Suggestions for Visual Mods

[Fear2288]

Does anyone have suggestions for mods that increase the visual quality of the landscape and architecture across the game?

Over the years I’ve plugged all manner of these types of mods into my game and switched them out and so on.

But at the moment what I’m most interested in finding is something with synergy, and something that isn’t performance heavy but still noticeably increases the visual quality of the game.

Right now, I’m using the following:

- Rudy ENB for Obsidian Weathers w/ELFX, Tamrielic Lights, and Embers XD
- Skolgedi grass (or however you spell it)
- Cathedral Plants + Cathedral 3D plant replacers
- Happy Little Trees + Happy Little Shrubs
- Illustrious Whiterun
- Northern Ice
- Nearly all of CC’s textures except Whiterun and Nordic Ruins
- Rudy’s Nordic Ruins
- Simplicity of Snow + Fluffy Snow
- Majestic Mountains
- Frank’s Markarth
- Water for ENB
- various other individual retextures/replacements too many to rattle off


Where applicable, I’ve opted for the 2k versions.

The result has been a game that looks pretty good and runs fairly well on my system…but there are some issues with consistency and synergy.

Sometimes things just don’t look very nicely together - usually due to one texture set being slightly brighter than another, or the color(s)/saturation of one not complimenting the other.

I’m eyeing up Skyland AIO right now, but I’m not sure about it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for mods that could achieve what I’m looking for?

[Corinze]

To be honest just grab stuff and try it. If you find 2 or 3 you like, try making a merged patch of them. You should be able to get 2 or 3 grass and tree mods to merge together as long as you are not using Seasons or need grass cache files for DynDoLod.
Stuff like Skyland AIO and Noble Skyrim, swap which loads last and see how the results are.
I feel you pain Fear, I am doing the exact same thing as you now. There are just so many mods.
The 2 ENB presets I always used, have been taken down and that is a whole other chapter - lol.
GL if you do find some nice combos please share with your fellow modders looking for that fresh look.

[Fear2288]

I’m actually fairly happy with what I have in regards to architecture right now. The only real peeves I’m having is El Soapa’s workbench being a bit too bright (though I love the design) and this strange shininess on the wooden stakes along Whiterun’s defenses.

My bigger issue is with flora, pretty much. I really like the Skolgedi grass mod but it’s slightly darker and less saturated color isn’t jiving with some specific plants - especially the yellow shrub and red tundra shrub in Whiterun.

I could use a mod to just delete these but it’ll leave various areas feeling/looking too open.

I also can’t seem to figure out why some crop plants are a very bright, washed out green color. When it’s bright and sunny out you don’t notice it, but they really pop out when the weather is overcast.

I’m just really open to using a new/different setup that cuts down or even eliminates these kinds of troubleshooting issues - something that is just consistent across the board and doesn’t have you going “wait, that doesn’t look right” during certain times of day.

[Ozymandias]

Some plants have an issue making them too bright in the shadow, you can look at this:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35843

[Corinze]

Brightness variations are usually an .ini setting or the enb you are using. I refused to roll my game back the game to make custom grass cache files so I'm still testing. I grabbed about dozen grass/tree/flora mods today, I still need to grab xEdit to merge them. I'll share a pic once I get there. lol

[matt]

Well, I use Tamrielic Grass and Tamrielic Landscapes. They were made by the same guy, and he was pretty thorough. The system requirements are a little steeper than some smaller mods, but they look good together, and it cut down the necessary mods. For example, I don't use Majestic Mountains any more because he included nice mountains in his mod.

[Corinze]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3016720123

Here is a mashup with xEdit. Beside having a bad ENB, I'm not liking this group of Verdant/Veydoseborn with some random flora. I'm going to have to watch some youtube vids for ideas.

[Fear2288]

Publicado originalmente por Ozymandias:

Some plants have an issue making them too bright in the shadow, you can look at this:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35843

Thanks, but that mod doesn’t touch the “yellow tree shrub” or “tundra shrub” I’m most annoyed by.

I already use Fixed Mesh Lighting which also doesn’t cover those, but it resolves various other instances of plants and other things being too bright under shadow or at night.

[Doom Sayer]

Ulvenwald has a vanilla replacer version now. The normal version butchers performance but the vanilla replacer has vastly better performance. Suggest finding 8k-16 mountains. Or at least 4k because they are probably the most obscenely stretched textures. Skyrim 202X has another mod page where the 202X texture pack has varying texture sizes so you dont cripple performance on 8g vram gpu.

Veydogolt Trees also has a lite variant.

I also really like Rudy NAT right now.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/91285

Also this which is a generation of tamrielic grasses for dyndolod.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/78521
(Havent tested myself I barely got my own grass gen to work)

[Corinze]

I was looking at those cache file yesterday but they weren't set up as Seasonal. I'll try another mix of grass that has cache files, merge then then try TexGen again.
Patrican ENB was hidden by the author but I found it on a thumb drive. Insanity was another great enb that is missing

[Corinze]

Not to spam pics - but - Fear I added some test grass/tree pics. I can pull a list tomorrow if interested.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3017252780