i recommend to check the sky folder of mangaclub's radiant clouds and fogs mod if you know how to compare and exchange files in your mods. some clouds (i use the overcast textures) seem to fit nicely to my HD Clouds. it is a matter of taste. mangas textures use 2048p resolution but they do not include mipmaps for whatever reason. i upgraded the ones i use with mipmaps and reduced artifacts. this also helps reducing aliasing effects depending on the fov settings and accelerates loading sky textures in case a smaller mipmap is the better choice for mapping the object without aliasing. i use the free paint.net (use BC7 DX11 linear dds format, do not use dx5 format for clouds due to the visible compression artifact problem) if you like to add this feature to manga's textures on your own. all textures in my mod include the mipmap feature already.
you will never see my vanilla compatible high res textures if you use a mod with vanilla incompatible meshes or another file path ! use vanilla settings or compatible ones. all other solutions have to be done on your own risk and manually!
i would be thankfull if you could give me an advise about a small error i have with The Farmlands mod. Unforunatly the dev don't have an idea how to fix it, so me hope is you could give me a hint.
By the way, your Mod looks awesome in the main game. It makes the sky ultra realistic!
it seems to be a conflict with another mod. maybe you can try to disable (rename) the sky folder in the other mod first. i hope that helps. if there is no sky folder i don't know. my mod textures should overwrite the other cloud mods, so load it later. if a mod changes the standard clouds/weather path it is probably not compatible to my texture mod and all you can try is to shift my cloud textures manually into the other mod (make a backup). see if it works. thanks for your nice comment!
Thanks for your answer, the only 2 mods i use for sky/clouds/weather is your mod and Vivid Weathers I will try to play around with your recommendations and get back later, if i'll find a fix. thank you!
i remember i had such a problem too and in the end i decided to stay with the vanilla weather only, game config menu (gcm) with the weather menu and my clouds mod and i am happy with it and the amount of weather types and cloud types available combined with enb. in the end it is a matter of taste and what you really miss. i currently use no nac and no vivid weather in my setup. so i can not help you with these mods and related incompatibilities.
I've read your description but I still have a question, please. You wrote "i recommend the reshade debanding option if you discover or use banding producing effects."
Well, I have got these problems with clouds in the sky looking like stripes/very long bands. And I don't know how to get rid of them yet...
So could you give me a hint were I could find the settings you described above in the Reshade Menu (I use the "Stark Reshade"), please? The settings there are not exactly my area of expertise.
Thank you so much and have a nice day! Best regards.
So far I am loving your mods. Unfortunately this one doesn't seem to make any difference vs vanilla for me. Using vanilla weather and 4k resolution on an Acer Predator X27 monitor. Not using Radiant Clouds either as that was causing strange cloud texture in the opening scene where you run to the bunker.
if you have strange weather appearance it can not be related to my mod. please check your mod list for mods changing weather appearance. sometimes a strange cloud effect can occur during the first weather change after installing or activating a new weather mod. just wait until weather has completely changed. if you compare my mod textures with vanilla you will see that they look the same until you look into detail. the changes are subtle to reduce low res banding and compression artifacts of the original. compare with the first image in my mod media images.
thanks for feedback. indeed and it should be visible for everyone under normal circumstances! this example excludes any upscaling effect because this comparison is done with the same texture size already used for the vanilla texture (2048x2048p).
Good idea for a mod. looks like you can remove more color noise though. Can you make a version without upscaling? Upscaling artifacts are visible and you can't really gain much with it. A version with just dithering plus chroma and luminance denoising would be perfect
thank you. it is not the first time i do such a mod. it really works and i can recommend it even if it is done mainly for myself. sharing is a nice thing and some people appreciate that :) If you read my description first you understand that this is not just mass upscaling. i did many steps to get the textures looking like vanilla without artifacts and banding. the effect is not texture size dependent but it would be stupid to leave an optimized texture at the original size of 0,5k without transferring the gained better quality into an already double sized 1k (in my filtering process even quad sized) texture. the upscaling and filtering done with a quad sized image is only the simplest but necessary step in this procedure and it does not produce any better image quality without the filtering steps. textures with 2k or bigger size, not be used as an atlas, are not touched in size, only in quality. if you like the textures to be smaller while losing 3/4 of the gained quality just downsize them and save them with bc7-format. they will look still better than original vanilla bc3 dxt5 ones but losing much of their additionally gained quality and effect and in this case i would not offer it as a HD or HQ mod. if you really like a version with downgraded but still better than vanilla result just simply ask for that or you can do it by your own using paint.net and simply downsize my textures as small as you like. Important: don't forget to use bc7 hq linear compression for saving and about the huge quality loss. if you save accidentally with ugly bc3 dxt5 format compression articfacts will instantly be back even worser than before.
you didn't get it. okay. if you go deeper into image quality you will see that this cannot be true otherwise we would still play with 128x128p textures instead 2k or even 4k. and my mod is no simple upscaling. i tried to explain that. you know about mipmaps and how they are used in a game and why they are generated ? you know about esrgan / ki related texture optimization and upscaling? i doubt you do reading otherwise i do not understand your statement. if you are interested in more detail let's do it via pm or just google it.
the vanilla textures are looking artificial at least playing with 4k res. so i cured this problem. 512k is very low res and because esrgan is not optimal for cloud optimization this is the reason why i did this manually and with my brain instead of using ki or esrgan presets. thank for your interest and understanding! compare my results (just watch the first image) with the original and if you think you can do it better or you think there are too many artificial details in my result (?) or the compression artifacts of the vanilla original are so beautiful feel to omit my mod. please use pm for further discussion. thank you!
22 comments
you will never see my vanilla compatible high res textures if you use a mod with vanilla incompatible meshes or another file path ! use vanilla settings or compatible ones. all other solutions have to be done on your own risk and manually!
i would be thankfull if you could give me an advise about a small error i have with The Farmlands mod.
Unforunatly the dev don't have an idea how to fix it, so me hope is you could give me a hint.
By the way, your Mod looks awesome in the main game. It makes the sky ultra realistic!
thanks for your nice comment!
the only 2 mods i use for sky/clouds/weather is your mod and Vivid Weathers
I will try to play around with your recommendations and get back later, if i'll find a fix.
thank you!
I've read your description but I still have a question, please.
You wrote "i recommend the reshade debanding option if you discover or use banding producing effects."
Well, I have got these problems with clouds in the sky looking like stripes/very long bands.
And I don't know how to get rid of them yet...
So could you give me a hint were I could find the settings you described above in the Reshade Menu (I use the "Stark Reshade"), please? The settings there are not exactly my area of expertise.
Thank you so much and have a nice day!
Best regards.
What is this supposed to be??
if you compare my mod textures with vanilla you will see that they look the same until you look into detail. the changes are subtle to reduce low res banding and compression artifacts of the original. compare with the first image in my mod media images.
If you read my description first you understand that this is not just mass upscaling. i did many steps to get the textures looking like vanilla without artifacts and banding. the effect is not texture size dependent but it would be stupid to leave an optimized texture at the original size of 0,5k without transferring the gained better quality into an already double sized 1k (in my filtering process even quad sized) texture. the upscaling and filtering done with a quad sized image is only the simplest but necessary step in this procedure and it does not produce any better image quality without the filtering steps. textures with 2k or bigger size, not be used as an atlas, are not touched in size, only in quality. if you like the textures to be smaller while losing 3/4 of the gained quality just downsize them and save them with bc7-format. they will look still better than original vanilla bc3 dxt5 ones but losing much of their additionally gained quality and effect and in this case i would not offer it as a HD or HQ mod. if you really like a version with downgraded but still better than vanilla result just simply ask for that or you can do it by your own using paint.net and simply downsize my textures as small as you like. Important: don't forget to use bc7 hq linear compression for saving and about the huge quality loss. if you save accidentally with ugly bc3 dxt5 format compression articfacts will instantly be back even worser than before.
and my mod is no simple upscaling. i tried to explain that.
you know about mipmaps and how they are used in a game and why they are generated ? you know about esrgan / ki related texture optimization and upscaling?
i doubt you do reading otherwise i do not understand your statement. if you are interested in more detail let's do it via pm or just google it.