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About this mod
DOWNPOUR is a retexture of the Skyrim rain, to make it more dramatic and heavy in appearance. The vanilla rain is a drizzle, this is a downpour. New version designed for True Storms - Thunder and Rain Redone.
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DOWNPOUR is a retexture of the Skyrim rain, to make it more dramatic and heavy in appearance. The vanilla rain is a drizzle, this is a downpour.
DOWNPOUR was originally designed to make the vanilla rain effect more dramatic, but now we have fadingsignal's excellent mod True Storms - Thunder and Rain Redone. This mod takes the rain effect to another level, as well as greatly enhancing the sounds of thunder. It makes for a much more immersive experience when it rains in Skyrim. Because of this, my original DOWNPOUR texture was not a good fit. The True Storms mod increases the rain effect, so my texture becomes overkill. Therefore, I created a new rain texture to work with fadingsignal's enhanced rain effect. My aim was to make the Skyrim rain appear more transparent and realistic. I designed it to work with my retextures of the Wet and Cold drip effect and the Splash of Rain droplet. Hopefully, everything will look in balance now.
I'm keeping the original version of DOWNPOUR for people who are allergic to ESPs, but I strongly recommend that everyone at least try out True Storms - Thunder and Rain Redone for themselves.
UPDATE 5/20/15 - Version 1.4 of the Combo Pack changes the folder name for the Splash of rain effect to fit the new Wonders of Weather mod, which combines Splash of Rain, Rainbows, and Shooting Stars into a single download. I've also added the Wonders of Weather Patch as a separate optional file.
UPDATE 3/25/15 - Version 1.3 of the Combo Pack and version 1.1 of the Splash of Rain optional download has a revised version of the splash droplet to make it more visible (especially with ENBs).
UPDATE 3/22/15 - Retexture of the droplet from the popular Splash of Rain mod added. This is tough to show in a screenshot, but I softened the effect so it doesn't look so much like a hard edged white opaque shape. It's quite a tiny texture, so nothing dramatic, but it should appear a little more realistic now.
UPDATE 3/22/15 - I've added a retexture I made for the popular Wet and Cold mod. Frostfall also use the Wet and Cold drip effect, so this replacer works for it as well. I thought the default rain drip effect on your character and NPCs had droplets that were a little too big (and opaque) to be entirely realistic. I retextured the effect to have finer droplets. Just a little tweak to make the effect more immersive.
In their infinite wisdom, Bethesda decided that Dust required three textures to capture (but still ended up with something that looked like floating snowballs). For Rain, they figured one texture was enough... a questionable design choice. Sadly, that one texture was only 32x128 pixels in dimension. So, they made a long column with 8 broken streaks that are repeated (over and over) to create the rain effect.
Now, the idea that rain would need a "hi-res" texture is a bit silly, but there is a downside to going too small. You risk the effect being too subtle (like the vanilla texture), and also looking too regimented in its repeat. I found that 256x256 worked well, since it was large enough to show detail, and more importantly, allowed for variety in the shape and placement of the drops. This size also allows for smooth animation for the vast majority of people.
I've added a Performance Version for people with lower end PCs. This textures is twice the vanilla resolution (64 x 256 pixels). It doesn't have quite as much variety as the regular version, but the effect is quite similar overall in game.
UPDATE 8/8/14 - I uploaded a fixed file of the Performance Version. The original had an incorrectly named folder. My apologies to anyone who downloaded that version yesterday. Please download the updated file.
Since there is only one rain texture, I decide to try not only to give more variety and apparent randomness to the rain particles, but to also make it appear heavier in game. We have excellent mods like SNOW that give us impressive snow storms, but the rain of Skyrim always seemed a little too restrained to me. So, I threw my hat into the rain retexture ring and this is what I came up with.
I tested the texture with both the vanilla game, and ENB, and found it worked well with both (at least in my opinion). It's impossible for any one rain texture to please everyone, and I don't pretend that this one will. I'm merely offering another choice for people.
Sakr3d was kind enough to make this comparison Gif showing the Vanilla rain texture, the Climates of Tamriel rain texture, and my DOWNPOUR rain texture:
For a quick test, open the console (~) key, and type in the following code: sw 10a23c
I would heartily recommend using the Splash of Rain mod with this texture, and suggest turning the splash setting up to 3 or 4. It really enhances the effect of a heavy downpour. With my new storm cloud texture in my Ethereal Clouds mod, rain is no longer just a spring shower in Skyrim.
DOWNPOUR was originally designed to make the vanilla rain effect more dramatic, but now we have fadingsignal's excellent mod True Storms - Thunder and Rain Redone. This mod takes the rain effect to another level, as well as greatly enhancing the sounds of thunder. It makes for a much more immersive experience when it rains in Skyrim. Because of this, my original DOWNPOUR texture was not a good fit. The True Storms mod increases the rain effect, so my texture becomes overkill. Therefore, I created a new rain texture to work with fadingsignal's enhanced rain effect. My aim was to make the Skyrim rain appear more transparent and realistic. I designed it to work with my retextures of the Wet and Cold drip effect and the Splash of Rain droplet. Hopefully, everything will look in balance now.
I'm keeping the original version of DOWNPOUR for people who are allergic to ESPs, but I strongly recommend that everyone at least try out True Storms - Thunder and Rain Redone for themselves.
UPDATE 5/20/15 - Version 1.4 of the Combo Pack changes the folder name for the Splash of rain effect to fit the new Wonders of Weather mod, which combines Splash of Rain, Rainbows, and Shooting Stars into a single download. I've also added the Wonders of Weather Patch as a separate optional file.
UPDATE 3/25/15 - Version 1.3 of the Combo Pack and version 1.1 of the Splash of Rain optional download has a revised version of the splash droplet to make it more visible (especially with ENBs).
UPDATE 3/22/15 - Retexture of the droplet from the popular Splash of Rain mod added. This is tough to show in a screenshot, but I softened the effect so it doesn't look so much like a hard edged white opaque shape. It's quite a tiny texture, so nothing dramatic, but it should appear a little more realistic now.
UPDATE 3/22/15 - I've added a retexture I made for the popular Wet and Cold mod. Frostfall also use the Wet and Cold drip effect, so this replacer works for it as well. I thought the default rain drip effect on your character and NPCs had droplets that were a little too big (and opaque) to be entirely realistic. I retextured the effect to have finer droplets. Just a little tweak to make the effect more immersive.
In their infinite wisdom, Bethesda decided that Dust required three textures to capture (but still ended up with something that looked like floating snowballs). For Rain, they figured one texture was enough... a questionable design choice. Sadly, that one texture was only 32x128 pixels in dimension. So, they made a long column with 8 broken streaks that are repeated (over and over) to create the rain effect.
Now, the idea that rain would need a "hi-res" texture is a bit silly, but there is a downside to going too small. You risk the effect being too subtle (like the vanilla texture), and also looking too regimented in its repeat. I found that 256x256 worked well, since it was large enough to show detail, and more importantly, allowed for variety in the shape and placement of the drops. This size also allows for smooth animation for the vast majority of people.
I've added a Performance Version for people with lower end PCs. This textures is twice the vanilla resolution (64 x 256 pixels). It doesn't have quite as much variety as the regular version, but the effect is quite similar overall in game.
UPDATE 8/8/14 - I uploaded a fixed file of the Performance Version. The original had an incorrectly named folder. My apologies to anyone who downloaded that version yesterday. Please download the updated file.
Since there is only one rain texture, I decide to try not only to give more variety and apparent randomness to the rain particles, but to also make it appear heavier in game. We have excellent mods like SNOW that give us impressive snow storms, but the rain of Skyrim always seemed a little too restrained to me. So, I threw my hat into the rain retexture ring and this is what I came up with.
I tested the texture with both the vanilla game, and ENB, and found it worked well with both (at least in my opinion). It's impossible for any one rain texture to please everyone, and I don't pretend that this one will. I'm merely offering another choice for people.
Sakr3d was kind enough to make this comparison Gif showing the Vanilla rain texture, the Climates of Tamriel rain texture, and my DOWNPOUR rain texture:
For a quick test, open the console (~) key, and type in the following code: sw 10a23c
I would heartily recommend using the Splash of Rain mod with this texture, and suggest turning the splash setting up to 3 or 4. It really enhances the effect of a heavy downpour. With my new storm cloud texture in my Ethereal Clouds mod, rain is no longer just a spring shower in Skyrim.