z929669

Nice screens ... seeing the effect of this mod on the seemingly redundant books on the shelves has sold me. I needed that kind of clarity to understand that there was actually a lot more variation of books in the game than the vanilla covers indicated. This may even be considered a 'correction' of a vanilla 'shortcoming' (i.e., laziness). If this is a very clean replacement with little concern for downstream compatibility or other issues relating to instability, I could even see this being a candidate for Core ... maybe.

Moved to appropriate forum

Moved to more appropriate forum

To be completely honest this is one of those mods you have to make a playthrough with (or at least play with for a while) to see any difference (I did) and it really adds to the immersion for me it brings me more into the game. OK, then a few more endorsements from staff based on actual game-play, improvement and/or corrections that this mod makes will suit me for inclusion into Extended. I will probably not have the time to give this one a fair shot.

@Kelmych et al Do you happen to know if this is a suitable replacement for Double Cursor Fix? Same author, but it has added functionality and may not be necessary.

Each of the vanilla versions is distinct from one another ... I don't like the letters from this mod at all. The book covers don't add anything really IMO. Is there something broken or undesirable that this mod fixes? Perhaps it will be good for Extended. I have yet to play with it though. The screens don't really sell the mod for me though.

Agree, but I think that the mesh 'fixes' are much worse than the blown-up models in that the wrinkly-mountain look is much more prevalent than the stretched-rock look. Brumbek needs to go in and fix the meshes himself I think (or someone that will do more than UV remapping). I'd like to see Hein create a version of his mod using the vanilla base meshes ... modified to his purposes of course. Even with ENB, I would steer clear of those NS and BR&M meshes. The mountains don't really pop so much anyway. The parallax mostly affects the smaller objects (as Hein implies in his parallax modder's guide)

Without mesh replacements, it is essentially AOF, but I'll include it if I still have that example.I'm talking about just the mod in it's entirety...even it comes coupled with the mesh improvements in it's install package. Did you just include the texture in the "without fixes" or did you also include any meshes the mods came with?"Without fixes" looks at only texture replacements and includes no meshes derived from NS or BR&M. I included Rocking Stones textures in the compare right after AOF (4th or 5th image in each set I think). It is basically a slightly enhanced AOF.

Without mesh replacements, it is essentially AOF, but I'll include it if I still have that example.

And that only goes as far as the current version, as soon as you update to another version all those features might not work for you anymore and you have to start all over.... and thus is the reason I can be of no help with Boris' handiwork. I am sort of just waiting around until he begins using integers in his versions :P

SMIM is present, as it only affects a small portion of the mountain meshes, and as I suspected, the SMIM'd UV maps aren't all screwy in an attempt to squish the entire texture onto the models. These exclude No Stretching and the more moderate Better Rocks & Mountains. I also really like Alternative Mountains; however, some of the texture mapping looks really bad. You can notice it mostly in some of the background rocks, but the effect is to turn an otherwise nice rock into a sort of ringed popsicle. When I noticed this happening to some of my favorite rocks, it killed this mod for me.

I am clearing all votes, since the poll is not accurately reflecting anything right now. Please recast your vote according to the new question. Preference is entirely subjective, and the poll results do not determine what we will use in STEP. We simply want to understand what the community likes in the event that we cannot decide between two or more options.

For those interested, the OP has been updated with a comprehensive compare of mountain retextures and other modifiers (snow, meshes). For now, I think that it is clear that Vanilla HD wins out as the STEP:Core replacer, as the detail is truly a vanilla HD retex, and I think it looks great. The mod also provides uncompressed textures, so the 2k normals can be reduced to 1k without compression for a very nice performance-quality compromise. For STEP:Extended, it is another matter, and we are open to input. However, I think that the serious contenders are Ewis v1/v4, AOF, and Bigger & Boulder. If we for some reason want to include the mesh fixes, then Rocking Stones becomes a serious contender (I personally don't like the UV remapping of the 'fixed' mountain meshes and think that some of the mountain meshes and rocks need SMIM'd proper and better UV mapping to reduce wrinkling whilst adding detail).

I have always preferred SkyRealism for its customizeability

WOW ... Ewis looks like a fantastic alternative. I will add this to the compare as well. Also, SMIM half-sized and ultra-sized variants are only textures, not meshes... and they have very little impact in my experience.

I hear game developers everywhere screaming. ;) I love Brumbek and Hein, but the rocks being smoothed just isn't what I would call improved. I bet a lot of future games will just use tesslelation up close, but for now I made this: The rock I made there took about 10 seconds and has about the same poly count as some of the smaller vanilla rocks. After one smooth there are definite diminishing returns. I think Bethesda did a good job on the meshes, but the person(s) who did the UVs did a really poor job. To my knowledge, all no strecthing does is scale the UVs and doesn't technically improve them (I did this with my wet rocks). That would require re-uving them. I don't think SMIM does this either, but I could be wrong. No sure about RS either because I haven't had a look, but are the UVs re-done/moved tech? This is the affirmation I was seeking. I did not fully understand the "UV" mapping until I read the wiki article. Now I see that "UV" has noting at all to do with light ... and is simply "XY" that would otherwise be redundant with the 3D coordinates. Thinking about this as a problem of fitting a 2D object onto a 3D model, it becomes clearer to me what causes 'wrinkly' or 'pinched' rocks in some cases: The coordinate mapping of the 2D texture onto the 3D object in No Stretching may be 'fixing' the stretched parts of the texture (like at the equator in the following spheres), but in doing so, the textures are getting condensed or 'squished' at parts of models analogous to the poles of the spheres. In the case of the image below, I believe that the texture coordinates are not scaled to the polygon count of the model (the checkers span polygons in both cases, but the second sphere shrinks the checkers at the poles and stretches the ones at the equator, while the first tiles the checkers). In No Stretching, I believe that the X-Y coordinates of the flat image are scaled to the polygon count of the image ... this could explain why many of the No Stretching textures look 'squished' (a good analog might be to cinch down a 5 cm diameter circle of skin on the back of your hand into 3 cm ... or just push your skin together and watch the wrinkles come). I agree that the higher poly count may not always be necessary, since it tends to smooth things (otherwise, it is just a waste of info) but that the real culprit may be the UV mapping of No Stretching ... that mod goes too far in the other direction: Vanilla spanned to many polygons per unit of texture, and NS spans too few in many cases (or simply scaled everything linearly rather than proportionately to the 3D space). This may be better demonstrated in the following image: Read about mapping a globe in a 2D image for even more 'aha' moments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection Therefore, I am thinking that we should either NOT use No Stretching, or we should only use that mod for convex and flat objects ... concave objects with a lot of 'pinching' like mountains will just get too 'squished'. My guess is that Brumbek has accounted for this. By now, he may already have covered the UV maps of rocks that really had an issue before, and NS may just be redundant and overkill. I will test this evening and post a compare of the various mountain mesh combinations in relation to AOF textures and then redo (again!) the mountain retex compares against the ideal mesh complement. This may change the results quite a bit, eh?

Alas, I concede tech. You are correct, and I spoke too soon. Good post with the nif images, too. I have done my own tedious compare of rocks using both vanilla and RS&M both with and without any mesh fixes. The results are mixed (link below). First, I agree that it is aparent that the RS&M meshes look more like modifications of SMIM/No Stretching textures ... some look better and some not, IMO, but that is nitpicking. Second, my screens do show that RS&M generally looks better in game with its own meshes than with the fixed ones (with one or two exceptions). Lastly, I now realize that my "issues" with the RS&M meshes are really issues that I seem to have with the NS/SMIM rock meshes! I happen to think that the vanilla meshes work best for most of the rock/mountain textures!! There are a few exceptions with certain rocks scattered throughout Skyrim here and there, but I cannot identify any of them in these screenshots. I know that they exist, because I have seen a few examples in game. I am thinking that the No Stretching mountain meshes in particular actually don't work well with any of the mountain textures. I am not expert on meshes, but I think that this is not so much the fault of the meshes having a higher polygon count as it is that the mesh-texture mapping is an issue. I'll defer to the mesh-texture experts out there on this, but I think that we need to take a serious look at the behavior of disorganized, natural-object meshes' interaction with their textures. Organized objects like plates, cups, animals, arrows, posts, walls, etc are a simpler matter to construct I think than more random patterns like rocks ... in fact, rocks are some of the most difficult objects to draw and craft artistically, because there is not obvious pattern to follow. I now think that the mesh reworking of rocks and mountains suffers such shortcomings. Notice how wrinkly and dimply the rocks from all of these compares look against the mesh replacements. My next project will be to post the mountain compares less the no stretching textures, just to see if we like them better (I like the vanilla without No Stretching much more than with!) Check out the gallery and judge for yourself. The following gallery examines all compares against an identical Core background. Vanilla (no mesh fixes) / Vanilla (mesh fixes) / RS&N (native meshes) / RS&M (mesh fixes) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0tmh7lfmek85p2s/4BWE94xLxS ... to clarify, I like the meshes in the very first screen of each set best, but the textures of RS&M best. @Hein84 Sorry to stir the pot so much around your mod and to doubt your changes ... and I see now that there is no stretching of your mod's textures ... only my mind was stretching :facepalm:

This logic is incorrect. Where the meshes do not change rather likely means that No Stretching did not apply in the first place ;) Definitely not proof that the NS meshes were used where 2 & 3 match. See my comment following about SMIM. Logic is sound and I purposefully didn't include SMIM to put to rest that No Stretching meshes aren't being used when the author himself states they are. You're essentially saying Hein84 is lying by saying they're not. :confused: Wrong again padawan, nobody is either explicitly or essentially accusing anyone of "lying" ... don't be dramatic Therefore, I checked it out myself, and in fact, they are. Both screen shots and NifSkope investigations prove this. I'll circle the ares in Photoshop if need be. There are areas in vanilla that are changed by NS. Uninstall NS and just use Rocking Stones, and these areas (meshes) remained the same as if NS was install. This is proof that RS is using the NS meshes. Further investigation using NifSkope (just to overkill it) proved most the meshes identical to NS. For your information, Hein also said that he sourced from No Stretching AND SMIM, so you will need to go back and add in SMIM ... or this compare of yours reveals an unknow degree of relevant information ;) Tech, your pages aren't even loading, so I am guessing that it will be quite awhile. Also, you forgot SMIM. Several of the rock textures we are looking at are affected by SMIM, and SMIM overwrites No Stretching in our load order ... you will need NS + SMIM for an analogous compare in order to reproduce the effects I am referring to ;) Also, I did use the No Stretching and SMIM meshes in my vanilla compares in the OP, and only RS&M replaces the meshes, so RS&M has changed some things that I think the mesh replacements fixed quite nicely, and some of these changes are clearly more close to the original vanilla state These are the Meshes that RS&M uses, that I propose should be overwritten by SMIM: ... that is quite a lot of material, although I am not certain which portions of our screens they correspond to. EDIT: Tech, please remove the PNG from the post and simply provide a link to your gallery as I have done in the OP. These are too unwieldy for a forum post. TIA Check again, I fixed the links. I don't know how to create a gallery in Dropbox. Every time I try to create an album is says there are no pictures found (but they're clearly there in the folder). Right click on the folder and click on "Share link" or you can choose to share the folder link from the web as well) I'll take some compares with SMIM installed as well to see if anything changes.

This is likely just part of the server upgrade the Nexus is doing. It makes sense that they would ensure Premium server access at all times for donating members. It costs to do a seamless transition of all of those data.

This logic is incorrect. Where the meshes do not change rather likely means that No Stretching did not apply in the first place ;) Definitely not proof that the NS meshes were used where 2 & 3 match. See my comment following about SMIM. Tech, your pages aren't even loading, so I am guessing that it will be quite awhile. (see below) Also, you forgot SMIM. Several of the rock textures we are looking at are affected by SMIM, and SMIM overwrites No Stretching in our load order ... you will need NS + SMIM for an analogous compare in order to reproduce the effects I am referring to ;) Also, I did use the No Stretching and SMIM meshes in my vanilla compares in the OP, and only RS&M replaces the meshes, so RS&M has changed some things that I think the mesh replacements fixed quite nicely, and some of these changes are clearly more close to the original vanilla state These are the Meshes that RS&M uses, that I propose should be overwritten by SMIM: ... that is quite a lot of material, although I am not certain which portions of our screens they correspond to. EDIT: Tech, please remove the PNG from the post and simply provide a link to your gallery as I have done in the OP. These are too unwieldy for a forum post. TIA

OP updated with latest compares from B&B (fourth image in each set) I am really liking the latest efforts from Sparrow. Looking at all of these textures, I must say that I find it difficult to choose between Alternative Mountains, Bigger & Boulder, Rocking Stones and AOF. Alternative Mountains - Definitely the best "vanilla-strict" enhancement. It adds much more detail to close-up rocks and looks almost exactly like vanilla far away. A bit more noise and bump, but all-in-all, a great vanilla replacement. Bigger & Boulder - A very realistic igneous rock retex. It looks fantastic close up. My only nits at this point are that I'd like to see just a tiny sprinkle of yellow-green in the color maps to warm them up just a bit. Also, there are some areas where I can still see some dimpling breaking up otherwise straight edges of the rock facets ... again, these are very minor nits that I am calling out since the author is watching :P Superior Rocks - Not a bad replacer, but it is not quite in the same league as these others, IMO. Rocking Stones - I pretty much hold this one in very high regard. My only nits are that the meshes conflict with some of the well-known mesh replacement fixes and some of the distant textures lose a bit of detail ... not sure if this is an effect of the parallax. Also, I admit that these are not ENB compares, and that this mod might be a significant improvement with ENB; however, that is beyond scope. AOF - It is currently STEP:Core, and I am not sure it will or should remain so. It always has been the best vanilla mountain retex ... until now? I am really not sure, but I am favoring Alternative mountains for Core just slightly at this very moment ... but who knows in one or two minutes?

Well, B&B technically should be below Water (Sparrow can confirm the ideal placement, but it says to overwrite Water and other conflicts): My curreent package list: Please use the saves I created. Mine are clean saves based on a clean character, and my saves represent 7 locations in different regions of Skyrim, capturing the various landscapes. This way we have a direct compare. Savegames are linked in the OP What mod are active in your "vanilla" clean saves? Whenever I've ever used your "vanilla" saves that you've uploaded, I also end up getting the "missing content" warning before loading them from my vanilla profile. My vanilla profile in only the vanilla game files with the addition of the Unofficial Patches. Anything more and it wouldn't be a vanilla game. I do use Immersive HUD because it makes taking screenshots a lot easier, but if I upload a save I always clean it from having iHUD present so it's pure vanilla. I am testing against the proposed core background ... see the MT restricted thread for details I went ahead and further examined the other install options for RS&M, and it looks like all meshes are the same as the ones I had used in the original compare (at least with respect to stretching if not parallax). OK, here is the problem (and I hope that someone else at least acknowledges that this is indeed a problem o_O ) Left image is RS&M Classic Gray with its own meshes ... wow, look at that stretched and unwieldy textures! Right image is same but with No Stretching & SMIM meshes ... FIXED! I'll say it again: Unless we overwrite the RS&M meshes with those from No Stretching and SMIM, the mountain textures are a backslide to the unfixed vanilla meshes. This is a problem. Anyone disagree with my assessment? In all honesty, I don't see any stretching. I even looked at them in full size outside of the gallery and still could see any. I see some vertical meshes and have been flipped to horizontal meshes in the "fixed" version; however, whether vertical of horizontal they still appear to be the same quality just with a different orientation. The other changes between the two versions also don't appear to be stretching to me. Just different meshes. Perhaps it's the screens or the distance, but I honestly don't see anything that I would call stretching. I will test in my own setup to confirm or debunk. Where in the Core load order are you placing Rocking Stones?To be honest, RS&M shows even less stretching than No Stretching Meshes, during editing the UV-maps I upscaled some of them slightly ;)Just saying that the vertical striations in the center rocks look stretched out compared to their horizontal counterparts. Also, in every screen that I see a difference between your mesh-texture mappings and those used against SMIM and NS, the proportions and orientations on the latter look more correct. In the example above, the vertical striations do not contrast properly with the adjacent textures. The 'fixed' versions really do though. Also, wherever the two differ that I have looked, your texture proportions are a match to the original vanilla proportions ... I have looked at a lot of texture compares against vanilla unfixed meshes, and while I love your textures, I would much rather wrap them around the NS/SMIM meshes. They are definitely different as the screens themselves show I am no expert on the mechanics benind meshes by any means ... just observing some effects and applying some logic.

lol. Those are stretched textures, and the only reason you can't see it is because they are high res. Load up that screen in vanilla, and you will see what I mean ... Sparrow, could you help me out here? Anyway, orientation of the texture is important, and if you use your arrow keys to flip back and forth quickly between the two (do it a lot if you have to), you will notice that MOST of the rocks in that screen change, and the proportions are much better in the 'fixed' version ....

OP gallery updated. I dropped several screens that are obviously never going to make it. I'll add Sparrow's new optional normal once he is done with it.