Please remove other mod for heightmap and let me know if it fixes it. I do not guarantee any compatibility with other mods.

Hello developer! I don't know English well, I'm writing through a translator. I have a problem with your mod in the crater area, the entire biome is black as ash without textures. I have a mod for height maps, maybe they conflict, please check this, I would be grateful. Plus there are mods for removing particles.

Ha, that's so cool! Thanks for indulging me as I explained what you already knew lol. He did include greyscale colormaps with his mod, so it's probably that he did intend them to be used with specific textures. That must be what the issue is. According to his posts from a few years ago he was basically learning as he went, which is what I'm doing now as well. I didn't realize Kenshi's colormaps work in a familiar way considering how quirky the engine can be at times, so I'm glad to hear that it's an established method that I can learn more about without having to rely solely on Kenshi-related information. My own texture work has been for games that didn't use them and all I ever released were a couple of brick textures for Morrowind on Nexus about a million years ago :D

I do appreciate the explanation, but yeah—I'm a texture artist, I definitely know how colormaps work, lmao. My guess is that his colormaps are simply overwriting mine or aren't playing nice due to some custom edits. He might’ve painted them with specific textures in mind, or possibly used a different compression method than I did. That alone could be enough to cause the incompatibility. Either way, it’s probably less about load order and more about mismatched design choices or compression conflicts.

(As a side note, if you're curious for more info on how colormaps work, you basically get 4 template colors to work with: one represents the primary faction color, one represents the secondary faction color, and the third and fourth represent the primary and secondary colors respectively but with a degree of shiny "metalness." There's also a couple extra template colors for allowing the primary and secondary to mix. A nicely painted colormap can define colors, their intensity, and varying amounts of shininess, and when paired with a compatible texture the results can be fantastic. The base texture doesn't even need to be fully greyscale, just the parts you're intending to color, so you could have something like just the leg straps getting dyed on the Drifter's Pants for example. After the colormap files are painted, there's just a tiny bit to do in the FCS and the new colormaps are good to go.)

Hey Deathfather, thank you so much for getting back to me. Basically, colormaps are a wash applied over the texture of the item. When this wash mixes with an underlying texture color, it can turn out really ugly in-game depending on what faction color gets applied to the item when a character equips it. This isn't noticeable in vanilla Kenshi because the default colormaps are super tiny and only seem to apply to places that are already grey or at least pale. But you can also barely see any color at all in vanilla, which is why the Better Colormaps mod was made to apply color to more parts of the armor so each faction can be more distinctive. It comes with its own greyscale armor textures to allow the color to apply without mixing. That's where the conflict with KenTex is, and what I seek to fix. (I hope this makes sense, it's been a busy day.)

I am overjoyed to have your permission, and I will absolutely credit you and keep you posted on my progress. Thank you again!

Cavan, I appreciate the kind words! I'm not entirely sure why there would be conflicts, as KenTex should override any vanilla textures. That said, mod load order can sometimes cause unexpected behavior, so I’d recommend experimenting with it—try loading KenTex first or second and see if that helps.

Regarding your request, I don’t mind you using the textures, but I’m curious—why would making them grayscale be necessary for colormap compatibility? If you could clarify how that helps, I’d have a better understanding. Either way, I don’t have an issue with you making colormap-friendly versions as long as credit is given. Let me know how it goes!

Hi Deathfather, this is GORGEOUS, but one thing I've noticed is that it doesn't seem to play well with custom colormaps like those in Faction Armor Colors - Better Colormaps . This is because custom colormaps use altered armor textures to allow the color to show more, and when I ran KenTex alongside Better Colormaps the result was weird and inconsistent — some armor would have its faction color mixed with the armor color, some coloring was lost altogether, etc. and would change depending on the load order of KenTex and Better Colormaps. Loading Better Colormaps afterward would also mean being stuck with original resolution textures on some pieces.

May I have your permission to make colormap-friendly versions of your textures? This mainly involves making some or all parts greyscale and possibly messing with transparency. Then we could have the best of both worlds. Of course I would fully credit you.

The 4x version I made used 30gb of vram lol!

Thanks iriemk!

Can't comment on that update's difference/effect, since I just found the mod after you pushed the update and announced it here on the forum^^.

I also downloaded Native Stylise and when I booted it first up with both mods enabled it nearly floored me. I was looking at an entirely different game. Native Stylise gives it a comic-ish look, almost a bit like Borderlands and your textures polish the whole thing.
Now I gotta fiddle with the options on my card and in Native Stylise mod a bit more to get the best possible visuals in conjunction with your textures. But that combo is definitely not for weak rigs though, just glad my GPU has a boatload of memory^^.

I do appreciate the input. I did put this under the graphical category and complete overhaul category. Thank you for the compliments my friend. I am glad you are enjoying it. This update was really big, and it should show in game :)

Hey, just a suggestion. I know authors like yours don't profit off of their work, just trying to up the PR for this gem^^. It's really good, so I think as many people as possible should know about it & be able to find it on top of their search list when looking to enhance their Kenshi game visually.

With the right "graphics related" keywords in the description somewhere, even the semi-literate (and maybe those who speak little to no english) will easily find & be able enjoy the mod^^.

With regards to nexus: Their mod search is a 1000x better than the stupid steam client's; about a dozen great mods I only stumbled upon by mere happenstance when searching on my browser, searching with the exact same keywords on the workshop search returned zilch. But that's just my 5 cents.

Anyway, awesome work.

iriemk I have mods with same "tex" in the name on nexus with thousands of subscribers. I am not making money off it, so do not really care how many people sub to it. Just thought I would share it with the world. It has a description. The literate get the reward of the intelligent ;)

I agree with Jasmin, either the mod title needs work (the "Tex" part made me think "textile", thought it's a clothing mod when I first read the title), or the description needs some of the relevant keywords for this kind of mod, like "graphics", "textures", "resolution" etc, in order for your mod to pop up on a search with such keywords.
I would not have seen it either if I wasn't checking the Modding forum religiously.

Apart from that tiny detail, this mod is stellar work! Big Kudos to you for making & sharing this gem. And to anyone who complains about the size of this mod: Imagine downloading this from Nexus with a free account at 1.2 mbit/sec.

I would like to ask you one more thing. Could you please take a look at the foliage textures? It seems to me that this is an element that has a BIG impact on the game performance with your mod. When I removed the "foliage" folder from the mod directory to load the default textures for them(or at least that's how it seems to me that it should work??), I had a fps jump of as much as 80 frames (30->110). I just don't know if deleting this folder could damage something and whether it is safe for loading your other textures in long term?

Thank you Deathfather. Maybe it is incompatibility with some other mods, but i will be apriciate if you look into this.

I will check into this juzek. I did not notice this issue when playing it.

Hi, thank you for your work. A noticeable positive difference in the appearance of textures compared to the original. Unfortunately, I have one problem with this modem. My character portraits disappear when the mod is enabled (it is at the very top of the mod list). Only gray backgrounds remain with no generated character on the background. The only thing I found on the forums is that it may be a problem with character poses, but I don't know how it applies to your mod.

Really nice mod, noticable difference. Although I would change mod name/mod image to something, that represents what mod does. Found it only by pure luck while clicking on random mods :)

Awesome, sorry for no response. Haven't been on steam for a bit.

I also redid the mod from the ground up using a new custom ai model I made.

I am fixing the bug today for the glowing textures. I am sure the game engine did not really like the DX10 textures I was using. I am reconverting back to the original dds format the game uses for each texture.

Oh, minor note;
Scorchlanders are affected by the bug as well for me.

Oh cool.
Thanks for answering. :)

Ok so its just the model textures of the npcs and players mainly? :)

@deathfather NP, Scorchlanders aren't effected by the bug. Greenlanders, West Hive, Fogmen, Shek, and cannibals are though. Haven't yet looked at South Hivers.

Thanks That1MetalHead. I can push an update for the possible alpha issues on the player character skin asap. Thanks for posting something constructive. All the energy they spent complaining about there being no picture or videos; They could have spent on making a collage of picture and videos for me. lmao.

@marduk For me it's like a 20 second extra load time. with my rtx2070 and i7-10700k, running graphics all at max at 1440p with reshade getting like mid high 50s and 60 fps with a couple more fps drops than usual. It's a noticeable visual upgrade.

Phenomenal re-texture, though there is an issue during night where the heads are unaffected by darkness and are brighter than the body. This occurs with no other mods active can dm screenshots.

So, what DID you do to "2x upscale" it..?
I mean, did you retouch the textures, upscale them, add more complexity to the meshes?
And about the limit to the image size, you do know that cropping is a thing, right?

I don't doubt that you've put in a ton of time on this, but 36 gigs is a pretty heavy DL for some people, and will increase load times significantly, so it would be nice to have a comparison of before/after, so a person can decide whether the performance hit is worth it.

Not trying to be an a-hole, just trying to decipher whether I should pull the trigger.

Created the mod for myself, and decided to share it with you guys. I am under no obligation to make a picture or video for it. Idgaf about subs and honestly do not care who uses it.

Salty must be playing in 1080p on a monitor from 2010. I have been creating and modding textures for almost 20 years. I have worked on a few AAA projects. My hours in game do not reflect my experience modding games. Pretty dumb conclusion to draw. Steam wont let me upload 4k images. Since they are larger than 8mb. If you knew anything about uploading a mod and adding images to it, you would have maybe figured this out. I have not had time to make a video for my "free" mod, since I am busy, and making this mod was not just "using ai to enhance everything". I DARE you to try and do better. What an idiot.

Good to know

Tried this with max graphics, only difference I noticed between using this and the compressed texture project was long load times and a loss of fps. Textures didn't have a noticeable effect

Not to mention you only have 46 hrs which makes me believe this might just be a mod where you used ai to "enhance" the textures or some other method that wouldn't actually improve it

Well you say it's 36gb and show 0 screenshots or videos displaying why we should download it. Not to mention that saying it looks better and to just trust you is silly.

A more detailed description and screenshots are possible

Not much more to know! I wouldnt have uploaded it if it didnt look better than original lol.

Its a "- Full 2x upscale and remaster of entire game."

Would love to know more about the mod