Puddles in Windhelm

[rootsrat]

The quality of water puddles on the ground in Windhelm market is terrible. They are very pixelated and look very bad. Has anyone else experienced that? The only texture mods I use are STEP 2.2.1 ones. I am at work now so unable to produce screenshots, but I'll post them later on when I'm back home. They DO look bad though, to the point, that if someone else had the same problem, they would know definitely what I'm talking about.

[PCG4m3r]

So far so good look forward to seeing more results.

Thanks Neo. I really appreciate that! I was hoping maybe you'll consider it for SR if I was to do a good enough job on the textures. :D

 

For now, I updated my mod and added an optional file to hide the low res puddles everywhere else in the game, if anyone is interested. The locations are listed in the version info and I believe those are the only places those decals appear from what I can tell in the CK. I changed the title to "Ugly Low Res Puddles Be Gone" too.

[rootsrat]

Great job mate, I'll skip your mod for now, but I'm anxiously awaiting the retextures!

 

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[Neovalen]

I'm going to wait for the textures myself as well.

[torminater]

I've had a long and very tiring chat with beth support and they said that they handed it over to the developers who might release another update/texture pack fixing this issue...

[PCG4m3r]

I've had a long and very tiring chat with beth support and they said that they handed it over to the developers who might release another update/texture pack fixing this issue...

Thanks for doing that torminater. Another texture pack would be great and hope they do fix those. Appreciate it. :)

[Farlo]

I've had a long and very tiring chat with beth support and they said that they handed it over to the developers who might release another update/texture pack fixing this issue...

That would be awesome of them, I'm not holding my breath though :P

[torminater]

you'ld die trying...

[PCG4m3r]

I created a new mod that is an improvement over my first one:

Skyrim Improved Puddles - SIP - WIP BETA

 

I started from scratch with a new plugin for that one. The specific changes I made are listed in the Description page. Essentially I made the puddles ice instead of water in Windhelm and they are separate textures/objects to keep them distinct from all other puddles, which will look more like water. I also fixed some problems I found with puddles in game as I was going through the CK. The textures still need MUCH improvement (I'm new at this), but it's a start. :)

 

Also, I added some step-by-step details in the mod's Posts section, identifying how you can see some of the other before/after changes I made in game.

[rootsrat]

Now, this looks really good! I'm definitely downloading it when I get back home!

[PCG4m3r]

Now this looks really good! I'm definitely downloading it when I get back home!

Thanks rootsrat! :D

 

I'd be curious to know what you think about it after you've had a look in game, not just the ice textures, but how I fixed some of the other problems mentioned in the Description and sticky in the Posts section.

 

For the ice, I'm trying to figure out how to make it look like real ice. Currently it looks like a shiny, bumpy texture of some kind and from a distance it's not bad, but up close, to me it still doesn't look good. More work to do! ...:)

 

If you find any issues with the changes, let me know. After the textures look better, I may try to expand and fix other areas that could use some puddle treatment, like a puddle overhaul! LOL

[rootsrat]

Puddle overhaul 

[Farlo]

If you guys want this added to STEP, go ahead and make a thread for it, I'd definitely like to see those ugly puddles go.

[Brumbek]

Welcome Brumbek! I think I speak for most, if not all on the forum, that your SMIM mod is one of the best and an absolute essential mod to make Skyrim look better! Thank you so much for all your hard work. :)

 

I may post a mod on the Nexus later (my first mod! :)) per torminater's suggestion. If these ever get fixed by SMIM or USKP, I'll remove the mod.

Thanks!

 

I finally got around to making my version. Basically, I disabled all 34 decal puddles the game uses and replaced them all with the real water puddles the game uses 100 other places in the game. They should have never used these ugly decal puddles. As PCG4m3r has no doubt found out, you can't seem to fix the texture on the decals...even with very high quality textures the decals look terrible in-game.

 

So...real puddles was the only proper solution, IMO.

 

Here is an archive with my .esp and screenshots comparing. (ESP is perfectly clean.)

 

Before

After

 

Before

After

 

Anyone is free to modify and improve what I've done. I've check out half of the ten locations in-game and they all look great with the real puddles. I will mention to SparrowPrince he should include this in WATER.

 

PCG4m3r: Feel free to use my .esp or incorporate into your mod...more could be done like more nuanced placing of puddles...anyway. Thanks to all for the info about this issue.

[MontyMM]

Good work - thanks guys. Those puddles looked like they'd escaped from Doom 2.

[PCG4m3r]

Welcome Brumbek! I think I speak for most, if not all on the forum, that your SMIM mod is one of the best and an absolute essential mod to make Skyrim look better! Thank you so much for all your hard work. :)

 

I may post a mod on the Nexus later (my first mod! :)) per torminater's suggestion. If these ever get fixed by SMIM or USKP, I'll remove the mod.

Thanks!

 

I finally got around to making my version. Basically, I disabled all 34 decal puddles the game uses and replaced them all with the real water puddles the game uses 100 other places in the game. They should have never used these ugly decal puddles. As PCG4m3r has no doubt found out, you can't seem to fix the texture on the decals...even with very high quality textures the decals look terrible in-game.

 

So...real puddles was the only proper solution, IMO.

 

Here is an archive with my .esp and screenshots comparing. (ESP is perfectly clean.)

 

Before

After

 

Before

After

 

Anyone is free to modify and improve what I've done. I've check out half of the ten locations in-game and they all look great with the real puddles. I will mention to SparrowPrince he should include this in WATER.

 

PCG4m3r: Feel free to use my .esp or incorporate into your mod...more could be done like more nuanced placing of puddles...anyway. Thanks to all for the info about this issue.

Brumbek, thank you so much kind sir! :D

 

I loaded up your ESP and those WaterPuddle* objects definitely look better than the puddle decals. I really appreciate you allowing me to use that in my mod. Would you mind if I combined your edits and my edits into a single ESP, just so anyone downloading doesn't have to load 2 separate plugins? I would of course give you full credit for your edits.

 

IMO, I think the Windhelm area may be the only place where moving water puddles would look better as ice, which is what I've tried to do in my mod. So that may be the only change I personally would make. I'm getting much closer to what I envisioned for the ice and here is an in-progress sample, but still needs some work:

 

Windhelm Ice Decal

 

That is actually a new decal I created and so far I'm only working on a large version at this time. I'll also create some medium and small versions that have a slightly different look, so these can be placed anywhere and I think adds to the realism that Windhelm is a cold/icy place.  

 

The problem with the vanilla decals, for those who weren't aware, is that not only are they static images, there are four in a single 512x512 DDS (4 quadrants essentially each with a different puddle shape). That same image is used for the small, medium, and large DecalPuddle* objects and the game engine randomly picks one of the shapes to spawn when loading the cell. In the case of the large, they are severely stretched because the game varies between 256 and 512 for the size when used in game (i.e. one portion/quadrant of the 512x512 DDS stretched to become 256 or 512 in game). Needless to say, they're ugly! :)

 

Once I finish my ice textures, I'll take your idea of using the WaterPuddle* objects and will incorporate more of those throughout Skyrim, wherever it may make sense.

 

Thanks again for the ESP and your efforts!