ACCEPTED Majestic Mountains (by T4gtr34um3r)

[Greg]

This is much better and I think I somewhat see what you mean now. The difference between lightside and default is subtle with default being perhaps just a shade darker. I prefer to stay with lightside given we have no compelling reason to switch to default and lightside seems to be closer to vanilla.

 

[sa547]

About this mod, the texture pack is visually great. However, I daresay I once went forward to the author politely asking about the overly-bright snow shaders. Unfortunately he seemed to be very defensive in his decision making the shaders too bright at night, especially as I removed the altered shaders from his plugin as a corrective measure and for the sake of consistency and compatibility.

Edited September 17, 2021 by sa547

[z929669]

7 hours ago, sa547 said:

About this mod, the texture pack is visually great. However, I daresay I once went forward to the author politely asking about the overly-bright snow shaders. Unfortunately he seemed to be very defensive in his decision making the shaders too bright at night, especially as I removed the altered shaders from his plugin as a corrective measure and for the sake of consistency and compatibility.

LOL ... yeah, T4 can get scrappy when he feels his work is criticized. He does great work obviously and knows what he is doing, but he can have strong opinions and a volatile temperament. These are traits of several great mod authors in our experience over the years.

I hadn't noticed the MM snow so much at night, so it may be related to your or our setup ... someone else around here may have some XP with this in MM though.

[DoubleYou]

We recommend turning off the buggy snow shader and only using projected diffuse in combination with Better Dynamic Snow, as is instructed in our guide. See this thread for some more details. 

 

[Mousetick]

Need correction on installation instructions:

Quote

Hide the following files:

• \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockcliff07.nif
• \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockpiles01.nif
• \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockpiles02.nif

The 3rd mesh should be \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockpilem02.nif with an m not an s, as found and originally reported by DY.

[DoubleYou]

1 hour ago, Mousetick said:

Need correction on installation instructions:

The 3rd mesh should be \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockpilem02.nif with an m not an s, as found and originally reported by DY.

Fixed.

[Mousetick]

5 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

Fixed.

Thanks. If you have 2 minutes to spare, could you take a look at rockpilem01.nif? I think it exhibits the same problem, to a lesser degree, and depending on lighting. It's a bit further along the same path towards the canal, on the other side of the path. There is another one at the foot of Gildergreen.

 

Edit: I think I roughly figured out the stuff below - no need to bother you with that ↓

I looked at the bug report you submitted on the Nexus. How did the MA know the texture used was wrfieldgrass01? When I look at the rockpilem02 mesh for example in NifSkope, the assigned texture is dirt02. Is the texture overridden in ESP record that can be looked at in xEdit? Or is there a way to find out in-game via the console which texture is being actually used?

Edited December 3, 2021 by Mousetick

[Mousetick]

On 9/4/2021 at 2:47 PM, DoubleYou said:

We may want to test alternate textures for wrfieldgrass01 at some point, however, that have a proper specular.

I thought I'd try that. Big can of worms. The issue is all the stone-bordered platforms in Whiterun, typically surrounding the houses. Their models use a texture wrstonebase01 that has both grass and stone for the top edge of the platform. So if you just replace wrfieldgrass01 you end up with this:

You then need to replace wrstonebase01 too, but that covers only the top edge. For the side you also need to replace wrstonebase02 otherwise you get 2 kinds of stone. In the end the whole platform needs to be replaced in addition to the basic grass.

Vanilla >> SRO >> Skyland Whiterun 2K

The grass of Skyland is nice and pretty close to Vanilla, it works well with MM rock pile meshes IMHO. But its stone platforms are quite different from vanilla.

I also tried just the grass from Noble, which the MM's MA referred to. While it works quite well with MM rock piles, its grass is vastly different.

[Mercury71]

Vanilla looks better than Skyland imo.

[DoubleYou]

Another option we could do is just use a normal map from another mod that provides the specular fix. Pardon some changes in my mod setup with this save in the last picture, but this shows the use of the "Whiterun Grass Hotfix" file from aMidianBorn Buildings and Landscapes SE.

• \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockcliff07.nif

MM unhidden mesh --> MM hidden mesh --> MM unhidden mesh with aMidianBorn normal on the SRO texture

  

[z929669]

3 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

Another option we could do is just use a normal map from another mod that provides the specular fix. Pardon some changes in my mod setup with this save in the last picture, but this shows the use of the "Whiterun Grass Hotfix" file from aMidianBorn Buildings and Landscapes SE.

• \meshes\Landscape\rocks\rockcliff07.nif

MM unhidden mesh --> MM hidden mesh --> MM unhidden mesh with aMidianBorn normal on the SRO texture

  

I think simpler is better, so I favor hiding the mesh, since it's identical (albeit last screen has ENB active and maybe some other mod diffs as mentioned)

[DoubleYou]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

I think simpler is better, so I favor hiding the mesh, since it's identical (albeit last screen has ENB active and maybe some other mod diffs as mentioned)

I don't see hiding these meshes as simpler. I see installing the Whiterun Grass Hotfix file, which only contains the needed normal miraculously, as far easier. Do notice that the rock will now show the correct texture, and remember that there may be other places where hiding the meshes may not work.

[z929669]

5 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

I don't see hiding these meshes as simpler. I see installing the Whiterun Grass Hotfix file, which only contains the needed normal miraculously, as far easier. Do notice that the rock will now show the correct texture, and remember that there may be other places where hiding the meshes may not work.

I didn't realize that the mod installed this and only this without a bunch of other stuff to account for.

[Mousetick]

On 12/3/2021 at 10:44 PM, DoubleYou said:

I see installing the Whiterun Grass Hotfix file, which only contains the needed normal miraculously, as far easier. Do notice that the rock will now show the correct texture, and remember that there may be other places where hiding the meshes may not work.

This is the best solution as it fixes the root cause of the issue. Hiding the MM meshes was merely a band-aid. It allows for keeping the MM meshes, which are nice, and using them throughout all locations.

Visually inspecting the rockpiles in Whiterun was not foolproof anyway, depending on time of day, weather and exterior lighting, they could more or less shine.

This is the texture set that is used to apply the Whiterun grass texture to landscape objects in Whiterun:

These are all the objects to which it's applied:

So in theory and unless I'm mistaken any or all of these meshes could potentially exhibit the issue in Whiterun: RockPileM01, RockPileM02, RockPileL02, RockPileL03, RockPileL04, RockPileS01, and RockCliff07. All of them would need to be hidden.

Edited December 5, 2021 by Mousetick

[Mousetick]

On 12/3/2021 at 5:07 PM, DoubleYou said:

Another option we could do is just use a normal map from another mod that provides the specular fix. Pardon some changes in my mod setup with this save in the last picture, but this shows the use of the "Whiterun Grass Hotfix" file from aMidianBorn Buildings and Landscapes SE.

I just tried it and it works great. Nice find. Now you just have to hope that the MA won't release a new version of the mod and remove the hotfix!