vurt

I think the grass generator can only handle very small files, that's why the slightly larger bush .nifs sometimes bugs out a bit. Just like the grass .nif's the generated rocks are extremely low poly (4kb file). The shroom mesh would be larger, even if it was just one (around 30-50k i bet).

Uploaded to the modpage.

I'm afraid I wouldnt know how, the grass generator is very picky and wont just spawn anything you throw at it. As you probably know even those bushes that i have in SFO are a bit buggy and will disapear sometimes. I've actually tried the grass generator with shrooms before, but they dont spawn at all. Edit: tried it again, actually it even crashes the game. but those shrooms are not very performance friendly anyways.. when i removed the stones and ground it's still a 143kb big file (compared to 2kb for the grass)..

Aiyen: look again, those arent leaves from any tree, they are plant leaves. There wont be grass everywhere, just patches of it where there's less ash covered ground. Edit: ground plant leaves: https://piclair.com/data/zzseo.jpg DoYouEvenModBro: put it last..

During an eruption the surrounding plants would die from the lava and in the long run plants that require a lot of sunlight would die off (mushrooms for example can grow in 100% darkness, i've tried).. but this isnt near the eruption (no lava) the falling ash isnt that bad in this place since you can see quite well :) Maybe i'll change the ground so that it isnt completely covered, might look a bit more natural..

Pretty sure there's fertile soil beneath the ashlayer ;) that's why bethesda put trees, and a some grass and a few plants there already, otherwise the whole landscape would be completely dead. Oh, and ash is actually very good for plants. If there's a fire the ground then becomes even more fertile. Volcanic ash + soil would be very good for plants.. Google it ;) Edit: for example: https://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/LivingWith/PlusSide/fertile_soils.html

Yes probably a better place. But i think i have solved it by making the ash ground a bit brighter and the dead grasses are a bit darker. Also got quite a few new plants including amanita mushrooms and some ash covered flat plants / leaves'n'stuff.

Any "advanced" modders around? ;) I need to change the ground textures named Lpineforest01-03 to LVolcanicAshGrass01 in the Solstheim region. I guess its possible to go over all the cells by hand and switch them out (using "replace"), but i'm way too lazy for that :D Any third party program where you can edit it more easily?

yeah i took a look at them, wasnt any difference in the shaders compared to the old, so i guess its something else.

Yes it's an impossible task to fit the grasses for the hundreds of ENB's variants and texture mods (ground/landscape textures). I'm gonna get bored out of my mind with doing ENB regular, ENB basic, Vanilla Regular, Vanilla Basic.. especially since i tend to update my mod quite often. So i'm probably giving that up and just concentrate on what i think is a natural looking ENB preset and then tweak textures for that version. aha, that texture isnt really supposed to move much at all, will fix it..

...another thing i'm looking into is making the grass appear better under certain weathers. As you can see, with ENB it's much too bright in this image: this effect can really ruin how the game looks, one of the things why i've previously stayed away from ENB. I got a reply from Boris that its possible to fix it because the shader is set improperly in some of the .nifs. Guess i need to compare the working ones with the faulty to see what i should change.

vfxninjaeditor: still tweaking, but it's not going to be super high contrast like many other ENB's, since that doesnt look natural. EssArrBee: Actually the bloom level for day time is set quite low (0.4). Most ENB's have far too high contrast and daylight looks very unnatural. One of the more well-known ENB's: https://static2.nexusmods.com/110/mods/110/images/30936-1-1380400227.jpg Ligtning and contrast doesnt reflect the sky at all, that's a very bright day and not a thunderstorm.. Compare to a game with very natural looking lightning (GTA V as an example) https://egamer.co.za/wp-content/gallery/06-september-2013-gta-v-screens/gta-v-new-1.jpg https://static.coolshop.com/images/screenshots/71127-2.jpg - very spot on daylight, could amost mistake the first one for a photo.. Even better is looking at some good reference photos (non-photoshopped). z929669? Four? Um, then i must have packed it with that folder with some older ones probably, lol. How typical me :P Alright, sounds good. Noise in the alpha sounds like good practice.

Yes, that would mean the LOD generator. Working on a ENB for SFO: https://piclair.com/data/ksy9q.jpg https://piclair.com/data/q211n.jpg https://piclair.com/data/aaspw.jpg https://piclair.com/data/51pxz.jpg https://piclair.com/data/isqva.jpg https://piclair.com/data/djo3d.jpg https://piclair.com/data/rap0o.jpg https://piclair.com/data/wjrsl.jpg https://piclair.com/data/yjz71.jpg https://piclair.com/data/cb04c.jpg

Ga-Knomboe Boy (who did the LOD generation) did the LOD atlas that large because at the time we didn't know how many trees i would do. It's not possible to UV-remap the LOD meshes, because they're already used in the .BTT LOD files. Actually you can remove all the *_lod_flat.nif files from trees/meshes, they serve no purpose at all any longer (which reminds me that i should remove them from the mod).

You mean regular? Basic doesnt have extra trees. The LOD's are really problematic and buggy to work with, huge effort.. Actually i dont even know the procedure of how to re-generate them, which i would need to do if i change the LOD texture in any way (placement of trees in the LOD). Not sure i understand what you mean with converting to .png?

Ok good to know, i acctualy think you have mentioned it before, when it think of it. Not happy with how the pines look, especially not when using just vanilla, so i'm working on some new ones (not just recoloring this time): https://i.imgur.com/78ICu3Z.jpg https://i.imgur.com/sxLoqzt.jpg tried to make them appear a bit thicker / more lush, i know that many people like that mod that doubles the branches.. But it can be done more performance friendly with just the texture, though perhaps not exactly as thick/lush..

No ENB or weather mods, otherwise it's not possible to tweak them correctly. The first row of trees are non-LOD's. The dead pines were inspired by, well, pictures of dead pines, saw some pictures of a whole forest with dead pines and the color is actually sampled from that image, though i made them slightly less orange-red because it looked a bit too odd.. The snowy pines matches really well in my image i think, remember that you have to check in different weathers and that you can't use weather mods or lightning mods, that will mess up everything if you are. Tweak away! ;) Edit: oh, and noise is probably a good idea, if it doesnt make them shimmer a lot..

Uploaded a new LOD for latest Basic Ed. I used ugridstoload=3 to get close so i could really see the LOD's, made it a bit easier to tweak the colors and shadows. https://piclair.com/data/2j6lo.jpg https://piclair.com/data/b14r2.jpg https://piclair.com/data/xa3tr.jpg https://piclair.com/data/jj2wg.jpg The snowy trees can't be too white i've noticed, because the transistion to the 3D mesh then doesnt look accurate at all.. they look nicer when a bit more white in the distance, but imo it's also important that it looks as smooth as possible when they change into the full 3D model.

Yes, the dead parts on the trees (and the fully dead trees) are now more orange/brown, like how dead pine branches usually look. Bethesda did them more yellow'ish, most of the time you couldnt see this "effect". I think the marshes look pretty cool with the dead pines :)

@Aiyen No worries, maybe i wasnt very clear what i was trying to show.

Aiyen: no one has said that iMinGrassSize doesnt have any kind of effect, that was not what the test was about. The test was SFO vs GoS and their respective suggested iMinGrassSize settings, and i showed that there was no FPS difference with almost the same coverage (his coverage is slightly better because of the enormous plants).

Grass on steroids. It makes the grasses and plants bulkier, that's the whole idea, it's even in the mod name ;)

@DoYouEvenModBro I used the latest one, i havent made any changes to the lupins, they should be the same, same with ferns etc, the meshes are unchanged. The mechanics of GoS is simple, if you make something larger it will obviously cover more of the ground. So yes, i can see how some people say it's a "FPS boost" because to add the same amount of coverage with SFO would require more normal sized plants.. but meh, i couldnt care less for that, i advice you to go out and look at an actual forest, you might be surprised to see that there's actually lots of actual ground to see, pine forests arent djungles.. Aiyen: it's not less grass... 255 is more than 30, no? Math isnt your thing.. big mesh = more coverage, it's simple.

um, he has raised the grass density from as low as 30 (it's usually as high as i go, sometimes lower, sometimes slightly higher) to 255(!) in the editor. That's a whole lot of more grass, so it makes no sense that there would be any kind of FPS boost with this mod and that extreme amount of grass (and my test shows it too, there's no boost). But again, for visual preference, people obviously have different taste, if you're not interested in getting a natural look and you want tree-like plants then i absolutely won't stop you.. i guess it's kind of cool in a fantasy type of way... you're missing out on many of the smaller plants though, good luck seeing the rather flat groundcovers, for example. Basicly what you will see when using GoS is the upper part of the largest plants, so it gets a lot less varied.

Sure, here's one with =10: https://piclair.com/data/l7ept.jpg as you can see 10 is really dropping the performance in latest versions.. 20 is probably as low as i would go. Actually i would mind to see some more of ground heh, i was out in the forest walking 2 days ago and it struck me how little grass there actually is in most places, it's mostly just different small plants and lots of their green (and now yellowing) leaves a lot of visible ground too, it's not like a forest is usually thick with grass, at least not pine forests.