Trouble understanding grass and LOD generation with additional mods to STEP

[James_Richards]

I am including some mods that I don't normally play without. I recently got into player homes and was wanting to include Elysium Estate. Seems the kind of home I am looking for. I added it, along with the sandboxing, multiple adoptions and my home is your home mods. When I LOOT'd them, there isn't much change in load order of the surrounding mods. This is mostly a good thing. I then encountered the home in my playthrough and had floating grass around the property.

I had forgotten I didn't regenerate the LOD and such. So, I reran xLODGen, put the output in new mod folders (keeping the original STEP content in case I need to step back), ran ACMOS, TexGen and DynDOLOD. No real hiccups as far as I can tell. loaded up a new save and... many things wrong.

Dragonsreach was not visible from the road leading out of Riverwood. In fact, a lot of assets were just plain missing. I hadn't even gotten tot he estate yet, as I am currently rerunning all the LOD programs again to make sure I didn't miss something. I also had bright green grass in the distance, yet dark green when getting close.

Until I am waiting for that to complete and see what happens, I searched for other people who had a problem with Elsyium Estate and floating grass. I can't seem to find any suitable patches, and looking at xEdit, Elysium Estate's esp is the last thing to touch the area around the estate.
This post discusses hiding the ini for STEP - Conflict Resolution, but the only ini's I can find are under the DynDOLOD folder and there are three of them. This answer seems quite confusing. Another fix found on the  mod page in the posts section says to disable the conflict esp altogether, but that patch as far as I can tell still doesn't touch the cells Elysium Estate is in.

Does anyone have any advice

[z929669]

For one, it sounds like Elsyium Estate alters the landscape and using it would require rebuilding the grass cache under 1.5.97 with your mod list (presumably STEP with some changes).

Also, it sounds like that mod or some other mod is adding it's own grass, which may or may not be limited to the Estate ... again, rebuilding grass cache may resolve.

Disabling the Step INI prevents the Step grass cache from being used (but if you remade it with your changes, you would still use the INI).

[James_Richards]

Yeah, nothing with grass added beyond STEP.

For one, I may have found the problem with LOD issues, Dragonsreach and Whiterun along with all the buildings being missing; my idiot self didn't apply the ini edits when I setup DynDOLOD again. I am just waiting for that to complete and I will test again. It will be annoying to downgrade Skyrim.

I don't think any mod downgrades will need to happen, right? STEP 2.2.0 should be fine the way it is?

[z929669]

22 minutes ago, James_Richards said:

Yeah, nothing with grass added beyond STEP.

For one, I may have found the problem with LOD issues, Dragonsreach and Whiterun along with all the buildings being missing; my idiot self didn't apply the ini edits when I setup DynDOLOD again. I am just waiting for that to complete and I will test again. It will be annoying to downgrade Skyrim.

I don't think any mod downgrades will need to happen, right? STEP 2.2.0 should be fine the way it is?

If you want to use a 1.5.97 game instance, any mods using runtime DLLs and SKSE will also need to be configured for that env. I have a separate Steam game directory for 1.5.97 mapped to its own MO instance . Also see Mousetick's notes.

When I want to run it, I just change the directory name from "Skyrim Special Edition" to "Skyrim Special Edition - 1.6.xxx" and "Skyrim Special Edition - 1.5.97" to "Skyrim Special Edition" and change MO instances. The instances are identical in all respects but for NGIO and runtime mod versions.

See our grass LOD guide for assistance.

[Mousetick]

5 hours ago, James_Richards said:

This post discusses hiding the ini for STEP - Conflict Resolution, but the only ini's I can find are under the DynDOLOD folder and there are three of them. This answer seems quite confusing.

The INI file mentioned in that post is named 'Step Patch - Conflict Resolution.ini' and is included as part of the 'Step Grass' patch, which is, as of this writing, at the bottom of this page: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31054?tab=files.

The instructions for installing that patch are given in Mod Group 20 - Patches > Step Patch - Conflict Resolution. If you installed it, you should also have the file 'Step Patch - Conflict Resolution.bsa'.

Hope this clarifies.

--

You'll run into this grass issue any time you use a mod that alters vanilla grass-covered landscape. The grass cache shipped by STEP matches the STEP guide modlist. If another mod you add modifies grass-covered landscape, the grass cache, which is a static snapshot, becomes out of sync.

Re-generating LODs will not fix the issue. In fact you're wasting your time doing so. Grass LODs are derived from the grass cache.

The main issue is the grass in near/active cells. The grass LODs are secondary. If the former can't be fixed, there is no point in tackling the latter.

--

The suggested workaround, to hide the INI file, makes the game ignore the grass cache, and forces it to render the grass dynamically so that it matches the landscape as it is currently in the load order (at the cost of performance, reduced quality such as grass rendered through objects, reduced density...). The grass LODs will be slightly off, since they're still based on the grass cache, but that is secondary and likely much less noticeable if at all.

--

The comprehensive solution is to re-generate the grass cache from scratch based on your current load order, but that requires SkyrimSE.exe 1.5.97 and No Grass In Objects.

[James_Richards]

40 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

The INI file mentioned in that post is named 'Step Patch - Conflict Resolution.ini' and is included as part of the 'Step Grass' patch, which is, as of this writing, at the bottom of this page: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31054?tab=files.

The instructions for installing that patch are given in Mod Group 20 - Patches > Step Patch - Conflict Resolution. If you installed it, you should also have the file 'Step Patch - Conflict Resolution.bsa'.

Hope this clarifies.

That does clarify things. I installed the grass patch to 'STEP Patch - Grass' as its own mod installed.

40 minutes ago, z929669 said:

If you want to use a 1.5.97 game instance, any mods using runtime DLLs and SKSE will also need to be configured for that env. I have a separate Steam game directory for 1.5.97 mapped to its own MO instance . Also see Mousetick's notes.

When I want to run it, I just change the directory name from "Skyrim Special Edition" to "Skyrim Special Edition - 1.6.xxx" and "Skyrim Special Edition - 1.5.97" to "Skyrim Special Edition" and change MO instances. The instances are identical in all respects but for NGIO and runtime mod versions.

See our grass LOD guide for assistance.

I might just do that, as I can see keeping different versions for now, helpful in other ways.
I'll look into the grass guide soon. LOD is almost done building, so I might just let that finish first. i5-660K at stock speeds, along with working through Proton, this takes forever, and it is almost done if it will be close to the original generation to complete STEP.

40 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

The suggested workaround, to hide the INI file, makes the game ignore the grass cache, and forces it to render the grass dynamically so that it matches the landscape as it is currently in the load order (at the cost of performance, reduced quality such as grass rendered through objects, reduced density...). The grass LODs will be slightly off, since they're still based on the grass cache, but that is secondary and likely much less noticeable if at all.

--

The comprehensive solution is to re-generate the grass cache from scratch based on your current load order, but that requires SkyrimSE.exe 1.5.97 and No Grass In Objects.

I will give this a shot. I'll hide the ini first, see how things look, then do the downgrade scenario. I THINK I have an external drive that might have that version installed on it form my Windows days.

Thanks to both of ya!

Edited May 18, 2023 by James_Richards

[James_Richards]

Well, it has been a quite eventful couple days. I spent some time downloading the 1.5.97 version of SkyrimSE. I started modifying the load order for STEP to rebuild the grass cache. I am fairly confident I'll pull it off.

Halfway through setting things up, I noticed MO2 stopped keeping track of some mods. Some ESPs in the load order also vanished. I restarted MO2 to find a blank load order, wouldn't even see the official content. Every time I tried to go into the work in progress load profile in MO2, it would just crash. Not only that, my entire system started going 'wonky'.

Reboot my computer and it wouldn't read my boot drive. And the drive that held my /home and user content was also acting up. Keep in mind, this computer was built about 8 years ago. The SSD pair I purchased were some of the earliest devices I brought from my previous builds. Well. They died.

So, spending the next two days rebuilding Arch, installing all software and re-downloading plugins and mods and such, I am now rebuilding the grass cache as we speak.

To keep things period to the 1.5.97 timeframe, most of the mods, patches and plusins are older versions (including STEP 2.0.0). The plan, since the big constant is using DynDOLOD andexternal tools are the updated pieces, is to just keep the 'STEP - xLODGen Output', 'STEP - TexGen Output' and 'STEP - DynDOLOD Output' carried into the latest STEP 2.2.0. Of course making sure all the DLL and SKSE mods are up to date for 1.6.640. Is this a good strategy? Or should I keep the grass cache and rebuild all LOD for 2.2.0?

[DoubleYou]

I recommend you rebuild the LOD. You *might* not have issues without doing so, but I wouldn't trust it.

[James_Richards]

Sounds good. Thank you for the responses.

I am more annoyed at how long it takes. Building DynDOLOD take over three hours. I really need a new computer. Hopefully, things will go well with the third and final interview this Monday. I will then be hopefully put to work ASAP. Finally get into a better apartment, then a newer computer build. The LOD gen actually takes up a lot of CPU cycles, so I can't really do much else but watch YouTube, and even then video will freeze once in a while. It could be me not optimizing my Linux install, but that is for another forum

[James_Richards]

Well, 6 hours later and it is still running. I need to figure something else out.

Is there any known grass cache that includes Elysium Estate for STEP 2.0.0 or 2.2.0?

[Mousetick]

6 hours ago, James_Richards said:

Well, 6 hours later and it is still running. I need to figure something else out.

Is it making any progress at least? If it's chugging along and steadily producing output, why not let it finish? Sure, it's time-consuming and hogging the machine, but it's a one-time process normally, if you've got everything set up correctly. It's not like you'll be doing it again on a regular basis.

Are you following the STEP Grass LOD guide that Z pointed you to previously? Have you followed the instructions Step 3 (optional): Take Steps to Speed Up Grass Pregeneration?

[James_Richards]

Yes.

1) When I reviewed the load order, I noticed a couple landscape mods doubled-up. Slight variations due to moving down to 1.5.97

2) Again, working through Proton on an already aging machine.

3) Aging machine.

I broke down, built a VM in QEMU, using passthrough to dedciate half my CPU, RAM and disc space. This is so I can have a true Windows environment. Started grass gen at 1am. 9:52, it is still going. It is at least doing more than what I saw with Proton. Doing something like grass gen will not work in Proton, yet.

So, I am going to let that finish, get a 2.2.0 STEP load order setup once more and stop once the grass cache is required.

Gods I wish I had not gone with Intel. Had i been on an AMD platform, I could have more easily justified upgrading over the years.

[James_Richards]

Aaaand. Crashed. Everything crashed. I am guessing I'll just have to wait until I have a better machine, maybe setup a dualboot just for this kind of situation. Until then, I guess I'll just have to disable the grass cache when making my LOD. Hopefully it doesn't look too bad.

[DoubleYou]

It is expected to crash. Just relaunch and keep going.

[James_Richards]

It will remember where it left off? Even reopening MO? When I said everything crashed, Mod Organizer also shut down.

Edited May 22, 2023 by James_Richards