Performance Grass Meshes

[Guest]

I was just quickly updating my Lush Trees mod and I was indulging whether to include a performance grass option. I went to look on the Nexus with the keyword "grass" and there seems to be a lot of dense performance sucking mods (I know Grass on Steroids doesn't) and I couldn't really find anything that alters the meshes. I looked into it and removed/reduced the lower parts of the meshes that no one would really care about. I thought leaving the bigger grass planes would be a great idea to maintain the height because no one really looks at the lower clumped planes. I also reduced the rock meshes by 10-20% which I know people moan about and totally remove them (like the kelp which now has one plane instead of two).

 

Anyway, if you want to take a gander it's below and if you want tell me it's already been done/it looks horrible please do. I also made some UV fixes on the rocks, but god knows how they managed to not do them properly for such a small mesh (stretches).

 

Performance Grass Test - V2.7z

 

By the way it seemed to run a bit better on the tundra, but I dunno' if I was imagining things per usual. 

 

Edit: Okay the pebbles seem to think they are plants now and the textures are messed up (!!!!!), but I'll look into that.

 

Edit 2: Fixed. Really weird problem as usual. Updated file. Any thoughts yet?

Edited September 18, 2014 by Guest

[Aiyen]

As I recall then the main obstacle in this should be that the grass generator does not really like when you alter the meshes... too much, or it will simply CTD the game. 

It apparently have some notion about how the meshes should be made. 

 

I personally also use the mod that removes the water plants and stuff.. since in my book then there is essentially nothing to do under water in skyrim anyways... other then in a very very narrow amount of locations... and even there it is not like it is main plot quality stuff. 

[Guest]

I thought that would be adding more detail cause that, but I have done that for a while and I never saw any complaints of crashes ever. Anyway I solved the rock problem so I know how it works now. It seems to use the mesh colouring for animations and also make them different from one another. If you match them up to vanilla at least it should be fine. On the underwater grass, well, you do sometimes see underneath if you are taking a shortcut across a lake or something, but I reduced the kelp down to 2kb so it's much better and you still get to keep it.

[DoubleYou]

I don't like removing underwater grass, but I have become a big fan of this mod, as I've always hated these little rocks that generally look out of place throughout Skyrim, which actually behave like grass.

[phazer11]

To be honest, I don't worry about my FPS being affected by the underwater grass. I install Grass on Steroids and push iMinGrassSize to 120 or so. Anyways back to brow beating Java 8 into working properly instead of getting corrupted somehow after the first or second reboot. Reinstalled Windows and am looking forward to Perkus Maximus working again.

[Guest]

Well I did a new mod because I feel like total crap at the moment and I feel like doing SOMETHING being that I am off:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/58268/?

 

@DoubleYou

 

That mod has a plugin, but I fixed the need for that (after some CTD goodness!). I hope that mod doesn't just delete the rock item as that would be dirty right?

 

@phazer

 

Get your super computer butt outta' here. This ain't for you!  Actually there are always people with decent rigs wanting more performance to run more things. Always.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Guest

[darkside]

Got a few FPS boost without significant visual difference. Thanks for a great mod.

[keithinhanoi]

@ SparrowPrince: So, are the meshes in Decrease that Grass v1.1 the same as the ones in the file you linked in your OP?

 

I noticed the mod also includes four textures, which are not listed in MO as overwriting anything (though I don't think MO flags overwrites of vanilla assets.)

 

The names appear to be vanilla names, so I want to ask if they are required, or just lower resolution replacements, and aren't absolutely necessary?

[Guest]

No problem darkside!

 

keith I added some more grass files along with SFO. The textures can be ignored but they are 512 which is double the resolution. I did that becuase I thought I could make up for the removed polygons on the pebbles this way with only a very slight VRAM increase. Also they are browner which blends better with dirt. By the way it's 3 textures now and they overwrite vanilla.

[DoubleYou]

Installed this, and since I'm not using SFO in my setup, I really can't see a difference, which is a good thing! Haven't crashed on it yet, but I have only been around Helgen and Whiterun areas outside. Liking this. Need all the fps I can get.

[darkside]

Should be hot file. How much polygon counts were reduced by these meshes?

[Guest]

Nexus will probably update soon. Anyway, I'm too humble to care about reaching the hot files because I don't do it for that, but it is nice that it allows more people to see it I suppose.

 

It's hard the say on the polygon front, but I would say around 25 to 50% as it does vary. Rocks are abit lower than the former, but they are reduced as far as I can. Also nice to see it is helping FPS and most people can hardly see a difference (myself included)!

Edited September 21, 2014 by Guest

[darkside]

1.3 is awesome. Remove a few plants.