis]

speaker-60

Perhaps it would be more foolproof just editing the meshes of all the stones to have some debris around them, (make a mod). This mod would be compatible with all texture mods, but not with anything that replaces meshes. It would need patches. But it would solve the issue with sharp edges.

[speaker-60]

speaker-60

Perhaps it would be more foolproof just editing the meshes of all the stones to have some debris around them, (make a mod). This mod would be compatible with all texture mods, but not with anything that replaces meshes. It would need patches. But it would solve the issue with sharp edges.

Sort of but not really, rocks are used in all kinds of ways in vanilla and in mods and not always pointing down and not all at the same height some rocks might be lower in the terrain or higher somewhere else
You would effectively have to make a custom model for each rock individually placed in the game or adjust the position of each ect
Base object swapper could be used to some degree but then how would you know what rock model to swap with based on the location its in ect, you would still need to revise each individually placed rock or landscape mesh and set the adjustments manually even as a BOS ini

An overall shader is a much better more feasible option for this sort of thing if it was doable at all. A manual method you describe would take months or even years to do, then there's patches for like any more adding locations or edits, then having to find bugs were a rock is used on its side and now has floating bits what wasnt there in the geometry when the rock was placed by the author of the location mod at the time of creation ect

Doing this sort of blend effect is arbitrary in modern engines, and easily doable with very little effort. Skyrim not being a modern engine effectively made for morrowind back in 2001 it obviously much harder get the game to do what is easy in modern standards. Not impossible for some, given the extremely awesome parallax tech we now have.

And so Boris knows, I knew when i asked here that it wasnt a simple thing or that i would have any idea how it could or couldnt be done in the skyrim engine, all references i made was just a generalization.
Ofcorse i dont know how this works im not an enb modder or a coder, i just didnt know if it had ever been discussed before and just seen that the new parallax effect is almost doing the effect by accident it made me wonder. I do find it abit illogical to tell someone who is asking a question that they dont know what there talking about, ofcorse they dont thats why they asked the question. If they knew they wouldn't ask lol I dont hold anyone agenst doing that i just find abit ironic and funny, i will always ask because there is always a chance something could become of my question but ill never expect anything to become of my question. I just like open discussions about ideas and possibilities thats all, in this example if boris says it cant be done for reasons then thats that. I can just enjoy the fact that the new parallax is offering this feature in some case by accident

[Anubis]

Sort of but not really, rocks are used in all kinds of ways in vanilla and in mods and not always pointing down and not all at the same height some rocks might be lower in the terrain or higher somewhere else
You would effectively have to make a custom model for each rock individually placed in the game or adjust the position of each ect
Base object swapper could be used to some degree but then how would you know what rock model to swap with based on the location its in ect, you would still need to revise each individually placed rock or landscape mesh and set the adjustments manually even as a BOS ini

Actually - all rock meshes are made to be used one certain side down. They're one-sided meshes that are open from below. And not all rock meshes need this adjustment. Of course, it would still take time to make this kind of mod. (I started one a while ago, adding grass and stuff around some rocks, but I've been busy and haven't worked much on this.)
As for the rocks being lower or higher in terrain, the debris and grass must have some universal height.

I'm not claiming it's easy and fast way, but without any viable alternatives it may be the only way.