Glitches at cave entrance terrain and a little more

[TaxTalis]

Hi everyone,

thank you for the great work and the huge effort you're all taking to provide the rest of us with a working and beautiful mod list! 
I tried STEP back in 2012 (I think) but failed to get my game to work and now am back to finally play Skyrim.
I used (yes, unsupported) WIP Guide v2.0.0 and I'm not here to ask for a fix, I merely want to point out two irregularities I found.
Maybe I did something wrong, maybe you already found and fixed them but maybe you want to look into it.
I don't dare to touch my finally running mods again for testing as I'm new to this all and I don't want to start my character over again.

First the entrance of a Cave called "Varlais Caverns" up near Arcwind point which says "cleared" for me already though I haven't done anything in it.
Also the actual port doesn't bring me to a place called "Varlais Caverns" but "Rielle" but maybe that's intentional. 
Anyway, the landscape of the entrance doesn't fit into the surrounding terrain.

https://my.hidrive.com/share/vfl9uvpzo0

Second I found a glitching fallen tree south of Heljarchen whatever that is.

https://my.hidrive.com/share/5vy641go18

Finally as I'm here anyway, is this what the water is supposed to look like from afar or did I do something wrong there? Up close and in map view (LOD32?) it looks ok, but otherwise it doesn't look very good from afar for me.
https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/QfAjnWEM

As I said, I don't ask for a fix, it's more to let you know and to ask if it looks suspiciously like I made a mistake.

Thank you again
- Tax

EDIT: Think I might should have posted that to SE Guides instead. Sorry ... 

Edited March 12, 2022 by TaxTalis

[DoubleYou]

Thank you for the detailed report. Could you please look in the DynDOLOD MCM and provide the cell coordinates of these locations so it is easier to locate these bugs? I think I remember seeing that glitched tree, but I thought it was a conflict with another mod I was using at the time so didn't look into it. 

I think the water thing is unfixable as of right now, but I am not sure. 

[TaxTalis]

Ah yes, i should have provided the coordinates in the first place.

Varlais Caverns: X 67230; Y -103242; Z 15889; Cell 16,-26; Block 0,-1; SubBlock 2,-4
Tree: X 70863; Y 39996; Z -8178; Cell 17,9; Block 0,0; SubBlock 2,1

The issue with the water lod is sad, as it ruins the great view a little but at least it seems I didn't mess it up

A side note, as the guide has been changed in the mean time and i started 2 weeks ago: 
Due to compatibility issues of some mods I'm using the 1.5.97.0 executable and binkw64.dll but my other files are the patched steam version.
Maybe the current WIP guide version wouldn't produce the above shown glitches.
I also added Rudy ENB but I haven't to my knowledge added anything related to textures or meshes related to trees, mountains or terrain in general. 

Edited March 12, 2022 by TaxTalis

[DoubleYou]

The problem at Varlais Caverns appears to be a conflict between Majestic Mountains and The Cause. I'll have to check what it looks like in vanilla and see how this can be fixed. T4 doesn't appear to be too keen on fixing bugs with the AE content, so we'll likely need to patch this ourselves.

The uprooted tree issue affects all of that reference type (000B5F20). Base model is treepineforestuprootedstump01sn.nif provided by Enhanced Vanilla Trees. @z929669 would need to address this. Hiding the model fixes the issue, so there must be something wrong with the nif.

As for the water, perhaps you have Reflect Sky option enabled in BethINI? That might be the cause of that issue. My water doesn't look like that from afar.

[TaxTalis]

Ah, at least then it's all known to where it stems from.

Hm yea your water looks fine to me too. I have Reflect Sky disabled in BethINI.
Though I have some LOD problems in general, so something seems odd about my settings or setup there. 
I get these dark spots in the swamps near Solitude which turn to a sort of grassland when approached:

https://my.hidrive.com/share/eo.vto8ma9

And some hefty Z-Fighting around the mountains surrounding the river crossing between the Shrine of Meridia and the Shrine of Peryite.
Sorry, I don't know what chunk that is, I haven't been there yet. It's clearly visible for me when looking out to Perite's Shrine from Meridia's one.

Still, not a support request, just letting you know in case there is something missing in the guide, but as your water looks fine, that seems to be on my end.

Keep up the good work and if I can be of help just let me know.

Edited March 12, 2022 by TaxTalis

[DoubleYou]

Actually, I think the water issue is simply because you don't have the dev Step Patches we use for the 2.0.0 guide. There are probably several bugs you'll notice because of that.

Mountain z-fighting is a bug with the game for forever. I don't think much can be done about that, but you could test out this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/37891. You'll need to redo your lods for the change to make effect.

I was able to "dirty" patch the MM - The Cause issue easily enough: https://mega.nz/file/YAp2BKhS#rr3pEVV86sSnUgAya-9W9nK8jziksm9oZM8RBi2EB-I. I'll have to figure out how we want to handle this.

[TaxTalis]

Oh yes that internal WIP STEP patch I am of course missing. 

When I'm off the game I see if the Cathedral - Improved Mountain LOD and Z Fight Patch (WIP) will improve those flickers for me (Edit: It might for others I also have, but won't for the ones I wrote about above, as those aren't changed by the patch from what I read). Just to be sure of the procedure, I would need to run xLodGen, TexGen and Dyndolod3  for that one correct? My grass cache can stay as it is, can't it?

Should I try the fix you proposed for MM and report?

Edited March 12, 2022 by TaxTalis

[DoubleYou]

17 minutes ago, TaxTalis said:

Just to be sure of the procedure, I would need to run xLodGen, TexGen and Dyndolod3  for that one correct? My grass cache can stay as it is, can't it?

You should be fine with just xLODGen and DynDOLOD for that mod. I doubt grass cache would really affect it, as grass doesn't typically grow high in the mountains. I'd leave it, and simply regenerate if you find an issue.

The fix I posted will work as is. As long as it is above Occlusion.esp, should be fine. Fix isn't final, but it fixes it fine enough.

[TaxTalis]

Alright, thank you!

Any hint on these dark spots in the swamps near Solitude by chance?
I assume you don't have them? So either it's a mistake on my end or maybe a fix from the Patch I am missing.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, DoubleYou said:

The problem at Varlais Caverns appears to be a conflict between Majestic Mountains and The Cause. I'll have to check what it looks like in vanilla and see how this can be fixed. T4 doesn't appear to be too keen on fixing bugs with the AE content, so we'll likely need to patch this ourselves.

The uprooted tree issue affects all of that reference type (000B5F20). Base model is treepineforestuprootedstump01sn.nif provided by Enhanced Vanilla Trees. @z929669 would need to address this. Hiding the model fixes the issue, so there must be something wrong with the nif.

As for the water, perhaps you have Reflect Sky option enabled in BethINI? That might be the cause of that issue. My water doesn't look like that from afar.

I'm fairly certain that glitching tree has to do with introduction of an incompatible texture set in skyrim.esm or update.esm that came with the AE update. It happened in HLT as well. I will take a look.

[DoubleYou]

19 minutes ago, z929669 said:

I'm fairly certain that glitching tree has to do with introduction of an incompatible texture set in skyrim.esm or update.esm that came with the AE update. It happened in HLT as well. I will take a look.

That is probably it. I saw that texture set override in Update.esm.

30 minutes ago, TaxTalis said:

Alright, thank you!

Any hint on these dark spots in the swamps near Solitude by chance?
I assume you don't have them? So either it's a mistake on my end or maybe a fix from the Patch I am missing.

I'll look into it.

[DoubleYou]

1 hour ago, TaxTalis said:

Alright, thank you!

Any hint on these dark spots in the swamps near Solitude by chance?
I assume you don't have them? So either it's a mistake on my end or maybe a fix from the Patch I am missing.

Following up, I don't have the dark spots, so it's on your end somehow. Make sure you followed the xLODGen instructions correctly.

 

[TaxTalis]

13 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

Following up, I don't have the dark spots, so it's on your end somehow. Make sure you followed the xLODGen instructions correctly.

Thank you for clarifying. I tried my best to follow the guide but of course I can't be certain not to have messed it up.

[DoubleYou]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

I'm fairly certain that glitching tree has to do with introduction of an incompatible texture set in skyrim.esm or update.esm that came with the AE update. It happened in HLT as well. I will take a look.

Following up, correcting the texture set does indeed fix this issue. Here I used the texture set from Update.esm but changed the 3D Index to match that of Skyrim.esm so that they map on the mesh correctly.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, DoubleYou said:

Following up, correcting the texture set does indeed fix this issue. Here I used the texture set from Update.esm but changed the 3D Index to match that of Skyrim.esm so that they map on the mesh correctly.

This is a better fix that what I had done in the past. Thanks

EDIT: Looks like I already did that. This is from Basic/Lush plugin:

I updated the wiki instructions to make this more obvious