How to make custom grass

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

Ok, here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to make custom grass in Oblivion. This requires you have a basic understanding of both NIFScope and Photoshop, you can use the Construction Set, and you have the Photoshop DDS plugin.

Ok, let's start on how to make grass. To start, you need to make a texture. This can be done by either making your own texture from scratch, or editing a currently existing texture. For this purpose, we will only edit one to save us some time. Open any grass texture from Oblivion (you may need to unpack a BSA to get one.)

As you can see, I chose an old, dead grass texture. Let's change it by giving it a little more life. I just edited the hue and saturation in Photoshop to give it a greener look.

For those of you who made their own texture, you will need to set up Alpha Transparency, as seen above. This can be best set up through the selection brush, highlighted in the tools window. Be sure to save all grass with Alpha, which you can select in the save window that will pop up. Also be sure you are saving in the Oblivion Texture folder. Let's move on.

Next up, you will need to open up any grass type in NIFScope that looks fitting for your new texture. Here is one random mesh I chose. You will need to edit it's texture.

Now edit it's texture, and you should see it look different, something like as shown. This is a grass mesh with your new texture. Save it and it's ready for in-game use.

Now open up the Construction Set, and look for the category that says grass. This is where we add your new grass to the game. You can make a new grass object from scratch, or edit a pre-existing one to make a new one that uses your mesh. Once that is set up, we will move on to the LandTextures. Make sure you change your grass' settings so it will work best in the area you are planning to put it. My settings I have now won't work in some areas.

Now find the LandTextures group in the Construction Set. Let's pick one to open.

Now I selected this grass texture, as it wouldn't make much sense to have green grass on Oblivion's lava. Now you need to go back to the grass tab, and merely click and drag your grass into the box in the LandTexture. Once that is set up, rename your new texture and go into landscape editing. And just find a place to put your new grass.

I made a new worldspace just to test it out without touching the game world. You can do anything you want with it, like paint Oblivion green if you wanted. Just put your texture somewhere and save the esp. Name it whatever you want. Then tick it off when playing the game, and see how it turned out. Make sure you have some way to get to it too.

Now you can see what your grass looks like in-game. Don't be disappointed if it doesn't looks as good as it did in NIFScope, because often times it doesn't. You can apply these to any kind of grass you can think of, and it will help make any mod all the more cool looking.

[Dave_91]

Wow, thanks for posting this IATE! :goodjob:

I'm going to try and make a new texture for the Ashlands grass for TES4: Vvardenfell. I'll let you know how it goes.

Damn, forgot, I can't right now. I'll have to unpack the Textures BSA again... I'll do it tomorrow and try though.

[TheImperialDragon]

Did you write all of this?

[IAMTHEEMPEROR]

Yes

[ev1]

:goodjob:

Thanks for the tut.