More Settlement Graphics

[eschalon]

Whilst trying to give the Bretons their own settlement graphics I found some files in the mod's settlements folder that were left unused in the game, which I've used to diversify some of the cultures and try to make them more unique.

I didn't add any new models (that's well beyond me), I only used existing game models and mixed up the textures that I found in the settlements folder.

Most of the graphics are based on architecture that I remember from the games, however I can't guarantee accuracy to lore.

The affected cultures are Colovian, Nibenean, Nordic, Dunmer, Forebear, Breton, Maormer, Bosmer, Altmer, Ayleid, Po Tun, Kamal, Tsaesci, Pellitine and Anequinan.

Additionally I changed the standard Westerngfx and Muslimgfx, which affects all cultures associated with them, two examples being the Heartlander and Crown cultures respectively.

Spoiler: All settlement graphics

Forebear (andalusiangfx)


Crown (muslimgfx)


Anequinan (anequinagfx)


Pellitine (pellitinegfx


Heartlander (westerngfx)


Colovian (saxongfx)


Nibenean (southerngfx)


Nordic (norsegfx)


Breton (celticgfx)


Reachman (easternslavicgfx)


Orsimer (orsimergfx)


Altmer (altmergfx)


Ayleid (ayleidgfx)


Bosmer (bosmergfx)


Maormer (maormergfx)


Dunmer (dunmergfx)


Argonian (argoniangfx)


Tsaesci (tsaescigfx)


Kamal (kamalgfx)


Po Tun (kapotungfx)


Tribal (tribalgfx)

DOWNLOAD
Version 1.2

To enable the Forebear graphics you'll have to open ElderKings\common\cultures\00_cultures.txt, find the Forebear culture and under graphical_cultures add andalusiangfx before muslimgfx so that it looks like { redguardgfx africangfx andalusiangfx muslimgfx }

Without this, the Forebears and Crowns will use the same graphics (muslimgfx).

It should be compatible with both 1.6 and the SVN, however the graphics depend on the culturegfx of the culture, which may be changed in the future.

 

[AjayAlcos]

They look wonderful. Out of curiosity, where did you take the inspiration for these marvels from?

 

[eschalon]

They look wonderful. Out of curiosity, where did you take the inspiration for these marvels from?

Thank you! I textured most of them after their presence in Elder Scrolls games, such as the rectangular breton buildings in Daggerfall and the rural colovian farms from Oblivion and added Western buildings to the indian models used for the Dunmer to represent temporary residences and (future) imperial influence on their culture. For the rest that weren't in the games such as the Tsaesci, I just went off what looked good to me. I wanted to give the Tsaesci and Akaviri the Akaviri architecture seen in the games but unfortunately I couldn't find a good game model to use. Same for the Orsimer, who I just gave the Dunmer fortress since it kind of looks like their castle holding picture and Breton houses so they fit in with the Breton majority around them.

Just to clarify though I only moved textures around and changed paths for models, most textures were already present in the mod's files and the most I did was change colors and edit them to fit onto other buildings. My work is based off of whoever made those original textures so I'm kind of hesitant to publish this without their permission.

Also an unintentional yet interesting feature is that due to the way houses are added to settlements, there's a increased visual difference in how many holdings a settlement has, seen in this picture where Culotte (1 holding) is noticeably more rural than Sejanus (2 holdings)


This also works for Dunmer provinces where the less holdings it has, the more noticeable the imperial houses are, which could roleplay as temporary residences while the province builds up, or as a backwater village built around a lone fortress. There's a distinct difference between the Dunmer fortress image provided in the OP and the capital province of Mournhold.

 

[eschalon]

Added download link and installation guide. This is my first (sub)mod so please inform me if it works correctly. All cultures listed in the OP should have different settlement graphics.

 

[iisbroke]

Thank you for this, I love graphic mods. I know they're superficial, but I RP games a lot so it helps with immersion.

 

[Colossal_Elk]

Looks quite nice! Great stuff, and thanks for taking the time to work on it!

 

[zonkie]

Awesome man!

 

[Xsardas333]

I hope they will add this to main mod. Awesome work!

 

[Miklu]

What graphic do the ayleid use? Altmer or maormer/bosmer?

 

[eschalon]

What graphic do the ayleid use? Altmer or maormer/bosmer?

Altmeri

 

[eschalon]

UPDATE:

Added Breton city model (for Republics) and changed the houses for non-tribal Reachmen, furthermore I've also switched the Altmer (Eastern) house models to Indian since I personally found the normal eastern buildings too generic and similar to the Redguards. This also affects the Ayleid models.



There was little inspiration for the non-tribal Reachmen models so I just used the smaller Western house models and changed the textures.

Additionally the problem with overriding (or lack thereof) seems to have been an issue with the mod's name, as such it was fixed by changing "Elder Kings" in the mod's name to just "EK". Lastly there may be more updates in the future so I've included 1.0 as addendum to the name and to designate the version.

 

[joseph00721]

UPDATE:

Added Breton city model (for Republics) and changed the houses for non-tribal Reachmen, furthermore I've also switched the Altmer (Eastern) house models to Indian since I personally found the normal eastern buildings too generic and similar to the Redguards. This also affects the Ayleid models.

View attachment 184455 View attachment 184453 View attachment 184454

There was little inspiration for the non-tribal Reachmen models so I just used the smaller Western house models and changed the textures.

Additionally the problem with overriding (or lack thereof) seems to have been an issue with the mod's name, as such it was fixed by changing "Elder Kings" in the mod's name to just "EK". Lastly there may be more updates in the future so I've included 1.0 as addendum to the name and to designate the version.

You are amazing.

 

[eschalon]

Update 1.1

Added graphics for the Argonians using nomad houses for the huts and Indian temples for the holdings to represent the Xanmeer ruins seen in ESO.


Changed textures for the Ayleids (very slight green tint) to differentiate from the Altmer (very slight beige tint) and made them use an Indian temple for the castle holding.


Made the Bosmer culture use tribal huts and nomad mainhouses for the holdings.


Changed nomad mainhouse and switched some house models for the tribal graphics to reflect ancient nordic architecture for the Atmorans, however since the graphics are hardcoded into the tribal government this affects all other tribal governments on Nirn such as the Argonian, Reachman and Quey tribals.


Personally I think this still works better for Tamriel than the vanilla models, since there are Forsworn among Nordic ruins in TES Skyrim and the mainhouse would work as a Xanmeer ruin. (Also the textures are quite dark and would be pretty unnoticeable in the mentioned regions, unlike Atmora which is white 24/7)

Lastly I've added tribal houses into the Nordic settlements as a tie-in to the Atmorans and the more rural Nordic buildings, fixed the texture for the Altmer temple to fit in with the rest and similarly edited the Nordic city holding.

 

[Xsardas333]

DAMN! Those are beautiful! GREAT job. I'm gonna try this update now.

 

[eschalon]

Update 1.2

Changed some of the houses for the Colovians and Nibeneans to differentiate them more from each other and the Heartlanders, restricting the Colovians/Nibeneans to houses with only 1 or 2 floors (but allowing a rare few for the Colovians to make up for Skingrad's unique architecture).

Spoiler

Colovian


Nibenean


Heartlander (vanilla westerngfx)

I also made some small fixes such as recoloring the domes of Redguard holdings from green to orange to reflect the bronze domes seen in ESO and removing the shine from Breton buildings that was caused by someone forgetting to copy over the nospec dds file.

Spoiler

Crown


Forebear

On a completely unrelated note I've discovered that Reshade, a post-processing injector similar to ENB works pretty well with CK2 and I've had a lot of fun tweaking some of the settings. I haven't found any discussion on this anywhere so I thought I'd just share it here as an addendum.


Cartoonified-ish

 

[Audiate]

Looks great, I'll definitely be using these, no idea how I've missed this thread for so long. Have you done anything for Ashlander/Telvanni architecture, or are they way too bizarre/involved to be added? I would assume they would be. Also, were these done in Maya?

 

[eschalon]

Looks great, I'll definitely be using these, no idea how I've missed this thread for so long. Have you done anything for Ashlander/Telvanni architecture, or are they way too bizarre/involved to be added? I would assume they would be. Also, were these done in Maya?

Settlement graphics are dictated by the county's culture, and unfortunately there's no Telvanni culture (all Great Houses belong to the general Dunmer culture).

Ashlanders use the same graphical culture as Dunmer so you'd need to edit in an unused culture gfx to distinguish them from the others (like the Forebear fix in the OP). I thought about doing the Ashlanders, however an additional problem is that they're all tribal at the start of the game which means they prioritize tribal graphics rather than cultural - it's the same reason tribal Argonians/Atmorans/Islanders all use the same graphics. I've tried to find a bypass for this on the forums and by looking into it myself but no results.

Filling some gaps like the Orsimer and feudal Ashlanders/Atmorans will probably be the next update when/if I regain interest.

All models used were already present in the game/unused files in the mod. I wish I had the resources and skill to model my own - nothing in the game quite fits Akaviri architecture.

 

[Audiate]

Gotcha, I was curious how these were done is all. The Ashlander issue is an interesting problem, it's a shame CK2 was (I assume) accidentally built with annoying limitations in the weirdest of ways.

 

[Daronaollard]

Looking at these bring back so many memories of the games. Very well done, I'll be book marking this for when the mod is updated! They're amazing.