alt3rn1ty

Fixed that for you ;)

One thing we tested over on AFK Mods was the Dwemer lifts which were conspicuous by their absence from the SSE installation, but included in the LE installation. After Mertz redid the BAIN Wizard for both LE and SSE, it was found that if we also run all meshes through SSE Nif Optimiser, the Dwemer Lift animations worked correctly again for SSE. So aswell as correcting a load of meshes for those of us who prefer employing every technique to optimise the games resources as much as is valid to do making for an overall better gaming experience (as you say, not needed, ofc) - In this case it actually got an animation working correctly again for SSE. Mertz also found that pre-optimisation of SMIM meshes, running around in Riften, compaired with post optimisation = Better FPS experienced. Mertz does not exaggerate and would not mention something that could be interpreted as hoping it was better, but actually was not ( yes I have temporarily gone senile on the word I am struggling to remember :P ). SMIM I believe in this case ( conversion to SSE ), is lots of little bits which add up to a not insignificant amount of optimisation. Brumbek is proud, and would probably prefer not to run an automated tool on his hand crafted meshes ( wanting of course not to provide a bunch of meshes which would crash peoples games which corrupted meshes are renowned for doing ). But Ousnius has a sound track record of producing tools, who is imho on a par with such stars as Zilav, Sheson and the Script Extender team (to name but a few).

If thats the same as "Add Tangents to shapes" .. There were 16 meshes corrected for that in SMIM 2.05 There were probably a lot of the corrections done which are not needed I did not say they were needed. But are we also saying that a lot of what Ousnius SSE Nif Optimiser does is not needed ? Removed vertex colors from shapes = 595 of those, redundant data Skinned mesh: Cleaning up skin data and calculating bounds = 53 of those Add Tangents to shapes = 16 as already mentioned Personally I would rather they are optimised for the updated game. Is carrying out the above operation a bad thing in any way ?

I ran all of the SSE 2.05 SMIM meshes through Ousnius SSE NIF Optimiser v2.7, and it found a lot of corrections to make, similar amount as to the SMIM 2.04 meshes. Beermotor took the new full BSA option apart and checked out the meshes in there, and it looks like those were actually taken through SSE NIF Optimiser, so that was probably done after the loose file setup. Anyone needs a SMIM wizard installer for Wrye Bash - See Mertz WizBAIN Thread, where you can download a wizard for it (unpack SMIM to a folder, rename the "SMIM SSE or LE Wizard" to just be called "Wizard", put it in the root of the unpacked SMIM package, then zip it all up again so that the wizard ends up in the root of the archive .. Drop it in Bash Installers and choose wizard in Wrye Bash to install it. Mertz (AKA Beermotor) has been doing some amazing work recently.

Congratulations on the release Will adapt my guide a bit with the -SSE info Its working really well with Simply Bigger Trees SE ( and its Billboards )

@Darkside I just did a test for people without Photoshop who cant afford it or are not students : I like Starac prefer Photoshop for any scaling of textures ( I used to swear by G.I.M.P but now know that PS does a bit of a finer job ) .. .. However, there is one exception where DDSOpt does shine ( if you get the settings right ) It can do a brilliant job on just Normal maps ( its especially good on redoing the mipmaps ) Here's a before and after comparison, right click and open each in their own tab to flick between the two and compare ( Try to ignore the tiny randomly placed rocks jumping around between loads :) ) Before After The before is with SRO 1.7 no changes The after is with SRO 1.7 Normals reduced half size with DDSOpt For my machine, just doing that has brought it into a comfortable range of VRAM use on my 3gb Laptop NVidia 970M card See previous testing I dont really need to do any reduction, but wanted to get the average down a little bit more - Reducing just the normals gets me down to an average VRAM use around the game 2.2gb ( without reducing normals I am averaging just under 2.6gb VRAM use ) And for comparison with vanilla, heres another screenshot recently testing the new Skyrim Performance Monitor, just with SSE Vanilla textures, averaging just under 1.7gb VRAM So for anyone desperate with a need to do any tailoring of the set for their own machines needs with less than 4gb .. I would say the best bet short of buying Photoshop is just to use DDSOpt on only the normal maps, so as not to degrade the diffuse textures Use the settings in the screenshots here But for constraints dont use R5G6B5 ( not compatible with SSE, see this topic ), just use all the lossless options for best results, and 50% them all. If you have difficulty separating normals from diffuse with filtering, just use a command line, xcopy .. xcopy /S "drive:\pathtofolder\*_n.dds" "drive:\pathtodestinationfolder\" ( The /S makes it go into and copy directories and sub-directories except empty ones ) ( The *_n.dds makes it look for any file (* is a wildcard) ending in _n.dds ) Your destination folder will then have all of the normal map textures only to work on. Starac will probably given time come out with his own quality reduced option set including much better reduced diffuse textures done with PS ( and save reducing some of the lower res normal maps ) to overwrite the full installation with .. If we ask nicely :)

Aah sorry no, last couple of days I have taken BethINI out of being installed, and swept all loose cache stuff away with CCleaner, just to have a clean look at whats what around all my files and in support of Wrye Bash dev at the moment. When I next install it will watch out for this happening again

Is there a possibility that if you have Skyrim SE and Fallout 4, that duplicate Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini files can somehow end up in Fallout4 screenshot

Well currently WB FO4 has 1471 new users and hardly anything of concern for Utumno https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20032/? All the Images there are me using it for my game, exclusively. There are a few minor bugs with the current beta, but use the link to the Oblivion thread ( just updated minutes ago to the latest ), go to the second post, and at the end of that post is a link to Dropbox ( 307 WB wip standalone ) and the latest Installer .. Which is at a very reliable stage now. Most of the bugs in the development thread have been due to some major ongoing surgery / refactoring where Utumno has overhauled something but had an unanticipated bug .. which have all been pretty quickly squashed and made Wrye Bash superb in how it performs now. I'm using nightly build Wrye Bash 307.201701270027 - Installer, and installing Standalone for FO4 and SSE ( this version was uploaded on dropbox about 16 hours ago )

Whats the chances you can be drafted into helping Utumno with Wrye Bash ( mostly python ) ? :) It now supports Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Skyrim SE - Utumno has nearly finished the major refactoring work he has been single handedly managing for five years, and is after the 307 release ( its now in public beta on all 4 Nexus sites ) going to need help particularly with Patchers for the latter three games ( while not losing sight of keeping Oblivion working well ) .. And let Tannins new baby NMM and its new virtual capabilities / profiles take over from MO ? I am probably going to get my ears bitten ( understandably, MO has become established as an advanced tool many love and depend upon its features, so will be hoping for undivided attention on MO problems ) But really, the community desperately needs the capabilities of a fully functioning set of patchers. What Wrye Bash does for the Oblivion community with its Bashed Patch is just superb, to have the same capabilities for Skyrim / FO4 / SSE would negate any arbitrary merging completely by software designed to deconflict Load orders to anyones requirements, with any possible load order. It basicly enables anyone to create a plugin by importing / merging records from other plugins, so that you can keep your general deconflicted Load Order, and leapfrog important records on a case by case basis per the users requirements, and have it load last to win. If my assumption is correct and MO is to become replaced in all it does with NMM .. Seems like a project we will no longer need eventually ? ( or at least duplicated effort ). If I am wrong then pardon the intrusion / suggestion, no harm meant. Just assistance for Utumno occasionally from someone on a similar level of understanding with this code would be marvellous and very much appreciated. I tried python once and snakes just do my head in, volunteers who are capable of helping such an advanced project are unfortunately non-existant. Utumno has been pretty damned marvellous with all the work he has turned his hand to so far, but openly admits he still does not grok patchers for the project. Edit : Note this is not an attempt to seduce you away from this project, just a request for help where your talents could be temporarily applied on a desperately needed project at this time. You may also find some mutually beneficial solutions on the Wrye Bash Github project pages. I do appreciate its a big ask though. Thanks for listening.

Select game toggle .. YAAAS! Thank you for all the work put into this excellent tool. I view this now as a solid recommend among essential tools for everyone, included among tools such as xEdit, LOOT, Wrye Bash and MNelsons Performance monitors.

No, not even a tiny insignificant hint of any stuttering, its all smooth as a babys bum :) Skyrim SE has always been the same for me, so any kind of stutter would be glaringly obvious .. I get none. Even when constantly walking / running around the landscape while VRAM is varying its load between 2.6 - 2.9 gb. There is always a bit of overload when fast travelling into a city from anywhere, the graph spikes to hit the roof at 3 gb, but then the instant before the game commences again VRAM use has already sunk down to less than 3gb .. So its not affecting gameplay at all. The only thing that is obvious is a little more warmth on the case from the GPU working a bit more than usual ( I am guessing because it has less spare VRAM to juggle in / out more textures, so it has to work a bit harder keeping the flow versus cache in system ram balance going ), but no temperatures to be concerned with yet. Although if I was to stick to the rule of always having circa 20 percent VRAM free at all times to preserve machine longevity ( especially on laptops where cooling is a very fine balancing act sometimes with the physically restricted space ) .. I think I am currently over-stepping the mark enough to want to bring down VRAM use just a little bit, or in the long term not use SRO permanently. Win 10 VRAM use I havent done any investigation into that, but I should imagine it is probably a bit less than Win 7, it does not use windows Aero glass effects anymore, so probably saves circa 100mb of VRAM in comparison with Win 7 ( I know on my old laptop which had Win 7, I could typically squeeze out that much VRAM for more spare when using a classic theme desktop and disabling aero ) Anyway thats all my thoughts so far apart from saying .. Its looking damned good. And does not deter too much from the games original artistic feel, which you always do well. Edit : Forgot to mention the Vanilla game VRAM use is averaging between 1.6 to 2.2 gb VRAM use on this machine, area dependant. I think my ideal to try and achieve would be 2.2 to 2.7

Just these

Now with all three parts installed : Game settings at Ultra, FPS capped at 60, on this machine Averaging just under 2.6 gb of VRAM use, just about throughout the game. The following graph is fast travelling from one city to the next and spending a couple of minutes running around each city before fast travelling to the next .. ( If you are wondering why the increased GPU use near Falkreath, Simply Bigger Trees SE .. Without reducing Shadows settings :), love that area especially when its a bit misty aswell ) I think Windhelm is the highest use of VRAM. Something I found ( which is not evident from the above graph ) is that going out into the surrounding country from a city tends to raise the average VRAM to circa 2.7 / 2.8 gb. Especially exiting from Markarth, and exiting from Riften. Machine was a bit warm but not hot, and the fans only kicked in to half full speed. I conclude SRO does not need any reductions for a machine restricted to 3gb VRAM

New question : If a user really objects to turning off the Snow shaders ( I love all the new SSE effects ) .. Which textures do we delete so that edge matching in affected areas does not become a problem ? As I understand it, its because of the new snow texture which matches all the rest of your snow work, but that does not go with the snow shaders .. So I imagine that necessitates deleting quite a few snow related textures to keep snow shaders instead with vanilla snow textures I like your new textures, but its kind of like going half way back to old skyrim but with HD textures if we have to cut out the new shaders .. imho

I'm on 3gb VRAM, going to be monitoring with the new Skyrim Performance Monitor ( v 1.6 just released ) I had a quick go with parts 1 and 2 yesterday, first entry into Markarth went up to the limit 3gb for a few seconds then a bit more caching kicked in to bring it down to circa 2.7 gb. So just on that small test without the full thing installed I am feeling for 3gb cards some reduction will be necessary I have a request : Before After Can anything be done about the stripe band in the middle which looks a bit horrid

Here's hoping Bethesda do a Fallout 4 Special Edition I mean Skyrim SE was a leap ahead of Fallout 4 in terms of lighting / atmospherics and the shadows on SSE are amazing, I love Fallout 4 and its performance far more than original Skyrim but it could obviously now be so much better if they dedicated another Special Edition team for FO4 and gave that game similar treatment.

The game can only have 255 ( thats 0 - 254, zero counts as the first slot ) mod slots ( Main game esm, dlc esms, and current save file take up a slot each so deduct them from 255 total ). LOOT range if its Minus 127 thru zero to Plus 127 = 255 global priority positions So it amply covers hexadecimal 00 - FE positions in the load order ( FF always being reserved by the game for the save slot ) Its the same Load Order rules for Skyrim SE, Skyrim, Fallout 4, FNV, FO3, Oblivion and Morrowind I think STEP guide was right in the past, but its changed since in one of the many ( very many ) betas prior to the latest release of LOOT .. Surprised it did not get seen before now.

Yep, SSEEdit, TES5Edit, TES4Edit, FO3Edit, FO4Edit, FNVEdit, TES4LODGen, FO3LODGen, FNVLODGen, TES5LODGen, TES4Files, MasterUpdate, MasterRestore... .. and now also SSELodGen. I used it recently to generate Simply Bigger Trees SE lods ( after installing its billboards ) https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5114015-simply-bigger-trees-se-formerly-skysight-sbt/page-42&do=findComment&comment=45806045 The xEdits need the edit scripts folder, and the relevant game data file, aswell as being named correctly Edit : Struck through TES4Files, I thought incorrectly that was also one of them

DoubleYou is there a way to set this so that it asks which game you wish to manage as it loads ? I have the one desktop icon, and when run I would like it to present a drop down menu choice between Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE Currently you need to change game to the one desired after it loads up for the previous game it is auto loading for. I can imagine such would be a pain for people who just want to manage a particular game all the time, so it should be settable in its own ini

Note : For Skyrim SE, I will not be updating VRT for use in that game. Unfortunately its going to need a lot more attention to detail than just a repack, and I do not have the time to spend on it. Sorry if anyone was hoping. I would not try to use VRT with Skyrim SE either, you will see problems with landscape textures ( possibly even causing CTD, the new landscape normals have alpha channels which are necessary ), or maybe water flow textures will not mesh with old optimised water textures in this mod .. And more than likely a few other issues I will not be looking into. Optimally they really need to be repacked in the new BA2 Texture BSA aswell. LZ4 ( the new BSA compression for SE ) is 7 times faster at decompressing files from the new BA2, than the old zlib BSAs which Skyrim uses.

This mod is also now available for Skyrim SE https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/303/?

News : I will not be updating this mod for Skyrim SE, I do not personally use body mods anymore so have no interest in converting the textures to the new format ( although that only really applies to textures stored in BSAs, the new game may well have updated its basic textures and normal maps / skin / reflection maps and whatever else may be new to the game .. So the original Navatsea textures would need to be redone before I did the same tricks again on the neck seam problems between face and body textures = I dont think thats all going to happen ) This mod may well be compatible with Skyrim SE, installed as loose files as it is, but I will not be testing it. ----------------------------------------- For anyone using No More Ugly Bronze Shine by COTS No need for that mods updated textures if you use Alt Navatsea UNP Seamless, I did my own variety of those ( they were not just a copy from that mod, I used the same idea, but gave a little warm red tinge to the black colour for my set of textures which works better with the neck seam blending, my textures were also a different dds format to the originals, and were made a little more optimal in the sizing department ( with different sizes between different options for my mod and the assumed VRAM use ) ) So you do not need to install what seems to be a newer update by COTS, they would be less well matched to all the other texture layers in this body mod

I'm now back on shift at work so will be unable to for a while, but I did have .17 installed prior to .18, and was using that without changing the ini at all - So I presume that was set also by default at Fasterbase=1 ?, if that was the case then yes that was fine.

@ Bonsante - A bit late here with a reply but hopefully Nebulous answer solved it I personally only use Wrye Bash as a mod manager, so cannot really advise, hence the note in the Description on Nexus under "Installation" which reads "Nexus Mod Manager, Wrye Bash or Mod Organizer ( or anything else out there now or in the future ) - See the relevant documentation / help files / read me's for your mod manager of choice on how to install / un-install mods." Such questions are best fired at the tool authors, because Mod Authors may be as clueless as yourself with regards using them. On a couple other mods of mine I have scripting for auto-installation via Wrye Bash Wizard, and also NMM scripting ( which I have had installed a couple of times just to test the scripting worked fine ) .. MO I presume also to work fine if it adopts the same FOMod scripting method as NMM But for semi-automated simple installations ( such as Vanilla Reduced Textures is ), which does not need any scripting, I would have thought would install trouble free for anyone really. Its just a case of installing an .esp and a .bsa into data\, then getting your Load Order right so that if you wish my textures to override textures in any other .bsa's then my mod needs to load later. Loose texture files will obviously override textures in my .bsa, because loose files are always loaded last