vfxninjaeditor

I noticed this on the first post: Texturing of ground textures for transitions. Adding leafs and snow to ground textures to show gradually changes between seasons. Number of different textures to be determined as yet.Somebody to take ownership of aesthetic of trees and/or plants. A tree changing through the seasons includes textures going from more/less leaves, more/less snow cover, and changing colours. We might be able to change the colour of the textures via model manipulation so this might save time and number of textures. Although we want to remain faithful to Skyrim, being as that its mostly Aspens and Pines, it would be nice to have at least one set of trees that blossoms flowers.Like we have discussed, I will be doing grass and stuff but count me in on these also. I am doing both my Unique Plants and Trees mod so I am prepared for these also. In fact, we can fully incorporate certain aspects of my mod into this mod if we want.

Modders resource. Like you said about weather, we don't want to re-invent the wheel. Vurt's Flora Overhaul would be a good start. His mod is super popular and it looks great. Plus, we do want to remain compatible in some sense with major overhauls such as this. He has given permission to lot's of people to use his assets (I have permission to use his custom tree meshes in my Unique Trees mod). It would give us a good start. Also, for pine trees I would suggest this mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/43677 In the comments I asked if it was a modders resource and he said yes. Cool thing, since they have lower branches now, we could do some fancy shader/mesh trick to add snow on them during winter months.

Don't those just change the wind effect though? Would be cool if we could control that based on the type of weather. I.E. Heavy snow storm makes the branches on trees shake wildly. Grass also a Wave Period value to control wind strength.

Okay, I understand everything now. I have some thoughts on the grass off the top of my head. The density values are self explanatory and we can change them to whatever feels right. The color range option doesn't always produce very nice results. Turning it up past .4 can result in some grasses appearing super dark and almost black (these were my results when experimenting with my Unique Grasses mod). Better to alter color directly in the texture and not go above .3-.4 in the CK. The color range value also influences the grass color depending on what texture it has been placed on. This means that grass on a dark brown dirt texture will be darker than grass on a grass landscape texture. Very good for slight variations in color. It just has to stay at around .4 or lower. Also, the height range is more of a percentage value that determines how much variation each grass mesh will have. 100 will produce grass of all heights varying within 100% of each other (some really small, some really big). It's not the best option for making the grass grow. We can still use it to provide nice variation during certain seasons. To make the grass grow most effectively it's better to make a copy of the mesh and scale it down in NifSkope. I have experimented with this and it produces very nice results if the density is high enough. These smaller grasses can also have smaller textures to save fps (256x256 and 512x512 depending on the size of the grass. 1024x1024 for the full size grasses that will be present during summer and fall). The height range value just won't cut it if we truly want to make the grass grow. All this talk makes me really excited. :D

So, essentially we could make leaves grow on trees? Sweet. Forgive me for being daft, how exactly does this work?

Those transitions you are talking about are stuff like grass density, height, etc. These are easy to do because they are simple number values. I am saying we should limit texture transitions. Plus, in real life the landscape doesn't change quickly. Plants, grass, and trees can change fast.

Yes, I agree with your above idea. It may take a lot of texture work (obviously) but we want it to look good and be immersive/realistic as possible. i do however feel that in a game such as Skyrim we don't need to be afraid of gradual change. Changing things everyday between seasons will take a lot of work. Maybe every 2-3 days? The player will still see it and we have less work. btw, I have a ton of ideas for grass, trees, and landscape. I am very busy with my job so I am compiling a huge post for when I am ready. :D EDIT: I want to clarify. I assume the only changes for seasons will take place every 3 months correct? Or are we making this faster (I also assume we will be giving the player an MCM with timing variables)?

Yes, I would be less worried about transition immersion than actually getting the seasons correct. One thing we will have to come to grips with is that if we can make this mod it won't be perfect. We are very limited with the current tools. It will be a feat no matter what is accomplished and I think it will be successful.

Seriously Sensational Sublime Seasons o Skyrim and Solstheim or S5 as the code name Hahaha, Perfect :D That won't confuse anyone. ;)

IMO, 'The Changing Seasons of Skyrim' makes the most sense. You understand it immediately.

I have a really long post regarding my part of the job (flora, environment, landscape textures, etc.). It's not ready yet. I do want to confirm though that associated grass meshes will change when the landscape texture changes. I can make a lot of different textures and meshes they just need a proper naming system to follow.

Can anyone provide me help or feedback?

I am having a bit of trouble adding custom grass. I followed instructions I found; Edited original grass, gave new ID and .nif. Created the new form. I then associated the new grass with the land texture I wanted. After, I loaded up a cell that I knew it would show and got this message: "MODELS: Could not load grass nif landscape\unique plant\grass\EGrass06.nif" Does anyone know what's going on? I placed the grass I am using in a custom folder to keep my data folder clean (It's still in the data folder, I just moved the new meshes into a new folder. This should have nothing to do with the problem though. Other than that, all procedures are normal and it should be working. Right?

Dude, you are not you only one to suffer from this issue, 'SkyTest - Realistic Animals and Predators' adds some new pigs and piglets to the farms in game. I also noticed that they, from a distance, have no walking or running animations. It was quite jarring. I hadn't noticed it before. I think those pigs also use the cow boneset. You might want to check and see if the cows also have this issue.

Dude, looking forward to this. I wish more people would pursue adding new animals to the game to help with immersion. For regular wild life I think we need turtles, squirrels, snakes, frogs, skunks, beavers, and turkeys. Maybe some sea animals; sharks, dolphins, whales. Too bad most people don't try this out.

The main reason is, they are not diverse enough. I can't just give the vanilla pine trees a full retexture and new leaves and call it a new tree. It won't look right. I need new meshes designed to look like other trees.

Fellow modders, I am in need of some help. I am currently working on a mod that expands on the flora of Skyrim. I have two resources I am working with. GKB Green Trees and Vurt's Trees (Vurt has given me permission). GKB has over 300 trees but many of them look very alike and lots of them are trees that don't fit with Skyrim's climate (palm trees). Basically, I need new trees - variety. I have no knowledge on making models for Skyrim. I do have the ability to make textures. If there is anyone out there who would like to help me by making me new tree models, this could be awesome. All credit will be given. Afterward, I would even suggest that you release your models as resources so others can benefit. Let me know below, and then we can PM if anyone is interested. Thank you!

Thank you for this. While I am 18, I still live with my family. To say the least, I don't need my 12 year old brother walking in right when I open the Nexus to discover the first mod in the hot files has a naked female displayed. Not good for him, awkward for me. Thank you.

You might be missing my point. It doesn't really matter why I would like to know how to merge mods, I would just like to know. Whatever way I choose to use the knowledge is up to me, and if I fudge up my game because I don't think it will be my fault. I know it doesn't improve my games performance. I never said it did. Although, I happen to be one of those guys who eventually gets closer and closer to 255 plugins as I play my game. All in all, it will be helpful knowledge. If you don't want to help me, no problem. I was just asking for help.

Thank you for replying. Those are exactly the reasons why I asked the question. I need to make my own patches and I also want to keep a lower number of esp files. I like it to be tidy. I don't really like the idea of having 14 plugins from one mod because the author hasn't merged them yet. The particular author says the plugins won't be merged till the v1.00 release which is awhile away. A good example of the type of merging I would like to know: Your mod 'Inconsequential NPCs' (brilliant btw) has one main plugin and the optional file. Because I want to keep my list of plugins compact, it would be great to be able to combine them on my own. That is the gist of my request for help/tutorial.

Hey, I am in need of help. I have read MTichenor's post on mod merging with TES5Edit (http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/904953-how-to-merge-multiple-mods-with-multiple-master-files/) This was created awhile back and newer versions of TES5Edit have been released. Could anyone supply a new tutorial with the newer version? I am still learning. A video tutorial would be awesome. I am currently wanting to merge the 14 esp files from 'Immersive Settlements' mod. 14 plugins is just way to much for my tastes.

My GTX 680 can handle a bunch, but the game will still crash sometimes (with lot's of other mod installed). Skyrim will crash once it's using 3.2GB of RAM (not VRAM). With lots of other mods installed (for example, the Texture Pack Combiner), you can expect crashing. Unless, you use a texture optimizer and downsize them. I downsize mine to 1K. Using sharpening from ENB and SweetFX they look completely fine in most cases and 100% better than vanilla (that's because vanilla textures are often blurry right in Photoshop. Bethesda could have made the textures from the HD DLC look even better if they had worked a little longer, without decreasing performance). What I am trying to say is that more often than not, this is the problem. Although, it could be mod conflicts - just double check that out yourself.

wow, just checked my mods. It's not cool to see people giving jerk opinions and finding out they never downloaded the mod in the first place. I guess this will give us modders some insight to not respond to idiots or respond telling them that they have no place for an opinion until they download it.

Set your 'iMinGrassSize=' value to something like 40. What is yours currently set to? It may be the problem. If you set it past 100, on a vanilla game all grass will disappear.