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Not the prettiest screenshot but just throwing it out for people who may be intrigued by the title. I'll have better soon, I'm just doing OG textures and making the outside atmosphere nicer, then I'll show more off up close.
Essentially I'm making a mod where windows are actually transparent and in major locations (e.g. Breezehome and taverns) you can see the outside world.
Even in locations I haven't detailed the outside of, the time of day filters through the window making the cell less claustrophobic.
If you want more of an idea, here's the Oblivion version I'm inspired by.
7 comments
This'll definitely look like a textwall but I want to be informative and also answer unspoken questions, plus I can refer back here in future.
So the way I'm *mostly* doing it currently is altering the meshes to have alpha (transparency) on the window sections, and that method has full texture mod compatibility. The current best fit is the Riften set where the glass panes are seperate so I can just change the alpha, so you'll see your exact textures but the window will be see-through.
The second method I've used when that doesn't look right is with a new texture for the glass, but it has its own name so any texture mods stay installed. Untouched models like house exteriors use your chosen texture like before. I saw some visual oddities in aforementioned Riften so *might* have to use this method more often.
I'm actually using Rustic Windows myself I think. The only cosmetic hard incompatibility seems to be Extravagant Interiors - Solitude because it changes meshes, but you can salvage the textures out of it.
City overhauls are another matter, but mostly I don't think you'll notice much as long as the layout looks the same, my outside views are much plainer than the real thing, so you can easily drop stuff like market stalls, banners e.t.c. that city mods add. I could go really accurate but I think it has diminishing returns of effort versus beauty, and my idea is to just to have a nice background view rather than standing right up to a window looking out.
I'll likely do patches for major mods like JK's Skyrim and my favourite Whiterun mod "Capital Whiterun" where any landmarks you'd notice missing are seen outside, and their added buildings have my features.
There are only two compatibility issues I will openly admit I'm worried about:
1 - Interior light and atmosphere changes (like ELFX). I enable visible sky indoors often so I'm concerned that touching that may overwrite the level settings that affects fog, light level e.t.c. but I hope not and I'll test it. Patches or merging the mods could fix it.
2 - Extensive building mods like palace, player home and tavern revamps. I'm keeping redecorating to a minimum but sometimes I say, place a wall to cover windows facing the inside of an object, which would then just look like a floating wall if another mod made the room wider. Also if a mod adds a basement or additional room it may clip through something because the building isn't floating in a void any more.
Again sorry for textwall but I wanted to be pretty open and answer both what was asked, and what anyone coming here later might have commented about.