Introduction:

I always thought, that the vanilla textures are suitable for Oblivion and have their own "charm". But the normal maps are quite smooth and not very detailed. And this is in a time, where normal maps are becoming more important. While some great texture replacers hit the road since the release of Oblivion, they often have larger textures and so increase memory usage and are hitting the performance of lower- to medium spec machines (like mine ;) ). There are other people who like the vanilla textures best. So this is where this mod jumps in. I made new and more detailed normal maps based on the vanilla ones with the same size and so the memory usage literally stays the same.

There should not be any performance hit whatsoever but a nice increase in visual quality (at least I think so ;)).

This new version already contains the two patches and the fixed uninstaller.


What has been done?

Anvil
Arena
Basementsections
Bravil
Bruma
Castles (including the city walls)
Castle Interiors
Cathedrals
Cemetery (tombstones)
Cheydinhal
Chorrol
Cloudrulertemple
Daedric statues
Doorstones
Farmhouse
Godstatues
Imperial City
Kvatch
Leyawiin
Lowerclass buildings
Priories
Ships
Sidewalks
Skingrad
Statues
Stonewalls
Tents
Clutter (not everything: no small clutter like ingredients, tools, dishes etc.)
Dungeons (ayleidruins, caves, chargen (prison), fortruins, sewers and miscellaneous stuff)
Landscape
Oblivion Realm + Oblivion gates
Plants
Rocks
Trees (barks)
Wood


Installation:

Extract the included "textures" folder to Oblivion/Data. As these are only normal maps, you should not need any archive invalidation. If prompted just overwrite. If you just want to test this package, I recommend creating an Omod with the Oblivion Mod Manager!

Play!


Un-Installation:

If you have created an Omod, just delete it. If you have put in the textures like they are, extract the "Uninstall Bomrets Normal Maps.bat" into your Oblivion/Data folder and run it. This will delete all normal maps, that come with this pack. Next time you start Oblivion, it will use the stock normal maps again.


Customization:

It's very easy to customize everything to your taste. Look into your Oblivion/Data/textures folder. There you find various subfolders which also may contain other subfolders. Everyone should know what's inside when reading the foldername. For example: If you just want Chorrol or the basements etc. but nothing else, just delete the corresponding folder of what you don't want in Oblivion/Data/textures/. Or vice versa: You don't like Chorrol. Then go to Oblivion/Data/textures/architecture and delete the Chorrol folder.
If you want to keep the Chorrol interiors and delete the exteriors it gets a bit tricky. Look into the Chorrol folder and you find a folder named Interior. Delete everything except of this folder. now you have stock Chorrol exterior and my Chorrol interior. Easy as that.


Known Issues/Bugs:

Not really a bug, but since Bethesda used the DXT1c Compression for many normal maps and I wanted to stay the same with filesize, there might be compression artifacts visible on the textures under certain lightning conditions (blockiness). The only thing I could do about that would be decreasing detail, but that would ruin the purpose of this mod. The vanilla normal maps have these issues too. As the vanilla normals these are not intended to stare at from close range. If you want close range detail, you would have to download Qarls for example, because he used far larger textures and so minimized the artifacts, that might be visible.


Incompatabilities:

This mod is fully compatible with Parallax Cities, Texians Window Lightning Aystem and any other mod, that does not replace the standart textures or alters them too much. Just install my normals after the forementioned and overwrite theirs. You will have no disadvantage (in case of ParallaxCities you even will gain a really nice visual advantage imho :)). It is not compatible with a mod that alters the base textures, like Qarls does. But you should not need my mod, if you're able to run and like Qarls either ;).


Final words:

Bethesda had a reason not to put much detail into the normals because the more detail, the more likely it is for artifacts to show up. But I think I made a good compromise. But look for yourself. Feedback and constructive criticism or help would be much appreciated, since I just started to work with Photoshop and this is my very first texture mod at all. :) I've put a large amount of my spare time into this project and really hope you like it too.
If you encounter anything that looks out of place, find a bug or see something that just looks ugly, contact me, so I can fix it.


Contact:

You can find me on the official forums at www.elderscrolls.com under the name Bomret or on the german forums of www.scharesoft.de/joomla/, also Bomret.

Or send me an E-Mail under [email protected]


Credits:

Many thanks got to Blade9722 for his tips and Decane for his intensive work on testing and bugfinding.
Credits also go out to the people that gave me feedback, some propably you :)


Have fun :)

Bomret