Cordwainer's Sky Candy
Author: CordwainerABQ ([email protected])

This is a set of textures to replace the stock Oblivion moons, Masser and Secunda, with new looks, and to add many new "nebula" textures to the night skies.

There is no .esp or OMOD to activate; all you will be doing is replacing texture files using standard copy and paste procedures. Seven new Masser textures and five new Secunda textures are provided, along with 23 new nebula textures. Mixing and matching these will provide a good deal of variety in your night skies.

These should work with all versions of Oblivion, regardless of which expansions and mods are installed. Conflicts will arise only with other mods that replace either moon (masser_full.dds, etc., and secunda_full.dds, etc.) or nebula (skynebula01.dds) textures, however it will NOT conflict with any star replacers-- only moons and nebulae.

Installation
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1. Make a backup folder within your Oblivion/Data folder and make copies of the following files and store them there. You can always restore those to put things back how they were before you used this package. The files to back up are located in Oblivion/Data/Textures/Sky and are named:

For the Masser moon:
masser_full.dds
masser_half_wan.dds
masser_half_wax.dds
masser_new.dds
masser_one_wan.dds
masser_one_wax.dds
masser_three_wan.dds
masser_three_wax.dds

For the Secunda moon:
secunda_full.dds
secunda_half_wan.dds
secunda_half_wax.dds
secunda_new.dds
secunda_one_wan.dds
secunda_one_wax.dds
secunda_three_wan.dds
secunda_three_wax.dds

For nebulae:
skynebula01.dds

Again, this collection will conflict with any mod that also replaces these-- but only these-- files.

2. DO NOT UNZIP THIS ARCHIVE DIRECTLY TO YOUR Oblivion/Data DIRECTORY! Instead, make a folder somewhere on your hard drive and unzip there. This will produce three main directories: Moons, Nebulae, and Screenshots. The Screenshots folder simply has a collection of example screens made using these textures for your viewing pleasure.

Within the Moons directory, there are two subfolders named Masser and Secunda. These contain the texture collections for those respective objects with separate folders named for each image source I used to make the moon's texture (for example Jupiter or Europa). Each of these folders contains a jpg image of the celestial body used to make the replacement textures, and the textures themselves. Each folder will have one of the two sets listed above: if it's a Masser replacer, it'll have the masser_XXX.dds files, and if it's a Secunda replacer, it will have the secunda_XXX.dds files. Please note there is an additional readme file in the BorgCube folder in the Masser collection-- read that if you wish to use that replacer.

Within the Nebula directory, in similar fashion, there will be a set of folders named for the deep-space object used to create the replacement texture. Each of these folders will have just two files: a jpg image used to make the texture, and a skynebula01.dds texture corresponding to that object.

Using the textures
============

To use the textures, simply copy them from the directory you made in Installation above into Data/Oblivion/Textures/Sky and say Yes when asked to overwrite the existing files. Again, be sure you back up your existing files before using these so that you can restore things to how they were. To use a different moon or nebula replacer, simply copy their respective files into Data/Oblivion/Textures/Sky whenever you wish.

Credits
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I am indebted to many members of the TES Eye Candy forum for helpful suggestions and feedback on these textures as I learned how to make them and as the work-in-progress proceeded. Image sources were mostly from various NASA archives. Graphics tools used were Paintshop Pro and GIMP.

You are welcome to use these textures any way you wish. If you include them in any other mod, please inform me at the email address above and give me due credit.