SnowGrass appearing among (seasonal) grass LODs in the WR tundra

[clearing]

Howdy, it's me again. Trying to generate grass LODs with Freaks Floral Fields. I do use Seasons of Skyrim but this mod doesn't have seasonal grasses. Therefore I set the po3_SoS INI to be `Grass=False` for each season.

Grass LODs generally look fine, except I randomly get snowgrass showing up in the tundra LOD. Attaching a low-res photo for reference, looking to diagnose why that greyish white grass appears. The landscape texture here doesn't include snowgrass02. I am 90% sure I'm looking at vanilla snowgrass here.

Here are some photos of the snowy LODs showing up, and how they disappear to nothing once I get close enough

https://imgur.com/a/MRZTuSf

When I generate LODs I check every season including Default. Grass cache was generated with that Grass=False update on each season in the INI.

Here are my logs if helpful. My most recent execution was running TexGen, but haven't changed anything since the previous DynDOLOD run (if you're wondering why the texgen output is newer than Dyn)

https://ufile.io/lh127vsf

I'm not really asking for a complete solution necessarily, but would like to find out how to debug this myself. Thank you!

 

Edit 1: They still appear with Seasons support disabled.

snowgrass02_000f17fe_1.ddssnowgrass02_000f17fe.txtsnowgrass02_000f17fe_2.dds

Edited September 6 by clearing

[sheson]

According to the timestamps of the provided logs, you ran TexGen after you ran DynDOLOD.
TexGen 3.0 Alpha-180 x64 - Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) (C4127BD7) starting session 2024-09-06 13:22:47
DynDOLOD 3.0 Alpha-180 x64 - Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) (D0994457) starting session 2024-09-06 12:04:38

TexGen reports file not found errors:
<Error: File not found textures\Landscape\Grass\SphagnumDrJ_D.dds. Used by Meshes\landscape\grass\sphagnumdrj_d.nif Freak's Floral Fields.esp SphagnumDrJ_D [GRAS:28000846]>
https://dyndolod.info/Messages/File-Not-Found-Textures

This results in DynDOLOD log showing:
[01:57] <Warning: Root block is NiNode in Meshes\landscape\grass\sphagnumdrj_d.nif Freak's Floral Fields.esp SphagnumDrJ_D [GRAS:28000846]>
https://dyndolod.info/Messages/Billboard-For-Model-Does-Not-Contain-Texture

If you have problems with grass LOD, I would suggest to fix such issue in the load order first.
Then run TexGen before running DynDOLOD in order to have the correct grass LOD billboards generated for the current load order.
Install them as a mod overwriting everything before generating grass LOD with DynDOLOD.

See https://dyndolod.info/Help/Grass-LOD#No-Grass-LOD-Check-List. Some of the steps should help troubleshooting this.

You should only have grass cache files for the default season without any season identifier.
The same cgid file for a cell is used for all object LOD generation.
Grass LOD should always look the same, regardless of the season.
If you check a cgid for a cell that has grass LOD with SnowGrass02_000F17FE billboard with a hex editor, you should find that it contains the model path Landscape\Grass\SnowGrass02.nif. If the cgid file does not, then you need to update LOD with the new grass cache.
If Grass LOD billboards fade to nothing, it is either because the full grass is not using the same grass cache anymore that was used to generate the grass LOD, or the full grass NIF / textures are transparent.

[clearing]

Ah yeah, I mentioned the timestamp thing, I merely ran TexGen a second time to make sure I didn't screw anything up the previous time, but the output was the same.

6 minutes ago, sheson said:

You should only have grass cache files for the default season without any season identifier.
The same cgid file for a cell is used for all object LOD generation.
Grass LOD should always look the same, regardless of the season.
If you check a cgid for a cell that has grass LOD with SnowGrass02_000F17FE billboard with a hex editor, you should find that it contains the model path Landscape\Grass\SnowGrass02.nif. If the cgid file does not, then you need to update LOD with the new grass cache.
If Grass LOD billboards fade to nothing, it is either because the full grass is not using the same grass cache anymore that was used to generate the grass LOD, or the full grass NIF / textures are transparent.

I will look into this. I think those last two points are very likely. Ty!

[Sebrian]

Hey there, i'm facing the exact same issue here, did you manage to fix it ?

https://ibb.co/BwFCVjW

I'm not running seasons and disabled seasons in dyndolod...

[sheson]

5 hours ago, Sebrian said:

Hey there, i'm facing the exact same issue here, did you manage to fix it ?

https://ibb.co/BwFCVjW

I'm not running seasons and disabled seasons in dyndolod...

If you have the "same issue", then the same answers and troubleshooting steps apply.

See https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum

[Sebrian]

5 hours ago, sheson said:

If you have the "same issue", then the same answers and troubleshooting steps apply.

See https://dyndolod.info/Official-DynDOLOD-Support-Forum

I will try to go trough those, maybe grass cache didn't run right because in my case it's only around 400mb with flora fields, i will attach my log just in case, thanks!

https://easyupload.io/q1le6m

 

[sheson]

2 hours ago, Sebrian said:

I will try to go trough those, maybe grass cache didn't run right because in my case it's only around 400mb with flora fields, i will attach my log just in case, thanks!

https://easyupload.io/q1le6m

The size alone of the grass cache is meaningless, as it is mainly depends on the number of grass placements, controlled by grass and land records and INI settings. Vanilla Tamriel has about 5529 grass cache files / cells.

For the vanilla game it is normal for the SnowGrass02 to occur in the Whiterun Tundra.

[Sebrian]

20 minutes ago, sheson said:

For the vanilla game it is normal for the SnowGrass02 to occur in the Whiterun Tundra.

Could this in theory mean that some other mod is placing the vanilla grass records on top of Freaks Floral Fields mod ?

For example Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods ?

I'm leaning towards something being an issue with grass cache itself or my setup of it, for some reason even after the cache was finished it was re running it every time i started the game, not adding any new records... had to disable grass control plugin

Could you take a glance at my dyndolod settings, maybe i'm missing something obvious here:

lod22 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB (ibb.co)

Thank you very much for your help, and sorry if i ask obvious questions, i'm pretty new with dyndolod and lod generation. 

 

 

 

[sheson]

14 hours ago, Sebrian said:

Could this in theory mean that some other mod is placing the vanilla grass records on top of Freaks Floral Fields mod ?

For example Landscape Fixes For Grass Mods ?

I'm leaning towards something being an issue with grass cache itself or my setup of it, for some reason even after the cache was finished it was re running it every time i started the game, not adding any new records... had to disable grass control plugin

Could you take a glance at my dyndolod settings, maybe i'm missing something obvious here:

lod22 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB (ibb.co)

Thank you very much for your help, and sorry if i ask obvious questions, i'm pretty new with dyndolod and lod generation. 

A plugin from a mod can use vanilla grass records.

If you see grass LOD billboards for SnowGrass02.nif, then it is because of it being placed there by the grass cache.
As explained, the vanilla game place this grass type in the Tundra. So it is expected that grass LOD will be shown for it in the Tundra.

If you have problems with grass cache generation you will have to check with the mod author, its comments etc. or whoever wrote the instructions you are following. TexGen/DynDOLOD do not affect it. TexGen generates billboards from full models and textures and does not care about grass cache. You can preview the grass LOD render to make sure they are correctly loaded and processed.

In any case, if the the full grass in the game is loaded from the cache, then the grass LOD generated from the same cache should match that - minus lower density, which simply means some full grass placements will just not have a corresponding grass LOD placement and minus overall color/brightness differences which might need adjustments as explained in the https://dyndolod.info/Help/Grass-LOD#Settings

How to troubleshoot that is explained in the post above https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/19925-snowgrass-appearing-among-seasonal-grass-lods-in-the-wr-tundra/?do=findComment&comment=281353

The DynDOLOD settings simply enable/disable grass LOD generation and its density.

If grass LOD otherwise looks OK and only like one single type of billboard sticks out, a quick and dirty solution you could always just delete it txt and dds files so it won't get LOD next time you generate it.

[Sebrian]

On 9/19/2024 at 8:30 PM, sheson said:

If grass LOD otherwise looks OK and only like one single type of billboard sticks out, a quick and dirty solution you could always just delete it txt and dds files so it won't get LOD next time you generate it.

After many hours of testing and reading info for dyndolod etc. and re running all of it i was able to iron out (almost) the issue of this problem, it has nothing to do with snowgrass02, or other vanilla grasses, the culprit is one of the greentreedrj21 files of the Freaks Floral Fields mod itself, by disabling (deleting) all of the instances of greentreedrj21 in TexGen(depends on your install.)\textures\terrain\lodgen\freak's floral fields.esp you will already achieve a way superior lod result, with none of the issues mentioned above with the "snowy" grass! 

This issue will appear in other locations as well not only the tundra biome!

But not all of the greentreedrj21 files cause this issue, i will make another post when i discover the specific file that causes this!

Thank you again sheson for help and the amazing tools that you have provided, after reading more of the documentation provided i'm just amazed by the flexibility of these tools and the visuals achieved by it! THANK YOU!

 

 

[sheson]

5 hours ago, Sebrian said:

After many hours of testing and reading info for dyndolod etc. and re running all of it i was able to iron out (almost) the issue of this problem, it has nothing to do with snowgrass02, or other vanilla grasses, the culprit is one of the greentreedrj21 files of the Freaks Floral Fields mod itself, by disabling (deleting) all of the instances of greentreedrj21 in TexGen(depends on your install.)\textures\terrain\lodgen\freak's floral fields.esp you will already achieve a way superior lod result, with none of the issues mentioned above with the "snowy" grass! 

This issue will appear in other locations as well not only the tundra biome!

But not all of the greentreedrj21 files cause this issue, i will make another post when i discover the specific file that causes this!

Thank you again sheson for help and the amazing tools that you have provided, after reading more of the documentation provided i'm just amazed by the flexibility of these tools and the visuals achieved by it! THANK YOU!

As I mentioned in https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/19925-snowgrass-appearing-among-seasonal-grass-lods-in-the-wr-tundra/?do=findComment&comment=281353, I suggest to fix the file not found texture errors reported for the grasses of the mod first in case there are visual issues with grass LOD.