z929669

I can see the diff just in the thumbs.

Most likely it's Whiterun Metropolis messing with landscape or objects in those areas. Verify by checking a new game without that or any added mods in the LO. Until grass precache can be generated in AE, it must be done in 1.5.97, and we only support our mod list for that.

The Step patches are required for stability and conflict resolution with out guides. Although we keep them to a minimum, the patches use several mods in the guide as masters, so you will get errors if those plugins are missing from your LO. The Lighting and Weather patch forwards changes made by Lanterns MCM version in the guide and NOT Lanterns 2, and you should not substitute that or any other mods with plugins in the guide as a general rule of thumb. If you use Lanterns 2, your lighting will be inconsistent wherever Lanterns makes changes.

I would not leave it disabled and would opt to fix any large ref issuess instead. The trade-off is worth it, IMO.

Incidentally, I created a less saturated version of RAID Weathers that the MA posted, so you may want to try that version our first to see if the effects are at least reduced. The fog distance settings impact quite a lot in weathers. FNAM record, I think, but I may be misremembering. xEdit comes with a weather editing script I think, but DY's reference is probably better if it's not the same thing.

It's governed by %LOCALAPPDATA%\ModOrganizer\{INSTANCENAME}\profiles\{PROFILENAME}\modlist.txt, so if you can restore that, you are back in business.

Thanks You can copy this out there if you like so I don't forget about it.

Tagged accepted for 2.1.0

Tagged accepted for 2.1.0

Thanks. I will join you in your vote. Tagged accepted for 2.1.0

Thanks. I will join you in your vote. Tagged accepted for 2.1.0

Agree and tagging accepted for 2.1.0. Thanks all.

Tagged accepted for 2.1.0.

As I mentioned: There is something else causing the issue, you installed Lanterns MCM incorrectly, or there is another incompatible or corrupt plugin or artifact causing the issue. This build was made for Lanterns MCM, and many people are running this build. It's your call, but just be warned that the issue you are having is not due to this mod. Be sure to sort plugins with LOOT and review your setup further if you want to find the true issue.

The Step Lighting and Weather patch is made for Lanterns MCM, so you will want to reinstall that and get rid of Lanterns 2, which has the wrong lighting. You either had a corrupt download or something else was wrong. Lanterns MCM has no issues with the Step build.

Some look better and others look worse. Maybe I will try doing the CL tundra grasses to illustrate how this can be mitigated. I added a screen to the first row of the second set with much lowered specular multiplier ... but I still think the effect could be improved with changes to the normals. This is the specular and normal for one of the shiny tundra grasses (specular is the alpha of the normal): The leaves are fine, but the MA placed a halo of brightness that might reflect light in a halo around each leaf and essentially wash out the leaves. Not sure why they did this or if the alpha of the diffuse will block this. I don't fully understand how exactly Skyrim interprets or renders this stuff. My specular and normal would look like these and use the same alpha as CL provides for this one (which I assume is same as above): The specular alpha dictates what of the normal shines through. Again, I don't know if the diffuse alpha governs the entire set, but I would assume so. I will recreate these using my algorithm and see what it looks like in comparison. Probably not till Monday:

Agreed. This is why I kept the specular maps brightness down on the vanilla complex grasses. I learned this when I created the one CL grass a month or two back. The author of this mod used lower values in the lower left pixels, evidently to tell ENB to "tone it down". A value of 127,127,127 RGB supposedly yields full ENB effect. Some have a value of like 103. But it's better IMO to keep the specular from being overly bright. Load up vanilla and check out the ones I created. They don't have this problem so much. You can also reduce the ENB subsurfacescatteringamount to like 0.1, and that helps but at the expense of the overall effect. Best to keep control of the alpha in the normals.

No, I have the brown tundra installed for both CL and this mod. I just verified by installing duplicate mods of each and comparing dirs in WinMerge to be certain. It changes loaded grass with or without ENB enabled because of the added normals as I mentined in my post after the first screens. If you add normals to the grass via atlas, it's bound to have an impact. As you can see, the impact is mainly in lighting, but it does impact tint to a small degree, making the brown grass a tad bit greener. Probably due to weather/lighting enhanced by normals. This is precisely why I included the first compare set. It illustrates the impact of adding normal maps via atlas. The game just uses them, and it makes me wonder why Bethesda never did it. Here's how CL compares to this mod in Explorer. These are thumbs of the actual files, and it's clear that the diffuse are both using brown. So the diff has to be the normals/lighting: CL >> This mod

I just PM'd him

See UPDATE in green text I spent quite a lot of time working with DynDOLOD settings to make this compatible with grass LOD. I've had some success. Settings that work well for the tundra do not necessarily work well elsewhere. this is also true for grass LOD without this mod or ENB for that matter. This issue is only really apparent on the tundra, as it's rare to notice grass LOD elsewhere. While it does peek through now and again, it isn't obvious. The compares below were all attempts to find such situations. All testing using most up-to-date 2.1.0 DEV mods, patches, and configs. Note that I'm fairly certain that DynDOLOD doesn't use the normal portion of the complex grass textures. It splits them and uses the diffuse half, which should be identical to the original textures. Then it creates normals with Texconv from the diffuse I think. First question: How does this mod affect grass look, irrespective of using ENB or complex grass? The following are compares with vs without this mod installed. No ENB ENB (wo/complex grass) ENB (w/complex grass) without this mod >> with this mod >> my own CL complex grass ↓ below is increased SSS and Fake Lights ↓ As these shots show, grasses with normal maps are more responsive to lighting in all situations. Note that grasses without normals are brighter all around without light sensitivity of normal maps ... no idea why. Grasses with normals just act more like other models in the game. My version uses much harsher normal maps and standard specularity (not super dark specular). The following shots are of my mod only: No ENB >> ENB (wo/complex grass) >> ENB (w/complex grass) >> slightly increased CG SSS and Fake Lights All the remaining shots have this mod installed: No ENB >> ENB (wo/complex grass) >> ENB (w/complex grass) DynDOLOD settings used in all LOD (optimized for Cathedral Landscapes & CL compex grass) TexGen grass settings: GrassBillboards=1 GrassBillboardsDirect=300 GrassBillboardsDirectLR=4 GrassBillboardsDirectFB=4 GrassBillboardsDirectTB=-4 GrassBillboardsAmbient=15 DynDOLOD_SSE.ini: ; grass LOD brightness multipliers GrassBrightnessTopR=0.355 GrassBrightnessTopG=0.335 GrassBrightnessTopB=0.275 ; make bottom darker to fake shadowing GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.020 GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.015 GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.010 NOTE: The above settings are optimized for complex grass, so the non-complex grass shots are at a bit of a disadvantage in comparison to LOD out of the gate. Those settings have historically been: GrassBillboards=1 GrassBillboardsDirect=160 TreeBillboardsDirectLR=0 TreeBillboardsDirectFB=0 TreeBillboardsDirectTB=-100 GrassBillboardsAmbient=25 ; grass LOD brightness multipliers GrassBrightnessTopR=0.295 GrassBrightnessTopG=0.315 GrassBrightnessTopB=0.300 ; make bottom darker to fake shadowing GrassBrightnessBottomR=0.170 GrassBrightnessBottomG=0.175 GrassBrightnessBottomB=0.180

I am running with all 2.1.0 test mods and this one. My reasoning is that this mod's shaders will cover anything that ENB Lights and other mods don't cover. Others are doing the same, since it isn't clear what is or is not redundant. powerofthree states that they are not totally redundant.

Thanks Greg! Tagged accepted for 2.1.0

I vote to accept this one with other mods overriding as we have discussed.

I don't think this is better that what we are using for Step now, so I vote to pass on this one. It's just a retex of a single wall note, so the Nexus in-game screens speak for themselves.

I've been running this for a while now without issue. It Since it adds ENB lights to effects shaders, it makes sense to use it with the Step ENB. I vote to accept this one for 2.1.0.