Shorter Grass

0.2b - minor tweaks to some grass meshes
0.1b - initial beta release

Comments and suggestions appreciated!


This mod reduces the size of most grass types by 30%, most shrubs by 50% and lowers the height of pebbles by 50%. Grass meshes are based on SparrowPrince's Lush Grass mod, shrubs and pebbles are scaled down from vanilla meshes.

Grass
Grass reduction is mostly done to alleviate the obvious landscape transition from 'full of grass' to 'no grass at all'.

A side effect to this adjustment is grass clumps now seem more sparse as a result of reducing the mesh size. This can be remedied by lowering iMinGrassSize value or using grass plugins such as Grass On Steroid and the like although it's not ideal. I would love to compensate by editing individual mesh to cover more ground but Blender and NifSkope are out of my league at the moment and for this reason I consider this a beta release.

Not all types of grass are affected by this mod - namely Blackreach and underwater grass.

Shrubs
Dead shrubs are resized since it's weird that they are bigger than their live counterparts.

Rock Pebbles
Who doesn't hate rock pebbles? They are hideous. This mod lower their height by 50% so they look flatter and blend better with the ground.


Recommended Mods, Conflicts

Conflicts TL;DR - Any mod changing vanilla grass meshes is not compatible and will be overwritten by/overwrite this mod. Any mod not compatible with Lush Trees and Grass is not compatible with this mod.

Lush Trees and Grass by OpticShooter
Decrease That Grass by OpticShooter
Shorter Grass can function independently from LTG however it's missing a few meshes that it does not touch. DTG includes new textures for rock and pebbles.

Shorter Grass should be installed after both LTG (if you would like to have the rest of LTG's meshes) and DTG (if you would like to use its rock textures), overwriting their files.

Glorious Grass by jack254
Grass On Steroid by skyrimaguas
Dense Grass 100 Density by ChewieMuse
These mods do not edit any mesh therefore they're fully compatible.

Unique Grasses and Groundcovers by joeshezzell
This mod doesn't have any conflict except for rock pebble meshes. It also comes with a new texture for regular rock pebbles.

If you would like to use my reduced mesh, install Shorter Grass after this mod.

Skyrim Flora Overhaul by vurt
As per SparrowPrince -
Q:Is this compatible with SFO?
A:Yes, but you need to use the basic version of SFO. Make sure that you install this mod over SFO.

Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin by preeum
As per preeum, his mod is not compatible with Lush Trees and Grass and therefore not compatible with this mod. For full disclosure I did not test the validity of this statement myself and I assume the author knows best.


(Un)installation

Installation
Choose which component(s) do you want.

Install with NMM, Wrye Bash, MO. For manual installation open the archive and extract the content into Skyrim/Data folder.

Endorse if you like it. If not see below. ↓↓


Uninstallation
Uninstall from NMM, Wrye Bash, MO.

For manual delete these files from Skyrim\Data\Meshes\Landscape\grass
            beachgrassobj01.nif
            beachgrassobj02.nif
            fallforestgrassobj01.nif
            fallforestgrassobj02.nif
            ferngrass01.nif
            fieldgrass01.nif
            fieldgrassflowers02.nif
            marshgrassobj01.nif
            reachgrassobj01.nif
            reachgrassobj02.nif
            snowgrass01.nif
            snowgrass02.nif
            tundragrass01.nif
            tundragrassobj03.nif
            tundragrassobj04.nif
            volcanicgrassobj01.nif
            volcanicgrassobj02.nif
            rockgrass01.nif*
            rockgrasssnowobj01.nif*
            rockgrasswater01.nif*

And these files from Skyrim\Data\Meshes\Landscape\plants
            deadshrub01.nif*
            deadshrub01snow.nif*
            thicket01.nif*
            thicket01snow.nif*

*optional files


Hypothetical FAQ

Q: How's the performance hit?
A: This mod should not have any negative nor positive performance gain. It is possible that you would get some fps boost but this should be minor and very much depends on your mod setup.

Q: [Obligatory ENB query]
A: Baarom ENB by bretton

Q: Will I make shorter grass for SFO or [insert mod]?
A: There would be some red tape involving permission and I haven't decided if I want to go through it but while I medidate on it you can do it yourself since it's a very easy process. UPDATE: I've been granted permission by Vurt to work on SFO (thank you!). ETA unknown as I'm currently in the middle of moving to a new place.

Q: How?
A: I'm glad I asked. First of all you need NifSkope.

• Open the mesh you would like to edit in NifSkope. For grass this would generally be in "Data\Meshes\Landscape\grass" folder. Backup the files you're editing (or not.. if you're feeling adventurous)
• Right-click on the mesh in viewer and select Transform > Scale Vertices
• Change the values for X, Y and Z to your liking. Ideally these should be the same or you will get a stretched object. For grass I used 0.7 for height, and 0.8 for width.
• Save the .nif file, overwriting the old one.
• You're done! Enjoy your 10x bigger pine tree.
  

Check out my other mods
Skyrim Interfacfe Makeover (formerly Fhaarkas Font Mod)
Authentic Books and Notes
Fhaarkas Softer Animal Fur (more or less deprecated)


Credits

SparrowPrince aka OpticShooter
I used his meshes as base per his general permission. What an awesome modder. Go download all his mods and endorse them.

Bethesda
for stuff