Skyrim

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PraedythXVI Ported by TheCinderfly

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deleted79755313

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About this mod

Complete model and texture overhaul of the Soul Cairn, covers all of the Architecture, landscape, sky, fx, particles, soul husks, bone piles, arvak, other miscs and also contains several fixes.
~Ported

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The Soul Cairn
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Complete model and texture overhaul of the Soul Cairn, covers all of the Architecture, landscape, sky, fx, particles, soul husks, bone piles, arvak, other miscs and also contains several fixes.



Description below provided by PraedythXVI

Options available:
-Texture resolution:
  • 4K
  • 2k
  • 1k
  • 8K for the new sky textures only.
-2 main sky options (dark or bright depending on how dark your enb and
weather mod make the soul cairn sky) and 3 mesh and texture options:
  • Vanilla: this option only retextures the vanilla Soul Cairn sky.
  • New Sky: replaces the sky mesh with a new one which has it's own textures.
  • Mix: combines both skies together.
-2 Boneyard Gate texture options.
-3 Bone pile options:
  • Vanilla quantity: replaces the bone piles with my own meshes made using my
    skeleton replacer, the amount of 3d bones matches vanilla, these bones
    piles also have khajiit and argonian skulls and tails from the mod Beast Skeletons which i've retextured to match my bones.
  • x2: twice the amount of bones the vanilla bone piles have.
  • x4: four times the amount of bones the vanilla bone piles have.
-Soul Husk model and texture replacer: Instead of being a basic shroom i
wanted the soul husks to literally be the husks of dead souls which have
been stuck in the soul cairn for too long, so you will now find that
soul husks are amalgamations of dead souls which you'll usually find
growing out of old corpses but you'll also sometimes find them growing
out of the ground most likely where souls ended up dying a long time
ago, this also makes the farmer creepier in a way.There is a 2nd
option which adds a few crystals in between the faces and makes the size
of the ingredient slightly bigger.
-Subtle FX: this is like LoD's Subtle fx meshes except i've lowered those effects a bit more and i've
also done this to the smoke coming out of craters.
-Arvak texture replacer.



List of changes made to the models:
  • Animated the light wells to make them look more magical, they can teleport you
    places so a static flat thing is ugly and boring imo.
  • Added crystal shards to the craters which themselves have been uv unwrapped
    to texture properly and avoid the ugly glowing pattern in it.
  • Changed the animated portal which you use to enter and leave the soul cairn to remove uv seams visible with the vanilla effects.
  • Remodeled the vanilla 3d walls and floors so as to not be forced to follow their
    brick patterns (technically this also counts as a performance
    improvement since these new meshes have less polys).
  • Made it so the 46 grave meshes all use 1 texture set instead of 4 texture
    sets, i didn't think 4 texture sets were necessary for graves and that
    way i was able to reallocate those texture slots for other things.
  • Almost all the architectural models have been edited in some way to suit my
    needs and to reduce seams where i could, either the models have had
    their uv's redone and/or additional parts were added or split from the
    original model for further customization (they work as intended with my
    textures, i do not know how they will behave with other people's
    textures nor do i plan to make those meshes compatible with other
    texture replacers).

List of changes made via the plugin:
  • Removed 1 texture set which i did not need for the architecture.
  • Removed the 3 dead shrubs growing out of the floor around Valerica.
  • Fixed clipping/spazzing floors in one of the ruins.
  • Added a few soul husks to the soul husks farm location (only if using my soul husk replacer).
  • Fixed a misaligned pillar corner mesh.
  • Fixed gaps in one of the teleporting lightwells.
  • Fixed some of the bone piles clipping through the back of some structures.

Includes:

Other info:
  • In total my overhaul covers the vast majority if not all of the soul cairn
    with less textures than vanilla uses for this location, the difference
    isn't big (about 73 vs 78 i think) but considering the changes made and
    things added i thought this was worth noting.
  • Since i decided to make the Soul Cairn out of sand i think the Soul Cairn No
    Grass mod linked below makes more sense to use now even though it
    already kinda did with dirt textures since green grass shouldn't be
    growing in such a dead desolate place, this is just a thought (though i
    can understand keeping grass since it helps hide the tiling terrain).
  • I don't know if new lod models are required and if they happen to be then
    i do not know how to make those nor will i have time to take care of
    this if it happens to be necessary, in fact this is most likely my last
    mod release until next year probably so i'll only be able to fix small
    issues and such, nothing more.

Recommended mods:

The Soul Cage - A Soul Cairn house
Soul Cairn Drainlife Crystal - Mihail Powers and Spells
Mihail Soul Cairn Drainlife Crystal - Retexture
Soul Cairn Performance
Arvak Burning Hooves Restored - Cut Content Restoration
Soul Trees- Interesting Soul Cairn
Hushed Soul Cairn Lightning

SOUL CAIRN
Video Graciously Provided by ridaraw793


Credits: