Kelmych

Out of curiosity, why that order? I don't see BCS overwriting a single file.The BCS Optional Paper Textures overwrite 4 textures in HQ Paper

Realistic Nights also changes the light levels from torches and spells.

Did you try overwriting with the original non-optimal 2Kx2K texture to see if it also has this gloss?

A new sidebox note was added to the guide about archiving mods when using Mod Organizer for installing and managing mods. Some mods use Fomods to provide a menu for installation, and many of these package their resources as a BSA. An example is the "Expanded Towns and Cities" mod in the "A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim" pack which has a BSA in the "00 Core" folder. When optimizing textures the BSA contents are extracted and the textures are then optimized. For mods that have both a Fomod folder and a BSA, when the textures are optimized the resources including the optimized textures should be repacked into a BSA. This allows the Fomod scripts to function properly. When MO is used to install the BSA should be extracted; since the BSA is unpacked by MO vs. the Skyrim executable there aren't any problems with the BSAs created by BSAopt or DDSopt.

It's certainly useful to create a MO profile for STEP Core and then other profiles based on it (e.g., STEP Extended and each pack you use) as described in the  Profiles tab in the STEP Mod Organizer guide. Using profiles allows quickly switching among different sets of mods such as different packs. Using categories as you suggest may help you to keep track of what is in the profile, but I expect most people use the categories to indicate the type of mod it is.

That question is answered on the mod's Nexus page.

There  is a reference in the first section of the DDSopt guide to a page that describes different types of texture files.

I've never seen it created automatically; I've always created it in Notepad++ and then added it to Skyrim\Data\SKSE. This is also what Neo says in the SR:LE guide (his instructions include additional detailed MO-specific steps).

I see Dual Sheath Redux in SR:LE but I don't see BSW, Greatsword Sheaths and Scabbards Redux, or Skyrim Weapon De-Larpification. If given higher priority BSW has replacement meshes that would overwrite most of the meshes from Greatsword Sheaths and Scabbards Redux, Skyrim Weapon De-Larpification, and Dual Sheath Redux. I don't know of any comparative testing with BSW except for some comparisons with Skyrim Weapon De-Larpification (which produces some rather thin swords).

A spell effect record, like many Skyrim records, includes a lot of different types of data including display and sound effects for the spell. Expecting parameters like these ancillary effects, two of which Mighty Magick changes, to remain unchanged seems disingeneous at least to me. Ideally there would be a plugin merge program that takes care of such minor changes, but as we all know there isn't and there isn't likely to be one soon.

The url reference to the most recent batch file archive, and the reference to the most recent ddsopt.ini, is part of the page header that occurs on every page, so indeed there doesn't need to be separate download references throughout the guide. The reference in the header at the top of the page is a single entry in the underlying 'code" that is then displayed on every page, and should be sufficient. The additional references that included the url were removed. The reference to the batch file in the page header was added after all the other references were in the "code"; these should have been removed a while ago once the url was put in the page header.

I looked in TES5Edit and Mighty Magic doesn't seem to change the Soul Trap effect in any significant way. It includes the generic Soul Trap effect from Skyrim.esm, with two small changes (Delivery is changed from "Targeted Actor" to "Aimed" and the Hit Effect Art is changed). Of course, it will either need to be edited to include the updates that eventually result from the USKP changes or have a patch with these loaded later than MM.

Some summary installation instructions for the optimized texture archive files for both Mod Organizer and Wrye Bash were added to the DDSopt guide today. If there are questions or comments please let us know. Hopefully these additions answer some of the questions in the posts in this thread.

A new version (v2.74) of the batch files was uploaded that no longer creates the empty HRDLC3 folder in "Vanilla Uncompressed Textures". The batch file was changed a while ago to put the uncompressed model space normal maps in HRDLC3 in "Vanilla Optimized" rather than "Vanilla Uncompressed Textures" to avoid any possible corruption of a large 2Kx2K male body MSN texture during optimization, but the now-empty folder was still being created. The batch file change doesn't change the optimized output; it's the same with both the old and new version. STEP will be adding male body textures from "Better Males" as discussed in the "Mod Testing" thread, so this vanilla male body MSN texture will be overwritten by one from "Better Males".

An updated batch file v2.74 was uploaded for the DDSopt guide that eliminates the empty "HRDLC3" folder in "Vanilla Uncompressed Textures". The updated file does not change the optimized output of vanilla textures or mod textures. In addition, some summary installation instructions for the optimized texture archive files for both Mod Organizer and Wrye Bash were added to the DDSopt guide today. If there are questions or comments please let us know. Hopefully these additions reduce some of the confusion that resulted from not having any installation instructions or pointers to such instructions.

I'm also planning to use Miko's mod (I also like that it is a little less sweeping than Phitts) and Dynamic Potions together. I loaded them and looked at the result with TES5Edit. There weren't very many conflicts that I had to address when I was building a patch.

Thanks for catching this. In a recent change to eliminate problems when the large male model space normal map in HRDLC3 was optimized to 1Kx1K, some small model space normal maps and this large one were added to to the Mod Optimization folder by the batch file so they wouldn't be changed during optimization. We'll change the text and figure to show this.

Mods are extracted to a single folder by the user' date=' and the batch file sorts the textures in the folder into 3 or 5 categories (the 2 additional ones are for exterior textures); each of these categories can potentially use different DDSopt settings. The batch file for mods doesn't use any information about which mod is being processed, unlike the sorting used for the vanilla textures where the details of the vanilla textures were used in the batch file. The full paths are preserved so when the optimization is complete the mods are reassembled in the "Mod Optimized" folder. It uses the "robocopy" system program internally. Some steps may seem to be done in a less direct manner to accommodate the capabilities of robocopy (it has more flexibility when excluding vs. including multiple directories and file types for copying). There are some suggested constraint tab settings in the guide; I plan to add another tab with a little more detail (a few figures with specific alternative suggestions) on this capable of being used across a wide range of mods including STEP mods, pack mods, SR:LE mods, and other mods that people use like quest mods. DDSopt can handle optimizing uncompressed textures at the same time as compressed, and getting the settings right can be a little tricky but is usually not too hard. The hardest part for settings is recommending these for body-related textures. Some mods can include both large body textures and some small face tint and other facial textures with a mix of compressed and uncompressed textures in both sets. Ideally the large uncompressed textures get changed to R5G6B5 to save VRAM, but I'm not sure this is best with the small size textures; there hasn't been much discussion of body textures on these forums since STEP doesn't handle many of these. Does this answer your question or did you have some other questions?[hr']

Perhaps other texture creators haven't been very interested in simple clutter items like these. For the most part this mod overwrites vanilla and SMIM textures, and only a few textures from other mods overwrite Tobes.

Installing any game in a User Access Controlled (UAC) directory is often a source of access problems, and is typically never recommended for any computer game. It might not be the problem here, but one of the first recommendations when trying to fix access problems is to move (although moving is typically fairly difficult, by the way) or reinstall the game in a non-UAC directory. UAC directories include "Program Files", "Program Files (x86)", and "Users". We always suggest installing Steam and Skyrim (and other games and the utilities used with these games) in a non-UAC directory (e.g., in a new directory such as C:\Games).Â

Thanks for all the work roots. I agree with you that Better Circlets + New Jewels for Circlets is best. For me it is followed by Better Circlets alone.

I edited my post to mention that the first figure will cause DDSopt to optimize while changing uncompressed to compressed textures. Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes not. The main difference here would be for one large terrain object texture. When I edited Falskaar I also reduced the size of some exterior tangent space normal maps to 1Kx1K; when I have a chance to get to Falskaar I'll see hoe this worked.

I'm not sure exactly what Neo wants to happen in the optimization. Falskaar contains both compressed and uncompressed textures. If he wants to optimize without changing any formats or sizes then the latter figure (DDSOpt_Fig7a.jpg) is the appropriate one (It will optimize both compressed and uncompressed textures without format changes). If he wants to change all uncompressed textures to compressed then DXTx should be used as the format option for all the format choices in the Constraints tab. The first figure will achieve this. I used the DDSOpt_Fig7a.jpg when I optimized Falskaar, but I haven't had time yet to go there in the game and check it.

Serious HD and Skyrim HD both have a lot of exterior textures. Skyrim HD textures are overwritten primarily by SRO and Terrain Bump. Serious HD does not have any textures that overwrite textures in the 3 archive files we have been using from Skyrim HD.