SKYRIMLE Bigger and Boulder - Mountain and Wet Rock Customization (by SparrowPrince)

[Brumbek]

Hi everyone,

 

I suppose I'll chime in with my thoughts. All this rock talk does intrigue me. I sure wish I had more time to fix everything. What really needs to happen for things to be done right is custom textures need to be made for each rock. This is what professionals would have done (apologies Bethesda). The way it is now, Bethesda is trying to fit two rock textures onto all the 30+ main rocks/mountains in the game. This is just plain sloppy and results in inevitable texture seams.

 

Now...the problem with doing custom textures for each rock is it totally breaks compatibility with all the rock texture replacers. Hence, I've held off on doing much rock work on SMIM. I have done minor UV fixes and I do continue to add more UV fixes as I play and spot errors. If I were to truly "fix" the rocks, I would have to pick one "ultimate" or best rock texture mod and use that as a base for my texture work. Again, everyone would then be forced to use my textures or just not use SMIM's rocks.

 

So I need to figure out what is the most liked rock texture. I like Ewis Alternative Rock Textures quite a bit. I've considered using that as a base. SparrowPrince's Bigger and Boulder is great for hiding the seams, but it loses too much detail and is too sharp/grainy for my tastes, no offense SparrowPrince!

 

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. As z929669 notes, I could merely do a much more extensive fix-up of the existing rock UV mapping to ensure no stretching horizontally or vertically. I suppose I should do this...it is just so tedious and again doesn't fix the ugly texture seams.

 

Anyway, sorry for long post. I'm honestly too busy right now to fix much else on the rocks. I'll be gone till mid-October on vacation. Feel free to respond with your thoughts and perhaps in October or November I can dedicate serious time to improving the mountains and rocks. Bethesda really just needs to hire me so I can devote 3 months full time to fixing all this, ha! Thanks for your interest and thoughts.

[MontyMM]

Bethesda really just needs to hire me so I can devote 3 months full time to fixing all this, ha! Thanks for your interest and thoughts.

 

LOL, and quite right too!  They could take SP and Cabal while they're hiring!

 

If you're up for it, I think we might be able to come to some critical agreement on a 'best of breed' rock retexture, upon which you could base your proper fix.  I would also support EWIS as a solid choice in this regard.

[Aiyen]

Guess ultimately it does not really matter much which texture is used a a base. After the mesh are completed then new textures will be made regardless.

The best thing is just to have something that is sorta good to start from, then perfect it afterwards when it is all visible ingame with the lighting applied as well.

[EssArrBee]

Well, then someone is going to have to make quite a few new textures. Maybe we can have colors other than gray and grayer for rocks. Just speaking as someone who sees mountains from their back yard, they look like red, gray, about 20 shades of brown, and even some purple (Jesus Marie!).

 

I know Pannonian was working on something like that, but he hasn't been around in a while.

[z929669]

Hi everyone,

 

I suppose I'll chime in with my thoughts. All this rock talk does intrigue me. I sure wish I had more time to fix everything. What really needs to happen for things to be done right is custom textures need to be made for each rock. This is what professionals would have done (apologies Bethesda). The way it is now, Bethesda is trying to fit two rock textures onto all the 30+ main rocks/mountains in the game. This is just plain sloppy and results in inevitable texture seams.

 

Now...the problem with doing custom textures for each rock is it totally breaks compatibility with all the rock texture replacers. Hence, I've held off on doing much rock work on SMIM. I have done minor UV fixes and I do continue to add more UV fixes as I play and spot errors. If I were to truly "fix" the rocks, I would have to pick one "ultimate" or best rock texture mod and use that as a base for my texture work. Again, everyone would then be forced to use my textures or just not use SMIM's rocks.

 

So I need to figure out what is the most liked rock texture. I like Ewis Alternative Rock Textures quite a bit. I've considered using that as a base. SparrowPrince's Bigger and Boulder is great for hiding the seams, but it loses too much detail and is too sharp/grainy for my tastes, no offense SparrowPrince!

 

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. As z929669 notes, I could merely do a much more extensive fix-up of the existing rock UV mapping to ensure no stretching horizontally or vertically. I suppose I should do this...it is just so tedious and again doesn't fix the ugly texture seams.

 

Anyway, sorry for long post. I'm honestly too busy right now to fix much else on the rocks. I'll be gone till mid-October on vacation. Feel free to respond with your thoughts and perhaps in October or November I can dedicate serious time to improving the mountains and rocks. Bethesda really just needs to hire me so I can devote 3 months full time to fixing all this, ha! Thanks for your interest and thoughts.

Thanks for stopping by ;)

 

I agree with your approach (as if that is any validation), and agree that rock texture reuse is a problem. I was wondering about the necessity of creating asymmetrical textures to work with each of the rock meshes once they were all made consistently. Fixing the mountains and rocks is one of the really big overhauls yet to be done, IMO.

 

Regarding textures, we have an extensive gallery in the OP, so feel free to use this in order to determine a texture base for creating the custom textures you require. I think that the best texture bases could be derived from mountainslab01 and/or montainslab02. Given my penchant for vanilla artistry, I would consider using Vanilla HD Rocks (29802). This author (pannonian) has uncompressed 4k source textures on that mod site, and they are an accurate enhancement of the vanilla basalt-granite-like morph of the vanilla rocks. For a more granite-like appearance, I think that AOF Detailed Mountians (4805) are well respected and widely used. I also agree that Ewis textures are dazzling (I think v1 is his best version for compatibility with Skyrim artistry). However, you can get a bit creative and perhaps use two sources and apply them to the location of the main mountain ranges.

 

Whatever you choose, I hope that the community will expound upon the variety based upon your initial choice (another reason to honor the vanilla-like look).

 

Let us know what we can do to help out!

[WilliamImm]

By the way, Brumbek, although this isn't completely related, I sent you a PM on the Nexus for a personal mod request of mine.

 

Sent from my Optimus G using Tapatalk 2

[TechAngel85]

I love the plan of completely overhauling the rocks; even if that meant mod authors would be required to use your mesh fixes as a base or not use that option in SMIM. The benefit of having proper mountain and rock meshes far outweighs the authors having to make a SMIM compatible version. SMIM has become a "no-brainer" when modding so any reputable mod author making these texture would consider your improvements when making their textures, I would hope anyway.

[torminater]

That's right. You make those rock textures, and renowned texture artists will use them as a base to create even better ones ;-)

[Guest]

Bethesda really just needs to hire me so I can devote 3 months full time to fixing all this' date=' ha! Thanks for your interest and thoughts.[/quote']

LOL' date=' and quite right too!  They could take SP and Cabal while they're hiring!

 

If you're up for it, I think we might be able to come to some critical agreement on a 'best of breed' rock retexture, upon which you could base your proper fix.  I would also support EWIS as a solid choice in this regard.[/quote']

Brumsplak you big head! :D He's not wrong though, but like a lot of companies, they don't care for these bugs they call "minor". There's already that much work and the schedules are that tight that it's virtually impossible. I got told quite a few times: "We will have to leave this as it can be patched later." I can honestly say that it's not the developers fault, especially when they are churning out asset after asset. If it's not a game-blocker then it's not considered a bug and priority to fix it is VERY low.

 

I'm not sure about them hiring me either. :p The game would be like playing a magic mushroom related nightmare it would be that crazy. Imagine all the glowing mudcrabs and crazy water trolls you would have to fight off. ;) I could say though that if I were in charge of the quests there would never be a dull moment.

[TechAngel85]

Did we ever have a consensus on the rocks and mountain textures? Personally, I've been playing with Alternative Mountains for a good while and prefer it over all the others that have been in testing. It's vanilla friendly without being exactly vanilla.

[z929669]

Did we ever have a consensus on the rocks and mountain textures? Personally' date=' I've been playing with Alternative Mountains for a good while and prefer it over all the others that have been in testing. It's vanilla friendly without being exactly vanilla.[/quote']

I think Alt Mountains has some serious issues though with certain models. The ones that work are fantastic, but the ones that don't a are a deal breaker IMO. You will notice that there are textures in each scene for Alt Mountains in the OP where some textures are UV mapped incorrectly on some models at right angles to where they should be.

 

Vanilla HD is the best Core replacer for mountains at this time, as that one is really an HD revamp of the vanilla textures, and the difference is apparent and quite good, IMO

[TechAngel85]

I understand what you're saying; however, I never notice this while actually gaming because I rarely stop to stare at the rocks. lol. The benefit of the extra detail in Alt Mountains is well worth it; however, for Core/STEP I can settle with Vanilla HD. I'll be using Alt Mountains in my personal setup.

[z929669]

I understand what you're saying; however' date=' I never notice this while actually gaming because I rarely stop to stare at the rocks. lol. The benefit of the extra detail in Alt Mountains is well worth it; however, for Core/STEP I can settle with Vanilla HD. I'll be using Alt Mountains in my personal setup.[/quote']

Totally understand your POV, but since an aspect of AM is pretty broken, I don't think it makes sense to use elsewhere either ... unless the author could fix the offending UV maps. I am assuming that this is a mistake anyway.

 

I'd like to officially recommend Vanilla HD for Core though. We'll need a mod thread and wiki mod.

[TechAngel85]

I'm game for that.

[MontyMM]

I think we know enough to settle on Vanilla HD as a reasonable choice for core. It's good that we're getting more key pieces locked in.