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About this mod
New high-resolution textures and adjusted meshes for the metal parts of the balustrades in Windhelm. Copper, iron and steel variants available as well as 4k, 2k and 1k versions.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
The Windhelm balustrades sport arguably one of the worst textures in Skyrim. Not many texture packs include it and those that do try to mitigate the damage by adding noise or applying a filter or two. Garbage in, garbage out tho. The balustrade meshes have issues as well, employing a weird green specular color while using a double-sided texture for the metal slat parts of the mesh. I did what I could with the meshes and built improved, high-resolution textures. What’s in the Box:
- Meshes with the specular flag removed from metal parts. If some metal can't have a specular, it makes no visual sense for other parts to have it.
- New 4k, 2k and 1k balustrade metal textures available in copper, iron and steel. All textures saved as BC7.
That’s it. Pretty simple.
Installation/Compatibility/Install Order:
This is a mesh and texture replacer so there is no plugin.
Compatible with all texture replacers that don't alter vanilla meshes, so Noble Skyrim, SRO, Skyland, SSE Texture Pack, Skyrim HD SE, aMidianBorn Buildings and Landscapes SE, and MystiriousDawn's HD Skyrim Overhaul (and more) are compatible. SMIM, Tamriel Reloaded HD SE and Skyrim 2020 are compatible as well.
Even so, this mod should be placed lower in your install order than other architectural texture replacers and USSEP as well. If you use a manager
that wants to overwrite files, do so.
Notes:
- I wanted to add the specular flag to the metal slat parts (because it looks great!), but since only one side of a double-sided texture element reacts to light, I decided against it. I suspect the vanilla slat meshes have no specular for this very reason. If someone knows how to fix the double-sided texture so that both sides of the mesh react to light, please let me know. I’d appreciate it!
- I also removed the specular flag from the other metal elements as well to make the mesh more visually congruent in-game.
- If you want to play with specular for the metal in the balustrades, it's fairly easy. Open the meshes in Nifskope and then add the specular flag in Shader Flags 1 of the TriShape (its a checkbox).
- There is stretching in some of the UV maps. I may try to tackle this at a later date.
- Screenshots (unless otherwise noted) were taken ENB-free so that you can see what the new textures look like in a vanilla set up.
- Other textures in the screenshots are from Noble Skyrim. Weather/image spaces provided by Aequinoctium - Weathers and Seasons. Gravestones by Sepolcri. Also Deathbell by Mari with Rudy HQ - More Lights for ENB SE - Deathbells and Nirnroots and Renthal Nettle SSE. Jk's Skyrim and Dawn of Skyrim SE are also in the frame.
- I don't know what kind of FPS hit you'll take. The vanilla textures are 2k. Its just two textures repeated so try the 4k or the 2k and downgrade if you get hit.
- Built with Photoshop, Alien Skin Eye Candy, CrazyBump, the Intel DDS plugin and images from textures.com, texturelib.com, patternpanda.org and Shutterstock. FOMODs built with FOMOD Creation Tool. Image compression and resizing done with Cathedral Assets Optimizer.
Thanks:
All of the modders who provide their work for our enjoyment. Seriously. Send them a donation or at least a kudo. Endorse the mods you use
. The MO2 devs (buy them a Ko-Fi) and a few of the people who help keep modding fun and interesting in the Mod Organizer 2 Dev Discord server: Elwaps, paleo, Nyx and KhrysINXS.
If you want to find me on Discord, I’m twizz0r#5776 and usually in the #modding channel of Mod Organizer 2 Dev.
Postscript: I’m always up for help and constructive criticism, but I’m not here for abuse. This mod started out as a simple band-aid to fix an ugly texture and morphed (as things do) into something larger. If you don’t like my work, then don’t use it and move along.