STATIC MESH IMPROVEMENT MOD (SMIM)

Skyrim is a fantastic game, full of terrific design, writing, characters, environments, quests, and so on.

But Skyrim contains many very low quality 3D meshes. Particularly, a large percentage of the static meshes 
(like architecture, clutter objects, furniture, ruins, walls, floors, and so on) are very low quality. 
They look like they were made for a 2005 game. Specifically, they are low-polygon and their textures don't 
match the model properly. Very unfortunate that such a great game is marred by hideous assets. This shall not do.

This is my massive project to improve the static meshes. I'll keep adding new meshes as the mood strikes 
me (as I find them in the game).

Please refer to the main Skyrim Nexus mod page for more details and preview pictures:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8655

INSTALL:

Copy to your Skyrim\Data folder. Use Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) to make life easy.

VERSION HISTORY:

v1.08 February 25, 2012
-Updated 38 of the interior farmhouse meshes to improve UV mapping.
-Toned down the tomato's brightness.
-Added Whiterun drawbrigde using real 3D rings. Warning, this increases the polycount by about 80,000.
-Fixed bottom stump texture for furniture to not be super-bright since I forget to add black alpha channel to normal map. Thanks to JohnGreenArt for spotting this.
-Added modified Skyrim HD Lite textures for the vanilla furniture I haven't improved. These textures were added to make all furniture have consistent textures with my SMIM meshes. Plus Skyrim HD didn't align the texture right so I fixed that. Per usual, you can use your own textures by installing your texture pack after SMIM and overwriting my files.
-Added improved signrtpost01.nif for Riften that removes the really ugly black part of the mesh that made no sense...
-Upated the loading screen mesh "loadscreenblackbriar01.nif" to use my new 3D rings. Plus I changed it to use the same wood texture the actual game does (and to fix ugly black wood part).

v1.07 February 19, 2012
-Added all 39 interior farmhouse meshes, all with my UV fixes to eliminate the blurry wood beams. All that remains is the basement meshes, exterior building meshes, and a few more walkway meshes.
-Fixed various random UV and vertex color errors the interior farmhouse meshes had. About 10 fixes total.
-Tomato added, a ripe, juicy one.
-Baked potato updated to use my fancy potato mesh.
-Fixed one more vanilla UV error in farmwell01.nif.

v1.06 February 14, 2012
-Improved all 44 shop signs meshes to use real 3D metal rings instead of ugly 2D rings. 
-Also for the signage, I fixed a number of UV errors and a couple of vertex errors.
-Also for the signage, I fixed signwhblacksmith01.nif which had the wrong texture for one of the rings, which looked silly.
-Also for the signage, I noticed signsfletcher.nif had a misaligned texture which cut off part of the fake ring, although I replaced this anyway.
-Also for the signage, I fixed signrtpost01.nif to not use a horrid non-wood mesh for part of it. I fear to think this was "by design".
-Also for the signage, I changed all windhelm textures to use the proper normal maps because strangely the game was using another wood normal map that didn't fit right.
-All signage using woodpost02 has been fixed to remove the blurry UV mapping to match the rest of my farmhouse mesh fixes.
-Renamed mod name in Nexus Mod Manager to just "Static Mesh Improvement Mod" so it can be found more easily.
-Fixed incorrect UV that was causing alpha transparency (vanilla mesh errors) in these meshes: signalchemyshop01.nif and signrtalchemyshop01.nif.

v1.05 February 13, 2012
-Fixed normal map issue for new woodpost02 texture.
-New option to install non-animated barrels.

v1.04 February 12, 2012
-Added 19 fixed farmhouse meshes. These fix the terribly blurry wood beams. There's still the farmhouse buildings and interiors, proper.
-I also included a slightly modified woodpost02 texture and normal map for better tiling for the wood beams.
-I also began replacing the horrible farmhouse 2D ropes meshes with real 3D ropes. Many more to go...
-For farmwell01.nif, besides the wood beam and rope fixes, I fixed one very bad UV error on the stone ring around the well.

v1.03 February 11, 2012
-Added new open/close animations to barrel01.nif. I assume the developers didn't create animations because the level designers sometimes placed items on top of the barrels, but my animations barely clip usually.
-Added several new options customizable with the new install script. New options are vanilla style furniture and barrel textures plus low-res textures options.

v1.02 February 10, 2012
-Added back wardrobe01.nif since I fixed the minor problem that was causing CTDs. Good to learn more about Skyrim's quirks.
-Fixed improper smoothing on the endtable01.nif mesh.
-Added new dresser01.dds and dresser01_n.dds textures modified from Skyrim HD to use with my new furniture. This prevents texture replacers from using new textures that don't fit my fixed UV mapping.

v1.01 February 9, 2012
-Removed wardrobe01.nif which was causing CTDs. Grr...works for me strangely.

v1.00 February 8, 2012
-Initial release with 20 meshes.

CREDITS:

NebuLa for Skyrim HD, which I used for the new furniture textures I made. Thank you for letting me use and modify your great textures! Much obliged!
Mayang for the great free texture resources which I modified to use with several objects, such as both new barrels. http://mayang.com/textures/
Thanks to Corepc for reducing my textures, which saved me some time.
Bethesda for creating awesome games with irksome flaws that we modders obsess over.