How to fix broken precombine caused by adding loose meshes?

[RawRawRaul]

So I found these two mod I really like called (Lovers Lab link, NSFW) Just Bigger Trees and Some Trees. Combining these two mods makes for a much more diverse landscape. However I know that swapping out meshes has a nasty tendency to break precombines.

What would be the right way of fixing this? I'm assuming I would need to create a custom .esp and somehow load those meshes into them, then open the creation kit and run a 1-25 day long calculation to fix the entire commonwealth, but I'm willing to do that.

I just don't know how to actually go about doing the first step, or if that's even the right process at all.

Would anyone have some sage wisdom on the right way to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[flecked]

You're better off just using a mod that doesn't break them. There's really no easy way to fix it unfortunately. Edited October 10, 2019 by flecked

[MissingMeshTV]

Simply “swapping out” meshes does not break precombines. If you substitute the mesh of a reference that is part of a precombine, it will not be rendered because the precombine will use the original mesh of the ref from which it was created. In order to get the new mesh to render, you need to intentionally disable the precombine system for the cell(s). Only then will the game render the new mesh. That’s one of the reasons that so many foliage mods disable precombines: any replacement meshes the mod adds won’t render until the precombines they aim to replace are disabled.

 

More info on the CK wiki in the “Replacing NIFs” section near the bottom of the page.

 

You’d be pretty brave regenerating precombine/previs data for the entire Commonwealth as your first optimization attempt. Keep in mind that doing this will leave the mod incompatible with any other mod that regenerates optimization data in the cells you’re working with.

 

You’d save yourself a lot of grief by following flecked’s suggestion and just using a mod that doesn’t touch the optimization system, such as Boston Natural Surroundings or any of the awesome mods derived from it.

 

BNS is a framework that several other foliage mods have been built from. The mod description used to have info on the framework aspect, but I don’t see that info there now. Might be worth asking the mod author about it if you're interested. Using the BNS framework might be the better route if you’re intent on making your own mod.

 

It goes without saying, that unless you have permission from the authors of the two mods you mentioned to use their assets, you wouldn't be able to publicly release anything using those assets.

[RawRawRaul]

All right. Thank you very much for the replies. I toggled the mods on and off and didn't see a marked improvement in framerate, so I think it's all right. Just wasn't sure if I was on crazy pills or something.