Ethereal Beasts - Familiar and Spirit Visuals

Introduction

There is evidently a lot of untapped potential in familiars for Skyrim. There are two spells and they tend to fall out of use later in a playthrough. It seems to have spurred mod authors on the Nexus to greatly expand on their functionality in innovative ways. I was particularly frustrated with the visuals.

The vanilla ghost wolf is pretty good, it matches with the effects applied to Skyrim's ghosts, but like those ghosts their unique look is ruined the moment they are hit by a spell. We see glimpses of what could have been in the 'Flaming Familiar' spell. The resulting creature looks like an element made manifest as a beast. The effect is achieved by applying a scrolling fire texture on to the base mesh of the creature, which also means that the effect works independently from Skyrim's shaders. The objective of these files are apply the same technique to Skyrim's other spirit animals and to modded familiars too.

In summary, Here are some advantages and disadvantages you may want to consider before downloading this mod.

• []Aesthetics: This is subjective, but I do feel they look more the part now of being magical entities of some kind.

  []Shader Independent: The new spell effects are scrolling textures which are applied directly to the mesh, so the visuals won't cancel out when your familiar or ghost creature is hit by a spell.

  Disadvantages

  • []Plugin: This is mostly a model replacer at heart, but I need an esp to connect the familiars to use my new meshes. By default, Skyrim's ghost wolf uses the ordinary wolf model.

    []Expensive: Every new familiar needs a new model. The execution is cumbersome when compared to how dynamic Skyrim's shaders are.

    The still images may not do the visuals justice, so please check the video to see these textures in motion.

    Skyrim Spirits

    All files will have modified the following Skyrim creatures...

    • []Companion Wolf Spirits

      []Howl of the Pack Summons

      []Kyne's Guardians

      []The Wolf Familiar

      When applying these visuals I had to remove the ghost scripts applied to each of the actors. I've been able to replicate all of the most important effects manually, by using abilities without recourse to scripts, but it will mean that these creatures won't turn in to a puddle when they are defeated.

      Supported Familiar Mods

      Currently, I have support for...

      []AndrealphusVIII's 'Fabulous Familiars': https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/52320

      []Option2's 'Patronus Expanded': https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/38747

      [*]SimonMagus616's 'Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul'.[/