TESTING ERM - Enhanced Rocks and Mountains (by SparrowPrince)

[DoubleYou]

Discussion topic:
ERM - Enhanced Rocks and Mountains by SparrowPrince
Wiki Link

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This may be worth a look. Best to wait until the lods are finished, however.

[z929669]

Yeah, I'm working with him on that ... too many irons!

 

[z929669]

Tagged for testing. This is a contender with MM and is highly vanilla compatible. It also has LODs now.

I prepared straight vanilla compares on the ERM LOD mod page.

[Mercury71]

On 4/8/2023 at 6:02 PM, z929669 said:

Tagged for testing. This is a contender with MM and is highly vanilla compatible. It also has LODs now.

I prepared straight vanilla compares on the ERM LOD mod page.

In some pictures vanilla looks way better. ERM looks washed out and i miss the cracks from the vanilla that looks more like true nordic granith rock.

[z929669]

5 hours ago, Mercury71 said:

In some pictures vanilla looks way better. ERM looks washed out and i miss the cracks from the vanilla that looks more like true nordic granith rock.

I think ERM is way better in most of those shots, particularly the map. The rock shapes are also better. You can test with different textures. I used the optional textures in those shots, but you could try vanilla. I've always like the vanilla rock textures as long as the UV isn't messed up.

Also, two things this mod does that I like:

1. blends the stark edges where rocks meet the ground texture
2. makes many of the sprawling flat 2D rocks 3D

I also told Sparrow that more sharp edges and cracks would be good.

[ButchDiavolo]

I am a tad confused about the Majestic Mountains situation. The mod page says that compatibility is "in limbo". Does that mean that I should remove MM and use this instead? If so, I suspect that I can remove all MM patches as well?

[z929669]

1 hour ago, ButchDiavolo said:

I am a tad confused about the Majestic Mountains situation. The mod page says that compatibility is "in limbo". Does that mean that I should remove MM and use this instead? If so, I suspect that I can remove all MM patches as well?

Yes, this would replace MM. This mod is highly compatible as a vanilla replacer, but MM makes changes to landscape and other vanilla stuff. Evidently, MM uses double pass on the snow shader to support parallax, but ERM uses single pass, which I'm told is more compatible, performance friendly, and generally looks as good or better in most situations. This is part of why MM requires patching where ERM doesn't.

ERM also has it's own LOD, whereas MM relies on vanilla for most LOD (which then use the MM textures). In fact, ERM LOD can be used for just about any mountain mod as a LOD upgrade as long as the mountain mod's texture paths are vanilla. ERM LOD can technically be used without ERM to upgrade vanilla LOD.

MM also has lots of conflicting striation patterns in the texture UVs (i.e., one boulder will have horizontal striations and another one nearby may have vertical). This happens more/less with vanilla and other mods, but it's worse with MM.

Compatibility is one of the things that makes ERM attrractive.

EDIT: ERM will also complement (or be complemented by) RWT.

[ButchDiavolo]

Cool! Thanks for the explanation. I will have a go installing this. Since I do have a parallax setup, I will pay special attention to the single pass snow shader and such.

[z929669]

21 minutes ago, ButchDiavolo said:

Cool! Thanks for the explanation. I will have a go installing this. Since I do have a parallax setup, I will pay special attention to the single pass snow shader and such.

Cool. let us know what you find.

I'll also be testing ERM with several different texture replacers to see what works best. All that matters is that the texture resolutions are standard units 1x1 or 1x2, etc. so that the UVs map correctly. Any textures with lots of striations may be inconsistent on any rock/mountain mesh, but I'm curious if the ERM UVs serendipitously are more consistent in this respect.

[ButchDiavolo]

First of all, the rocks look amazing! I thought it wouldn't make that much difference, but wow, the best rocks I have seen so far.

I did a few quick checks with different texture mods around Dawnstar (to check the single pass snow shader etc.) and Riverwood (to check the rocks/ mountains):

1st combination: ERM Parallax, ERM Rock Texture Replacer, The Omnibus Terrain Complex Parallax AIO (mystiriousdawn), Simplicity of Snow parallax. This combination just looks very good indeed. I saw no strange artefacts or what have you. The only tiny issues I noticed was some occasional blending issues in snowy areas, but this was very minimal. For me personally, this is the winning combination, because the textures have the right tone. Not too dark and not too bright.

2nd combination: ERM Parallax, 8k 4k Nordic Mountains Parallaxed (MystiriousDawn), The Omnibus Terrain Complex Parallax AIO (mystiriousdawn), SoS parallax. This also looks very good, but the rocks are brighter and has a bit more striation. Again minimal blending issues in snowy areas.

3rd combination: ERM Parallax, Skurkbro's Retexture Project AIO, The Omnibus Terrain Complex Parallax AIO (mystiriousdawn), SoS Parallax. Pretty much the same as the previous combination, but (slightly) darker rocks this time. Again minimal blending issues in snowy areas.

So all in all, all 3 combinations look good to me for a parallax setup. It is a matter of personal taste which would take preference.

Side note: all 3 combinations used the projecteddiffuse from The Omnibus, which I *think* is a double pass shader. This didn't seem to cause any problems at all for the snow, at least not that I could see anyway. And yes, I did redo TexGen and Dyndolod, just to be sure for each test.

Edited April 13, 2023 by ButchDiavolo
general typo fixes

[z929669]

Thanks for letting us know. You might want to post this for Sparrow-Cockerel and other users on the ERM Nexus page so that he can speak to the finer points of what's expected with parallax.

[ButchDiavolo]

OK, done.

[z929669]

This mod was updated with 'rough' option if anyone wants to test for Step.

The default option doesn't blend as well with the Step build as MM, which is in current Step mountain/rocks solution.

@Mercury71, I'm currently unable to test this one again any time soon. If you are willing to test out the new option under the Step build, that would be helpful. Asking because you didn't like ERM from screens you saw. Testing the rough version in game may change your opinion, IDK.

[Mercury71]

22 hours ago, z929669 said:

This mod was updated with 'rough' option if anyone wants to test for Step.

The default option doesn't blend as well with the Step build as MM, which is in current Step mountain/rocks solution.

@Mercury71, I'm currently unable to test this one again any time soon. If you are willing to test out the new option under the Step build, that would be helpful. Asking because you didn't like ERM from screens you saw. Testing the rough version in game may change your opinion, IDK.

My STEP build is currently not up to date i am sorry to say.

[Mercury71]

On 8/18/2023 at 5:21 PM, z929669 said:

This mod was updated with 'rough' option if anyone wants to test for Step.

The default option doesn't blend as well with the Step build as MM, which is in current Step mountain/rocks solution.

@Mercury71, I'm currently unable to test this one again any time soon. If you are willing to test out the new option under the Step build, that would be helpful. Asking because you didn't like ERM from screens you saw. Testing the rough version in game may change your opinion, IDK.

Just finished reinstalling STEP (with MM ofc) and remembered this thread. Has anyone looked into this mod since?