Xila's Photorealistic Pyroclastic Ash Spawn - A Memorial Mod

This is a retexture of the Ash Spawn body and weapon files using real images of pyroclastic ash flows from The Petrified Forest in Calistoga, CA. The site where these photos were taken sits seven miles from Mt. St. Helena, which exploded 3. 4 million years ago and dumped ash flows for many miles around. Thus, it is similar to the location of Solstheim in juxtaposition to The Red Mountain.

I blended these pyroclastic ash flow images with the original upscaled vanilla textures as well as upscaled vanilla ash textures. I smoothed out the normals, upscaled the glow maps, and adjusted shading, coloring and saturation as needed.

This is meant to go with Photorealistic Pyroclastic Ash Flows for Solstheim, which is shown in the screenshots. All images are shown with 4K resolution.

I made this mod as a Memorial for my friend Amara, who died on June 29th, 2022 after a long hard fight with Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

This past winter was the last time I got to see them, and together we went on an adventure to The Petrified Forest, which was just a few miles from where they were living at the time. That adventure was the best part of the trip; it was such a gift to be fully in our element together combing through rocks on the ground and soaking in the glorious wonders of the wild world.

Below is a picture of Amara doing their thing, making themself at home curled up in an ancient pyroclastic ash flow, nbd

If you are interested in collaborating on Overhaul projects, or levelling up your experience of modding Skyrim, please join my discord server, Skypocalypse.

Skypocalypse is above all a place for COLLABORATION, a community hub for mutual aid to level up our skills and Skyrim itself.

This server is the host to Skypocalypse Academy, where modders and porters of all skill and experience levels assist each other as we dive ever deeper into transforming the bones of this magical game. Featuring an extensive library of tools and resources, The Academy is meant to be as educational as it is welcoming.

We know from experience that modding is an extremely addictive past-time and can be a slippery slope from creating a simple load order to porting mods to going full boat and attempting to rebuild Skyrim from the ground up. That's why we believe in a community that integrates Xbox and PC gamers along with porting noobs and experienced mod authors. We all have more to learn, and modding Skyrim to its extreme is a community effort to say the least.

Skypocalypse is meant to be a gaming community that supports collaborative efforts. The gaming and social channels here are intended to foster the social connections that help act as glue for our collaborative work.