ENB Complex Grass - Patch Compendium for various grass mods (by Skurkbro)

[TechAngel85]

 

On 5/26/2022 at 9:50 PM, z929669 said:

Some look better and others look worse. Maybe I will try doing the CL tundra grasses to illustrate how this can be mitigated.

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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.

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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:

Diffuse alpha is cutout. Everything white will be cut out and used as the texture. I would imagine your normal map alpha for specular would need to be even darker than that. Cathedral's darkness is more of what I would expect from my experience. 

[z929669]

13 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

Diffuse alpha is cutout. Everything white will be cut out and used as the texture. I would imagine your normal map alpha for specular would need to be even darker than that. Cathedral's darkness is more of what I would expect from my experience. 

The normal alpha (specular) matters, but the normal vectors are the main predictors (high green/red needed). This is evident in the shot of the fieldgrasstu*.dds I posted for this mod above in the post you quoted. Note that specular is essentially black where it overlaps the diffuse alpha, yet this mod's brightness for that grass is off the charts with complex grass. I have tested these grasses with a specular as in my second screen and a normal only slightly more green/red than in the first set above, but the normal must be as harsh or harsher than in my second normal.

So this is really bright (this mod):

but this is more muted as in my updated screen in my compares post (my version; note that I fixed the diffuse background of many textures that had black right to the edge of the alpha cutout):

... my version actually merges two normals. Darkening the specular alpha does have some impact as well, but the normal vectors have the main impact on reducing brightness.

 

[TechAngel85]

On 6/6/2022 at 6:54 AM, z929669 said:

What version of PS are you using? There is a plugin set call "Flaming Pear", that adds filters. A few of these are for Solidify. The will be helpful for your diffuses that you are painting the background there. What that does is it takes the image with a transparent BG (you'll have to remove it by using the Alpha cutout) and makes it the color of the image. So you'll see browner, darker bg around the stems and the leave color around the leaves. Should prevent you from having to paint and do it quick and easy.

Like this: 

[z929669]

25 minutes ago, TechAngel85 said:

What version of PS are you using? There is a plugin set call "Flaming Pear", that adds filters. A few of these are for Solidify. The will be helpful for your diffuses that you are painting the background there. What that does is it takes the image with a transparent BG (you'll have to remove it by using the Alpha cutout) and makes it the color of the image. So you'll see browner, darker bg around the stems and the leave color around the leaves. Should prevent you from having to paint and do it quick and easy.

Like this: 

Good tip. I'm using 2020

[TechAngel85]

23 minutes ago, z929669 said:

Good tip. I'm using 2020

Found it: http://www.flamingpear.com/freebies.html
Don't know if it'll work on your version, but that's it.

[z929669]

36 minutes ago, TechAngel85 said:

Found it: http://www.flamingpear.com/freebies.html
Don't know if it'll work on your version, but that's it.

It works. Super handy. SolidifyA seems best, but B and C also work

[z929669]

Updated screenshot compares

I think I will modify the source textures of the fieldgrassTU(14-17) variants to have slightly reduced brightness at the leaf tips. This high contrast is the main problem when normals are added. The same is true for a couple of the field grasses. These will be provided as options rather than replacements.

[TechAngel85]

16 hours ago, z929669 said:

Updated screenshot compares

I think I will modify the source textures of the fieldgrassTU(14-17) variants to have slightly reduced brightness at the leaf tips. This high contrast is the main problem when normals are added. The same is true for a couple of the field grasses. These will be provided as options rather than replacements.

A great improvement!

[z929669]

removed from testing