This is a tropical rainforest overhaul for the Legendary Edition, covering most worldspaces of the base game and DLCs minus the visual overkill. Tested extensively for compatibility with most known popular mods.

FEATURES AND CHANGES

• The mod covers and changes Tamriel, Dawnguard HQ, Falmer Valley, and parts of Solstheim.
• No overpowering bloom or altered imagespaces.
• Icy and snow interiors are changed to temperate green caves.
• Icicles and ice sheets are removed or replaced with lily pads.
• Small vanilla flora are retained intact for most interiors, with their outdoor worldspace models replaced by tropical models.
• All snowy weather are swapped for rainstorms. Some regions have been modified for tropical climate and for compatibility with most ENB presets for vanilla weathers.
• Strong wind sounds are removed and tundra ambient sounds are transplanted to other previously snowy regions.
• Statics with the snow/ice shader flags are stripped, with the side benefit of them not disappearing at random.
• Jungle ambient sounds are added.
• Object LOD is properly placed as it should be in the base game.
• Trees are chosen and placed accordingly based on the original sizes of vanilla trees.
• Skaal villagers and hunters wear fur, leather and scaled armor and light clothing.
• Absolutely no changes to fauna aka wildlife.
• Care has been taken to move or delete obstacles and stray collision cubes. 
• To be sure, the mod has been checked and cleaned with xEdit, along with repeated playtesting prior to release.
  

COMPATIBILITY PATCHES

Project Rainforest initially comes with compatibility patches for the following mods, all found in the Optional subdirectory:

• Natural Lighting and Atmospherics - specially modified for this mod; named retained for compatibility with other mods relying on it as a master.
• RS Children - carryover fixes for Aeta, so she uses the correct clothing and facegen.
• Sounds of Skyrim Legendary Edition + NLA - this patch will allow SOS audio descriptors to be used together with the modified NLA plugin included in this mod.
• A special grass performance patch is also included; this patch reduces the number of grass variants per landscape texture so as to increase performance.
  

By the way, anyone is free to create patches for this mod.

COMPATIBILITY LIST - CAREFUL READING REQUIRED!

Although an NMM-compatible version is also available, please do note that this mod is best used with Mod Organizer 1 or 2 and xEdit to better diagnose and resolve mod conflicts. It is also advised to create a savegame as a backup and keep that before using this mod, besides creating a Mod Organizer profile (or cloning your existing playthrough profile) for this mod.

• NOT COMPATIBLE WITH TROPICAL SKYRIM OR SEASONS OF SKYRIM - TROPICAL EDITION
• Overall texture packs (i.e. Noble Skyrim, Skyrim HD, etc) may or may NOT be compatible with this mod, especially those adding snow, ice, or both for landscapes; load such packs before or after Project Rainforest.
• Texture packs for buildings, structures, armor, weapons, clutter, furniture, NPC and creature overhauls can be loaded after this mod
• Some texture packs for landscapes, glaciers, snow, and ice NOT compatible.
• Better Dynamic Snow NOT compatible with this mod because it mainly reverts back the snow shader effect
• ELFX Exteriors may revert some previously snow-free buildings (i.e. farmhouses, Windhelm and Winterhold structures) to having a frosted shader effect aka that mossy look. Or do NOT use ELFX Exteriors.
• ELE/ELE Lite is fully compatible.
• Cloud texture packs are compatible.
• Snow, ice, and glacier effect mods NOT compatible with this mod, especially as this mod tries to eliminate the ice/snow effect.
• Skyrim Particle Patch is compatible; must be ordered before this mod.
• Some water mods like WATER, RWT, or Pure Waters may or may not affect the mod, they should be loaded after this mod; RWT wet rock effects may affect the overall look due to modified meshes and added cubemap. During testing, RWT is found to be compatible.
• Tree/Flora mods such as Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Bigger Trees, Enhanced Vanilla Trees, and others like it are NOT compatible with this mod unless patched for compatibility. However, the stand-alone big tree option mod that comes with SFO is perfectly compatible.
• USLEEP and Cutting Room Floor is compatible, as are with other Lord Arthmoor small settlement mods.
• Paradise City for Skyrim is compatible with summer version.
• Some grass mods like Verdant, Veydosebrom, etc. may NOT be compatible with this mod unless designed for this mod or as summer version.
• Weather overhauls like CoT, Vivid, Pure Weathers, ELFX, NLA, or NVLA, as well as Sounds of Skyrim, True Storms, and Wonders of Weather must have a compatiblity patch (NLA+SOS and NLA patches comes with this mod; Wonders of Weather is also compatible) or they will NOT work with this mod
• Creature mods are highly compatible, including Animallica and Beasts of Tamriel; this mod preserves all creatures' respective appearances for the sake of full compatibility and with the use of reproccers.
• RS Children or other kid overhaul mods require a patch to override the default dress used by Aeta the Skaal girl (RS Children patch comes with this mod).
• NPC overhaul mods, especially those that modify the Skaal NPCs, may require a compatibility patch made so that the Skaal can use clothing and armor other than the Skaal coats.
• Until there's a compatibility patch made, Wet and Cold settings must be set to *default* or *summer* disable all snow-weather visuals but retain clothing/equipment usage, or DO NOT USE Wet and Cold with this mod.
• Mods with other worldspaces such as Wyrmstooth, Falskaar, Beyond Skyrim: Bruma may or may not be affected with this mod due to changes in aforementioned objects and terrain; regenerating the LOD through xLODGEN may be necessary to reflect changes, but region weather in those mods may have to be slightly modified through patches to remove snowy weather.
• Can be used with DynDOLOD with the optional LOD texture pack; should work provided one must use Texgen to create LOD texture pieces for DynDOLOD. However tree LOD can only be generated with TES5LODGEN.
• Not tested yet with Frostfall; may use only hypothermia effects.
• Not tested yet with SMIM
• Should be compatible with Real Clouds and Minty's Lightning Mod (see load order example).
  

NOTE REGARDING OTHER WORLDSPACES

For mods like BS:Bruma, Wyrmstooth, Falskaar, etc. which uses vanilla landscape textures, it's recommended to use the optional texture LOD pack in order to regenerate the terrain LOD for those mods through TES5LODGEN and DYNDOLOD.

WHY THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS TO DOWNLOAD?

The RTR (Ready to Run) version is a full package -- this includes pre-generated tree and object LOD all packed into a single archive. This is recommended for intermediate users and/or those using NMM/Vortex. 

The Base version is packed loose, which means either those who use Mod Organizer or for experienced users installing mods manually. However, take note that this version does not have object and tree LOD, which means the tree billboards (only use TES5LODGEN for tree LOD) and object LOD texture pack is needed when generating LOD with either xLODGEN or DynDOLOD.

Both packages include the aforementioned basic patches found in the Optional subdirectory (usually accessible in MO1/2 by clicking on the mod properties, Optional tab, then moving the plugins in.

REGARDING GRASS: Both versions have grass density maxed out, based on Grass on Steroids, which means you must tweak your Skyrim.ini settings, specifically under [GRASS]:

[Grass]
bAllowCreateGrass=1
bAllowLoadGrass=0
bDrawShaderGrass=1
iGrassCellRadius=2
iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=7
iMinGrassSize=70

INSTALLATION

Before using this mod, please read the above compatibility list, make sure you have all the DLCs installed, and create a hardsave; for existing MO playthroughs, make a full gamesave, then create a profile clone of that playthrough. 

Make sure you have SKSE memory patch, ENBoost and Crash Fixes enabled.

The Ready-To-Run version can be installed through any mod manager or extracted manually. Uninstallation is done by deactivating the mod before deleting the associated files (to be sure, look inside the archive for file structure). THIS IS THE RECOMMENDED INSTALL FOR NMM USERS AND BEGINNERS.

The Base version -- because it has loose files, meaning to say anything can be overwritten -- can only be installed with Mod Organizer or expert manual installation by knowledgeable users with understanding of the Skyrim Data directory structure. You have been warned.

TWEAKING

Project Rainforest also has an .INI file where you can control grass density (default is 65) and LOD distance. See the STEP Wiki on those .INI settings.

You can also delete the .INI file.

AS TESTED DURING ACTUAL GAMEPLAY (Shown in Screenshots)

The PC with this mod installed uses an i5 4590S processor, 8gb of system RAM, and a Sapphire RX470 Nitro+ with 4gb VRAM. Otherwise you may have to run Texture Optimizer (Ordenador) to reduce texture sizes.

• Natural Lighting and Atmospherics with Rudy ENB for NLA
• Realistic Water Two
• True Storms (hence the customized NLA plugin)
• Sounds of Skyrim Legendary Edition
• Animallica
• Beasts of Tamriel
• OBIS
• Cutting Room Floor
• Vivid Weathers (cloud textures portion only)
• Skyrim Flora Overhaul Large Tundra Trees
• Inns and Taverns
• Aquatic Life Overhaul
• Oblivion Gates
• Dolmen Ruins
• Woodbridge Project
• known texture packs -- aMidianborn, Langley, etc. -- at 1k size
  

LOAD ORDERING IN MOD ORGANIZER 1 or 2

In the mod list and if installed as loose, Project Rainforest must be ordered this way:

Cleaned ESMs
Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch
...
(some texture packs)
DYNDOLOD Resources
Project Rainforest LE BASE Loose Files Only
Project Rainforest LE DYNDOLOD LOD Texture Pack
Project Rainforest LE xLODGEN Tree Billboards
...
(city/dungeon/village/clutter retextures)
(other armor/weapon/creature/NPC/mods)

The following proper order on the plugin loadlist (either BASE or RTR):

Skyrim.ESM
Update.ESM
Dawnguard.ESM
Hearthfire.ESM
Dragonborn.ESM
Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch.esp
...
(other ESMs)
...
(HighResTexturePack0x.esp)
..
Project Rainforest.esp
Cutting Room Floor.esp
...
Sounds of Skyrim Complete.esp
...
Natural Lighting and Atmospherics.esp (modified version)
...
...
Real Clouds.esp
mintylightningmod.esp
True Storms.esp
True Storms-NLA.esp
SOS_NLA_ProjectRainforest_Patch.esp
...
RSChildren.esp
RSChildren Patch - USLEEP.esp
RSChildren Patch - Project Rainforest.esp
...


If you run into trouble, run LOOT to reorder the load list then please check with xEdit for plugin conflicts.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Texture sizes:

• 512x512 for grass and some other foliage
• 1k for landscape and some trees
• 2k for mountains, rocks, and (former) glaciers and ice
  

DYNDOLOD generation settings: Medium quality, static only, no trees (must be generated separately through xLODGEN), 256x256 LOD textures for atlas.

Grass density: 65

TOOLS

• Creation Kit LE
• xEdit aka TES5EDIT
• xLODGen aka TES5LODGEN
• DynDOLOD
• Adobe Photoshop CS6 with nVidia DDS Plugins
• Nifskope 2.0+
• Outfit Studio for Bodyslide (used for NIF editing)
• TreeLOD.exe Billboard Texture Generator
  

RESOURCE AND MOD PATCHING CREDITS

• Stroti & Tamira via MannyGT - Tropical Plants/New Plants 1.3
• Elinen & zTree - Hoddminir Trees/Flowers/Grass/Ground Textures
• LorSakyamuni - TW3 Landscape Resource
• ConfidenceMan - Natural Lighting and Atmospherics
• SirJesto - Sounds of Skyrim Legendary Edition
• Ranaline - RS Children Overhaul
• Ga-Knomboe Boy's GKB - Tree Resource Pack
• Vurt - Skyrim Flora Overhaul (some texture resources)
• muppetpuppet - Moonpaths to Elsweyr Resources
• zilav, sheson, et. al. - xLODGEN/DynDOLOD
• Ousnius - Bodyslide and Outfit Studio
  

All resources in this mod are not-for-profit use.

PERMISSIONS

• This mod can only be uploaded to the following sites other than Nexus: TES Alliance, AFKMods, DarkCreations, LoversLab. However, uploading to sites other than those mentioned is not allowed.
• Some assets are from third-party authors whose free assets are strictly for NOT-FOR-PROFIT use, so this mod cannot be monetized whatsoever or for any commercial exploitation.
• Patches, bugfixes, updates, add-ons, third-party retextures, and the like are allowed freely for further improvement and stabilization of this mod as long as due credit is given.