Hello Skyrim people,

Skyrim has a lot of texture replacers but very few mesh replacers. And almost no static mesh replacer mods. Now it does...I now present my first proper mod: a 3D model upgrade mod!

Brief Introduction

The first thing I noticed when playing Skyrim was how many static meshes were very blocky and frankly, ugly. This is quite jarring next to the quality character and create models. I was hoping Skyrim would use much higher-fidelity environment meshes compared to Oblivion, but sadly many architecture, clutter, furniture, and landscape meshes are...very...unamazing.

Hence, this mod edits many 3D models to improve their appearance and to fix many of the ugly seams and other oddities present in many of the default 3D models. The ultimate goal is to improve about 200 to 300 of the worst offenders. This will take a long time, and I'll release incremental updates to include new 3D models as I finish them.

Note: This is a high-polygon, high-resolution mod! Only modern computers should use this mod!

Pictures!

Please also note: These pictures don't do the 3D models justice. My mod looks much nicer in-game, in-action!

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-2-1328857447.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-1-1328857306.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-3-1328857309.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-2-1328857389.jpg / http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-3-1328857390.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-1-1328934962.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-1-1328937341.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-4-1328857310.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-5-1328857390.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-2-1328857308.jpg
http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/images/8655-1-1328857388.jpg

Note: there are custom options for weathered/dirtier textures available when you install the mod if you don't like the cleaner look of the furniture/barrels!

Please see the Skyrim Nexus page for more images and information.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8655

Although you can't always tell the difference, with some things you can, like the table and the stone wall. (Edit: Going off the screenshots, that is)
Absolutely stunning!

Thanks a lot, Brumbek!

(And lol @ 'ultimate tater mod')

This looks amazing. Not sure about the apple though, it maybe looks bit too smooth around the stalk...

Totally approved!!


Love the Table.
And I'm svcker for better meshes of all kind. Even more so than textures!

Cheers

Nice Work. Only the new Barrels are not my kind of liking, I like the Vanilla barrels more, they look more realistic. But the other ones are very good.

Very nice!

Any chance this could be uploaded to the steam workshop so that any new updates could be automatically downloaded? I think this would be cool as it looks like this type of craftmenship will take a long time to complete.

Great!

Downloading now.

Hm, looking nice!

But frankly, in some of the pics it looks as if you mostly improved the textures and the uv mapping, not the polygon count.
Therefore one might be tempted to ask whether more detailed meshes are necessary or if the same effect could be had much cheaper?
Don't want to sound negative, I'm just wondering.
What I really did like are the barrels that have a visible "bumby" rope/belt around them now and the round table.

How's the fps hit with those models?

Thanks to everyone for the comments. Many more meshes will be improved over time.

My mod is sort of a combination of UV mapping improvements/fixes and new 3D meshwork. Sometimes I keep existing mesh geometry, sometimes I add new stuff. I understand that some stuff can be faked through normal maps, but I don't like doing that. Normal maps were invented ages ago when games couldn't handle hardly any polygons. Nowadays, games can push tons of polygons so using normal maps for details and curves is a crutch and inferior to real 3D modeling. The pictures don't show my work adequately. Go in-game and look at the stuff I've improved. You see the new mesh detail. Normal maps are fine for looking at things at a distance head-on, but when close and at angles, normal maps lose their fake 3D effect.

Anyway, my logic for this mod is why fake 3D with low poly stuff when there's plenty of room to create high-polygon stuff? That being said, some of the models I left a bit low-poly in order to not make them look out of place. So I'm not trying for super-high-detail, just nice detail that still fits in to the game. But again, try my stuff in-game and I think you'll notice my new mesh stuff much more.

One day you'll make something I don't download. Not today though...

Mmm, most are good, although I do think that the barrel looked better vanilla

Aw man let's get married

Downloaded.

Will do!
Sorry if I did maybe sound a bit negative in my earlier post, that wasn't my intention.

Another small step towards bringing Skyrim to this decade

Nice job

Version 1.01 released. I removed the wardrobe01.nif which was causing CTDs. Grr. Will fix that mesh shortly. Blasted .nif format is so unpredictable...the wardrobe works on my machine, so go figure.

Anyway, I have big plans for this mod. Thanks to everybody for the comments! My future plans:

Make rocks and mountains not ugly (remove ugly seams, fix streched textures)
Replace horrid 2D ropes with 3D ropes on the farmhouse stuff.
More fruit and bread and other food improvements.
Modular support with install script for picking and choosing.

Hm, could I use this without the high-res textures? I fear those are a bit too much for my computer... but I would really love to have that table and some other improvements in my game. (For performance reasons, I'd skip the food and other smaller stuff.)

Oh, and any plans for Windhelm? It's my favorite town, but it's horribly blocky and blurry, I think, and the snow looks weird in lots of places.

In any case, this is very good work, great to see mods like this so soon!

Amazing how since Morrowind, TES games still have these badly designed meshes. Always makes me think things were rushed.

This looks really good! Nice work

Talking about the farmhouse...

They also have this horrid wooden beams with terribly stretched and tiling wood texture on them (the big collum-like wood beams).

And regarding seams: The wooden gate-like structure on top of the stairs to Dragonsreach shows visible seams, too.
So, in case you are looking for something to do...

That's it exactly! I really hope that you're considering doing the interior and exterior building meshes too. The weird flatness of them bothers me much more than the misc items.

Also are these still compatable with texture replacers? I haven't installed any yet, but knowing me - I will and when I do it'd be nice to know that the new textures won't look weird with these models.

Looks great man!

I personally hate normal maps. Often you find you have a poor quality texture, and a normal map to make it look better, until you look really close. Oblivion was very guilty of this, Skyrim not so bad, but there are some things I think yuck, that texture looks like something from orignal Doom....

There was an Oblivion armour converted to Morrowind, and it looked terrible (to me), the chest mesh was obviously flat, and the texture had no real shading on it to indicate depth, as the normal map was for that.
Sure, I know MW armour was low poly, but at least that stuff had bumpy bits for key detail areas, combined with shaded textures, gives a pretty good result.

Normal maps are good for systems that have quick processors and low RAM. Also known as the PS3/Xbox. I was hoping they'd have high-res meshes with the high-res textures, but alack...

Thanks for posting your improved meshes, Brumbek.

I realize some will prefer vanilla. I also accept the vanilla barrels are realistic. I just don't think they look good. I'd rather have slightly less realistic but higher-quality models. Perhaps I'll add a optional "vanilla style" option in the future.

Well, maybe I'll release a bad mod next time just for a change.

The problem is I had to create custom textures for several models. Since these are my textures, no other mods will work with them unless specifically designed for my mod. Hmm...I could release a low (vanilla) resolution texture option, but for now I'm avoiding doing a lot of extra stuff since it just slows me down in actually including new meshes. I'll see what I can do for the next major release.

And yes, I'm sure if I ever reach Windhelm, I will find it ugly and be forced to fix it all. It's just that I am VERY slow in playing the game since I've already got a list of about 20 meshes to fix before playing more.

Yes, so true. If you want my honest opinion, I seriously think the person or two in charge of the static-type meshes just doesn't pay attention to details. I say that because so many meshes have total noob mistakes. Like they shrink a wall 50% but they don't update the UV map to shrink it, resulting in a very streched/blurry texture. Also, they constantly don't update the UV map when creating angles, which results in skewed UV maps. Or they copy and paste geometry, weld it together, but then never both updating and welding the UV map. Rushed? Maybe, but a careful modeler wouldn't do this type of thing, deadlines be danged. They just need to insist their modelers adhere to proper UV mapping rules...it ain't that hard. But that's just my opinion.

Yes, I will fix the horribly streched wooden beams with HORRIBLE seams running up and down. Boggles the mind how the most basic shape to UV (a cylinder) could get fouled up, but I digress.

And I'll look for that other thing at Dragonsreach. The thing is every 15 minutes I play I become horribly depressed as I find about 10 new meshes that either are low-poly or have terrible seams...

Yes, the bizarre flatness of the buildings I've noted. It's crazy. Bethesda created awesome character and creature models made up of thousands of polygons. But then they were like, oh, we can only use 20 polygons for this big wall the player will stand right next to during this critical scene. Just doesn't compute IMO...

SMIM uses its own custom textures out of necessity for most objects. But custom replacers shouldn't look weird or out of place. Best advice is just try it and let me know if you find really jarring differenes and maybe I can fix it, although it may just be the texture replacer you are using is very different from vanilla textures.