DESCRIPTION

Inspired by PeterBitt's Morrowind Watercolored, Morrowind Styled is a complete retexture of the vanilla game and expansions.

Through the use of a Photoshop filter, ran on most of the game's textures, Morrowind Styled keeps a cohesive look that is faithful to the vanilla aesthetic. There's not much more I can say about this mod, just take a look at the pictures and decide if it's something you would like to play with.

INSTALLATION

All files have been packaged inside the Data Files\Textures\ folder. Install through your mod manager of choice (I recommend Mod Organizer 2, personally; yes, it is on the Skyrim Nexus, but it supports Morrowind too!).

The mod is a pluginless replacer. If your game starts behaving strangely (other than associated longer loading times and peformance drops), look elsewhere for the guilty party!

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

The textures are exactly four times as big as vanilla. This is because compression adds artifacts. In the case of these filters, at lower resolutions these artifacts would be much more noticeable. The alternative would be to release these textures as uncompressed textures at half the resolution, but that wouldn't make any difference: you are trading off crispy textures with barely noticeable artifacts for less crispy textures with no artifacts, but similar file size.

Known issues of this mod include:

• Texture seams are more noticeable. This is unavoidable when dealing with filters.
• Increased loading times, due to texture size.
• Potentially reduced performance, due to texture size. I haven't seen any decrease in my performance, aside from the loading times.
• Compatibility issues with mods that haven't been patched, in the way of visual clashing.
  

AVAILABLE PATCHES

So far, patches for the following mods are available:

• Lore-Friendly Better Bodies Underwear by Yar-Yulme. This mod requires that you install either Better Bodies v2.2 by PsychoDog Studios or Better Bodies ZW v2.4 by ZWolol. As you can imagine, the patch only covers the underwear model. No nude patch is available.
• Better Clothes v1.1 by PsychoDog Studios.
• More Better Clothes v1.01 by Plangkye.
• Better Clothes for Tribunal by Keazen.
• Better Clothes Bloodmoon Plus by Spirited Treasure.
• Concept Art Vivec Face Replacement by Sigourn.
  
  

REGARDING THE PATCHING PROCESS

When doing Morrowind Styled, I abided by a few rules religiously:

• Leave the user interface alone.
• Leave decals with alpha maps alone (e.g. Dagoth chalk textures).
• Leave visual effects alone (e.g. gas textures, smoke textures, rain, water, waterfalls).
• Leave spell effects alone.
• Leave skies and moons alone.
  

When doing patches for other mods, I also follow these rules:

• Leave normal maps, specular maps, reflect maps, all of that alone.
• Leave related files above (such as reflection textures).
• At my discretion, sometimes I won't filter certain textures if I feel they are better off being unfiltered. Most of the time this is with textures that have no actual "body", like a chain texture behaving like a chain (as you would see in old videogames), as opposed to something like Skyrim, where you can recognize a chain independently of its texture.
• Last but not least: I try to resize the textures before the patching process to match their vanilla Morrowind counterparts (if possible) or to at least resemble vanilla textures in size (most of the time).
  

To the best of my ability, I've added pupils to Wood Elves, as theirs are lost in the patching process.

REGARDING REQUESTS

As you can see, I cannot simply run all textures through a filter. This makes patching mods an intellectual task, in that it requires my attention and judgement, and a rather time-consuming one at that when it comes to mods like Tamriel Rebuilt, with thousands upon thousands of textures.

Just like PeterBitt did for Morrowind Watercolored, I will also be accepting requests for patches. I have only two conditions:

First, that you get permission from the mod author for me to alter their textures and release them here, on this page. In the case of old mods where the author seems to have vanished, or is very difficult to contact, I'm willing to make exceptions.

Second, the vanilla game has a certain aesthetic and I don't want to deviate too much from it, as I would be betraying the intention PeterBitt had when he made Morrowind Watercolored. Mods that retexture the game will not be accepted. Exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis. For instance, Daedric Helm of Tohan is something I'm willing to patch, as it uses vanilla textures except on a different model. Same with Blighted Animals Retextured, which gives the choice to use vanilla-friendly textures.

Major texture replacers are out of the question, period. Do not inquire about them. Body replacers are a possibility if you can get permission.

I WANT TO MAKE MY OWN PATCHES

The Photoshop patching process is simple. It requires that you have Adobe Photoshop. Even better if you know how to automate Photoshop processes by using "Create new action".

• Start with a texture resembling vanilla in size. In the future, I will provide rough guidelines on what vanilla sizes are.
• Create new action, and begin Recording.
• Increase the texture size to 800%. This will give you a texture that is eight times as big as vanilla.
• Go to Filter Gallery, and apply the Dry Brush filter. Settings are: Brush Size: 10; Brush Detail: 3; Texture: 2.
• Decrease the texture size to 50%. This will give you a texture that is four times as big as vanilla.
• Go to Filter Gallery, and apply the Accented Edges filter. Settings are: Edge Width: 1; Edge Brightness: 22; Smoothness: 5.
• Save the texture as a .dds file, using DXT1 compression (if the texture has no alpha channel), or DXT5 compression (if the texture HAS an alpha channel).
• Close the file.
• Stop playing/recording the action.
  

It's very important you don't mess up this process, as everything will be recorded into the action. I recommend to save all textures with DXT5 compression and use Ordenador to optimize the textures and remove unnecessary alpha channels when applicable.

CLOSING WORDS

I have PeterBitt to thank for his fantastic work on Morrowind Watercolored. He inspired me and many others to play Morrowind while keeping its vanilla aesthetic intact. Nowadays I see his mod as a stepping stop to playing vanilla looking Morrowind, no texture filters period. I hope his mod and my mod do the same for you, as no matter how good the filter, detail is always lost.

SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES

Morrowind Watercolored v2, by PeterBitt. The original.
Pixelwind V2, by LeviSmith. This mod increases the vanilla resolution textures by upscaling them, using Nearest Neighbor. This means the textures will look much sharper as a result, allowing you to see the actual pixels in the texture.
Morrowind Uncompressed Vanilla Textures, by Bethesda. I simply figured out a rather cheap way to force the game into using these textures. These are the vanilla Morrowind textures with no compression, which translates to no artifacts and thus more clarity in the textures (without modifying their resolution), at the cost of longer loading times due to the increased file size.