SKIN:High Quality Skyboxes II

[Salk 368]

Hello!

After installing the new version of the skyboxes I immediately wanted to look around to see the effects in the game and I must say it's impressive. One note: I don't use the Yavin IV modification but Kexikus' work there is so great that I am sorry I'm going to miss that.

As I expected, Korriban, Taris and the Unknown World are top notch and a feast for the eye. The backdrop buildings of Taris are fantastic although I would have personally liked a slightly lighter color for them to make them blend even better. Exceptional job on those three worlds.

Kashyyyk was better than I expected and it is in fact very much approved of by my own aesthetic sense. The lighter tone of the sky doesn't affect negatively the overall picture the way I initially feared and the various improvements are simply undeniable. 

And now I come to the only two criticisms, hoping that this won't make me sound ungrateful or worse because I truly admire the excellent job Kexikus has produced today and in the past.

I was talking of personal aesthetic sense and alarm bells were ringing in my head when I checked Dantooine. Let me start with saying that this also brings in a wonderful set of images but my gripe is with the high, snow-capped mountains. They are present in LDA_sky0003.tpc and LDA_sky0004.tpc. While numerically speaking it's LDA_sky0003 which present a higher number of mountains that look like they could belong to alpine settings, it's actually LDA_sky0004's big mountain which looks less harmonious.

Dantooine's landscape doesn't strike me for one that would allow such a strong contrast between hilly, undulating terrain and the relatively near presence of very tall mountain peaks. The snow, while being beautifully rendered, exacerbates this particular issue. 

But the rest of Dantooine is so beautiful that I elected it to be a worthy replacement and improvement over Kexikus' version 1 of his skyboxes.

And now I come to the only one new planet I decided to not "upgrade" fully and it's a shame because there is really much I like here as well. It's Manaan. I installed the new version to test it in game of course and the alarm bells in this case were too loud to ignore and the suspicions which arose from just checking the comparison screenshots found this time confirmation. First let me say that I believe the structural changes and especially the corrected perspective for the Atho City vistas are a wonderful and welcome change. The lighter skybox looks very good here as well and is a great improvement over version 1. My problem is with a new texture found in LMA_bboard01.tpc, LMA_ring01.tpc and LMA_ring02.tpc used to replace the original. I have attached two images which show exactly what I am talking about. In my opinion, the replacement, which I honestly cannot even understand what is supposed to represent, is a sensible downgrade. It doesn't fit together with the rest of the composition. Chromatically, to begin with but also structurally. The texture is also much less detailed and tendentially monochromatic compared to the original one. That's something very visible just by looking at the walls' texture quality.

So in the end I did not include that part in my own Manaan upgraded skyboxes. Ultimately I kept only the actual skies from that world: LMA_sky0001.tpc-LMA_sky0005.tpc and the .are changes (I don't know what the edited Manaan .mdl/mdx files are for but I left them out just in case) because I also liked V1's underwater Manaan skybox better.

I do hope that this "mini-review" is not going to antagonize anyone, especially the very talented author of this modification. I focused mainly on criticisms simply because everything else is superb.

Again, kudos to Kexikus for beautifying the skies of our beloved KotOR game!

Cheers! 

[Kexikus 994]

10 hours ago, Salk said:

Kashyyyk was better than I expected and it is in fact very much approved of by my own aesthetic sense. The lighter tone of the sky doesn't affect negatively the overall picture the way I initially feared and the various improvements are simply undeniable.

Glad to hear that I was able to convince you on that end

10 hours ago, Salk said:

I was talking of personal aesthetic sense and alarm bells were ringing in my head when I checked Dantooine. Let me start with saying that this also brings in a wonderful set of images but my gripe is with the high, snow-capped mountains. They are present in LDA_sky0003.tpc and LDA_sky0004.tpc. While numerically speaking it's LDA_sky0003 which present a higher number of mountains that look like they could belong to alpine settings, it's actually LDA_sky0004's big mountain which looks less harmonious.

Dantooine's landscape doesn't strike me for one that would allow such a strong contrast between hilly, undulating terrain and the relatively near presence of very tall mountain peaks. The snow, while being beautifully rendered, exacerbates this particular issue. 

But the rest of Dantooine is so beautiful that I elected it to be a worthy replacement and improvement over Kexikus' version 1 of his skyboxes.

Well, I just disagree here. IMO the mountains fit Dantooine's landscape very well, but that's of course up to personal taste. I want to note however, that those mountains were also present in the original release. I think I changed their position and the big one that bothers you was probably farther away before but the mountains themselves are not new.

10 hours ago, Salk said:

And now I come to the only one new planet I decided to not "upgrade" fully and it's a shame because there is really much I like here as well. It's Manaan. I installed the new version to test it in game of course and the alarm bells in this case were too loud to ignore and the suspicions which arose from just checking the comparison screenshots found this time confirmation. First let me say that I believe the structural changes and especially the corrected perspective for the Atho City vistas are a wonderful and welcome change. The lighter skybox looks very good here as well and is a great improvement over version 1. My problem is with a new texture found in LMA_bboard01.tpc, LMA_ring01.tpc and LMA_ring02.tpc used to replace the original. I have attached two images which show exactly what I am talking about. In my opinion, the replacement, which I honestly cannot even understand what is supposed to represent, is a sensible downgrade. It doesn't fit together with the rest of the composition. Chromatically, to begin with but also structurally. The texture is also much less detailed and tendentially monochromatic compared to the original one. That's something very visible just by looking at the walls' texture quality.

So in the end I did not include that part in my own Manaan upgraded skyboxes. Ultimately I kept only the actual skies from that world: LMA_sky0001.tpc-LMA_sky0005.tpc and the .are changes (I don't know what the edited Manaan .mdl/mdx files are for but I left them out just in case) because I also liked V1's underwater Manaan skybox better.

As I said before, that's also personal taste and I do think that my textures are a vast improvement over the vanilla look in every regard. I have no idea what you're trying to show on those pictures however. Could you elaborate on that?

The mdl and mdx files are replacements of the skybox models. I can't remember how terrible the vanilla Manaan skybox model is but I would assume that without those models you will get very ugly seams when using my new textures, so I would highly recommend using them. The only exception would be the docking bay where I also edited the backdrop planes which you don't want to use. So there you'll have to decide what to do.

As for the underwater scene. I get why you feel that my skybox there is too bright compared to vanilla but the colors are almost exactly the same in V1 and V2. The biggest difference is that the new one has better lightrays and works when looking up whereas the old one was seriously broken there. So I don't get why you would continue using V1 in that case at all.

Anyway, thanks for the review. I'm glad you like the things you do like and I hope you'll like the TSL version just as much if not even better.

[Malkior 476]

I believe the pictures Salk sent refer to the line of windows on the structure. Yours are a bit flatter and yellowish green which sticks out a bit and looks somewhat less high resolution compared even to Vanilla. To me they look like they were scaled-down versions of the Vanilla windows, but I can't tell if that's what you were intending.

[Salk 368]

Hello again!

It's exactly what Malkior said. The new textures for the docking bays lack detail and depth, despite the higher resolution. The line of window in particular is flat and the choice of making it yellow/gold, rather than sticking to the original grey/black, make it stand out even more. 

I am attaching another comparison screenshot down here and this time I will try and explain to be more clear about how a different decision could have made already a big difference.

If you look at the original texture, Bioware used Texture A for the lowest line of "windows" (as I said, I'm not even sure what they are supposed to represent and that is equally unclear both in the original and the new texture but the original is way smoother). You decided instead to use what is there marked as Texture B (which is Texture A in your version). Sticking to the original composition would have already helped improving the overall final look instead. You may also notice how Texture B and Texture C used by Bioware artists are not really the same and they both add a variation that is missing in the new textures.

Generally speaking, I find the original texture (granted, I use an upscaled version of it but it doesn't actually make that much of a difference) superior but it's just my personal opinion. What I did like better though was the perspective that your new textures/models of the docking bay backdrops introduced. It gives that feeling of being more realistic and overall geometrically correct. Unfortunately I couldn't have the best of both worlds so in the end it was either one or the other.

About Dantooine's mountains: I do believe you Kexikus when you say that there were already mountains in the original release but their presence was way more subtle and to me, it was preferable. Again, it's a matter of taste, I guess. Technically speaking all was impressive, including the mountains! 👌

And lastly about Manaan underwater: yes, I didn compare the new and the old LMA_Sea04.tga images and yes, I did notice that the color of the sea is not even that brighter but as you said, the much lighter rays of light change the overall rendition considerably.

I'm not the greatest TSL fan but I am looking forward to seeing what you could pull out of your magic hat there. I must say, the images you posted during the years (especially Nar Shaddaa) were impressive. 

I can but thank you again for all you have been doing for these two games and for offering it to us all.

Cheers!

[Kexikus 994]

That makes sense. While I like the yellow windows I can see why you would prefer the old ones. And I definitely see your point about them lacking variation in my case. I did intentionally make them quite dense/small to convey a better sense of scale but I might have overdone that a little.

Right now I don't feel like doing that (slightly burned out on skyboxes) but I might actually look into improving that in the future. Since it's only a backdrop texture that is much easier than changing an entire skybox. No promises though.

[Feuerwinter 2]

Good evening, first things first. Your mod rocks. But recently after updating to the new version 2 I'm seeing artifacts in Taris. What happens is, there's tops of buildings floating in the sky randomly. If I revert back to the version before everything works fine. I also took care of removing all previous mod files before updating. I'm still getting this weird glitch.

[Kexikus 994]

4 hours ago, Feuerwinter said:

Good evening, first things first. Your mod rocks. But recently after updating to the new version 2 I'm seeing artifacts in Taris. What happens is, there's tops of buildings floating in the sky randomly. If I revert back to the version before everything works fine. I also took care of removing all previous mod files before updating. I'm still getting this weird glitch.

Hmm, you're the second person to report this glitch.

Does it happen in every Taris module or only in some?

Also, what's your OS and GPU?

[Salk 368]

I'm glad to report that I don't seem to have this kind of issue.

My specs are Win10 and Geforce nVidia RTX 2070 with 432.0 drivers.

[Feuerwinter 2]

15 hours ago, Kexikus said:

Hmm, you're the second person to report this glitch.

Does it happen in every Taris module or only in some?

Also, what's your OS and GPU?

My specs are Win10 and Radeon RX 590 Series. Latest drivers installed. It happens on both sides of Upper Taris.

I could try to uninstall ReShade and see if that makes a difference.

EDIT: 

• double-checking where it happens showed that it only happens in Upper City North
• uninstalling ReShade brought no change 
• uninstalling all mods and only using yours brought no change

Edited November 20, 2020 by Feuerwinter

[Kexikus 994]

On 11/20/2020 at 5:12 PM, Feuerwinter said:

My specs are Win10 and Radeon RX 590 Series. Latest drivers installed. It happens on both sides of Upper Taris.

I could try to uninstall ReShade and see if that makes a difference.

EDIT: 

• double-checking where it happens showed that it only happens in Upper City North
• uninstalling ReShade brought no change 
• uninstalling all mods and only using yours brought no change

Thanks for looking into it. I still have no idea why it happens only in this one module but at least it seems to be consistent for everyone who has this issue.

I've attached a possible fix to this post. Could you extract the two files into your Override and see if the issue is fixed?

@mackmitchell94 Could you check as well?

TarisNorthFix.zip

[Feuerwinter 2]

@Kexikus This indeed fixed the problem. Thanks a lot for the effort. Been enjoying the mod already but now it's perfect!

By the way, does anyone also experience this weird shadow kind of thing crossing the half right of the picture? I do have that with and without mods. It moves with the character and sometimes it's also on the other side of the screen. At first I thought it was a reflective surface, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Kexikus 994]

On 11/22/2020 at 10:30 PM, Feuerwinter said:

By the way, does anyone also experience this weird shadow kind of thing crossing the half right of the picture? I do have that with and without mods. It moves with the character and sometimes it's also on the other side of the screen. At first I thought it was a reflective surface, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Actually, from your screenshot that does look like a reflective surface, just a broken one. Both the ground and all the buildings should reflect the skybox but instead you seem to have no proper reflection and only this broken line. I would assume that this is also caused by your GPU not liking OpenGL/KotOR and not something that we can fix.

[Kexikus 994]

Uploaded a new version that includes the fix for Taris Upper City north as well as lower quality (1k) versions of all files for weaker computers.