About this mod
Nordic snow has a crystallized appearance with tiny reflective specks. It maintains the color and brightness of the vanilla snow (from 2011), and has been carefully tweaked to ensure it does not have any tiling issues etc.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
When Skyrim was released in 2011, I was disappointed by the snow textures. They didn’t resemble real snow and broke my immersion. Coming from Norway, a country known for its heavy snowfall and long, cold winters, I wanted to recreate the authentic look and feel of snow.
Nordic snow has a crystallized appearance with tiny reflective specks. I aimed to maintain the original color and brightness of the 2011 vanilla snow (not the Special Edition) to ensure compatibility with the game’s other materials, avoiding overly bright or dark textures. Additionally, I focused on making the snow look good across large, open landscapes, ensuring there were no visible tiling issues. I meticulously tweaked the texture to achieve the right look and feel in various environments, making it appear cold, unforgiving, and reflective of both sunlight and moonlight.
Reviews
Vanilla looks like 'wet' snow, like -5 or -10 C. Mod looks like dry powder snow like -20 or -30 C. Thank for making this Canadian happy. Snow looks as cold as Skyrim now.
- Pthalo
As fellow snow brother (i live in Switzerland) i approve this snow textures, well done![]()
- remlnx
you sure do know your snows.
kudos and hats off, by far best looking snow i ever seen in skyrim.
ty very much.
- wim1234
My friend, I have to say that this is the best snow mod out there, no offense to the other snow mods but they lack realism big time, even smim's version, good job my friend..
- aundrejones
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Performance?
These textures are 2048x2048 which is also the same as the original snow textures in SSE. Hence, these textures won't cause you any harm as long as you can pull of the original (with some exceptions).
Installation
You can either use the nexus mod manager or you can install it manually. To install it manually you need to unzip the files to the Skyrim main folder:
To find the Skyrim folder you just go to steam -> second mouse button on Skyrim special edition -> properties -> local files -> browse local files.
New or old snow shader?
This is down to personal preference; they will both work well with my textures.
You can see a comparison gif HERE.
The new shader tends to make the snow differ more in different situations (light levels, weather, etc), it seems to have slightly more depth, with torches and other light sources like it, the new shader may make the snow look like it has a thin layer of ice on top of it. The "snow mist" (not related to my textures) also tend to be brighter with the new shader. The new shader also reflects other light sources more and may give the snow a more sparkling feel. On the other hand, the old shader looks softer.
All of my screenshots were taken with the new shader.
Generally, it appears that most people prefer to deactivate the new shader.
You can deactivate the new shader by opening SkyrimPrefs.inib and change EnableImprovedSnow from "1" to "0".
if you want to keep the shader, you also have an option to only remove the white dots you can accomplish this by keeping EnableImprovedSnow enabled and adjust bToggleSparkles to "0".
ENB?
Use one that does not "burn out" the snow or just don't use one at all. My textures are made with mostly the same brightness as the vanilla so if there is an enb that work well with vanilla then it's likely to work well with my mod. Unfortunately, too many enbs overexpose and as a result leads to snow that burns out (completely white). Nordic snow should not look like this. If you think your snow is too bright, then try to turn off your enb and see if it helps. Some weather mods might also add more brightness so those could also potentially add to the problem.
If your snow looks worse than my pictures that are taken with vanilla rendering, then your enb is doing a poor job with snow.
How to know if a snow texture is good?
People have different preference when picking textures and there is usually many to pick from. These are some general guidelines for what I think is important.
- Do the textures tile well? When you look at the snow in Skyrim what you see is a combination of many images placed next to each other in a gird. With a good texture you will not be able to distinguish where one tile begins and another ends. Look for an area that has a lot of snow and that you can see far. If you don't notice those tiles, then its good. For landscape textures you don't want to many specific features (like leaves or branches) as it tends to stick out when you tile them. Be mindful of mods that only shows you closeup of the snow and has a lot of details. They may look good on the photo, but the moment you look over a large landscape they look horrible.
- Is the color gradient and brightness the same as the vanilla texture? My textures have been tweaked to have the same color gradient and brightness as the vanilla texture. By using vanilla as the baseline, we know that everything that works with vanilla will work with my mod. If you are using something with different settings, then your ether has to tweak it yourself or you will have situation where it will be off. E.g. that the snow gets "burned out" on sunny days.
- Do the textures share similar features like the vanilla textures? When Bethesda created their environment, they saw the vanilla texture, and they adjusted everything to fit with that. So, if the textures have rocks or other features in different places you may get weird overlap where the textures are cut in half, this will not look good. So, this is why I reused the rocks that they have in their texture and make sure they are in the exact same spot.
- Does the texture look good without ENB or other mods? Be wary of those that has a lot of other mods and ENB in their photos, this may give you a false comparison to other textures, and imperfections may have been covered with ENB settings. Thus, you rely on a specific ENB setting to get the desired result.
- Does it look and feel right in the game and on your setup? Finally, you just need to try it out and look at it. Look at the snowy places and walk around.
Compatibility
You can use the HD Nordic Snow with Parallax by EdmondNoir, if you prefer to use Nordic snow with Parallex. Note that this patch also requires Nordic snow to be installed.
It works with almost everything except other snow textures. My textures also have very similar color and brightness as the vanilla so rest assured that it will also work well with any enb etc that works on vanilla. Also remember that this mod only has textures, hence it will never cause any harm to you or your save games.
If you are planning to use texture packs that already contain snow textures, then make sure you install my mod last and overwrite everything. My textures only replace snow-related stuff so you can rest assured that it will work well with any major texture pack of your choice. I personally only use the vanilla textures and Nordic Snow.
Files for ineed and Majestic Mountains were added to 3.4.3 so that you don't need to do this yourself if you are using these mods. These extra files will not do any harm if you are not using these mods so don't worry about that.
Please note that this texture does not work well with Blended roads this is due to BR using the alpha channel to make the ground transparent. The problem is that this alpha channel is also used to control the reflection of textures. I recommend not using blended roads. But if you do you can have a look at this at Nordic Snow - Blended Roads Support by GabonZ.