Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D 4K Texture Pack 3.0 Update

Good morning! 🔆

It's been several months since the last update to this project (time really does fly, it feels like yesterday when I announced 2.0). I initially planned on releasing a smaller update as well to follow up 2.0 last year, but it ballooned in scope, and here we are! It's taken me a long while, but I'm pleased to finally announce the release of the next major version of the pack: 3.0!

3.0 is in fact not larger than 2.0 in terms of the sheer amount of new textures. However, this does not mean this version is any less substantial than 2.0 when it comes to meaningful changes. Similar to 2.0, this version includes over 250 new 4K textures, covering many parts of the game. But again, it's much more than just that! In fact, the whole work process has changed quite dramatically over the last couple of months- leading to much higher quality textures than in prior versions (more on that further down). You will be seeing a major leap in quality between 2.0 to 3.0, maybe even more so than between 1.9 and 2.0! Other improvements include Spanish and German translated 4K textures (finally!), updated Reshade presets and plenty of miscellaneous improvements and changes.

That's just a pinch of what's new, here's some more details:

250+ New Textures!

This update includes over 250 new 4K textures which have been remade from the ground up for this version. This includes both environment textures such as the ground, walls, stone tiles and bricks, wooden panels etc. It also includes many new interior textures, completely overhauling several locations, particularly in and around Kokiri Forest, Kakariko Village, Inside the Great Deku Tree, Lake Hylia and Hyrule Field. There are tons of miscellaneous textures as well that have been completely remade, such as different types of wood and bark, many NPC textures, Link's clothes, grass and groundcover, clovers, ladders, the inside of Jabu Jabu's Belly, the Hylian Shield and many more.

The Hylian Shield in particular has been meticulously hand painted by fellow artist @SkilarBabcock and it looks absolutely stunning. They previously contributed the gorgeous textures for Link in my Twilight Princess texture pack, and they're incredibly talented. Please check out their website and follow them on their socials, they 100% deserve it.

Like previous updates, it helps it all comes together really nicely and makes the whole pack feel a lot more polished and complete. The details all add up!

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. What's new with this version however, is that I've spent considerable time making sure every single texture added had a noticeable impact on the perceived quality of the area they belong to. Long term followers might know that I worked by a frequency priority system, where the most viewed textures received the highest priority to be remade. Starting with this version, I have moved over to a perceived-quality priority system. The difference is that with perceived-quality, I instead prioritize textures which I deem to have the biggest impact on the overhaul visual quality of an area, rather than how frequently that particular texture is displayed in-game. With the new system, textures which aren't necessarily common, but incredibly important to the overall visuals of an area (such as the Great Deku Tree for example) get prioritized over frequent but less noticeable textures (such as foliage). I have found this new approach to working highly effective, and I think you'll notice that the step-up in perceived quality in this version should be pretty drastic over previous versions!

Finally: Support for the Spanish and German languages!

As stated in previous posts, I'm working to add support for all in-game languages to my packs, starting with English then working my way through other popular languages. First in turn for this pack is German and Spanish, which if you're a long-time follower you might remember there used to be Spanish support in the pack a long time ago. Unfortunately, support had to be removed for the release of 2.0, which brought new UI textures and was also incompatible with the existing Spanish translation from prior versions. Luckily, it is now fully back & supported starting from this version onward! Everything in menus, in-game text, button prompts and location names have been translated, and should work without issues. However, if there are any mistakes or errors regarding the translation, please let me know! ¡Gracias! and danke schön!

Improved Japanese translation textures thanks to work by Tomoki Sato ("LINK")

Tomoki Sato (a user who also goes by the name "LINK") has generously been helping with translating most of the UI textures of this texture pack, as well as the MM3D 4K texture pack, over to Japanese! Another batch covering some of the textures has been added in this update, with more getting included in future releases. Please follow them on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/LINK_genkaiya

Updated ReShade presets (Ultra v10, N64 v4 and Vibrant v1)

The ReShade presets that come with the pack have been updated and improved in this version. The new versions are now Ultra v10, N64 v4 and Vibrant v1- which is a brand new preset with a colorful, rich and lively look, which I recommend you try out! These new presets are also updated to support the latest version of ReShade (6.3.3 at the time of writing this). I recommend that you update ReShade to the latest version, or 6.3.3, to ensure maximum compatibility with these presets.

And many bugs fixes, optimizations and minor changes...

Minor issues from the previous version has been fixed. Performance has also been marginally improved due to the previously described optimizations, although keep in mind that Vulkan support in emulators is still not perfect and bugs may occur that did not occur in OpenGL in previous versions. For this reason you are still be able to enjoy the game using OpenGL instead of Vulkan by enabling it in the emulator Graphics Settings, if you want to. This should lead to a more polished and overall enjoyable experience for everyone using the texture pack.

That's mostly it for this update. Enjoy!

The update is available early to all you Patrons here, with a public release as soon as the next texture pack update releases.

There is also a 4K version available! The 4K version includes higher quality textures than the 1080p version, and will work on all displays- even those that don't display in 4K resolution. It will still look better than the 1080p version, no matter the display!

Please feel free to try it out!

(The texture pack does not work on real 3DS hardware)

You can find more information about the texture pack here

Download it from here!

Download the 4K UI Overlay Utility here (Version 1.2a)

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!

❤️