MarcDwonn

Thanks for the help, i learned a couple of useful things about NGIO and grass in general. But i made a discovery a moment ago, when i tested DynDOLOD-Grass-Mode = 2. I'll recycle my NGIO Nexus post for efficiency: Just checked my problematic Rift location, and discovered something very interesting. I think this wasn't clear to see when i was in Mode 1, probably because of the shorter grass distance. Screenshot Looking at the right bank, there's this bald spot that gets more dense when i go closer. But at the same time, much further away on the left bank there's really dense grass still, which is not faded out. I can only conclude that this is not a problem with grass fade, but maybe more of a problem with the grass placement of FFF grass in this specific spot. Not sure, but at least i can stop trying to improve the Grass INI settings now.

I'm using BethINI (don't know about "Pie" though, it was the one bundled with Nordic Souls) with the High preset. GrassFade is also off. Initially i made sure to set my grass settings in the INIs: Skyrim.ini [Grass] fGrassFadeRange=14128 SkyrimPrefs.ini [Grass] fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=6144 fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0 fGrassStartFadeDistance=6144 GrassControl.ini Overwrite-grass-distance = 6144 Overwrite-grass-fade-range = 14128 But checking the settings in-game it turns out that DynDOLOD-Grass-Mode = 1 in NGIO changes the most important ones to the following, so i don't have control over them anymore: fGrassFadeRange=0.00 fGrassStartFadeDistance=999999.00 Still, the issue with the fade gap persists. Do you think that it will help if i use the settings you recommended above? But how do i do that if NGIO overrides them?

I'm having the same problem, and trying to fix it for days now. DynDOLOD-Grass-Mode = 1 in GrassControl.ini (NGIO) and the corresponding setting in Dyndolod. No matter what i do, no matter what i set in any INI, there is always a fade gap between the end of the full grass in the loaded cells (uGridToLoad=5) and the start of GrassLOD. Note that i have this issue in the Rift, but not in the Tundra (there the full grass doesn't fade out before the GrassLOD starts). I'm using Freak's Floral Fields. And i made sure that there is no performance mod in the modlist that is changing grass settings on the fly. Are there new developments or infos on this particular issue? Or is the only solution to try running DynDOLOD-Grass-Mode = 2?

Ah, that would explain it. Yes, i'm using Anniversary Edition with the latest EXE. A year ago with the Elysium modlist i had the best success without using CG, and the far grass was quite consistent. Now with the Nordic Souls modlist, without using CG the far grass was very inconsistent, and even changed color completely at different TOD (now i understand why). That's the reason why i switched to CG. I'm not gonna bother tweaking further - it seems that the v1.6.x solution is inferior and will not get much better. I reached my goal for the grass - to be immersive enough for my upcoming playthrough. Thanks again for all the help, Z! PS: If i ever invest the effort to downgrade to v1.5.97 to be able to use NGIO, i'll post my results here.

Finally i tweaked the GrassLOD and the following is the result. Mornings and afternoons look great: But at noon i still have quite dark GrassLOD: Is this the best that can be done with the current tools, or could i improve that some more? My settings for TexGen are default (STEP v2.2), and for Dyndolod i'm using these: ComplexGrassBillboard=5 ComplexGrassBacklightMask=35 ; complex grass LOD brightness multipliers - applied to grass LOD billboards created from "complex" grass with normal map textures ComplexGrassBrightnessTopR=0.750 ComplexGrassBrightnessTopG=0.750 ComplexGrassBrightnessTopB=0.750 ; make bottom darker to fake shadowing ComplexGrassBrightnessBottomR=0.600 ComplexGrassBrightnessBottomG=0.600 ComplexGrassBrightnessBottomB=0.600 I'm aware that this could be something that NAT3 makes worse, in comparison to, let's say, Cathedral Weathers. Honestly, the current results are good enough for me, but i'm curious if people have gotten better results, still.

UPDATE: I reworked three different grass mods: Folkvangr + Origins Of Forest for my current modlist, and then Cathedral 3D Pine Grass - Full 3D Coverage (in case i ever want to go back to QW's Patch 2). But, i had a couple of issues again, mostly due to shaky documentation. :sigh: The ComplexGrass Guide about trigger area in Normal Map: "If your normal map is correct, you do not need to worry about this area." This is wrong, and i wasted quite a bit of time because of it. Even with proper trigger area 32x32px @ 127 grey in Specular Map, which i thought is taking care of my previous issue, i got many blue sheets on different grasses: When i took the extra time and placed 127,127,255 patches on every normal map, the issue was completely gone. Then, i probably misunderstood the CG guide saying that 4px Alpha padding is minimum but should work. This was the result with 10px padding (IIRC): As a solution, i had to extend the black padding quite a bit into the Specular Map to get rid of it on some grasses.

I was quick because i had your help, it saved me many hours of trial and error. Super appreciative about that! Plus i have experience with batch processing piles of stuff (been using Photoshop for over 20 years now, so i know my way around). But this whole texture stuff is a real learning experience. And issues like above can completely stop me in my tracks, because then i don't know what to look for. Color management is very complex - i only understand it enough to set it up in my software and my files. But under the hood i seems to change the gamma values of pixels: let's say the color managed monitor displays 127, but in the file the value is saved as 129. I always though it's the other way around - that only the display of the pixels is changed for color accurate view, not the actual values in the file, but i'm not sure anymore. Funny detail: To automate the creation of the trigger area, i couldn't just make a selection in the lower left corner and fill it with 127 grey, because the textures are different size and the positioning is absolute. I made a Temp layer, made a 8px selection in the middle, filled it with color, auto-aligned it to the lower left corner, then CTRL+LM selected the 8px area, switched to the Alpha channel, filled the selection with 127,127,127, and deleted the Temp layer. Maybe it can be done more efficiently, but this was the "quick and dirty" way. Oh, that reminds me - i've still not automated the padding of the Alpha map. Got work to do...

Well, turns out that if the trigger area is above 127 grey, you get those funky blue sheets like i did in my game. It seems that the game doesn't recognize the DDS as a texture atlas anymore and uses the whole height as one single texture. It's beyond my technical understanding...

Interesting discovery: After comparing my "bad" texture with Skurkbro's, sure, the specular maps are completely different, but the trigger area in his textures is RGB 15,15,15 - which is way below the guidelines. I took his Specular map into my "bad" texture, and the texture was fixed in-game! Then i just set a trigger area of RGB 15,15,15 and the issue was gone as well. Boris on the ENB discord told me that my gamma settings in Photoshop might be wrong and it's messing with the trigger areas. I'm gonna try disabling color management for the textures i open. UPDATE: Issue found and fixed. I worked in sRGB in Photoshop, and it messes with the gamma. Working in "Untagged RGB" leaves the trigger areas at the correct 127,127,127 values and no more blue sheets in game. I'm ready to do all the grass now. With sun at zenit (ignore the GrassLOD):

2 of 24. Exact meshes are known. If i remove those 2 textures and use Skurk's instead, i have no issues: Here's a closeup that demonstrates how the game renders both Diffuse and Normal Maps as Color texture, in my two problematic DDS files (same grass above and below; the transparency is caused by the black parts of the specular map (which the game things is an alpha map). Before you ask, yes, i placed 8px square 127-grey triggers into the specular maps, like in the guidelines. - With NifSkope i was never "lucky" to get it to render the textures, if started inside MO2. So i start it standalone and as a texture resource i use the direct texture path to my mod in MO2's mod folder ("tundra test"). I'm gonna carefully compare my "bad" textures with Skurk's, again, and get back to you. BTW, what i did NOT test yet, is placing a trigger "pixel" onto the Normal Map as well. JohnSkyrim's guide said that it's not needed, if using a proper normal map, but what does that even mean? :shrug:

I managed to get NifSkope showing the textures, and here everything seems OK. I double-checked the texture source as well. It's all very confusing...

Alright, since i switched to the combo Folkvangr + Origins Of Forest, i had to do the initial test with 24 textures (that's how much Folkvangr uses in the tundra near Whiterun :) )... But all worked well, those CrazyBump settings are excellent, the new textures are very well behaved, under all times of day. I already have my PS Actions in place, so i will process all 160 textures. (But damn, that CrazyBump really likes to crash...) I have on issue though. Two of the reworked 24 textures show blue sheets. I redid them from scratch, but nothing changed. I compared to Skurkbro's and to the other textures that do work, but can't for the life of me find any differences. Here's what it looks like in game (i had a trim problem as well in one texture in the screenshots, but it's already fixed): Here's the third screenshot: And here's what one of the NIFs look like in NifSkope. This is unfortunately beyond my expertise: At first i thought those are missing textures, but no. It's just that the NIF seems to use the Normals part as Diffuse texture as well, and it calculates transparency from the Specular map (screenshot #3). I never worked with meshes, so if it's a NIF issue, i have no clue how it could be fixed.

CrazyBump works well, i was able to easily reproduce your settings after exporting a b/w PNG with transparency. Comparing the end results with Skurkbro's fieldgrassTU (1).dds, it seems to me that the biggest difference is in the specular map. The normal maps are quite equal in "noisiness", the biggest differences are that Skurk has gone with the opposite shape and it looks a bit less flat (?). I'm gonna isolate the tundra grasses for treatment, and run some tests in-game, very curious to see what will change...

Great info! Never heard of Solidify, but it seems kind of a standard for this stuff. For the alpha a lazy Threshold works best. I tried to get as close as possible to your settings. This is the result: That would cover the diffuse and alpha part of the exercise. Gonna get CrazyBump and see about Normal and Specular. A plan for automating part of this stuff is already in the works.

I'm studying your treatment of the above grass texture [fieldgrassTU (1)], and the diffuse is quite a mess in the original. Orig: Reworked: (sorry for the desat images, my monitor is wide gamut and color management changes the colors of screenshots) What i don't get is, how do you clean it up like that? It looks automated, like a software algo is taking the diffuse colors at the border of the alpha mask and interpolates them into the empty space around the mask. Is that a Photoshop filter i'm not familiar with? I've seen this "look" on other textures as well, but always thought that it's the result of the creator color-brushing over parts of the diffuse to bring in some variations (highlights, fake shadows etc.).