Windhelm Enhanced - 500 Companions Wall 8k HD Retexture

This mod is an installment in a series of mods that overhaul Windhelm City

Version 1. 5 Reworked normal map. Much improved. - Fixed visual error in diffuse texture where a name ran off the edge of a stone - Tweaked diffuse texture to add a little bit of color back into the background stone - Removed erroneous alpha in diffuse texture. Now half the size! - added new download option mixing 8k diffuse w/ 2k normals for best performance/visuals balance

What is this Mod??

This mod is (what I felt) was a much needed retexture of the wall in Windhelm honoring the 500 companions of Ysgramor. Considering it's such an important part of Skyrim's lore, Bethesda's texture is awful. They made like, 20 stones maybe, and let the UV map repeat the texture. They left texture seams, odd texture transitions between parts of the architecture (see the images), and did a real rush job on a texture that really deserved more attention.

Well that's where this mod comes in!!

This mod is an HD (8k!) re-texture of this wall. The UV map/mesh has been re-worked to eliminate odd seams, and now encompasses the whole wall. What does this mean? This texture does not tile at all. You're seeing the whole single texture across the whole wall. This has its pros and cons.

Pros? More freedom to include unique detail like cracks, weathered stones etc. Textures that include unique elements don't tile well because those elements stand out like a sore thumb when the texture is viewed at a distance. This texture has been tweaked down to the smallest detail. Cons? Since the texture fills the entire wall, it's stretched over a large mesh face, which means that even though it's an 8k texture at the highest resolution offered for download, it may not live up to your expectations of how nice that should look, because the object it is applied to is so large. It's still light years better than vanilla in design, and quite a bit better in fidelity as well.

It's probably somewhat obvious, but the stones form the shape of a tree. I thought an oblique reference to Yggdrasil here would be nice and sort of fitting.

I realize it's a lot to ask to install an 8k texture, but as it applies to only a single object in game, realistically it won't affect performance that much compared to say, a 4k skin texture applied to like 20 NPCs wandering around. I have provided 4k and 2k version as well, but I really urge you to use the 8k for this one texture!