Grass keeps popping up, why?

[gax]

Hi, i did a clean install and set everything up like explained in Vlads 2022 modding guide.
My pc is win 10 Pro, i7-11700k @ 3.60GHZ, 32 GB Ram, RTX 3090. In Bethini the setting is ultra, but particles set to 1500, as odered in the guide. Everything runs smoots and beautiful, apart from that annoying up popping of grass in the distance. No changes in Bethini or in the ini files directly had any impact. Someone has an idea of whats wrong?

[ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE]

Technically everything "pops in" once you get close enough.

Grass is just obvious at doing it, i think only mods can make it more seamless.

[Ozymandias]

I don't think anything's wrong, the rendering of grass is very limited. If you're not afraid of headaches, you can look into grass cache: it's possible to pre-generate all the grass, then thanks to DyndoLOD it can be rendered very far. However the mod to make the cache is limited to Skyrim 1.5.97.

Some grass caches are available on Nexus for various grass mods (or vanilla), but if you also have mods that modify the terrain, you'll end up with grass floating around.

[gax]

I am on 1.5.97. But since i did the complete set up as explained in the guide, DyndoLOD was not part of it and thus not installed. I had a short look into it now and it looks very complicated.

[Ozymandias]

Although it's not really as bad as it looks (most of the default settings are fine), it's definitely not your regular mod.

Anyway, generating the grass cache is an additional process, in some way more troublesome. But depending on your mod list, what's available on Nexus might be good enough. Granted, I think it's mostly there for people who have updated Skyrim.

[Corinze]

Rolling a fully modded game back to 1.5.97 is the hard part.

Since you are there, generating the grass file is easy just time consuming even for the one file. If you plan on running Seasons, you'll need 5 grass files, spring, summer, fall, winter and combined. It is a pita, but the results are worth it. GL

[gax]

Thanks for the replies and the (unfounded) optimism. I tried generating grass (with NGIO actived) several times, w/o success.

[𝑲]

You can keep troubleshooting grass cache. Alternatively, you can look at your INI settings in more detail to make the grass fade at its max distance without sudden pop-in, and adjust the shading of the terrain in xLODGen to match the grass so the effect is reduced. That is what I do, there is no performance cost from the grass LOD, and the terrain almost seamlessly blends with the furthest grass.
Just a guess: the pop-in might be from setting the DynDOLOD mode to 1 in the No Grass in Objects config file without having a working cache and grass LOD. Set it to 0 to restore what BethINI set as the grass settings.

[StreamWhenGuy]

To generate grass faster, just unlock the framerate and put the game in windowed mode. Or you can lock it at 120 or 240 FPS or something if you worry about about excessive framerate for w/e reason. During the generation the framerate doesn't matter. We're not actually playing the game. Depending on your HW it should get finished within minutes. It always ends at 71.11 pct Tamriel (59,49).

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by gax:

Thanks for the replies and the (unfounded) optimism. I tried generating grass (with NGIO actived) several times, w/o success.

If you mean the game quits/crashes while you generate the damn thing, it's "normal" indeed. You can relaunch the game, it will resume its work, don't expect to do it all in one try. Don't worry, it doesn't restart from the beginning.

It just works! :)

[Vlad 254]

Originally posted by gax:

I am on 1.5.97. But since i did the complete set up as explained in the guide, DyndoLOD was not part of it and thus not installed. I had a short look into it now and it looks very complicated.

If you're on 1.5.97 and if you're using my 2022 guide for 1.5.97 DyndoLOD is mentioned 48 times throughout the guide. Not only that but there is a section titled
"DyndoLOD - *optional / advanced" near the end of the load order. When the guide was originally create DyndoLOD 2 (2.88) was the latest version and when 3 Alpha 34 came out I added it to that section as well for users to choose their version or of course not run it at all.

So yes, there is a DyndoLOD section in the guide.

[gax]

Originally posted by Vlad 254:

If you're on 1.5.97 and if you're using my 2022 guide for 1.5.97 DyndoLOD is mentioned 48 times throughout the guide. Not only that but there is a section titled
"DyndoLOD - *optional / advanced" near the end of the load order....
So yes, there is a DyndoLOD section in the guide.

I was confused by this parts:
"IMPORTANT ONLY USE THIS SECTION IF YOU SKIPPED THE "LANDSCAPE & TREES" SECTION"
"Again, only use 1 of the options below IF you did not use mods 46 - 58"

Because i used the mods from your landscae and tree section, i did not install DyndoLOD. I obviously misunderstood that part of your guide and will start implementing it now.
Thanks for your work!"

[gax]

Originally posted by Ozymandias:

Originally posted by gax:

Thanks for the replies and the (unfounded) optimism. I tried generating grass (with NGIO actived) several times, w/o success.

If you mean the game quits/crashes while you generate the damn thing, it's "normal" indeed. You can relaunch the game, it will resume its work, don't expect to do it all in one try. Don't worry, it doesn't restart from the beginning.

It just works! :)

I didn´t for me, unfortunately. After several crashes and restarts, the whole thing hangs up indefinately and the text file is gone after reboot. I went thru the whole process 4 times, always with the same result. Llke many others, the NGIOS bugs section is full.

[Corinze]

This video helped me alot, since I use Vortex some steps I had to do manually with copying or moving files.

https://youtu.be/5n5mGM0wzsI

[gax]

I still stuck at installing DynDOLOD lol. Does it go before Assorted mesh fixes, Nordic Snow and Majestic Mountains (Vortex thinks so) or after ( i do)? The beautiful thing about the Vlad guide is its idiot proofness. Until the Dyndo part, that is.

[Ozymandias]

This is something I always hesitate about, and I might change my mind after testing, or depending on the mod... But I think that it makes more sense to have the resources loaded before other mods, since they should be vanilla based.

Also, Majestic Mountains and others (my tree mods for instance) have additional dyndolod packs to install, only those packs overwrite my mods. And take Assorted Mesh Fixes, some of its files are located in"\meshes\DynDOLOD\lod\", so it seems to be the corrected mesh for dyndolod.

Of course the texgen/dyndolod output will be loaded last, since it should properly reflect my load order.