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Murals That Don't Suck (WIP)


volnaiskra

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Here's a preview of my latest mod. I'll be working on this over the next few months, so constructive feedback is appreciated. If you'd like to be notified when it's complete, you can follow my facebook page.


Overview

When I played Skyrim back in 2011, I remember fighting through a Nordic ruin, and coming across my first Nordic mural. It seemed to depict strange gods and beasts, and speak of a world long forgotten. With breathless anticipation, I walked up to examine it, to let its story and lore soak into me.

I still remember the feeling of disappointment I felt when I realised just how horribly low-res the mural was. It wasn't just ugly, it was damn near indecipherable.

When I came back to Skyrim in 2014, I was delighted to learn just how many mods had been made since those early days. Every conceivable element of Skyrim had been improved and beautified. Well, almost every element. Those murals were still pretty much as bad as ever. Sure, a few people had modded them, but those mods did little more than apply a sharpen filter, re-export the normal maps, and/or do some higher-resolution outline work over the originals. The major texture overhauls like Skyrim HD didn't even touch them.

You can't really blame the modding community for this. The problem was that the vanilla murals are just so low res that they don't really give you anything to work with. To do a decent job, you'd have to scrap them and completely redo everything from scratch. And this would be a very loooooooong process. No one would be stupid or crazy enough to do that.

Until now.


http://snag.gy/rQTN9.jpg




Wait..... 8192 x 4096 - are you crazy?!

Believe it or not, even this seemingly preposterous resolution is actually slightly smaller than ideal!

The thing is, the in-game Nordic murals are huge. If you play in first-person and walk right up to one, you'll only see a small fraction of the mural. In other words, the mural becomes several times larger than your screen. If you're playing at 1920x1080, that means that the whole mural is now, say, 5k-6k pixels wide.

This problem is compounded by another problem: the various mural elements share space with each other. So, for example, the file that contains the women carrying a queen (shown above) also contains three men carrying a king to the women's left, and a large blank area to their right. So, while the file is already a paltry 512x512, the group of women is only 150px wide! And yet they practically fill the screen if you walk right up to the mural. So yeah, you can see why things get as crazy blurry as they do.

So, even at 8192 x 4096, the women get slightly enlarged (and hence blurred) when right up close. But of course this is minor, and they still look great.

And of course, when I release the mod, I will create a lower-res version for people too.


http://snag.gy/QOagj.jpg



OK, but whose system could run something like this?

Actually, the VRAM usage is surprisingly modest. Many people will be able to run even the high-res version.

I have VRAM issues on my PC (CTD if I have too many texture mods), and so I normally refuse to use 4K textures. I use 2K textures and even 1K textures where possible. But I have zero problems running these 8k mural textures, and most other systems will be fine too. This is for two main reasons:

1. I've been smart and selective in how I compress and export the various files. The filesizes aren't particularly huge.

2. The murals are all in small interior locations with few objects being loaded into memory. The stress on your memory in these dungeons is nothing compared to being outside. If you're successfully using texture packs outside, then you'll probably be able to use the highest-quality version of my mod without any problems


Like I said, I don't even use 4K textures normally. But my feeling is that if you're going to splurge your VRAM on any texture, then it should probably be the mural textures: they're large, they're interesting and lore-rich, you'll naturally want to examine them up close, and they're indoors where your VRAM is usually underutilised.



http://snag.gy/cGLvC.jpg



How are you making them?

I'm redoing every mural from scratch, element by element. I'm creating everything in Photoshop on my wacom, with multiple layers of overlayed texture. I'm staying as lore-friendly and close to the originals as I can (but Bethesda didn't make it easy on me - the originals are so low-res you can sometimes barely bloody tell what's on them!).

To increase the final visual quality, my source files are even larger than the output versions. For example, the source of the file pictured above (the bear god Stuhn) is 7000 x 7000. The PSD file is over 3.5GB, and I regularly hit 95% RAM usage on my 32GB RAM system when working on the mod in Photoshop!

I'm using multiple visual references as I work, to keep things accurate and lore-friendly. So far, I've already referenced scientific illustrations of bear skulls, photographs of Viking decorative woodwork and sculpture, and a Rembrandt portrait- to name just a few!



http://snag.gy/kpWLh.jpg



When will it be ready?

A few months still. I've already sunk a good hundred or so hours into it, and I'm not even a third of the way through. But I'm highly motivated, and it will definitely get done. It will take time though, that's all, as it's a side project I make in my spare time.

To keep track of my progress and be notified of when it's done, keep your eye on this thread, or follow my facebook page.

Until then, please let me know what you think, and if you have feedback on what I've done so far. :smile:

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I felt the same way you did when I first encountered the murals in a Nordic ruin. Your mod will make the Hall of Stories worthy of lingering in. I'm looking forward to seeing it. :)

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Amazing!

You are the embodiment of artistic talent!

From one modder to another, I whole-heartedly appreciate your effort on this.
I anticipate it's release and will support it the moment its up.

 

I'm not sure how these are implemented in-game, but I'd assume they are on a Nif using alpha yes? or is it against a diffuse stone? Either way, ensure that Alpha Blending is enabled there for a crisp look with nice AA edges!

 

Keep it up!

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Thanks for your kind words, people. They bring a smile to my face. :smile:

Amazing!

You are the embodiment of artistic talent!

From one modder to another, I whole-heartedly appreciate your effort on this.
I anticipate it's release and will support it the moment its up.

 

I'm not sure how these are implemented in-game, but I'd assume they are on a Nif using alpha yes? or is it against a diffuse stone? Either way, ensure that Alpha Blending is enabled there for a crisp look with nice AA edges!

 

Keep it up!

I'm not sure about the model side of things. I've just been working from the .DDS texture files, which has been working fine.

 

Though having said that, there are some oddities in the way the .DDS files are applied. Certain parts of the texture get stretched or distorted in-game. And other parts seem to get tiled strangely. The main imagery is fine, but some of the stuff in the fringes are affected. You can't really notice this in vanilla since everything's so blurry anyway, but with the higher resolution you do start noticing it.

 

For example, some of the imagery on the fringes of the mural gets a bit more elongated than it should. Also, some of the 'blank' areas (ie. areas of the texture file that don't contain imagery, but just contain 'empty' stone texture) get elongated in weird spots.

 

To combat this, I've decided to load in test textures that contain a precise grid on them, and then study those textures in-game to see just how and where exactly that grid gets distorted. Then, through trial and error, I should be able to compensate for the distortions by distorting my originals in the exact opposite way.

 

Can anyone think of a better way to solve this problem?

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Great idea!
I hated how the storytelling in Skyrim was based around books and talking to NPC's as oppsosed to the more immersive way of absorbing the environment, and taking in things at your own pace.
Reminds me of when I first tried reading the DB's commandments in the Sanctuary.

Hell of an idea!
Good luck, I'm cheering for u :')

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