ACCEPTED DROPS (by ramccoid)

[Octopuss]

Let's try to make it simple (because I am not even sure what am I talking about):

Whatever effect it is in the Ragged Flagon, it looks awesome and I wouldn't change it (well, maybe like 10% decrease of the size of the drops but that's nitpicking).

The water dropping from the above in the bear cave in Helgen is too dense in v3, but the lighting effect is sort of nice. The density feels just about right in the vanilla game and possibly in v2, but it looks like grey lines.

[TechAngel85]

Allow me to interject my point of view here...

 

When I evaluate a mod, especially mods like this, I compare it to real life. Why? Because most often the more "natural" the mod feels the better it fits into the game. Mods like this should be "noticeable" in my opinion. They should enhance and add to the ambiance of the scene. If you have drops that are unnaturally big, then they're going to catch your attention and break your immersion. For this reason, STEP is currently recommending v1. The effect is a good improvement over vanilla; however, that v1 does break your immersion one bit. The effect is beautiful if you stop to take a look, but other than that it simply enhances the ambiance.

 

V2 went too far, imo. The drops are far too noticeable and catch far too much light. In some cases they look like white streaks rain down the screen. This is not desirable for enhancing the ambiance of caves, mines, and other places that are suppose to be dimly lit in the first place. Vanilla lighting in these place is FAR to bright in the first place so I don't want anything that is going to add to that distraction.

 

V3 I have not had a chance to look at yet. I do want to say, that there is such a thing as "over designing". Imo, the mod could have stopped with V1 and been a success. I would ask that you keep V1 available for STEP.

[ramccoid]

Sorry, my friend, I wasn't trying to influence your decision and thanks very much for even considering it, it's very much appreciated. It's just that, when Octopuss was on the Nexus, I always sort his valuable advice on improving my mods and that's all I'm doing now, nothing more, nothing less.

 

I haven't made the droplets any larger, they are all exactly the same size through each version. Below is a comparison image of each version, so you can see what the differences are between each droplet but the sizes are the same. What we were talking about was a effect I first added into version 2 and developed a bit more in version 3 and Octopuss was simply giving me his honest opinion, as always, on it.

 

I do know about over designing but I do enjoy doing this stuff and yes you're right, sometimes I do go overboard on a few versions but I get there in the end with the invaluable advice I get from the Nexus community and forums, as this one.

 

So once again, I apologise my friend, if I was giving the wrong impression.

 

EDIT: Sorry, yes I will put version 1 back in the optional section for you.

 

Edited April 8, 2015 by ramccoid

[TechAngel85]

Version 2 texture does look nice in that compare, but when I viewed them in game they seemed to "noticeable". V3 doesn't look transparent enough for a water drop, imo. I will retest though in a few additional locations.

[ramccoid]

Version 2 is not that much different from version 1 alt. It is the same texture but I improved the streak of light along the side, tidied it up and made it look more natural. Version 3, is still just a advancement on version 1 alt but after studying droplets from images for a while, I discovered that the light appears to be refracted to the bottom, in most cases, giving a opaque look to it which is what I tried to achieve, with it.

 

 

EDIT: If you decide which droplet you prefer, I could always put that version's droplet texture up as a optional because they'll work with any version I'll produce. I have no intentions to alter the mesh any further because I'm totally satisfied with it and I doubt that I will do anymore work on the droplets themselves, just the other effects included in the mod.

Edited April 8, 2015 by ramccoid

[TechAngel85]

Do you mind if I ask what specific mesh edits you have done? Were they just simply match the shape of the drop?

[ramccoid]

The droplets didn't need matching to the shape because they work of a atlas texture. It's doesn't matter what shape you use, as long as it stays within it's section of the texture which in this case is a 4x2 grid giving eight different droplets in total. This also means that the texture size being displayed is only one eighth of the actual resolution. So if you used the x2048 version, it's really just displaying at x512, the x1024 version displays at x256 and so on. The mesh then controls which section to display at a time, in this case it picks randomly a droplet from the eight to show for each time one falls. if you look carefully at the animation, you'll see fat and thin and short droplets, they are not all the same but this is to stop the whole effect from looking like continuous lines, dropping from the ceilings and gives the impression of individuality and separation to them to a certain extent. The changes to the mesh, as far as I can recall with dealing with so many, are only simple tweaking of lighting, colour and redirection of the texture to eliminate conflicts with other completely different effects which share the default texture. A common practice by Bethesda.

[Harpalus]

As I mentioned on the SNOW mod page, ramccoid's mods are all hidden with a message that implies they won't be coming back up again. ("I've had enough".) Posting this here because it may have to be removed from STEP now. (Unfortunate. I like this texture.)

Edited April 29, 2015 by Harpalus

[hishutup]

*sigh*

I hate when authors outright remove their content but I believe I know why he did.

Theres this site that is uploading mods like it is his own and ramccoid was getting frustrated with it.

 

I dont see why authors do this, principle maybe...

You pretty much just let the fool take your content and then become the soul provider of said content.

People are not going to discontinue to use your content and why would they?

[Neovalen]

That blows, he had great work. :(

[mjmiller704]

Since this mod can no longer be obtained, what is the current recommendation? Can it be safely skipped for now? 

[TechAngel85]

Yes, skip it for now.

[DoubleYou]

Nuts! I hope I still have a copy of Webs Extended.

[Neovalen]

Another author down, this does not look good.

 

Hopefully he will come back eventually.

[DoubleYou]

Well, sadly I guess we must drop this mod. You can still find it on the web, but we probably can't use it.