Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the sky?

fixing bugs
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Joined: 11 Jul 2013, 21:16

Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the sky?

been using 252 for yeeears and finally decided to update. 3.15 is a huuuge benefit! game runs smoother, better fps ect. thanks much for that!
unfortunately i'm having a big issue with smoke trails, like from chimneys n braziers, and some of the magic effect around my hands. the smoke and magic effects are barely there any time, which isn't too bad. but sometimes when seen against the backdrop of the sky, they show up as blank empty transparent shadows, in the shape of the mesh i'm assuming.
i've tweaked a bunch. AA, floatrender, series settings Particles, using the old 252 enbseries, ect. nothing really helps. but putting back in the old 252 dsd9.dll does fix it! so it seems there's been a change there
anybody have any ideas please??
thank you

edit; oh, used Realvision 252 Full C Nova from before. but when i changed to 3.15 binary i updated to Realvision B Full

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

Screenshot(s) would be great.

Does adjusting [PARTICLE] parameters make any difference? Remember to tick IgnoreWeatherSystem first.

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

Image
Image
elfx torch glow^
Image
http://imgur.com/WfDBJ17
left hand magic^^
http://imgur.com/lUQLWTE
ELFX Exterior torch glow^^
http://imgur.com/RyiQklA
chimney smoke^^


sorry. here's pics. hands, ELFX torch glow, and chimney smoke
Last edited by Mookeylama on 06 Aug 2017, 01:21, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

What are your system specs, OS and GPU mainly?

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

pretty new build. april. i7-6700k (mainly for win7), 32gb 3200 ram, 1080ti strix rog oc. OS is win7 (of course, i find out they're fixing the 4gb limit for 10 shrtly after this build lol).

it's definitely a change in the dll that's different from 2.52, to 3.15.
because i was actually happy w/ my 252 setup, but people kept telling me how much smoother new binaries were. then somebody told me i could just simply switch out the dlls and try it. so i dropped in 315 dll, checked enblocal for any new settings (only had to change couple hair n watersao). and sure nuff, they were right! 315 played like a dream. but then i noticed these transparency issues. so i figured it was because i was "half assing" the enb install. so i completely removed my 252 stuff and made sure it was a clean 3.15 install...this made the issues a little worse lol.
but the point is, it was like this when the only thing i'd changed was the 2.52 dll to the 3.15 dll. so it's some change there

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

so i tried upping [PARTICLES] and it did make it look better...but only after a HUGE increase. default was 1.0, and smoke n magic looks kinda normal at like 7 lol. but that made many things too bright, and my waterfalls glowed like the sun heh. so don't think that will be a feasible fix

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

Yeah, just wanted to confirm my suspicions since I noticed the sky also looks somehow wrong in your screenshots. I've seen your issue a few times with certain presets but I have no idea what the cause is, in any case it seems like certain presets look 'wrong' in other systems, it's often as if gamma is somehow glitched.

Can you please try a different preset, for example the default files that come with 0.315?

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

thank you. i sure will try a different preset...tho i think i may've found the issue, and if so, it's terrible for me...
think it may be the "real" cloud type mods. i use Real Clouds, and also Clouds for Skyrim by XGF. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/58471/?

both those mods make clouds appear in the sky, and i just can't play without them. CFS has more stable, consistent and better looking clouds, but RC has an incredible distant rain effect, and it's the only mod i've found that actually lights the sky up during a lightning strike. so i use both, with CFS taking priority for clouds.
after searching, i've found a couple things...
http://forum.step-project.com/topic/851 ... ur-in-sky/

that describes kinda my issue, and it woulda been after my 252 setup.
also this...
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/39450/?
the comment;
"bigeyescarl posted @ 3:58, 26 Jun 2017
Hi there,
could u make the alpha channel for your awesome 3D clouds? So this mod cloud go along very well with the newest enb preset, thx"
==============

and after my testing, it does appear that the unwanted transparency effect only happens when smoke, magic hands ect, are viewed with the fake clouds behind it. why this is, or what changed from binary 252 to 315 to cause this, i have no idea. i DO know that this is terrible for me, and means i may not be able to upgrade to 3.15! i'm midgame, and the 2 cloud mods are in a Massive merge i made. i wouldn't get rid of those 2 mods anyway, as i love 'em (that distant rain effect and lighting should really be experienced by all!), but i couldn't even remove them if i wanted to, as that merge is huge, old, and a bunch of the mods in it are no longer available. so i couldn't even tear it apart and rebuild it (which i'm sure would destroy my save anyway).

so do you think adding an Alpha channel to the cloud textures would actually help this? i have no idea how to do that tho, and my cancer is draining what energy i have. probably not up for any lengthy learning curve

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

Thanks, that's good info. I quickly checked the textures used by Real Clouds and it looks like it already uses alpha channel (obviously), so I'm not sure to what alpha channel that user is referencing to. Also the alpha blending properties look correct (as they do for chimney smoke too) so right away I'm unable to say what's wrong, I need to test Real Clouds myself and investigate.

Can you say if some kind of particle effects (like other kind of smoke?) render correctly even when they overlap Real Clouds?

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Re: Smoke & magic are transparent shadows when against the s

Well, it looks like I can't repro the issue:

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