Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K Texture Pack 2.1 Update

Patch Notice #1 (2025-05-15): A small patch, version 2.1.0a, has been released which fixes various issues from prior versions. This includes a fix for "flickering" which sometimes would occur when using the post processing edition, as well as a fix for some textures not always loading correctly.

Happy New Year! 🎆

I'm really excited to finally announce the next major update to the Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K texture pack! This version includes a huge amount of new textures, hundreds of changes, fixes and other improvements. Changes include new environment textures for several areas in the game, new character textures, new enemy and creature textures, remade UI, new material maps, performance optimizations and bug fixes. There's a lot to cover so here's the more detailed changelog:

New environment textures!

Several areas have been overhauled this update with new textures. Over 100+ new environment textures have been added, with nearly all of them receiving newly created material maps for them as well (*for the post-processing edition only).

Like in prior updates, the environment textures have been overhauled in many areas of the game! The new textures cover these regions;

• Ordon Village

• Ordon Spring

• Zora River

• Kakariko Village

• Kakariko Graveyard

• The Sacred Grove

• East of Castle Town

• South of Castle Town

• Lanayru Hyrule Field

• Eldin Hyrule Field

• Gerudo Desert

• Hyrule Castle Courtyard

• Hyrule Castle Graveyard

• Castle Town

• Faron Woods

• Lake Hylia

• Several dungeons (including the City in the Sky, Temple of Time and Hyrule Castle)

Since this update is so large, no single area has been the primary focus of this update, but you can rest assured that the vast majority of them have been touched up in one way or another! The two areas with the most new textures this update is the City in the Sky (now 90%+ covered) and the Hyrule Castle outside sections (the graveyard, courtyards etc, these previously had barely any new textures in them. Now they're pretty much completely covered!)

Tweaked Link textures!

Last update, fellow artist Skilar very generously contributed their own hand-crafted textures to this project, specifically most of Link's textures! They are incredibly high quality and fit perfectly, I think. They have also helped me out with several other things, including helping me improve my own art for my own textures and giving me great advice in various ways. This update however, I decided to again comb through the most important textures (Like Link's textures) and have made some slight changes to slightly improve the overall aesthetic. One example is the Hylian Shield which is now bluer and more contrasty than in 2.0, as well as Link's nose being just barely rounder than before, to closer mimic the look of the original textures. It's small details like this which can really make or break the look, especially if they're prevalent. I think you'll like it!

New shaders and visual tweaks!

The four custom shader presets from my Wind Waker HD texture pack project have been added to the pack! Of course, in Twilight Princess, this will result in a quite different look than the original, but I was surprised when I tried it myself- it actually looks pretty great with these shaders, but in a different way! You're by no means forced to play using these shaders, but I think you should definitely give them a try, you might really like them!

And like always, you can of course configure the shaders however you like, or disable them all together in the Dolphin Graphics Settings > Post-Processing tab. Go wild!

Increased consistency and improved quality all around!

As part of my overarching goal to improve quality and consistency in all my texture packs, I U have continued my work this update to remake many of the in-game textures from scratch to look cleaner and more consistent with the original art style. Lots of work has been done this update to revisit and remake many of the old HD textures to be higher quality, and to be more faithful to the original artstyle. The game should now feel  even more like the original GameCube/Wii versions when played with these textures, and a lot fewer should look out of place and blend in better with their surroundings.

Repeat notice about two new Dolphin Emulator features which can improve your experience further (optional):

The bundled Dolphin Emulator that comes with the pack (the "Standard Edition" only) has been updated to a more recent version and now supports several new features and improvements. Most notably for our usecase is the new "VBI Skip" feature, which can be toggled on within the Dolphin Graphics Settings > Hacks tab > VBI Skip. This feature most notably is capapble of preventing stuttering audio whenever the game lags or drops frames for whatever reason, which can really break immersion. However- this feature is still in beta and can cause other issues, so use it with care and save frequently if you do!

The next feature directly affectes Twilight Princess directly, and is called "Cull Vertices on the CPU", and can be toggled on within the Dolphin Graphics Settings > Advanced tab. This setting lets the emulator cull (or not display) things which aren't visible on the screen, resulting in potentially large performance gains, even with the "Hyrule Field Speed Hack" toggled off in the Game Properties > Patches tab! With the Speed Hack disabled, several visual effects will now display correctly in-game, such as the mini map which has been visually downgraded from playing on original hardware since Dolphin's inception. If you have a modern CPU and GPU in your system, I highly recommend that you toggle this new feature on inside of Dolphin and disable the Hyrule Field Speed Hack, since this should now provide the ideal experience overall moving forward! (Note: Disabling the hyrule field speed hack will reduce performance by a fair margin, so only do this if you have plenty of headroom to spare in terms of performance)

Easy version selection!

Starting from version 1.3 onward, the post-processing edition and standard editions have been partially merged. Both versions now share the same folder and Dolphin settings will transfer between them, and they both load textures from the same location. This means the file size of the texture pack has been halved as a result (since duplicate textures are no longer included) and it also makes it possible to switch between the versions as you please, provided you're saving the game normally using in-game saving and not save states (save states are not compatible between versions).

What are the differences between the "Post-Processing Edition" and the "Standard Edition"?

There are two versions of the texture pack you get to select once you've downloaded it. One is the "Post Processing Edition", which includes all the post processing effects showcased in the trailer like ambient occlusion, tone mapping, bloom and more. The other version is the "Standard Edition" which doesn't include these features but has some other benefits instead.

The Post Processing Edition utilizes Ishiiruka Dolphin to achieve these features, and has some graphical features implemented not available in regular Dolphin at all. It also requires Windows 7 or higher (not compatible with MacOS or Linux) and a dedicated graphics card. Both editions include a controller preset for common gamepads like Xbox One, PS4/PS5, GameCube etc. The standard edition version alleviates some bugs present in Ishiiruka Dolphin (increased stability, for example) and supports MacOS & Linux, too! But does not support any of the additional graphical features listed above, like material maps, custom tone mapping, HD bloom, depth of field or ambient occlusion. Both versions look stunning so if you're uncertain I recommend you play the standard version- or try out both and see which one you prefer! The screenshots above have been taken using the post-processing edition.

That's mostly it for this update. Enjoy!

This update is first available to all patreon supporters here, with a public release in two months from when this post was first published!

There are two versions available for download: The 4K version and the 1080p version. Both are indentical except for the textures resolution being halved in the 1080p version compared to 4K!

Note: The 4K version will look better than the 1080p version, even if you don't have a 4K display. This is because the textures are physically larger and contain more detail in the 4K version, no matter what resolution display you're using!

(Only available for the Dolphin Emulator, the texture pack does not work on real Gamecube/Wii/Wii U consoles).

Read more information about the texture pack on my website!

Updating from an older version is super simple:

Just copy & paste the "GC" and "Wii" folders inside the "User" folder in the texture pack directory over to the new version's User folder and it should work straight away!

Download Desktop Version (4K and 1080p DDS versions)

Download Mobile Version (Compatible with Android & iOS)

I am only able to make things like this thanks to your support, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you for helping me do what I love!

❤️