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

Below is a hex file example of a grass cache file that has been stripped of the data required to populate the grass throughout the cell (essentially, it is a blank grass cache file in that it will not show any grass, despite specifying a grass.

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