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About this mod
Retexture of Solstheim landscapes using real images of pyroclastic ash flows. Made in memorial for a friend who died.
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This is a retexture of 10 different Solstheim tiled landscape files using real images of pyroclastic ash flows from The Petrified Forest in Calistoga, CA. The site where these photos were taken sits seven miles from Mt. St. Helena, which exploded 3.4 million years ago and dumped ash flows for many miles around. Thus, it is similar to the location of Solstheim in juxtaposition to The Red Mountain.
I made this mod as a Memorial for my friend Amara, who died on June 29th, 2022 after a long hard fight with Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
This past winter was the last time I got to see them, and together we went on an adventure to The Petrified Forest, which was just a few miles from where they were living at the time. That adventure was the best part of the trip; it was such a gift to be fully in our element together combing through rocks on the ground and soaking in the glorious wonders of the wild world.
Below is a picture of Amara doing their thing, making themself at home curled up in an ancient pyroclastic ash flow, nbd.
As you can see, the actual pyroclastic flow looks quite a bit different from the in-game images. In order to make sure that they'd blend well as extended tiled landscapes, and with all of the adjacent vanilla textures, I overlaid upscaled vanilla ash textures at 30-35% opacity over the top of the ash flow images. This makes them more uniform and more similar in color and shading to the vanilla files, but with far more detail and structure. I also thought this would be more lore-friendly, with ash laying over the top of the original hardened pyroclastic flow.
I always found the original Solstheim landscape textures to be excessively flat and boring, to the point where I don't even want to spend time there. My hope with this mod was to give them a more dynamic appearance while providing a massive improvement to the visual quality.
Inherently the tiling is a downgrade from vanilla landscapes, due to its lack of uniformity. It is fairly noticeable over long distances but I did the best I could to blend them until my eyes couldn't stare at the screen any longer. At some point I will probably try to redo the one texture file that's the most noticeable (volcanis_ash_01.dds) and see if I can improve the tiling. If it's too much for you, just track this mod and wait for an update.
After doing all of the ash-strewn landscape textures there were three more vanilla files that just looked terrible and didn't mesh well with the new high resolution dynamic textures, so I utilized similar methods (blending pyroclastic ash flows and powdered ash) with overlaid images from Quixel Megascans to create those.
I've included a patch for Shaders of Solstheim, which I strongly recommend using with this mod. Without both that mod and the patch, you may end up with some shaders that have rock textures instead of ash textures.
I recommend using this with Photorealistic Pyroclastic Ash Spawn
Available for Xbox here
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If you are interested in collaborating on Overhaul projects, or levelling up your experience of modding Skyrim, please join my discord server, Skypocalypse.
Skypocalypse is above all a place for COLLABORATION, a community hub for mutual aid to level up our skills and Skyrim itself.
This server is the host to Skypocalypse Academy, where modders and porters of all skill and experience levels assist each other as we dive ever deeper into transforming the bones of this magical game. Featuring an extensive library of tools and resources, The Academy is meant to be as educational as it is welcoming.
We know from experience that modding is an extremely addictive past-time and can be a slippery slope from creating a simple load order to porting mods to going full boat and attempting to rebuild Skyrim from the ground up. That's why we believe in a community that integrates Xbox and PC gamers along with porting noobs and experienced mod authors. We all have more to learn, and modding Skyrim to its extreme is a community effort to say the least.
Skypocalypse is meant to be a gaming community that supports collaborative efforts. The gaming and social channels here are intended to foster the social connections that help act as glue for our collaborative work.
I made this mod as a Memorial for my friend Amara, who died on June 29th, 2022 after a long hard fight with Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
This past winter was the last time I got to see them, and together we went on an adventure to The Petrified Forest, which was just a few miles from where they were living at the time. That adventure was the best part of the trip; it was such a gift to be fully in our element together combing through rocks on the ground and soaking in the glorious wonders of the wild world.
Below is a picture of Amara doing their thing, making themself at home curled up in an ancient pyroclastic ash flow, nbd.
As you can see, the actual pyroclastic flow looks quite a bit different from the in-game images. In order to make sure that they'd blend well as extended tiled landscapes, and with all of the adjacent vanilla textures, I overlaid upscaled vanilla ash textures at 30-35% opacity over the top of the ash flow images. This makes them more uniform and more similar in color and shading to the vanilla files, but with far more detail and structure. I also thought this would be more lore-friendly, with ash laying over the top of the original hardened pyroclastic flow.
I always found the original Solstheim landscape textures to be excessively flat and boring, to the point where I don't even want to spend time there. My hope with this mod was to give them a more dynamic appearance while providing a massive improvement to the visual quality.
Inherently the tiling is a downgrade from vanilla landscapes, due to its lack of uniformity. It is fairly noticeable over long distances but I did the best I could to blend them until my eyes couldn't stare at the screen any longer. At some point I will probably try to redo the one texture file that's the most noticeable (volcanis_ash_01.dds) and see if I can improve the tiling. If it's too much for you, just track this mod and wait for an update.
After doing all of the ash-strewn landscape textures there were three more vanilla files that just looked terrible and didn't mesh well with the new high resolution dynamic textures, so I utilized similar methods (blending pyroclastic ash flows and powdered ash) with overlaid images from Quixel Megascans to create those.
I've included a patch for Shaders of Solstheim, which I strongly recommend using with this mod. Without both that mod and the patch, you may end up with some shaders that have rock textures instead of ash textures.
I recommend using this with Photorealistic Pyroclastic Ash Spawn
Available for Xbox here
If you are interested in collaborating on Overhaul projects, or levelling up your experience of modding Skyrim, please join my discord server, Skypocalypse.
Skypocalypse is above all a place for COLLABORATION, a community hub for mutual aid to level up our skills and Skyrim itself.
This server is the host to Skypocalypse Academy, where modders and porters of all skill and experience levels assist each other as we dive ever deeper into transforming the bones of this magical game. Featuring an extensive library of tools and resources, The Academy is meant to be as educational as it is welcoming.
We know from experience that modding is an extremely addictive past-time and can be a slippery slope from creating a simple load order to porting mods to going full boat and attempting to rebuild Skyrim from the ground up. That's why we believe in a community that integrates Xbox and PC gamers along with porting noobs and experienced mod authors. We all have more to learn, and modding Skyrim to its extreme is a community effort to say the least.
Skypocalypse is meant to be a gaming community that supports collaborative efforts. The gaming and social channels here are intended to foster the social connections that help act as glue for our collaborative work.