Comparison 1 A lot of the noise from the original textures is gone. The wood and surface finishes look far more photorealistic now, and the ground actually has a defined dirt texture instead of just a mess of blurry pixels. This was only taken in 4k. In 8k would look even better. Comparison 2 The wood and lighting are significantly improved here. At 8K resolution, there's no quality loss if you're using an 8K monitor. Converting colormaps with alpha channels to BC7 format adds a lot more depth and richness to the colors. Just keep in mind that these screenshots were taken at 4K, so you're still seeing a lot of mipmaps that match vanilla resolution. The improvements are already visible even with that limitation, but the real jump in quality becomes clear when using DSR or playing on an actual 8K display. Comparison 3 The chest in the bottom right corner is a good example of how things have improved overall — the latch hinge was barely visible in vanilla, but now it’s clearly defined and properly colored. The rug on the ground and the wood on the table also show much more clarity when zoomed in. Once again, because of mipmaps, a lot of the higher-resolution details in the textures aren’t fully utilized at 4K. You’ll really start to see the full quality when using DSR or playing on an actual 8K monitor. This is game wide improvements.
Hmmmm, this is maybe overkill, for mountains, yes, 8K is good. I do not see mountains textures, could you upload only mountains textures in 8K, please, as separate file ?
And, in my opinion, textures must be better, for 8K textures quality is not so good, to be quite honest with you. No hard feelings, please. You upscaled the normal maps. This isn't a good idea, and won't work. The upscaled diffuse maps need to be converted to normal maps afterwards.
Upscaling introduces extra detail which is great for diffuse texture. But normal maps store per-pixel information storing the normal vector (the angle at which the light should bound off the surface at the point I think). It has nothing to do with any extra detail that the AI upscaling adds in. So upscaling normal maps breaks them, so that is why they must be re-generated separately afterwards.
With this know-how, please try to improve your textures further, do not stop now here.
Download this, please :
https://github.com/Theverat/NormalmapGenerator
This one can reprocess the normal maps in one click !
Just a quick question, my (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\Data already have a folder name Textures but it is with the uppercase (T) Is this something I should address first?
Did you look at the other mods modpage at all? This here is a upscaler of the original skyrim textures while the one you linked has new textures for most things.
Maybe. It depends whether you prefer the authentic Skyrim experience as originally intended by the developers—even if that means simply enhanced versions of some of its less polished textures—or if you're looking for a completely refreshed visual experience that offers an entirely new artistic vision.
maybe u could make a download file with a note with a googledrive link and then we can copy and paste it into browser and download it all one from there plus it be way faster than nexus anyways :D just a suggestion
Xzandiel, Awesome work, bro. As I already attempted that effort myself, I know how hard it is to remain consistent throughout the process. I have not compared these to my work yet, but I still want to post an appreciative note because I saw some not-so-motivating comments Keep that 2.0 Generative AI work going that looks promising. Hey, DEEJMASTER333, I see you around almost all the vanilla-friendly work throughout nexus and be delighted as you regard my work highly appreciative bro have you compared these to mine i am really wanna know Bro. might do so myself when i off from work.
Much love for what you do, Waqas — I truly appreciate the kind words. The regenerative AI is something special, and I’ve been having a blast working with it. I’ll definitely be refining some of it by hand afterward as well. Can’t wait to see the full result come together.
Sound great, but be careful, a 8K texture (8192x8192 pixels) contains four times the number of pixels compared to a 4K texture (4096x4096 pixels) and requires around 64 MB. So if all the 32000 textures of Skyrim are 8k, you will potentially need 2048 GB of vram memory on your 3D card. Of course, all textures are not loaded at same times, but you got the idea. That's why most games mixes with 8k, 4k and 2k textures, even 1k or 0.5k for the smaller ones. Should be great if we could have 4k ones. Amazing work though (yep, it's not easy, even with AI tools).
Thanks for the heads-up! In practice, Skyrim doesn't load anywhere near the full texture library into VRAM simultaneously. It uses a texture streaming system that loads mipmaps based on distance and screen size, similar to many modern DX11 titles. Even with 8K textures, only the required mipmap levels are streamed in, so actual VRAM usage remains manageable. All textures in this mod include properly generated mipmaps to avoid decompression spikes or "bombs." On both my RTX 3090 and RTX 5080 test systems, performance is smooth, and memory usage remains well within acceptable limits—even in dense environments or with ENBs. The engine simply won’t allocate anywhere near 2TB of VRAM, because that’s not how texture paging or caching works in practice. That said, I do agree that offering a 4K version could be useful for mid-range setups, and it’s something I’m considering for broader accessibility.
You're right, but also don't forget texture post-processing shaders like parallax or complex material, that are more intensive on a 8k texture than on a 4k or a 2k one, as they process each pixels. And also texture streaming, as you mention, can go slowly. I doubt my rig, which is decent, could run flawless a full 8k game, even with mipmaps. I guess each time I will go in contact or low distance, it will ram or freeze. Could be interesting to have some ingame stats.
Can absolutely stutter badly in the right locations in 8k. I would think playing in 8k or using DSR will be mainly for screenshots and content at this point. I am going through the flora and fauna now :)
102 comments
A lot of the noise from the original textures is gone. The wood and surface finishes look far more photorealistic now, and the ground actually has a defined dirt texture instead of just a mess of blurry pixels. This was only taken in 4k. In 8k would look even better.
Comparison 2
The wood and lighting are significantly improved here. At 8K resolution, there's no quality loss if you're using an 8K monitor. Converting colormaps with alpha channels to BC7 format adds a lot more depth and richness to the colors. Just keep in mind that these screenshots were taken at 4K, so you're still seeing a lot of mipmaps that match vanilla resolution. The improvements are already visible even with that limitation, but the real jump in quality becomes clear when using DSR or playing on an actual 8K display.
Comparison 3
The chest in the bottom right corner is a good example of how things have improved overall — the latch hinge was barely visible in vanilla, but now it’s clearly defined and properly colored. The rug on the ground and the wood on the table also show much more clarity when zoomed in. Once again, because of mipmaps, a lot of the higher-resolution details in the textures aren’t fully utilized at 4K. You’ll really start to see the full quality when using DSR or playing on an actual 8K monitor. This is game wide improvements.
And, in my opinion, textures must be better, for 8K textures quality is not so good, to be quite honest with you. No hard feelings, please.
You upscaled the normal maps. This isn't a good idea, and won't work. The upscaled diffuse maps need to be converted to normal maps afterwards.
Upscaling introduces extra detail which is great for diffuse texture. But normal maps store per-pixel information storing the normal vector (the angle at which the light should bound off the surface at the point I think). It has nothing to do with any extra detail that the AI upscaling adds in. So upscaling normal maps breaks them, so that is why they must be re-generated separately afterwards.
With this know-how, please try to improve your textures further, do not stop now here.
Download this, please :
https://github.com/Theverat/NormalmapGenerator
This one can reprocess the normal maps in one click !
Hey, DEEJMASTER333, I see you around almost all the vanilla-friendly work throughout nexus and be delighted as you regard my work highly appreciative bro have you compared these to mine i am really wanna know Bro. might do so myself when i off from work.
All textures in this mod include properly generated mipmaps to avoid decompression spikes or "bombs." On both my RTX 3090 and RTX 5080 test systems, performance is smooth, and memory usage remains well within acceptable limits—even in dense environments or with ENBs. The engine simply won’t allocate anywhere near 2TB of VRAM, because that’s not how texture paging or caching works in practice.
That said, I do agree that offering a 4K version could be useful for mid-range setups, and it’s something I’m considering for broader accessibility.