My experience using the new Grass Normals feature 0.414

[TheForkOnTheLeft]

Hey Borris,
I have been testing out the newest ENB binaries 0.414. There is a HUGE difference though. The grass becomes extremely dark. I use the grass features for ambient lighting and intensity of grasses.

TESV ENB 0.414(I'm aware the grass normals can be turned off and the issue I'm seeing can be avoided)


TESV ENB 0.413 and under



I have been trying to re edit everything in my current ENB/weather project. A had to change LOTS of different settings to try and compensate for the grass not taking in as much ambient lighting as I had it previously. I changed the SSAO/IL types and brought up the Illumination settings higher to help and try to get the grass brighter. But it doesn't work out that well in most cases. I had to push ambient lighting higher and the automatic ambient lighting higher to try and compensate as well. SSS had to be set up so I can get it to look darker so it doesn't glow from me pushing the ambient lighting to try and make it so the grass can match the environment.

Another example(This is all ENB 0.414):

This is the best I can make the settings compensate for the new grass normals fix features


This is if I kept my SSS settings alone without editing them and pushed the ambient settings



I want to make this new feature work because If you notice the landscape is dark in both images. the darker grasses and being able to have that base and work from that can make it so the grass can blend with the landscape much better. But in most situations the grass isn't so great and stays pretty dark. The skin SSS stays constant though. I think adding a new settings to change the overall brightness/darkness of SSS could help a lot here. Or possibly allowing grass to be brightened a little more then 5.00.

All in all I love all the new features. I just want to you see my experience with the edits and how you could possibly add some new features or edits to allow us to use this new grass fix set up in ENB.
I look forward to your next update. I will try my best to keep track of this post. I hope this helps you see some of the things that most of us users see. Good luck Borris.

[ENBSeries]

Skyrim SE have the same normals for grass and nobody complained. Also i had several posts here about old grass that ao for it looks dark and if i can fix that. So people never satisfied. All i can do is to mix no normals and normals, but this bring back problem with wetness and just a little bit reduce "darkness". There is no other solution.

[TheForkOnTheLeft]

I'm sure someone could actually come up with some normals for grass mods to help the issue out too. I honestly was fine with the bug. I never got it unless if I was looking for it. But I cant say I wouldnt notice if there was the complex lighting effect hitting the grass during rainy weathers, but I would not care entirely about it. We are bound to find bugs one way or another. This is an old game. I'm sure someone will find a solution if anything. I'm still really happy with the progress this has gone through.

I just wanted to post this to give you a visual insight on the whole thing. At least with this. Nothing more. Maybe you come up with a solution one day. Who knows what can happen in a month or more.

[ENBSeries]

There is no solution and never be, grass made from flat quads without normal maps and this can't be changed ever.

[ENBSeries]

Guess i will try to mix old vertical normals and new with quad normals, its the only option to reduce at half, but make buggier wetness at half.

[TheForkOnTheLeft]

Yeah, screenspace is tricky from what I have been told about it. Your plan sounds like a good one. Just throw it out there and see the results. I'm fine with the way things are right now. But I'm certain many people will still have issues and report the problem.

[ENBSeries]

As i said, se have the same normals as i did and no complains. But i had complains to normals which were before grass normal feature. So no matter what i will do, complains will be always, but also loss of performance, because mixing normals require extra normalization, which is slow and very noticable for dense grass on the screen.