PPR Mod (Project Photo Realistic)

[shockz]

No ENB or injectors are used in my game, that is normally the first question people ask, what ENB settings you using.

 

For a while now i have been modding the landscape textures and water of skyrim.

Now im not the kind of person who is happy with his outcome and normally i don't like my own work.

However i am now starting to see results i could say with a lot of confidence that im liking.

Because of a realistic water i ruined recently, i decided to see if the land could be done in the same way before i try to get the realism back in my water.

The Photo realistic water i am talking about is below.

 

Photo Realistic Water Video

 

 

[video=youtube]https-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgVmTm_H86E

 

 

 

Here is a small video to show the lighting test i did today with my new photo realistic textures.

I have done all the landscape files twice so it's not that big of a job, i was just never happy so started over a few times.

Got riverwood area done, going for riften area next and turning that autumn into spring.

 

Because of the limitations in my skills im not expecting a crysis comparison but im going to try regardless.

After the textures are up for download, please bare in mind a lot of landscape edits will be needed, not only to fix bad seams but to add more to the game without pushing my pc to any stress levels, the game to me looks bare and dull. This may take me a while..

 

Photo Realistic Land Video

 

 

[video=youtube]http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-424lZj9oGI

 

 

 

Because my video quality is useless im going to tag some screenshots below

 

[CaBaL]

definitely doing right imo... just 1 thing for what i've learned on enviromental skyrim stuff... there are always 2 different "layers " on normals.... one for fine and medium details and a second layer or "level" call is as you like for big bumps... it's used to reduce the pattern effect and give depth from distance,preventing also a flat view in first person in whide areas,

the 2 things are always indipendent one from another .... the huge shape never follow fine details to tell it in an ndo way.

making a repeatable bump pattern and overlaying_multiply with neutralization over details you can get even better results

i tried to make some experiment on this aspect with amidianborn landscape update released yesterday (can find on nexus)... it's all but not photorealistic... heavily oriented on a pictorical side but you can see what i'm talking about.

[Aiyen]

Uhhh new landscapes...guess it is about time I update them!

 

On this side of things.

I am sadly the kind of person who like what ENB does to water.. mostly. I need my caustics! It is just a way too epic effect!

But well that can always be implemented on top!

I think your water vid looks great, but then again I think most water mods look great when looking at it from that angle. Would be really interested in seeing it on shallow water, and some different places etc.

 

As for your landscapes, then I think the images and video looked very nice.

Recently what I have noticed I would like is a much better worked wood texture for just about everything. The one I have now just stands out slightly with my ENB settings. Also gonna need to look for a new one for certain rocky ones inside interiors. But that is a different story.

 

Looking forward to seeing what you cook up in the future! Always love more epic textures!

[shockz]

are these in the alphas on the normals, because i erased them till i figured out what they used them for.. i know the defuse holds transparency or specular but wasn't sure what the normal alphas held... Could i trouble you into posting a diffuse texture with a matching normal and normal alpha so i roughly know how to work them..

 

I must agree when i started out i had crysis in mind but true photo realism seems to be out of my reach atm... getting close but not the real thing lol

 

The water i had has gone im trying to bring it back though, the shallow water looked great. there was only 1 angle i could not make look realistic and that is facing forward on the right side of the water... tried multiple times to figure out why that part look horrible... when i fix up this new water im working with i'll show you shallow deep and angled, then i will show you the ugly angle where it never seems to look good. lol

 

The only reason i don't use ENB is because its too good for my rig... id love to have ENB but i will need upgrades before i can enjoy a good ENB.. already tested the parralax and soome other stuff and was very impressed.

[CaBaL]

are these in the alphas on the normals, because i erased them till i figured out what they used them for.. i know the defuse holds transparency or specular but wasn't sure what the normal alphas held...

 

I must agree when i started out i had crysis in mind but true photo realism seems to be out of my reach atm... getting close but not the real thing lol

alpha are used for transparencies just on diffuse maps, since often one texture overlay the other ingame... like snow... or grass ... pourpouse is to make conjunctions smoother. normal do not have alphas except few exceptions... since nifsettings on meshes are on no specularity... or very weak one.

this bump effect ...you can find into the normal maps, particularry check the green channel... is more noticeable there.

[shockz]

I think i know what you mean, my normals seem ok the game looks flat when the sun is at the highest point but retains more bump  the more the sun goes down.

Not sure how to solve this... Green and blue alphas for normals control left and right dept, slightly angled though. green holds purple colors while the blue holds yellow colors... shadow and light i think. normal mapping is very hard im still struggling with it a bit.

 

My texture

 

 

My normal

 

 

Outcome

 

 

 

Here are some different angles of water and shallow water, even added the ulgy angle last. yuk ima sort that out if it's the last thing i do lol

This is not the realistic water in the video, i changed it to make it non photorealistic. forgot to save a backup of the esp.

 

[CaBaL]

nope is not what i mean, althought your normal is well done :)

 

 

i called this second "layer" sub bump... are mostly soft waves but can be deeper

 

do not mind too much abouth the flip of normals... usually beth uses an inverted green , but in many cases normal is just as ndo produces it... just use the option you think opportune

[shockz]

Aaaah i see what you mean now, thank you so much.. it's late here 3am but tomorrow im going to work on giving my normals some more work.

I don't have ndo, i create height maps and convert them into normals, then i have to fix a lot of things in photoshop. i'll find a way to do this... will update with some results :)

[CaBaL]

downgrade to cs5 and bring back ndo at work :) is seriously the best possible option.

goodnight

[shockz]

Im thinking of doing that.. ndo2 is the best program i have ever had so far for normal maps, worked wonders on my world of tanks conversion.. g'night and thanks for the help, much appreciated :)

 

im upstairs on my laptop to see what my screenshots look like without my Smart 3D TV

[deathneko11]

I think you really are trying to put SRO under......jesus. what kind of performance hit is this? O_o

 

Oh and if that video is of a lake then I think the water is too fast. If it is a river then never mind, it looks fine.

[shockz]

the water is a river i did the speed to match the rapids lol...

 

Performance hits... well each has their mod limits due to what specs their rig is.... so mine is not a pro rig but it can handle a lot of stress for what it is.

 

 

Resolution i have is 1920 x 1080p 60MHz most textures you see in the video are 1024 x 1024 pixels DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha . the rocks and wood are 2048 x 2048.

My water is 1024 x 1024 Pixels 128 bpp ScRGB+Premultiplied Alpha floating point.

 

INI file is tweaked way past Ultra with more than half draw distance on light LOD etc, No stripping yet, Tree culling on. some cell culling on.

 

Lots poly count due to increased density in tress and objects, plants etc... I only get a stutter during autosave... the video stutters a bit but that came after converting the video so it wasn't an in game issue... It supprisingly runs smooth.

Lags a little when i have a lot going on on my desktop like photoshop with huge 2048 x 2048 textures open and ck running with tweaked CK INI.

 

Machine name: SHOCKZ-PC

Operating System: Windows 7 GAMERâ„¢ 2010 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)

System Manufacturer: Acer

System Model: Aspire M3203

Processor: AMD Athlon™ II X4 620 Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.6GHz

Memory: 4096MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 4080MB RAM

Page File: 1731MB used, 6426MB available

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

User DPI Setting: Using System DPI

System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)

DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled

DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode

 

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip type: GeForce GTX 650

DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

Display Memory: 2755 MB

Dedicated Memory: 971 MB

Shared Memory: 1783 MB

Current Mode: 1600 x 900 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor

Monitor Model: LG SMART 3DTV

Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)

Output Type: HDMI

Driver File Version: 9.18.0013.3193 (English)

Driver Version: 9.18.13.3193

DDI Version: 10.1

Driver Model: WDDM 1.1

Driver Attributes: Final Retail

[shockz]

 

Been working on that extra bump... using various cloud methods with blend modes and fade effect... the green channel adds a lot of purple, but using the red channel i did get some dark  blue that is in your normal... will keep trying new things and going in game to see the difference. :)

[CaBaL]

 

Been working on that extra bump... using various cloud methods with blend modes and fade effect... the green channel adds a lot of purple, but using the red channel i did get some dark  blue that is in your normal... will keep trying new things and going in game to see the difference. :)

looks great... is a small thing but you'll immediately notice a big difference in open areas where the same tile is repeated often,just out of riverwood...direction whiterun above dirtcliffs there's  one of these areas, perfect to check textures like pineforest and field grass 2  (field grass 01 is all 'round whiterun)

a consideration on memory usage: increasing in this way with normal the variety of the pattern let user feel less mandatory huge increase of grass density(user chose eventually a moderate increase instead of high density) ...a nice gain for fps, game will render default textures instead of polygons for grass

[deathneko11]

Shokz, any chance you could release what youve done with riverwood so far? The water I mean. I'd love to test it in game and use for screenshots.