Hi everyone,

I'm revisiting Oblivion after a few years of absence, and my mod research skills have gone a little rusty. So I'd like some recommendations about how to improve how the game looks, in these categories:

(1) General texture replacers. I'm loking for the best-possible quality, my GPU can handle it.

(2) A greatly improved player character face, for all humanoid (non-Khajit, non-Argonian) races. I was downright appalled how ugly and low-res the vanilla textures look. I'll be using the HGEC body, if that's important. I'd like high-res textures and a better face structure, if possible. Since I'm also playing Morroblivion, I'd be interested in mods that replace the basic resources so that the changes carry over to Morrowind content.

(3) UI mods. I guess I can find those on my own, but I'd still like to hear what people are using these days.

(4) NPC face replacers/enhancers. Here, too, i'm interested in high-res textures and possibly, if not necessarily, improvements in specific races' face models.

(5) Cosmetics mods - there are just too many of them. Is there one reasonably comprehensive mod I can start with?

I will of course experiment with many more mods later, but for the start I'd like to have a basic mod setup where I can bear to actually look at the gameworld and its characters without backing out immediately.

I love these kinds of posts! I'm just getting back into Oblivion as well, so I'll take a look at my grotesquely and completely unnecessarily large collection of OMODs and see what I can recommend.

1.) http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45666/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/28378/? are still a great starting point. On top of that I recommend anything by http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/1600249/?, http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/3222912/?, http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/66583/?, http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/153868/?, http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/1545548/? (mostly southeast asian and tropical but there's a lot of great stuff), and http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/1518707/?, just to name a few. In fact, you might have better luck finding textures you like http://www.darkcreations.org/testg/wiki/Main_Page. Before installing ANY texture replacers I also like to start with http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/38204/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/18430/?, so that any textures missed by other replacers should still have some improved normal maps. From there I'll refer you to the texture guide wiki I linked for any flora/creature/misc retextures that might tickle your fancy. Go over everything with http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801/? to improve performance.

2.) You might be interested in http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/44676/?. There are other face improvement mods out there, but this one is personally the best I've seen. Couple that with http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/2766128/? Seamless Heads and Equipment for whichever male and female body replacer you are using. I don't know if/how either of these play with Morroblivion. For male body replacers http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/40532/? is really the only way to go. For female you have a huge array of choices, I recommend looking at ones with default armor/clothing replacers available/included. http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/15624/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/24078/? are my favorites. All of these come in SFW and NSFW versions.

3.) http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/10763/? or http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11280/? are pretty.

4.) See the texture wiki I linked. OCOv2 comes with some pretty textures.

5.) I can't really recommend any, I play with OCOv2 and cosmetic mods don't always play nicely with it due to its use of Blockhead and changes to default hairs for default races. It does add a few new hairstyles, and if you're even remotely familiar with the CS you can add more from your favorite hair packs.

I'd also like to give a shout out to http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1506000-relz-the-unique-landscapes-project/page-1?hl=+unique%20+landscapes and http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/1545548/? non-replacer mods like Jungle for Everyone and some WIP spring, autumn, and winter seasonal mini-overhauls, which don't overwrite anything in your data folder and are easy to toggle on or off via their respective esp files. Fun fun!

Oh, and I almost forgot! http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45749/?!

There's a wiki around that compiles an updated list of graphical mods. Here's a link to the http://www.darkcreations.org/testg/wiki/Oblivion

The Bomret SI pack in that link is incomplete unless you use omod. So I suggest the one that I uploaded: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/46162/?

Thanks for this. I already found most of those, but there are some really nice interior texture replacers and enhancers I didn't know, and those won't impact my already pretty low outdoors fps (mostly from Oblivion Reloaded).

Also, a question: I don't know what normal maps do exactly, so I have no idea if it's feasible to combine those normal map mods with texture mods like QTP3 and Bomret's. Is it?

http://www.3dkingdoms.com/tutorial.htm is a lighting algorithm to improve the appearance of bumps and dents. A good demo of it is http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/:

Thanks.

Hmm... that means the normal map must fit the texture, right? And any improved normal maps I install will only benefit textures which aren't overridden by a mod, since the texture mods come with their own normal maps.

Yes, best to install the normal maps first, then overwrite with the mods like QTP3 etc. Wrye Bash shows this up well.