Real Skyrim Snowflakes – (Physical) Vivid Snow
This mod removes the Fake snowflake effect of Skyrim and adds REAL Snowflakes that are inside the Worldspace so they get Lit by Lights and effects and even with PHYSICAL Collisions – Especially noticeable with ENB’s. Compatible with Vanilla, NLA, COT, PW, Purity, RCRN, ESS,SS
Welcome to Real Skyrim Snowflakes – aka Vivid Snow
Support Chat and Early Access
What is this mod?
Real Skyrim Snowflakes differs from almost any other snowflake mod out there. It removes the fake Skyrim snow
particle system from the weathers and adds in-world snow particle systems (And optional PHYSICAL SNOW).
That way, snow gets lit by light sources
and effect lighting! It dramatically increases the feeling of snowy days & nights that way!
It also includes a fix for the Day 1 vanilla bug that visual effects disappear as soon the map was used!
(thanks to mattiewagg for the script!)
This Mod is part of the VIVIDIAN ENB Suite and available here as a standalone mod for better compatibility.
So far it does NOT add new Weathers but modifies Existing ones in your load order
PHYSICAL SNOW
Physical snow will be rendered in a certain Radius around the Player and normal Non physical snow is being used
for distant snow. Physical snow will react on all inworld objects and collides with them. This resoults in creating
a shelter effect as soon you are standing below a object. Physical snow though is EXPERIMENTAL. It will render alot
of Snow emitters and the quality of the effect strongly depends on your Rig and the ammount of heavy scripted mods
you already run with. As more laggy your scripts are as less script time there is to place snow emitters and as less
dense the physical snow will be. At the moment i do recommend it for screenshots and short term plays because
longterm Tests are still missing. Please have a look at the Bugs section for things that can occour.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
1. This mod is not made for people who count every FPS or have a weak rig! It will render several thousands
of snow particles in front of you, so expect a FPS loss.
2. For Proper function you MUST change the iMaxDesired value in your skyrimprefs.ini [particles] section to at least 6000
(I personally recommend even 10000 but that depends on your Rig (GTX 670 here))
3. You need SKSE for the map weather fix to function properly!
4. This mod will start to make real sense when using a ENB, since the vanilla nights & particles in Skyrim are simply too bright for the
lighting effect to be seen well. Weather mods like PW / Purity help there.
5. ENB Particle settings now apply to the snow, so you must rely that the ENB author does sensible things to particles at night
Compatibility
Real Skyrim Snowflakes is compatible with Vanilla, Natural Lighting and Atmospherics, Pure Weather, Purity,
RCRN, Climates of Tamriel, Expanded Snow Systems , Supreme Storms, Weather Ambience Overaul.
Since True Storms does not include snow weathers, its naturally compatible 😉
Installation
0. Install Tes5Edit if you havent done so already. Here is a Video showing you how todo so: Click me
0.5 If you do not have Tes5Edit or you do not have >=3.1.2 then download it from Here
1. Follow the installer Instruction or copy the content of the data folder into your skyrim/data folder.
1.5 When using Mod Organizer – right click in the Realistic Skyrim Snowflakes – Vivid snow mod entry in
your list and click on “open in explorer”
1.6 NMM users need to have a look into their Skyrim/Data Folder
2. Copy the content of the Edit Scripts Folder to your Tes5Edit/Edit Scripts/ folder. (replace mteFunctions.pas)
3. Put Vividsnow.esp at the end of your load order
4. Run Tes5edit and leave all checkmarks enabled so it loads up your whole modlist. – that will take a while.
5. Right click the VividSnow.esp and press Apply Script
6. Select in the upper part the “Real snowflakes Patcher” and press Ok. – It might ask you to add Masters to Vividsnow.esp,
confirm that.
The script will now scan your modlist and add all Weathers that will be changed by Vividsnows to the Vividsnow.esp.
When done, close Tes5edit and accept the request that it want to save the Vividsnow.esp
The installation is now complete. Please Notice that you need to redo this procedure from scratch as soon
you remove or add Weather mods.
ENB COMPATIBILITY:
The recommended settings for particles can be
IntensityNight=0.4 up to 0.7
LightingInfluenceNight=1.0
It greatly depends on your weather mod and the particle brightness of it.
What to Expect from your weather Mod
Because Vivid Snow does not add weathers you will experience Snow weathers just as intended by your Weather mod
here is a small list what kind of Snow Weathers are inside the diverse weather mods:
Vanilla, Purity, Pure Weather, NLA
Two snow weathers: Medium Snow, Strong Snow
Climates of Tamriel
Nine snow weathers: Lite Snow (1), Medium Snow (1), Strong Snow(5), Blizzard Medium (1), Blizzard Strong (1)
Expanded Snow Systems – Vanilla
Eleven snow weathers: Medium Snow (1), Strong Snow (1), Blizzard Lite (3), Blizzard Medium (3), Blizzard Strong (3)
Expanded Snow Systems – COT
Nine snow weathers: Blizzard Lite (3), Blizzard Medium (3), Blizzard Strong (3)
Supreme Storms & COT
One weather change – Strong Snow
Bugs
-There can be leftovers of old particle effects stuck in the savegame – blurry particles in front of your cam.
In that case, open the console , type in FW 81a and save. Then restart Skyrim and load the saved game.
-If no particles are showing up during a weather (like loading into a snowy weather), skyrim failed to initialize the particle system
because the savegame didn’t have one. To fix this, force a snow weather with the FW 4d7fb command and save.
-Almost invisible or too dark particles may often be the result of wrong ENB settings.
-ENB Mist Bug: ENB has two bugs with particles. They Vanish when the MIST effect is too strong and they interact badly with
the volumetric Fogs on the mountains. There is nothing i can do about that, only your ENB mod Author.
PHYSICAL SNOW BUGS:
Lag and Engine Limitation can produce either not to stop the snow from emitting (snow during no snowy days),
snow being frozen and not animated as well as snow falling though roofs sometimes.
Recommendations:
Expanded Snow Systems this will add Blizzard and other types of Snowy weathers to skyrim. (also available for Vanilla)
Weather and Ambience overaul this will overaul your Weather and Skyrim Experience at once
Wet and Cold – adds snow effects to NPC’s, blinding vision effects in blizzards and much much more
Credits
Thanks to Hishutup for the Tes5Edit Installation script
Thanks to Kesta for the ongoing great work on the Physical Emitter Script!
Thanks to mattiewagg for the Weather map fix script
Thanks to Kesta and Grimy for adding ideas into the Map weather script
