Issues with Grass Cache for Seasons

[DoubleYou]

4 hours ago, z929669 said:

Please see my previous post and confirm if NGIO settings do apply as stated in the guide and that they are n/a once the cache is created and moving over to AE.

NGIO does not run on AE, so of course changing its settings makes zero difference.

[Taisaijin]

Starting out with no grass cache generated, not playing on SE just using it for Grass Gen, the grass becomes ugly crab grass after those two settings in NGIO are applied, when you generate a cache with that you get ugly crab cache that carries over. I would imagine the same is true for playing on SE since the trouble begins with NGIO. It's not just the Step guide that asks for those settings, this other guide I read and linked to earlier that's intended for AE said the same thing.

[DoubleYou]

I have to believe that I am completely misunderstanding what you are saying on a fundamental level, because that is simply not the case. But I'm glad you fixed it, however you did so. I know that my method works, and my guide is correct. I don't provide guidance for usage on AE as it is very very difficult. There is a guide here that has mostly accurate, although not entirely so, information on how this works for AE users: https://github.com/The-Animonculory/Modding-Resources/blob/main/Grass Lods.md

[z929669]

2 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

I have to believe that I am completely misunderstanding what you are saying on a fundamental level, because that is simply not the case. But I'm glad you fixed it, however you did so. I know that my method works, and my guide is correct. I don't provide guidance for usage on AE as it is very very difficult. There is a guide here that has mostly accurate, although not entirely so, information on how this works for AE users: https://github.com/The-Animonculory/Modding-Resources/blob/main/Grass Lods.md

You must mean that generating on AE is complex. Usage on AE is a matter of loading the grass plugin and invoking the mods (which do the heavy lifting).

I agree though, which is where I was heading ... @Taisaijin must be mistaken about the NGIO setting causing the the "ugly crab grass". Something else was causing this, and it is conflated with the change to the NGIO setting. When more than one change is made resulting in a difference, there is no way to know which thing was the cause. It gets even more complicated when you have implicit (rather than explicit) changes/causes ... as with epigenetics.

[Taisaijin]

all i know is that the grass cache i was using in AE was over riding my grass textures and looked exactly like what the game looked like when I booted up SE. To get the grass textures to appear correctly in SE I had to turn off 'use grass cache' and 'load only from cache' in NGIO. All caches generated with those settings on came out looking the same, default looking crab grass not matching my grass mod... of course this could all just be a quirk of seasonal landscapes too.

[z929669]

34 minutes ago, Taisaijin said:

all i know is that the grass cache i was using in AE was over riding my grass textures and looked exactly like what the game looked like when I booted up SE. To get the grass textures to appear correctly in SE I had to turn off 'use grass cache' and 'load only from cache' in NGIO. All caches generated with those settings on came out looking the same, default looking crab grass not matching my grass mod... of course this could all just be a quirk of seasonal landscapes too.

I'm just saying that if you had any other alterations, then we can't say for sure that those NGIO tweaks corrected it.

I'm confused though now, as I thought you were talking about using generating in SE and using in AE ... but now you are talking about using in SE ... I'm just going to stay out of it, as I am lost

[Taisaijin]

I mean when I boot up SE I see the same grass that gets carried over to AE. I feel like I had generated good caches before with those settings before trying out Seasonal Landscapes. Only other thing that has changed since then that might be affecting is i ran beth.ini, I think that would affect my SE install too. I definitely do appreciate all of your responses on this, it is indeed a confusing subject.

 

[z929669]

41 minutes ago, Taisaijin said:

I mean when I boot up SE I see the same grass that gets carried over to AE. I feel like I had generated good caches before with those settings before trying out Seasonal Landscapes. Only other thing that has changed since then that might be affecting is i ran beth.ini, I think that would affect my SE install too. I definitely do appreciate all of your responses on this, it is indeed a confusing subject.

 

Certain changes to the game INIs can definitely cause issues. Grass density and variation settings are two examples. Probably distance settings too. All of these can be altered by BethINI presets.

Perhaps you can test again under more controlled conditions? I have used those NGIO settings as described without issue in generating and using grass cache, NGIO, and grass LOD in 1.5.97 and in using that same cache in 1.6.xxx (less NGIO).

[Taisaijin]

Would setting 'load only from cache & use cache' to false before printing actually yield a viable cache? I haven't tried this out yet.

[z929669]

37 minutes ago, Taisaijin said:

Would setting 'load only from cache & use cache' to false before printing actually yield a viable cache? I haven't tried this out yet.

Printing?

Those settings are required for cache generation. From the NGIO mod page:

Quote

How to precache all grass in version 3 or later

...

1. In config file set the following options
UseGrassCache = True
ExtendGrassDistance = True
OnlyLoadFromCache = True

 

I'd suggest carefully following our grass LOD guide and starting again from scratch. I just updated the TexGen and DynDOLOD config settings (alpha 95) ... they will get another update when we find the best ones for the new alpha.

[Taisaijin]

Printing = generating the cache, ive been calling it that lol. 

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

You must mean that generating on AE is complex. Usage on AE is a matter of loading the grass plugin and invoking the mods (which do the heavy lifting).

I agree though, which is where I was heading ... @Taisaijin must be mistaken about the NGIO setting causing the the "ugly crab grass". Something else was causing this, and it is conflated with the change to the NGIO setting. When more than one change is made resulting in a difference, there is no way to know which thing was the cause. It gets even more complicated when you have implicit (rather than explicit) changes/causes ... as with epigenetics.

anything in the beth.ini default tweaks it sets you up with that would be conflating when NGIO ini is activated and swapping out the texture of the grass entirely? 

[z929669]

49 minutes ago, Taisaijin said:

Printing = generating the cache, ive been calling it that lol. 

anything in the beth.ini default tweaks it sets you up with that would be conflating when NGIO ini is activated and swapping out the texture of the grass entirely? 

3-4 NGIO settings will completely override and negate the game INI settings (i.e., BethINI only standardizes existing game INI settings to known 'good' values. It doesn't add anything other than insurance and peace of mind. ... and makes game INI management much simpler). So you could indeed be causing yourself issues if you expect those game INI settings to govern behavior when the NGIO ones apply (ore the inverse). See the NGIO config descriptions for details. I think we also call these out in the grass LOD guide, which is why I mention following that guide carefully to get everything set up correctly.

[Taisaijin]

Sorry about that, it's always some Duh issue, i still had an old grass cache in skse overwrite that it was reading, deleted that and I have no more crab grass WITH proper NGIO settings! I usually delete those before generating a new cache not sure why the caches kept coming out like they did but thats a different issue, this is sorted out and I Thank you all. Maybe it is required to boot the game up at least one time when changing grass mods before you generate a new cache? 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Taisaijin

[DoubleYou]

35 minutes ago, Taisaijin said:

Sorry about that, it's always some Duh issue, i still had an old grass cache in skse overwrite that it was reading, deleted that and I have no more crab grass WITH proper NGIO settings! I usually delete those before generating a new cache not sure why the caches kept coming out like they did but thats a different issue, this is sorted out and I Thank you all. : )

Now this makes sense. This is why I always recommend keeping Overwrite empty.

[z929669]

36 minutes ago, Taisaijin said:

Sorry about that, it's always some Duh issue, i still had an old grass cache in skse overwrite that it was reading, deleted that and I have no more crab grass WITH proper NGIO settings! I usually delete those before generating a new cache not sure why the caches kept coming out like they did but thats a different issue, this is sorted out and I Thank you all. : )

Ha! That's the sort of thing I was hoping was the cause of your issue. Just some random setting (or grass cache in this case) unaccounted for.

Glad you got it sorted.