CaBaL

...oh i think i get the problem on ground shadows... let me explain: normal map as you know is an RGB file (red green blue) , where red is the vector of lighting from left to right, green the up-down, blue says how much normal is "deep" ,this is to simpify... now my normal for ground got a bit of relief (pretty much to say the truth) and when the mesh tile is placed upside down (mesh tiling as said is often quite random and not particularry well done in game) textures show an inverted red...or green....this can be very easily fixed just playing with levels of normal channels.... i'll absolutely do for next update. about those green areas is another problem of meshes....since the specularity is set on a weird green color on the nifs and not on a 50% grey or white...which would be totally right. now on other textures set where the green is stronger u do not notice the mismatching so much...in mine that tend to a desaturate brown u notice much more. i'm working on parallax for caves and frozen caves...will be very easy to fix the awfull green specularity with a more appropriate color. thanks for the comparison this time angel... is proper.

angel, accept an advice from a friend, i get what u mean about grainy look, but u do not have to stick on the microdatails... "noise" is used to reduce the "pattern" effect... not only in these textures but in many enviromental works for many games from various author much better than me. what imo you have to check is: first the overall look and how much an enviromental texture looks proper and fitting to an enviroment. second but probably more important... how much the enviromental textures is made up of proper "tiles" in this case you have to take a close look on how much repeatable patterns are visible ,somehow you should not see the tile because if u see a bounch of detail repeted too often...the texture is wrong ( noise reduces this effect quite a lot)...i'd prefer a more noisy pattern than a clean textures repeated as a chess board ...you may lose something Very close but the overall feeling is better (afterall who plays with player nose on rocks and walls?) is very important to see where are the major lacks in beth work...for example shadows and lines baked and painted on diffuse maps that makes stones look like warped paper (let's be honest u cannot "paint" a shadow...it should be rendered from normal+specular not by a black line). bad bad tiling in beth things is another big lack. colors not really natural in bethesda ..both exasperate yellow and green ....remember? no photosyntesis in shadows... also funny how mountains are grey but caves yellow....i used a more brownish thing.grey+oxidation tends to brown.... (it's my taste,and my idea ,we're in the field of taste...useless somehow...still bath palette is wrong with too much yellow from any point of view). to see major problems means also find solutions... because if we mod but keep also what is not good we're getting nowhere. now ...in any comparison we should always see where's the problem in original work... and find which work fixes it better (not talking of these caves remakes..i mean in general) *** simplyfing a lot things comparison should be: texture problem--->x mod fix---->y mod fix *** first we need to recognize the problem itself btw.... not just think that beth is always right and what fits to beth is right too....we can be all Very close to beth intention and design running on different paths. finally clear... anybody got his own opinion and taste. but we cannot say....x is better than y because i do not like 2 things on y when x does not have these problem but also does not bring any solution . a balanced analisis should keep the count of what we get and its "price"...is like betting on an horse: u can bet 0.5 cent and win 10 dollars or bet 1 dollar and get 100.000. all this in general, not talking about these specifical modification... just using as example. hope there's no problem or hate is just my humble opinion.

heheeh sparrow...believe me... i'm a 36 years old guy, italy was a stunning place up to 10-12 years ago , really full of culture and history, kind of credle of humanity in many aspect....roman empire ,reinassence....things that italians themselves forget now. food is culture somehow... so well... probably some of the best food you can find around,not talking of restaurants with "standard" things, talking about families and small villages and traditions. sadly lately wrong governaments,corruption,various problems ,economical situation do not let this country show all its potential. what really bothers me is the loss of creativity ... ignorance among people,call it globalization or whatever you want but result is the same.

i'm italian michaelrw...really sorry for the terrificant english and the many awfull errors... but is what i had from school around 18+ years ago,my university studies (did twice ,history of art and history) did not contain english exams...i'm a beast in ancient greek and ancient latin... both do not help much on forums ...lol :)

Cabal, to answer your question - STEP aims to enhance the visual aspect of Skyrim - but it also vows to stick to vanilla style of the game as much as possible. Purely from STEP point of view anything that is similar to vanilla would be better. This was the principle of this project since the very beginning. So quite often mods that look stunning would be ditched in favour of mods that may look worse, but are closer to vanilla graphical style. Now, personally I installed Beauty of Skyrim, then I let Hectrol's overwrite that and lastly I added your mod on top of that. This way I get ALL your textures, but also BoS and Hectrol's for the ones your mod doesn't cover (yet?). I am sure that many users will also favour your mod to BoS, but - again - from STEP point of view this may be not the best choice. yep...i know about the principle rootstrat... clearly always hope for an "out of the box "option...finding it more creative and way more interesting... but i know the step point of view :)i agree without any problem bout the line, what blocked my digestion was angel's prospective (i'm kidding eh...better to remember this detail) which is simply unilateral. for respect for other modders i will not put my analisis here... but if we go on the tecnical matter  the list of things to write is long... about all the 3 mods. angel cannot just end the discussion with his impressions (again hoping he's able to see the more and bigger problems on other textures sets) is a comparison? let's compare then....otherwise is an opinion on a showcase. hope noone get offended....i repeat that does change nothing for me if this or any mod of mine is added in core options...i'm not pulling in any direction...i'm just saying that analisis should be less fancy

im a little bit confused, so was wondering if you may clarify.. when you say "iron out all specular in your diffuse and let the normal map do all the work" are you saying that speculars should be in diffuse maps and not normals (for "modern games" like skyrim) ??sadly from oblivion and on specular is essential...cant just make a dark one because nifsettings and game engine are wrong ,and it's just the tecnical side of the thing...if game lighting is crap...do not blame proper specular .i also keep in mind the 2,3 enb users with a better lighting yeah...forgot to answer this part :D

do not misunderstand me mate, absolutely no hate or ********-like, critique is the ONLY way to improve things...and i'm glad to read criticism when i can. that said i see angel likes beauty of skyrim and pushes in that direction (not that word changes for me if this mod o mine is included or not) stressing just what he does not like in my work and not showing what's objectively wrong in other textures sets (if he sees issues...otherwise i do not know what to think) .... just far from being perfect....also sentences like "makes for good shots but not to play" seem only subjective to me. angel is not a newbie... analisis seems a bit "coarse" in this case to say the truth... in matter of material i edited my previous post putting on a couple of images to show what i mean.... the point is always the same...and also my question....do we chose mod for how much they stick on vanilla appearence (in this case i'd understand SRO and the other texture tweak recomended) or we try to have something a bit more realistic and out of the box? again... in both cases nothing changes for me...i'm not kidding i really do not care....i'd just keep doing my things,in my way :) just MY point of view in my usual rude way ....not expecting to change people mind....hope it's all clear, hate to have these misunderstandments for silly things.

I'm not sure I understand at all. nevermind sparrowprince...just my personal medicine against precipitous judgments...zen

i'd keep a deep breath before talking of moon and sun...and a zen pause... anyway... https://www.cepolina.com/photo/nature/mountains/cave/b/cave-stone.jpg primary caves are grainy ,unless we're talking about limestone caves  (secondary) https://i612.photobucket.com/albums/tt206/Monduccio/GrotteSBarbara6.jpg where anyway shapes are way more intricate than bethcrap and they will still be this way. on side note...repeateble pattern...does not mean you have to see it repeated ingame. frozen caves available!! that was the reason of the visit :)

dunnow mate, never worked on flora and stuff like that,aside fron photos  i do not really know where to start, much more probably  blades armor is next...dwarven mace and bow ,whiterun missing files (they're not few .carpets +banners,need lot of work) and first things on windhelm.... anyone agree that windhelm without parallax is a bycicle without a seat?

These textures of yours weren't included in that comparison. That's why I've added them to Testing. :D yep yep....realized after "post reply" button... did not know there was a range of choices to decide from :) sorry

yep is indeed pretty difficult to get even close to memory limit in interiors... files look fine anyway with 2k-1k uncompressed... no reason to upload also a 4k...improvement is not worth the download size...probably i'll add parallax in future...file could get big.eventually will be released  a 2k with 2k  uncompressed normal ...depends on frozen caves, i kinda suspect those ones will give me some headaches. thanks!

imagine.... to understand a post-it i left on top right side of the plasma i use  as monitor i had to ask my wife a translation this morning :/

updated whiterun stuff... fixed the grass mess...lol,added displacement for project parallax users, a couple of new trims (visible mostly in dragonsreach) some work on stairway to dragonsreach, some new wooden parts...like the planks inside tavern (that texture is shared with a LOT of other object...took a bit to find somethig fitting everywhere. i'm quite happy of results so far... fixed the mismatching between city wall and city plaster wall... not perfect but works pretty well. also some work on windows... darkened glow and envmap. another update will contain temple and few missing stuff.

LOL... not indeeed my work but please keep an eye on this mod by frozunswaidon.... i find it very interesting...someone may not like the photorealistic approach but it's tecnically well done ,compact...except roads covers all snow types...i wholeheartly endorsed

that's a mesh problem since instead of a mesh with transparencies beth placed a solid one...and clearly my grass placeholder does not help at all.

That's basically what Starac used to say about other retexture projects ;) files talk, is not a subjective  thing....or me being a dick (well i'm a dick often... and maybe i'm the incarnation of evil..always bitching around textures lol) but...open the files... just that.... improved render ingame is simply the result of beth work with different size...maybe some enhancement (you cannot imagine how seamless textures are improved if you tile em twice or four time....with 0 effort) nmc works for fo3 and new vegas are proper  projects of this kind ...rest is tweak...hate me... but these are the facts :)

eh,,,,right... grass...and grass transparencies... i've uploaded wrong files...kinda placeholder... sorry..the hurry...lately too much real life work and vodka : / oh on side note.... there's no mod to add snow in whiterun area? i'm doing also clouds and got half an idea ... because seriously having snow in bruma and not in whiterun is weird.....

just for curiosity i re-downladed SRO from torrent yesterday...first time i used it did not hit my attention...what i guess is the latest release...with dawnguard 1.6 something like and took a closer look to textures in whiterun folder....damn.... are vanilla textures... all of them :/ no offense for noone but it's not even modded material or retextures stuff....now i understand why is so close to vanilla "spirit"....same files... just bigger... not a single specular changed. why mod is not on nexus anymore btw? if i understand correctly author asked money for vanilla maps? forget i'm going to replace sro anyway ...we're talking about different things....in different languages...in a different universe ... in a different dimension :) before any misunderstandment.... i'm not throwing **** on SRO...is a huge work and clearly author put some effort in it...also it's not a "competitor" basicallly other modders compete with me...and often i do not even realize it....(i compete just for beer or girls or dogs.... not for mods) is just that i saw many users pulling away their hair because SRO is not available on nexus... and honestly i cannot see the reason.... to make an identical mod...u need photoshop and a photoshop action for sharpening and resize... and time...that's all

at least these are retextures.... new ones... not a resize of vanilla ones+photo overlay

https://www.mediafire.com/?77y4soz79gnsrt3 snow 1 https://www.mediafire.com/?7a9d6lkl16knl69 nightsky both in progress and both will be resized clearly

hey sparrowprince :) glad to see you here...awesome works you did! yeah this thing of the road is complicate, i actually thought to make something "roman " with squared stones.. like roads and bridges built by the empire in contrast with mountains and"nature" of nord.... but well meshes does not help at all,....we'll see eventually if some stones can be bigger and rounded with book update. now.... whiterun remake is the next....hope with the weekend. then stones (here's a preview if someone's interested https://www.mediafire.com/?em93a4p54lwhpr9 normals are not complete) or blades armor set (such a fantastic job bethesda on textures and models...worth some tears)

well ...to stick on bethesda ideas is a 2 side coin...a creative limit sadly(i often would make things very different),,,on the other side helps to keep things consistent with the whole game without forcing balance. i try always to use bethesda method and "style" ,is something that i can use or not use in future (i mean there are MANY better styles and methods) but in the meantime i learn this as part of "artist" package... best things come always from crossover and beth method can be part of the "recipe" for future things. point is always the same... more you learn more arrows for your bow. i'm extremelly gratefull to step project (sadly i have not enough time to follow discussions as i wish) , must say that noone ever offered such massive ,well done and well planned guide on any aspect of the game. so indipendently from choices in matter of textures... i thank you for the precious work