Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K Texture Pack 2.0 Update

Update #4 (2024-07-13): Another patch, 2.0.0d, has been released to fix an issue with flickering on the post processing edition, as well as further improved performance.

Update #3 (2024-03-21): Another small patch, 2.0.0c, has been released to improve performance and quality of some shaders.

Update #2 (2024-03-04): Another small patch, 2.0.0b, has been released to fix another issue with ubershaders, which could result in screen artifacting. It also adds two new shader presets by @Typhoon859!

Update #1 (2024-03-02): A small fix, 2.0.0a, has been released to fix an issue where forced dithering would cause graininess in the post processing edition.

Good evening! 🌅

I'm absolutely thrilled to finally announce the next major update to the Zelda: Twilight Princess 4K texture pack. This one has been a long time in the making and is, so far, the biggest update made to the pack so far! It includes a huge amount of new textures (over 400) and hundreds of changes, tons of fixes and other additions. Not only is there a huge quantity of new textures, but improved quality and consistency has been a primary focus as well. Over the course of several months, I've been slowly remaking older textures one by one from the ground up to look substantially better. Changes include new environment textures for many areas in the game, new character textures, new enemy and creature textures, remade UI, new material maps, performance optimizations and many bug fixes. And perhaps the biggest upgrade of them all: Thanks to very generous contributions by fellow artist @SkilarBabcock, Link now also have completely remade, hand painted textures in glorious 4K resolution! These are, in my opinion, the best looking textures in the pack so far. Please send them some love and check out their stuff!

>>> Visit Skilar's Channel

There's also a ton more miscellaneous changes. Here's the detailed changelog:

Overhauled environment textures!

Many areas have been upgraded this update with brand new textures. Over 150+ 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 Ranch

• Ordon Spring

• Zora's Domain

• Zora River

• Snowpeak

• Kakariko Village

• Kakariko Graveyard

• The Sacred Grove

• South Hyrule Field

• Lanayru Hyrule Field

• Eldin Hyrule Field

• Death Mountain

• Gerudo Desert

• Hyrule Castle

• Castle Town

• Faron Woods

• Lake Hylia

• Hidden Village

• Several dungeons (including Forest Temple, Goron Mines, Arbiter's Grounds, Temple of Time, Palace of Twilight and the inside of 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!

New Link textures by Skilar Babcock!

Fellow artist Skilar has very generously contributed their own hand-crafted textures this update- namely most of Link's textures! They are incredibly high quality and look excellent. They have also helped me out with several other things, including helping me find a better style for my own textures and giving me great advise in various ways (and have made me more motivated to create consistent and higher quality textures than ever before). We're planning to work together for the foreseeable future in regards to several different projects (some not yet announced), so please stay tuned! There's some awesome stuff coming soon...

New default shaders and visual tweaks!

A new shader preset has been added: The "HenrikoMagnifico_Balanced" shader, which is now also enabled by default in the post-processing edition! It tries to strike a better balance between visual fidelity, performance and style to look more or less like  an improved version of the original Gamecube/Wii game, with some extra bells and whistles on top. The Ultra shader is still included and has been improved as well. However, it's no longer the default shader enabled by default. 

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 took this update as an opportunity to remake many of the in-game textures 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 a lot 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!

This version has been deprecated and is no longer supported. Please use a more recent version, thank you!

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!

❤️