HD And Not HD

[Paultimate79]

Edit: A lot of people ( Ghogiel & Witcher79 to name a couple ) may still be confused as to what HD means. "High Definition" 720p or 1080p is -only- considered HD if the content being displayed is native. As I explained below, you can take an SD movie at 16:9 or 16:10 and expand it to cover a 1080p screen. Does that make the video HD? NO. Same with this game. It doesn't matter what you're running it at, it matters what native resolution the textures are able to display before there is no more detail. 1080p or 720p are simply upper limits of a given display. Skyrim is capable of displaying in many HD resolutions, however the vast majority of the default textures are 512x512.

 

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Hi, Im a Skyrim player and new to the Elder Scrolls modding community. First off want to say that ability to mod the game as the Elder Scrolls series allows is fantastic. Really great for the community to have fun even when they arnt out adventuring. One of the major things ive come here for is for the awesome HD textures many people have been working on and uploading for all to see their hard work.

 

.. I just have one small beef so far..

 

People using photoshop/whatever to take a default texture from the game, applying (badly done) sharpening to this texture, blowing the texture up to 2048^2 or 4096^2 and pretending big numbers means they can put "HD" in the title. I will demonstrate two examples. One is truly an HD upgrade over the games textures, and one is a ... well, here they are, lets see if you can tell the difference.

 

 

#1

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2630

 

#2

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2632

 

 

Now sure, some of us have 4GB of pure DDR5 pumping away, but most of us do not. The issue with (one of the above) uploads is #1 very lazy mod with no real work or visual upgrade put into it that is mislabeled HD, but more importantly #2 The image was 512x512 originally. 171KB. The blown up image with zero added actual detail is 2.5MB. For nothing. Doesnt seem like much, except not im wondering how many other cheap texture mods Ive downloaded that I need to sift through? Or any of us?

 

Could we have some better quality control on bogus "HD" texture mods? Or at least make people more aware when commenting on bogus HD mods (be nice). Sure someone may like the look, but it isnt HD, and thats what many of us are looking for. If I wanted a sharpened effect I'd use an injector(do!).

 

Thanks for reading, and happy (actual) HD texturing!

Edited December 5, 2011 by Paultimate79

[Ghogiel]

I checked the screenshots in those mods. None of them are HD. They are mostly likely cropped though as the aspect ratios aren't standard resolutions. :tongue:

 

 

If you want 'HD' make sure your screen resoultion is above 720. :thumbsup:

[Witcher79]

I checked the screenshots in those mods. None of them are HD. They are mostly likely cropped though as the aspect ratios aren't standard resolutions. :tongue:

 

 

If you want 'HD' make sure your screen resoultion is above 720. :thumbsup:

 

This.

 

Also: Complete High-Res Retexture Project

Nuff said.

[jimhsu]

Moral of the story: it is OK to blow up a texture in photoshop as a starting point (in fact, that's what I do). It is NOT OK to call it a day and upload that.

[snackynak]

Aw man, you mean I have to go an find a bunch of hi-res stock images of wood, stone metal, and cloth to repaint the images at 2048 and can't just double the image resolution and apply a high pass overlay? :psyduck:

[Blu02]

It's still chaotic on the texture-modding here on Nexus. People want to be first and/or biggest, and some people just upload whatever small changes they make by personal taste. but the real deal texture-packs are slowly starting to form and show, instead of just getting flooded away behind bazillions of other new mods. Within a month or two I'm certain you wont have any problems filtering these mods from eachother. Just give it some time to organize :) There are a lot of people and work involved.

 

As Wither79 mentioned, one of the projects trying to gather all types of real new textures into one single pack is Skyrim Pretty Pack. Keep an eye on it ;)

 

 

But I agree.

 

Also on the persistent use of "HD" in these matters. It's just.. wrong :wallbash:

Edited December 4, 2011 by Mr. Bravo

[SkjoldBjorn]

Yeah, i agree there is to many of em, i kinda did a *sigh* when i found a "HD texture pack" for bread. Not that im saying it's badly made. But all those different mods kind of a mess, you get all these different texture packs and don't take me wrong, you do this mostly because you think it's fun and all, and maybe you are new to texture modding, but some of them are really bad. however i will take bad texture mods over a ton of anime-stuff and really over-the-top adult content i saw people make for oblivion.

 

HD is used for everything these days.

Edited December 5, 2011 by Sk8on

[Ghogiel]

it's just a non sense label. Vanilla game is HD...I run at 1080p.

[Xouthpaw]

This is what happens when the CK isn't out and people who have never re-textured anything before want to release anything they can. As I've noticed a lot of the mods actually do read something like, "This is my first mod/ first re-texture."

[MonsterMonkey]

I'm sorry but i dislike 80% HD textures i download most of the time i delete them quicly, it's a question of having an artistic talent or not, to make it good you got to feel the mood of the game and its visual logic (if i can say such a thing) because a lot of HD retex are breaking the visual logic of the game.

 

To be clear most of the time Hi res retex is useless only some very good modders (in my opinion) have succeded, and most of the time it's more like a bling bling izm, like 2248/2248 res for textures this is absurd, if a tex is ugly it is still ugly no matter the resolution you make it, most players complain about there framerate and still put very-high res everywhere like it changes the game a lot, isometimes they do it just to say hey i have blahblah crossfire with16 gb ram etc, (wich is a complete waste of money in my opinion) it's like when i read people saying that they put ugridtoload at 11, ( Like they play scoped to see what 's there 2 miles away) with ultra details ( i''ve tried ultra as i was playin high details, and i wanderwhere are those ultra details exactly???? please ùake screens if you found them) and all view distances full and playin 1900/1080 res,

So most of them do it for the show... just to say " hey look what i have !".

Most of the time they didn't even tried to put ugrid to 7 with medium far details (What 's the difference, if you put ful detail lod it's hided by the fog effect and distant blur effect of Gambryo, the only thing that change allready is your framerate)

and they dont even know either than most screens cannot display 1900/1080 resolution, they dont know that there aint no notiçable difference between high details and Ultra Details (but a great fps loss), before i was playin ultra HD blahblahblah and was around 20/30 fps, and some guys showed me the xbox version, then i understood that Skyrim does not need all these ultra settings, they dont make enough difference to sacrifice the smoothness of the game.

 

Now i run it ugrid 7, antialias 2, aniso 8 far details medium, shadows 2048 shadowblur 4, all view distance full, and 1360/780 res, the game is as beautifull as it ever been and i have 60fps nearly allways.

If you wanna have some fun set the game on high settings take a screen and then take the same screen on ultra settings and you'll notice that 80% of times there ain't no differencies.

 

i really think people should concentrate on improving image space effects, colour scheme and shadow:lighting effects, because they are way (and without any comparison) better at enhancing a game graphics than HD.

Edited December 5, 2011 by MonsterMonkey