Update 3.1 is a big revision of the mod using new custom models for cleaner upscales and much improved hand-tweaked alpha channels. Special care was taken to inherit the vanilla color tone and saturation, even if the difference was only subtle in earlier versions. The detail layer masks for snow and ash covered trees were also improved. Make sure to grab update 3.2 as it contains some fixes regarding the latter.
25 November 2019
I hopefully just solved a very common problem with mip maps for trees. I stumbled upon this issue while comparing the visuals to the vanilla tree textures. Somehow the vanilla trees looked way more lush in the distance. It turned out that this was caused by the default settings for alpha map testing and thresholds in my DDS plugins. Funny enough, none of the Photoshop plugins made it possible to fix this. Just GIMPs DDS plugin was capable of modifying these values. Thanks to that awesome and free tool, I avoided manually editing all my mip maps. The next update will have regenerated mip maps for all tree branch textures so distant (not billboard) trees will appear more lush.
Keep in mind that nothing about the actual tree mesh or texture was altered here, even if it appears like it. This is achieved only by generating mip maps with proper alpha settings.
Yes I think so. Visual outcome might be a bit different because SE has very weird mip maps for trees that makes them very noisy. This is matched to the visuals of trees in LE.
Thanks! I tried not to change anything regarding color and saturation, it should be perfectly matched with vanilla. Your shots look like SE? There were some changes to branches in SE so the result may vary. For example they use no mip maps, and the normal map has a specular (alpha) layer. This is not the case in LE so I can't say how the outcome will be in SE.
Found and fixed the issue with the color/saturation difference for green pines compared to vanilla textures. I've redone almost everything for the next update to better represent the vanilla visuals, even if the difference was just subtle.
Awesome work; in Skyrim VR this mod is the difference between "ugh, have to walk through these fake plastic trees again" and "whoohoo, forest walk time!". Thanks!
Hello sir, thank you for this mod. I plan to use this mod in SSE alongside DynDOLOD. I have to pick up some billboards from SSE, and your mod page says the color of your trees match vanilla. I wanted to confirm with you that I should use the "Indistinguishable VANILLA Medium" option from this modpage:
Or if you would recommend different SSE billboards with these tree branches. I want to avoid seeing the trees noticeably change color when they switch from their LOD models to the actual tree. Thanks again :)
I can't speak for the billboard resources mentioned, as I use my own. You can find them here. Billboard brightness and saturation is influenced by a lot of factors like weather settings, time of day, and ENB preset. You'll always end up having to tweak them for your visual setup using DynDOLOD's billboard brightness option.
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Update 3.1 is a big revision of the mod using new custom models for cleaner upscales and much improved hand-tweaked alpha channels. Special care was taken to inherit the vanilla color tone and saturation, even if the difference was only subtle in earlier versions. The detail layer masks for snow and ash covered trees were also improved. Make sure to grab update 3.2 as it contains some fixes regarding the latter.
25 November 2019
I hopefully just solved a very common problem with mip maps for trees. I stumbled upon this issue while comparing the visuals to the vanilla tree textures. Somehow the vanilla trees looked way more lush in the distance. It turned out that this was caused by the default settings for alpha map testing and thresholds in my DDS plugins. Funny enough, none of the Photoshop plugins made it possible to fix this. Just GIMPs DDS plugin was capable of modifying these values. Thanks to that awesome and free tool, I avoided manually editing all my mip maps. The next update will have regenerated mip maps for all tree branch textures so distant (not billboard) trees will appear more lush.
Keep in mind that nothing about the actual tree mesh or texture was altered here, even if it appears like it. This is achieved only by generating mip maps with proper alpha settings.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11446
Or if you would recommend different SSE billboards with these tree branches. I want to avoid seeing the trees noticeably change color when they switch from their LOD models to the actual tree. Thanks again :)