Shadow/darkness follows my character, and no dual sheath

[Halde]

Hey all!

Did my complete STEP installment. I have two issues. The first is that there is a shadow following my character, at least at evening hours, around 6:30 pm ingame as can be seen on the screenshot. The sun is over the Falkreath hold, when I walk close, the edge of the shadow follows at the same distance it is in the screenshot. Meaning I can only see the sun, I can't be in the sun. This seems to be specific to the area surounding Falkreath however. The issue seems to be tied to something that generates or renders at approximately the distance of the shadow seen in the screenshot, because a similar, but much less visible effect appears when walking around other places such as around Riverwood or the plains of Whiterun. 

The other is no dual sheathe. 

I don't know what could've caused this, did the STEP setup by the letter, including Nemesis, so I'm thinking it might be one of the few mods I installed outside of STEP.

These mods are

Civil War Overhaul
Expanded Towns and Cities
Vigilant and the accompanied hi-res textures for the areas made for that
Apocalypse + Vokrii compatibility
Cloaks of Skyrim + CCOR compatibility patch

While my knowledge is quite limited on the subject, the only thing I'm thinking that perhaps Cloaks of Skyrim could mess with the dual sheath. I haven't troubleshooted yet by trying to turn them off, I will do so tomorrow - merely wanted to put this out there, in case someone had experienced this themselves and immediately know the issue.

Hoping for help!

~Sincerely

Halde

Edited May 17, 2022 by Halde
Mistake

[Halde]

Ok, so both of these issues are present with a clean STEP install. I made a new character to test it on. It seems to be during the hours of day during sunset and perhaps sunrise as well. On the first screenshot you can see my view. I circled the (what I assume is) sun part, and the edge of the shadows/darkness. In the next I've done the same, walking a few paces forward. The screenshot is taken within ~3 seconds. 

Furthermore the dual sheath is still not present. I didn't screenshot this, I assume it's imagineable. It is sheath in the Vanilla left side though.

Hope someone can help me troubleshoot this within STEP.

~Sincerely

Halde

Edited May 17, 2022 by Halde
Typos

[z929669]

I'm assuming this is EVLaS kicking in for loaded cell and maybe vanilla mountains (i.e., I wonder what the result is with double-sided meshes for MM surrounding mountains).

[Halde]

Hmm sounds plausible. I should note, that while I call it "shadows" it might be a misnomer. Shadows from objects doesn't appear on the ground. The ground, and all space (buildings, rock, trees, npc's) in a fixed diameter around my character just darkens.

Hmm sounds plausible. I should note, that while I call it "shadows" it might be a misnomer. Shadows from objects doesn't appear on the ground. The ground, and all space (buildings, rock, trees, npc's) in a fixed diameter around my character just darkens. I will try to disable EVLaS and see if the issue persist. Do you have an idea about the lack of dual sheath?

[Halde]

It's definetly EVLaS. It completely disappears once the mod is disabled. It seems that the edge distance is basically the distance from which shadows render from my character. I can see shadows from buildings rendering at about the same distance when I disabled EVLaS. 

Is this something I should report as a bug? I can't possibly imagine this is the mod working as intended.