Preface
Please note that this mod is no longer directly supported and has now been superseded by two tools which do what this mod does on a much broader scope, while also greatly reducing the likelihood of mod incompatibilities. These tools are Groundcoverify (OpenMW only) by Benjamin Winger, Habasi by Alvazir and Hide Grass (MWSE only) by Abot. I recommend using these mods instead of this, due to its limitations.
Hemaris pioneered the fantastic idea of turning regular static flora into groundcover. When they stepped back to take a break from modding Morrowind I offered to take over the mod page for them while developing my own tool together with my brother-in-law to do the same thing as Habasi and Groundcoverify - Alvazir, Benjamin Winger and Abot beat us to the finish line and have thankfully made three fantastic tools, making our project redundant. However, I will keep this mod page up for historic purposes. Full credit to Hemaris, Benjamin Winger, Alvazir and Abot for their work.
- MasssiveJuice

What this mod does
The base game of Morrowind has a lot of grass, ferns, and kelp by default, but they are all regular statics. By making the game engine load those plants as a grass mod instead, they get the benefits of lower CPU overhead and improved appearance (wind swaying, "stomping" when walked on). All of the other grass mods out there already account for the base game plants being where they are, so you can combine this mod with any of them without issues. Or you can run this mod by itself, with no other grass mods, if you just want to add a little bit of subtle motion to a "vanilla-plus" Morrowind install.

How it works
This mod uses one plugin (named "CONTENT") to delete every individual grass and kelp in Morrowind.esm, and then a second plugin (named "GROUNDCOVER") to put them all back in the same positions.

That lets you load the "GROUNDCOVER" plugins as grass mods, and the "CONTENT" plugins as normal mods, so that all of the original grasses and kelps appear in their usual places, but they are given a grass mod's special handling by the engine.

That makes them more performance-friendly to render, and it enables fancy visual features like OpenMW's grass stomping and swaying in the wind.

A second pair of plugins does the same thing for TR_Mainland.esm version 22.11. You can use just the Morrowind.esm plugins, or just the TR_Mainland plugins, or all of them at the same time.

[Update 2022-12-03]  There is now also an alternate download which supports Beautiful Cities of Morrowind version 2.7.6. The BCOM version of this mod comprises a replacement for the core plugin Beautiful cities of morrowind.esp (stripped of its references to grasses and kelps), and a pair of "CONTENT" and "GROUNDCOVER" plugins. This version is mostly compatible with BCOM's optional plugins, meaning that in most cases, enabling one of the optional plugins will only cause at most a handful of misplaced plants. I plan to expand the BCOM version of this mod with fuller support for the optional plugins, but I am uploading the basic version right now because it's done.

[Update 2023-04-20]  BCOM itself has been updated, breaking compatibility with the alternate download. I do not have the capacity to update my plugin to work with the new BCOM at this time.


How to install
1. If you have any mesh replacers which affect the vanilla grass and kelp (or Tamriel_Data/TR's grasses and kelps), you have to duplicate their meshes into this mod's \Meshes\grass\ folder. There is a list of affected files at the end of this readme.

2. If you are an OpenMW user and this is your first grass/groundcover mod, you will need to locate your settings.cfg file, open it in a text editor, find the [Groundcover] heading (or create it if it doesn't exist), and add underneath it the line enabled = true (for more information about finding and using your settings.cfg, consult the OpenMW documentation).

3. If this is your only groundcover mod, you should use a grass density setting of 1.0 to prevent any of the original plants from disappearing entirely. In OpenMW, that means editing settings.cfg, under the [Groundcover] heading, to include the line density = 1.0 and you might also want to increase the rendering distance for groundcover, using a line like rendering distance = 16000 (where one cell of distance = 8192, and the default for this setting is 6144)

4. Enable one or both GROUNDCOVER.esps as groundcover plugins:

• If you use OpenMW, this means editing your openmw.cfg file to include a line like groundcover=plugin-name-goes-here.esp for each GROUNDCOVER plugin which you want to use. Do not enable them in the OpenMW Launcher!!!
• If you use MGE XE, this means generating distant land with the GROUNDCOVER.esp(s) enabled. If this is your only groundcover mod, set the grass density to 1.0 when you generate distant land.
  

5. Enable one or both CONTENT.esp(s) as normal plugins. Do not enable the GROUNDCOVER.esps as normal mods!

• If you're using the BCOM variant of this mod, you should also enable the included Beautiful cities of morrowind.esp as a normal plugin.
  

Is Tamriel Rebuilt required?
No, TR is not required. This mod has separate plugins for Morrowind.esm and for TR_Mainland.esm version 22.11. You can use either set of plugins by itself, or both sets at the same time.

Is it compatible?

• It works with both MGE XE and OpenMW.
  

• You don't have to use the Vvardenfell plugins. If you have a landscape mod for vanilla Vvardenfell which works poorly with this mod, but you still want to use this mod for TR_Mainland, you can just enable the mainland plugins only.
• If you have any mesh replacers which affect the vanilla grass and kelp (or Tamriel_Data/TR's grasses and kelps), you have to copy their meshes into this mod's \Meshes\grass\ folder. There is a list of mesh files at the end of this description.
• This mod doesn't contain any landscape records, so it is compatible with terrain edits in the sense that it won't cause landscape tears. But
  depending on how much your other mods raise or lower the landscape, it might result in floating or buried grass.
• This mod can't affect any plants which were added by another mod, so those will remain ordinary non-groundcover statics. And it can't keep track of whether another mod has moved one of the original plants, so those will be reverted to their original locations.
• It is "compatible" with both TOTSP and vanilla Bloodmoon because it doesn't touch the island of Solstheim in any way. I have no plan to add support for any version of Solstheim.
• Lots of exterior cells are unaffected by this mod, so mods for those cells are definitely compatible. See the map below. This mod is especially compatible with mods for West Gash, Grazelands, and Vivec.
• Ashfall's plant fibre harvesting is disabled for affected plants, but you can still harvest fibre from container plants, from plants added by other mods, and from static plants inside caves and grottoes.
• There is now an alternate download which is compatible with Beautiful Cities of Morrowind.
  

What about interior cells?
Grass mods don't work in interior cells, so this mod doesn't touch any of the grasses and kelps in interiors, including grottos. The only cells it affects are exterior cells with at least one grass or kelp, in Morrowind.esm and/or TR_Mainland.esm.

How did you make this?
I used Greatness7's tes3conv tool to convert Morrowind.esm and TR_Mainland.esm into JSON text documents, then used find and replace in a text editor to delete everything in them except for cell references to specific static plant ids. I then made the "CONTENT" plugins by adding markup to turn all of the remaining references into deletion records.

Map of affected cells


List of affected meshes
If you have a mesh replacer for any of these files, you need to replace this mod's version, in the Meshes\grass\ folder, with a copy of your mesh replacer's version. The only exception is Morrowind Optimization Patch; this mod already includes the latest MOP versions of these meshes as of 2022-12-01.

Why? MGE XE and OpenMW will only render groundcover objects whose meshes have "grass" in their filepaths, so this mod's GROUNDCOVER.esps have to redefine the affected plants as using meshes in a \grass\ subfolder.

flora_ash_grass_b_01.nif
flora_ash_grass_r_01.nif
flora_ash_grass_w_01.nif
flora_bc_fern_02.nif  <------ note that bc_fern_01 is NOT affected by this mod, because it's a container plant
flora_bc_fern_03.nif
flora_bc_fern_04.nif
flora_bc_grass_01.nif
flora_bc_grass_02.nif
flora_bc_lilypad_01.nif
flora_bc_lilypad_02.nif
flora_bc_lilypad_03.nif
* Flora_BM_grass_01.nif
* Flora_BM_grass_02.nif
* Flora_BM_grass_03.nif
* Flora_BM_grass_04.nif
* Flora_BM_grass_05.nif
* Flora_BM_grass_06.nif
* flora_bm_shrub_01.nif
* flora_bm_shrub_02.nif
* flora_bm_shrub_03.nif
flora_grass_01.nif
flora_grass_02.nif
flora_grass_03.nif
flora_grass_04.nif
flora_grass_05.nif
flora_grass_06.nif
flora_grass_07.nif
flora_kelp_01.nif
flora_kelp_02.nif
flora_kelp_03.nif
flora_kelp_04.nif
in_cave_plant00.nif
in_cave_plant10.nif
* tr_f_fern01_db.nif
* tr_f_fern02_db.nif
* tr_flora_at_spartium01.nif
* tr_flora_at_spartium02.nif
* tr_flora_at_spartium03.nif
* tr_flora_thirrlily_01.nif
* tr_flora_thirrlily_02.nif
* tr_flora_thirrlily_03.nif

* = only needed for TR_Mainland