Skyrim

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Gamwich

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Gamwich

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About this mod

Ethereal Cosmos brings all new textures to the Skyrim galaxy, stars, and constellations. It was created to enhance the beauty of Skyrim nights.

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Ethereal Cosmos is a retexturing of the Skyrim galaxy, stars, and constellations. It brings beauty and a touch of fantasy, while remaining subtle enough to not be lore unfriendly.

Update: 2/12/14 - Added new version of Climates of Tamriel stars replacer with greater star density, but no larger stars added. Doubles the density of the small stars (compared to ver 1.0), but doesn't add any additional large stars. For CoT users who want to eliminate the dark spot issue, without changing the appearance much from the original. 

2/10/14 - Added new stars replacer texture for Climates of Tamriel users. This will change the CoT starfield to match the appearance of the Ethereal Cosmos stars, and also eliminate the dark spots that were sometimes visible during aurora events, or on bright galaxy replacers, like my nebula belt. *ONLY DOWNLOAD this file is you are using Climates of Tamriel. It won't be visible otherwise. You will still need the main Ethereal Cosmos file for the regular stars, the galaxy, and the constellations.

NEWEST: Added a subdued variation of the twinkle star version. The nebula belt is less saturated, the constellations are less prominent, and the twinkle star field is less dense. For those people who are bored of the default night sky, but want less "eye candy."

NEWER: Added a twinkle star version for those people who can't live without it (control twinkle speed via the timescale setting). The constellations are less intense to better integrate with the little twinkling stars. Paired with the vivid nebula belt.

NEW: Added a new version with a more vivid nebula belt, for those who want even more color to their night sky.

I wanted to bring a sense of depth and grandeur to the Skyrim night. I hope that I've achieved that aim.

The default galaxy is replaced with a nebula belt comprised of many hi-res Hubble images. The stars are redone to create a sense of depth and variation in brightness and detail. No longer are they just a bunch of little dots. Stars now have more variation in shape and color. The constellations have been redefined to stand out better from the star field with more detail and color that varies from the center to the trailing edges of each major star.

Like all my recent mods, this retexture was done with performance in mind. The "galaxy" texture is the largest, being a 4K texture, but since it wraps the entire night sky, it wasn't practical to make it smaller without affecting the appearance. The stars and constellations are both 1K textures, so they are performance friendly. And realistically, stars are a long way away, so they shouldn't be overly sharp. If they are, they look fake and painted on. Distant stars should be a little dim and fuzzy. The sharpness and detail of stars varies depending on their distance, and they do in these textures.

While I've included screenshots in the gallery to show the new textures, it is hard to capture the overall effect in a static image. You need to see them in-game to fully appreciate the changes. My screenshots were taken with Climates of Tamriel, and you can see how the colors and saturation varies depending on the type of night sky that's active. Obviously, any ENB (or other color changing mods) will alter the overall appearance of the night sky.

Installation: Use NMM, or to do manually, merely unzip the file and install it into your Data folder in your Skyrim game folder.

The file path is [C]Windows > Programs Files or Program Files (x86) > Steam > SteamApps > common > Skyrim > Data > Textures > Sky

Uninstall: Deactivate with NMM, or just manually delete (or overwrite) the 4 texture files... skyrimgalaxy.dds, skystars.dds, skyrimconstellations01.dds, and skyrimconstellation02.dds.

Enjoy!

This mod may not be posted to others sites, or used for other mods without my permission.