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About this mod
This is a tropical rainforest overhaul for the Special Edition, covering most worldspaces of the base game and DLCs minus the visual overkill. Tested extensively for compatibility with most known popular mods.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
For your assurance, please read instructions in this description carefully before installing this mod.
DON'T SKIP INSTRUCTIONS. DON'T TL;DR.
PROJECT RAINFOREST FOR SKYRIM SPECIAL EDITION
by SA547
LEGENDARY EDITION VERSION ALSO AVAILABLE
DON'T SKIP INSTRUCTIONS. DON'T TL;DR.
PROJECT RAINFOREST FOR SKYRIM SPECIAL EDITION
by SA547
LEGENDARY EDITION VERSION ALSO AVAILABLE
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.
- Weather used by the mod have been modified for better visibility and clarity.
- 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.
- Care has been taken to move or delete obstacles and stray collision cubes.
- Water color and characteristics have been modified to look better in-game.
- 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:
- Dolomite Weathers Patch
- Dolomite + True Storms Patch
- RS Children SE - carryover fixes for Aeta, so she uses the correct clothing and facegen.
COMPATIBILITY LIST - CAREFUL READING REQUIRED
Although a Vortex-compatible version is also available, please do note that this mod is best used with Mod Organizer 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.
- Overall texture packs (i.e. Noble Skyrim, Skyrim HD) may or may NOT be compatible with this mod, especially those adding snow, ice, or both for landscapes; load such packs before Project Rainforest.
- Texture packs for buildings, structures, armor, weapons, clutter, furniture, NPC and creature overhauls -- as long as they do not contain snow or ice textures -- can be loaded after this mod
- Some texture packs for landscapes, and with glaciers, snow, and ice NOT compatible unless specifically made for this mod.
- 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.
- ELE/ELE Lite is compatible.
- Cloud texture packs are compatible.
- Snow, ice, and glacier effect mods NOT be compatible with this mod, especially as this mod tries to eliminate the ice/snow effect.
- Skyrim Particle Patch SE is compatible.
- Some water mods like 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, Pure Waters and HD Water are 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.
- USSEP and Cutting Room Floor are compatible, as are with other Lord Arthmoor small settlement mods.
- Paradise City for Skyrim is compatible with summer version.
- Some grass mods NOT be compatible with this mod unless designed for this mod or as summer version.
- Most popular SSE weather overhauls, as well as Sounds of Skyrim, True Storms, and Wonders of Weather will NOT work with this mod unless they have a compatiblity patch (Dolomite+True Storms patch included; Wonders of Weather works out of the box).
- Vivid Weathers NOT compatible because it included its own tree LOD.
- 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.
- 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. Tree LOD must be generated only with SSELODGEN.
- Not tested yet with Frostfall; may use only hypothermia effects.
- Not tested yet with SMIM
- Should be compatible with Minty's Lightning Mod (see load order example).
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 (use only SSELODGEN) 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.
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.
IMPORTANT: TURN OFF THE SNOW SHADER before using this overhaul -- go to the launcher settings.
Make sure you have fixes for SSE enabled for maximum stability.
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/VORTEX 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.
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.
- Nyclix's ENB-Reshade (highly recommended Reshade preset)
- Dolomite Weathers Natural & Vivid
- True Storms
- Enhanced Lighting and FX (interior and exterior only; no player home option)
- Animallica
- Cutting Room Floor
- known texture packs -- Noble Skyrim -- at 1k size
LOAD ORDERING IN MOD ORGANIZER 2
In the mod list and if installed as loose, Project Rainforest must be ordered this way:
Cleaned ESMs
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
...
(some texture packs)
DYNDOLOD Resources
Project Rainforest SE BASE Loose Files Only
Project Rainforest SE DYNDOLOD LOD Texture Pack
Project Rainforest SE 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 Special Edition Patch.esp
...
(other ESMs)
...
(HighResTexturePack0x.esp)
..
Project Rainforest.esp
Cutting Room Floor.esp
...
Dolomite Weathers.esp
Project Rainforest-Dolomite Weathers Patch.esp (optional if Dolomite is only installed)
...
...
mintylightningmod.esp
True Storms.esp
Project Rainforest-Dolomite-True Storms Patch.esp (optional if Dolomite and True Storms are installed)
...
RSChildren.esp
Project Rainforest-RS Children Patch.esp (optional if RS Children is installed)
...
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
- 512x512 and 1k for landscape and some trees
- 2k for mountains, rocks, and (former) glaciers and ice
- Some textures are DXT1; DXT5 for transparent diffuse and normals
DYNDOLOD generation settings: Medium quality, static only, 256x256 LOD textures for atlas.
Grass density: 60
TOOLS
- Creation Kit LE
- xEdit aka TES5EDIT
- xLODGen aka TES5LODGEN
- DynDOLOD
- Adobe Photoshop CS6 with nVidia DDS Plugin
- Nifskope 2.0+
- Outfit Studio for Bodyslide (used for NIF editing)
- TreeLOD.exe Billboard Texture Generator
- Nif Optimizer for SSE
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.