SkyrimSE:Grass LOD Guide
Skyrim Special Edition Grass LOD Guide
A guide to grass LOD for Skyrim Special Edition
by: The Step Team
Guide scope
This guide intends to explain the process by which grass LOD can be generated via the grass cache files for Skyrim Special Edition. It may include some general recommendations for optimizing appearance and performance, as well as technical information that may prove useful for troubleshooting.
No Grass In Objects
No Grass In Objects is required to create the grass cache files necessary to generate the LOD for grass. This section will cover the different settings and make suggestions on usage.
DynDOLOD
DynDOLOD is required to generate grass billboards and grass LOD. This section will cover the different settings and make suggestions on usage.
Grass cache files
Grass cache files are actually an unused feature of Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, and Fallout 4. Apparently it was too difficult for Bethesda to figure out how to use it successfully. They did have it working in original Skyrim using pre-generated grass cache files located in Skyrim - Misc.bsa, but they turned it off by default (INI setting bAllowLoadGrass:Grass) and instead forced the game to create grass every time the user loads the cell (INI setting bAllowCreateGrass:Grass). Grass cache can be generated via the CreateGrassAt console command presumably. Alternately, the grass cache can be generated by setting bGenerateGrassDataFiles:Grass to 1 in Skyrim.ini, which will create the grass cache files within a grass folder within the data directory.
Hex file structure
01 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 6c 61 6e 64 73 63 61 70 65 5c 47 72 61 73 73 5c 49 76 79 2e 6e 69 66 00 00 00 5c 43 d0 bd d1 8b 00 74 01 01 00 00 00 00 00
