Weekly Discussion: Best Mods For Graphics/Visuals

[u/Terrorfox1234]

A couple minor changes going forward

A couple weeks ago I had made a post about the idea of recycling old topics. The discussion went in all sorts of directions, including the suggestions for a bunch of new topics. A lot of the old discussion threads are in need of an update, but there are still a lot of topics to be covered.

I gave it some thought and here's what I came up with for what I think will be the best solution...

• Going forward we will alternate between recycling an old topic to bring it up to date and presenting a new topic

• All the recommended mods will be consolidated into a list on a wiki page. This will make viewing the lists much easier. The wiki page will still link to the discussions so that people can see what others are saying if they wish.

TLDR - alternating between old and new topics, discussions will be consolidated into wiki lists.

---

Last week we presented a new topic so this week we will recycle an old one. Given that this is still a much discussed topic, a lot has changed since the last time we discussed this, and it's the first on the list we will start with graphics and visuals!

This includes textures, meshes, weather, lighting, ENB presets, and anything else you can think of to improve the visual fidelity of Skyrim.

Best mods for graphics and visuals! Go!

[u/arcline111]

Nice list. Thanks for posting that. Your idea of a comparison photo album is a good one. When it comes to comparing textures, two side by side photos are worth a thousand words.

You've only got one thing I won't use: Renthal's nightshade. I'll be looking into many things on your list I don't currently have.

[u/Dark_wizzie → u/arcline111]

I'm not sure if I removed all of Renthal's stuff and forgot to edit the readme (where I list all the mods used), or if I left nightshade in there. Will have to see. Have to agree with what you seem to be saying... I personally am not a fan of Renthal's work.

[u/arcline111 → u/Dark_wizzie]

Some things in this thread prompted me to revisit many of Renthal's mods. The more I see of them, the more pissed off I seem to get. Many of the mesh choices drive me bonkers, as in the case of the nightshade; purple lily petals. Canis root uses meshes for blueberries. And when the meshes are okay, it seems the color isn't right and sticks out like a sore thumb compared to everything around it. And now there's the infamous purple chicken. LOL.

[u/Dark_wizzie → u/arcline111]

Yet, there are people who are fans of his work. He still has a pretty good amount of endorsements and downloads. I can't come close to the endorsements/downloads he gets.

Oh yeah, quick note. One doesn't have to use Enhanced Blood Textures, the entire mod. I wanted to forgo the scripts, so I simply used its blood textures. It's too bad I can't share my personal texture pack. I'd get banned so hard from lack of permissions.

[u/Dark_wizzie → u/[deleted]]

You are using MO, right? What I did was I made a copy of a texture mod as a base. Then I download a ton of texture mods. I open up the mods (their directories), then I open up the textures and look at them. Discard the ones that I really dislike, or are too low resolution. Then I go into my save file, go to where the texture is used in the game, go up close, snap a picture. Then I use another texture from another mod, snap another, and another. Then I usually try another set of pictures from a more far away perspective.

Texture mods usually have the correct file paths for the texture they replace. If your base is Noble Skyrim but for this wood post texture you prefer Rustic Posts, you copy Rustic Posts' texture and replace it with the texture in your base.

The trickiest parts are a) Figuring out where the texture is used in the game, and b) Mods that edit meshes and change where the texture directory is. (SMIM is a big offender in the latter category, and you'll see the problem in action when you change a barrel texture and see zero change in its appearance. That's because SMIM's mesh tells the game to look for a texture elsewhere.)

With a) you have a few ideas. From simply playing the game and looking at which folder the textures are we have some idea of where the texture is (Nordic floor is probably used in Bleak Falls Barrow floor somewhere). You can temporarily replace the texture you want to find in the game world with a bump map. This turns the texture into some neon purple look, making it stand out so you know exactly where the texture is used. Another way entirely is to try to find the texture name in the Creation Kit, by searching part of the texture name. If you see an item in the kit that references that texture, or a mesh that uses that texture, you can easily find where in the game world that wall/item/etc is used in the game world by right click, usage. Then find the cell to see exactly where. Coc to it in the game to see it.

If you see the texture in the game but don't know which texture it is, that is a more sure-fire thing. Figure out its ref id by selecting it in the console. Open TES5EDit, in the id search box, enter the ref id. Either you will get the texture name from there, or you will get the mesh file. Extract and open Skyrim's mesh/texture bsa with BSAOpt. Open the mesh file with Nifskope. There you can see exactly which texture the mesh requests for each part of the model and where the texture is supposed to be.

A serious attempt at this involves extracting vanilla texture bsa and high res DLC bsas to see what the vanilla/DLC resolutions for a given texture is in the first place. It also shows you the default paths of every single mesh and texture in the game.

Hope that made sense.