I've been working for a little while on an update for Northern Ice retexture. And I'm now entering testing stage that I'd like to make more open to public. If there are any issues during your testing, let me know, I'll take a look at solving them. If nothing comes up anymore then I'll move the old version to old files and 1.21 will be the new default.
Changelog for 1.20:
- Fixed gamma being incorrect and making textures really gray instead - Added IMR2 meshes with customized values. - Improved frozenmarsh textures - Added Frozenmarsh complex parallax - Added Glacier complex parallax - Added frozenmarsh parallax - Changed frozenmarsh parallax and backlight - Revamped Glaciersubsurface - Removed dependency on Soft Light and switched to Back Light - Fixed and optimized extremely high file size in textures. 414MB --> 183MB
Changelog for 1.21: - Fixed collision for glacierendlg and dlc2glacierendlg - Fixed heavy complex parallax distortion on huge meshes (might be noticeable slightly in very specific angles or problematic meshes, not much more I can do for this) - Hopefully fixed brightness issues - Lowered specularity brightness - Tweaked glacierstraightlg to fix some UV map issues - Added a cubemap - Minor tweaks to ENV texture
// Currently investigating ENB preset effects on the textures. It's highly likely that it will be difficult to reproduce the same look unless you're using specific ENBs. More info will come soon on this matter.
Hmmm, icefloes.dds has been sort of blurred and bloomed to look much less crisp and glacierparallax.dds is much more blurred. Frozenmarshice01 has had the dark parts brightened in a way that shows some like artifacting on the textures that's kinda strange. Maybe it looks better in-game like that, but I don't really get it.
Also there's some meshes and cave ice normal maps that are in the original Northern Ice but not in this OR IMR?
I'm confused, is this an improvement on Northern Ice? If so, how?
I'm assuming you're comparing the textures directly.
I'll try to answer your questions on the mod.
Textures: - They aren't changed in such a way to look like a different ice retexture. As in the mod description, this is just a 'branch' of Northern Ice, but made to look more in my style. I have made various artistic changes to the textures to suit my needs.
Caves: - I'm not aiming to include caves. I already have a cave mod I'm happy with.
Collisions: - In the latest update the collisions aren't up to date yet with the meshes as it is in testing phase for other issues.
"I'm confused, is this an improvement on Northern Ice? If so, how?"
I never made the claim or posted it anywhere that this is an improved version of NI. I've stated that this is my version that I've tweaked/edited of his mod.
If you dislike the way the mod looks, you're free to find whatever works best for you.
This mod, installed on top of the IMR 2.2 (low poly consistency, no partitioned meshes or snow) destroyed my frames from 60 to 0
glacierslab.dds files are still 170 mb, despite this in description:
- Glacierslab_n.dds : Optimized file size 170 -> 42, heavily improved texture surface mapping, super accurate specularity, added a lot of micro detail.
Sorry about that, I can see how that might be confusing. I'll quickly redo the description for clarity. Also not entirely how you'd lose all your frames just like that over installing a texture mod. Unless running out of Vrams?
Best way you can test is open up task manager when running your game, go to any glaciers and check whats your Vram usage on the graphics card tab in Performance section. Otherwise I'm not entirely sure why you'd be experiencing this unless you have a very limited amount of Vram. 2Gb or less.
What we have here are 3 textures 90 MB each ! and 2 textures with 180MB each ! such big massive textures are only for screenarchery, for gameplay it is to much, i have downscaled the textures to 2K, now there are 21 mb and 41mb, and you cant see realy a difference, but you get a massive performance boost. It is not your VRAM, the problem with such big textures are, they are not packed in BSA and uncompressed, even my 4080 dont like this, and again, try to downscale, i have uploaded picture, where you can see, there is no difference.
When someone say, textures have no performance impact, yes, normaly that is true, but we are working here with loose files !! with loose file loading, textures have a massive impact on game performance, thats the reason why so many have performance problems with JK mods or other overhauls, because they are using 2K - 4K and even 8K textures on everything and forgeting how stressfull it is for the machine, to work with all this thousend of loose files.
No engine in this world, uses loose files, because of performance, in modding we must use loose files, because of loading rules and overwriting to build our setup, but we must learn , 4K on everything is nonsense, and will brake any graphics card performance, think about it, do you realy need 2K 5MB texture on a single color grass mesh ? do you see any difference between a 1K 1 MB texture and a massive 22MB 4K texture on a bee or goblet ? ;)
From a distance this is the best looking glacier replacer IMO. I love the complexity of color and detail it has at the far to medium distance. I do wish that up close the glaciers had a more detailed texture as unfortunately the bluish gray smeared portion of the texture (glacierslab.dds) looks a bit like wet molded plastic when you're right next to it. I hope that texture gets revisited one day.
This looks amazing, great job. The only thing missing for me is ENB Complex Multilayered Parallax support to tidy up the joins between this and Majestic Landscapes... Any plans to add it? IMR has an ENB addon in the options section now, so hopefully it wouldn't be a major pain in the arse lol.
Yep have that installed as well. The issue I'm having is where the ice slabs merge with the land, the edge snow texture looks spiky like a shell texture or when you try apply parallax to a non-parallax texture. The most obvious places are the marshes just outside Morthal and to the side of Windhelm bridge. I've just switched over from your Skyrim Remastered IMR, which blends this beautifully, but I really love the way you've blended the blue of Northern Ice with the snow texture so would like to keep the switch. I'm open to the fact that I may be doing something wrong or that another mod might be conflicting, so just wanted to check.
Since I haven't included the caves, you can use it with the original mod if you want the cave textures but you have to disable the ESP and use IMR for meshes.
46 comments
I've been working for a little while on an update for Northern Ice retexture. And I'm now entering testing stage that I'd like to make more open to public. If there are any issues during your testing, let me know, I'll take a look at solving them. If nothing comes up anymore then I'll move the old version to old files and 1.21 will be the new default.
Changelog for 1.20:
- Fixed gamma being incorrect and making textures really gray instead
- Added IMR2 meshes with customized values.
- Improved frozenmarsh textures
- Added Frozenmarsh complex parallax
- Added Glacier complex parallax
- Added frozenmarsh parallax
- Changed frozenmarsh parallax and backlight
- Revamped Glaciersubsurface
- Removed dependency on Soft Light and switched to Back Light
- Fixed and optimized extremely high file size in textures. 414MB --> 183MB
Changelog for 1.21:
- Fixed collision for glacierendlg and dlc2glacierendlg
- Fixed heavy complex parallax distortion on huge meshes (might be noticeable slightly in very specific angles or problematic meshes, not much more I can do for this)
- Hopefully fixed brightness issues
- Lowered specularity brightness
- Tweaked glacierstraightlg to fix some UV map issues
- Added a cubemap
- Minor tweaks to ENV texture
// Currently investigating ENB preset effects on the textures. It's highly likely that it will be difficult to reproduce the same look unless you're using specific ENBs. More info will come soon on this matter.
Images
Maybe it looks better in-game like that, but I don't really get it.
Also there's some meshes and cave ice normal maps that are in the original Northern Ice but not in this OR IMR?
I'm confused, is this an improvement on Northern Ice? If so, how?
Also also has similar changes to this mod been included: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/66075 ?
I'll try to answer your questions on the mod.
Textures:
- They aren't changed in such a way to look like a different ice retexture. As in the mod description, this is just a 'branch' of Northern Ice, but made to look more in my style.
I have made various artistic changes to the textures to suit my needs.
Caves:
- I'm not aiming to include caves. I already have a cave mod I'm happy with.
Collisions:
- In the latest update the collisions aren't up to date yet with the meshes as it is in testing phase for other issues.
If you dislike the way the mod looks, you're free to find whatever works best for you.
glacierslab.dds files are still 170 mb, despite this in description:
- Glacierslab_n.dds : Optimized file size 170 -> 42, heavily improved
texture surface mapping, super accurate specularity, added a lot of
micro detail.
EDIT: 1.10 version of this mod
EDIT: and with the original Northern Ice
Otherwise I'm not entirely sure why you'd be experiencing this unless you have a very limited amount of Vram. 2Gb or less.
When someone say, textures have no performance impact, yes, normaly that is true, but we are working here with loose files !! with loose file loading, textures have a massive impact on game performance, thats the reason why so many have performance problems with JK mods or other overhauls, because they are using 2K - 4K and even 8K textures on everything and forgeting how stressfull it is for the machine, to work with all this thousend of loose files.
No engine in this world, uses loose files, because of performance, in modding we must use loose files, because of loading rules and overwriting to build our setup, but we must learn , 4K on everything is nonsense, and will brake any graphics card performance, think about it, do you realy need 2K 5MB texture on a single color grass mesh ? do you see any difference between a 1K 1 MB texture and a massive 22MB 4K texture on a bee or goblet ? ;)
or just use IMR with this alone?