PCG4m3r

Adding SKP just prevents processing altogether. Have you verified the purple sky is associated with this texture and that you can fix it by replacing this file? I have verified using the Compressionator that adding these files to the INI indeed changes the result as evidenced by the diff. I do notice the purple sky only on the very distant horizon from high altitude. I see this even with unoptimized vanilla. Can you post screens of your purple (and corrected) sky issue? Also, DDSopt will change 32x32 to 1x1 if there is no variation in the texture (i.e., it is a single color). This is a good thing, and Ethatron mentions it somewhere around here ... Yes, after I noticed the purple sky, I copied over the original Vanilla textures (no DDSopt processing) and the sky reverted back to normal. The purple is very distracting when in game and may be more noticable at certain times of the day. I uploaded a couple images to my imgur album here:     https://imgur.com/a/lCIep#0 If that URL doesn't take you directly to the album, go here:     https://pcg4m3r.imgur.com/     then look in album: "DDSopt_v080preUpd3_with_Z_ini" The images were taken with a complete vanilla game (no other mods and no HighRes DLC textures). The purple sky is the result of using DDSopt 8 update 3 with your custom ini and the other image is after I copied over all \sky textures from the Vanilla BSA. Time in game was 7:45am and location was near Ivarstead in case you were wondering. EDIT: And forgot to add: I'm certain the purple is due to skyrimcloudsfill.dds. I copied just that one DDSopt-imized file over and the sky reverted back to purple. I recalled that one causing the same issue in an older post, so knew right where to look. It also happens to be one of the files that DDSopt changes from 32x32 to 1x1 size.

Hey z, Regarding all the new ini and all the effects and sky textures that were added, I'm wondering should they all end with "=SKP" ? The reason I'm asking is I made sure that new ini was in my DDSopt path and ran ver 8.0 update 3 against all Vanilla textures and even with that ini I still get issues like the purple sky problem due to modification to:     sky\skyrimcloudsfill.dds I made sure my setup was configured per the DDSopt Guide on the wiki, but it seems like DDSopt is still changing some (not sure if all) of those files in a bad way. I'm also seeing other textures that are 32x32 changed to 1x1, which is a problem I noticed before the new ini file. Am I doing something wrong or should we just set all those to be skipped with "=SKP" at the end of each line?

Realistic Lighting Overhaul (predecessor to Realistic Lighting with Customization) was just released! This has been a highly anticipated lighting mod. I've been using RCRN for a while and like it, but after what I've seen and read about RLO I think I'll be making a switch. Dragonsreach looks very well done based on my observations so far! It will be modular in its releases (intentionally) and currently covers major city interiors, but also includes a lot of fixes / enhancements to lighting (i.e. shadow striping, bad meshes, etc.). City exteriors will be coming in ~2 weeks. Would you consider adding this one to your guide as a lighting option? The only thing I'm not sure about is whether TES5Edit tweaks will be necessary to be compatible with the other mods in your guide. I did have a crash inside Dragonsreach, but I'm not sure if it's due to RLO or something else. I don't know how to figure out what caused it. Note, the mod author included the previous version weathers (Realistic Lighting 3.5) optional until the 4.0 weathers are released. Also the meshes included in RLO fix a lot of lighting/effects problems and those will continue to be updated in subsequent RLO releases, but the latest mesh fixes used in the mod actually come from here:      https://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1499 There was an update to the meshes today and includes some extras that are not in the latest RLO 4.0.2 release. So those would just be installed after RLO to overwrite (or repack 4.0.2 manually with the updates). The Load Order is identified in the mod. Here's what I did in BUM to get it up and running (listed in order I have them in BUM):      Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Illuminated Spells.esp      BOTTOM: Shader Replacers      Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Interiors.esp      BOTTOM: Shader Replacers      Realistic Lighting Overhaul - 3.5 Weathers.esp      BOTTOM: Extra Late      Realistic Lighting Overhaul - 3.5 Dawnguard Weathers.esp      BOTTOM: Extra Late The weathers are supposed to be after RLO main plugins. I used "Extra Late" because I wasn't sure where better to place those, but at least they're ordered after Hoping you'll consider this one! :)

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply and fixes Neovalen! Now gotta go install "Brows" ...trying to keep up with you. :)

Hey Neovalen, I went back and redid some of the TES5Edit changes on some mods to be sure I did them correctly. As I was doing this, I took some notes on some things I noticed, which you may want to be aware of and correct if you agree. Also in BOSS Recognised Plugins: DSpSoB.esp has this comment underneath:       "Requires: Neovalen Race Compatibility.esp" I don't see that esp mentioned anywhere in your guide. Did I miss something or should we just ignore that comment in the BOSS results?

You're right Neovalen. I'm sorry. I must have clicked that ring by accident. Appreciate the help. Regarding the black armors, I'm now thinking it may be related to a VRAM issue. I happened to notice last night that armor turned black right before my game crashed. I have a GTX 580 1.5GB (using 2048x1280 res) and chose pretty much 2048K textures for all mods (where applicable), but haven't reran DDSOpt upd3 on anything except the Vanilla/HRDLC textures yet. I will work on that tonight and hopefully all will be better...or I'll just reduce to 1024K. :) I also would be interested to have SkyRe with your setup! As a couple, minor mod suggestion, have you tried/considered the following? Closer Quivers and Longer Arrows V3 (choose only Main QCv3 file + CBv3 Crossbow Bolts UNP + CQv3 Dawnguard DLC Arrows) https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/5711 With the UNP body the quivers noticably float in mid-air and looks odd This mod fixes that and also the longer arrows look nice (version 3)Version 2 of this mod moves the quivers, but doesn't have longer arrowsAlso has fixed arrow recovery, which I believe the Unofficial patches fix, but I don't know if there's any conflict to be corrected via TES5Edit (you're the master at that -- I'm just the padawan :)) Clipping could be an issue with some armors since it moves the quivers closer to the body, but may look better than floating in air to someIcebreakers Improved Reverb https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/16907 Improves reverb where it counts and doesn't seem too overdone IMO Gives a nice echo type effect in Dungeons and some other indoor locations -- adds to realism

@Neovalen This has to be one of the best modding guides I've seen! You did an excellent job and I appreciate all the detail so much! :) I had previously been a heavy Wrye Bash user and and still like that tool, but through your guide I have really come to appreciate Mod Organizer and like what it has to offer much better. I also appreciate the step-by-step approach to everything, especially all the TES5Edit stuff, because I don't understand what a lot of those things in there mean, but I trust that the edits will prevent all potential issues in game. I've managed to go through and setup per everything in you have listed and have even been keeping up to date with all your changes. I haven't actually played the game yet, but have been trying things out and it's all looking good so far. The only "issue" I ran into so far, but happened only once: I was trying out some different armors on my character (a Level 1 character loaded from a vanilla game that was saved with only Skyrim.esm and Update.esm in the load order). Everything was fine with the armors, then I think it was the Tales of Lycanthropy Werewolf mod options popped up randomly. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to just appear (it happened after a few minutes of messing with armors), but since it came up I played with the options to check it out. After closing that menu, the armor was completely black. I tried other armors and some were fine, while others were all black. It was very odd and I haven't been able to reproduce yet. Any idea what could cause that? Thanks again for all your efforts on this most excellent guide!Â

@Besidilo After living with the 2560x1440 res for a little while, I just noticed a strange graphics glitch in the game that I confirmed was due to the custom resolution. When I switch back to my native res 2560x1600 in game the problem goes away. The problem I noticed, when in 1st person view, weapons and hands had a strange ghosting like outline or glow, following the shape of the object, for lack of better descrription. I especially noticed when viewing over shadows or dark textures, because the outline was very wide and it appeared as if the ghosted outlines had increased brightness or removed shadows wherever the they appeared. Â I uploaded a couple images to show you (in album "Skyrim - Glitch with 2560x1440 Res": https://pcg4m3r.imgur.com/ The first image with black bars at the top/bottom is the 2560x1440 res. You can see the problem along the length the arms and around the outside of the hands. The issue is completely gone in the other image (native resolution). Any idea what causes this and how to fix while still using the 2560x1440 res?

z, I updated my Post 450 (https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=228&pid=16394#pid16394) to refer to the OP / Wiki Guide for proper settings and to hopefully reduce confusion. I also changed the suggested settings to reduce normal maps per your recent reply to my PM. I thought it would be good for others to have that info. Take a look when you have time, to ensure it's accurate, and if you think it makes things more confusing, I can certainly edit it further or maybe it should be deleted? I don't want to mislead anyone.

@Besidilo Thank you so much! After I created that custom resolution in NV CP last night, I changed the resolution directly in my SkyrimPrefs.ini, but thought I needed to leave my desktop res set the same since it was custom. It appears that now because I have the new 2560x1440 Custome Res added, the Skyrim Launcher Settings now show that resolution as an option. So now I'm running my full 2560x1600 desktop for everything else, but when I launch Skyrim I have the reduced 2560x1440 res!!! That's exactly what I wanted! Woot! :D I learn something new every day. :)

I must say, I've never tried adjusting those particular NV Control Panel settings before and it actually worked out pretty good for me (i.e. 2560x1440). This is interesting. Like the OP I also have a 30" monitor with native 2560x1600 res (16:10 ratio), but with a single GTX 580 1.5GB card. I'm running on 306.97 drivers. Following Besidilo's tips, here's what I did: In the >>Display >>Change resolution of NV CP I clicked "Customize..." then "Create Custom Resolution". A nice big warning pops up with a disclaimer indicating that proceeding could cause damage to the monitor, blah blah blah. I suspect that's only a concern if raising the resolution higher than the native res (i.e. 2560x1600). In this case I only lowered "Vertical lines" to 1440, tested it and it worked fine. Then in the "Adjust desktop size and position" I set it to the "No scaling" option. Finally I set the res to 2560x1440 in SkyrimPrefs.ini. I get the black bars at the top and bottom like Besidilo mentioned, but 2560x1440 is not too far removed from the native res, so it's not that noticable actually. I'll try this out for a while with a full STEP install to see if I notice an improvement with VRAM usage / FPS. I was able to successfully do a full STEP installation (v2.2.0a) before, often choosing 2048K textures over 1024K, but I did DDSOpt a lot of textures and half-sized Normal Maps in most cases, which I'm sure helped. My problem has always been the significant drop from 60fps down to 30 average and sometimes dipping to 14-15fps in forested areas when moving around. I never measured VRAM much, but with EVGA Precision I always noticed it was above 1500 in most cases. HiAlgoboost helped a lot with the movement and made it tolerable due to no obvious stuttering. Still I'd prefer FPS to stay above 30 at all times. I tried using 1920x1200 res in game settings like the OP, but while FPS was much improved at that res and never any stuttering, my issue had always been the apparent blurriness of everything in the game, for lack of better description. I'm not noticing any blurriness with this 2560x1440 change and it fills the screen pretty nice, so hopefully the reduction will improve VRAM usage and FPS with full STEP. Now if only there was a way to retain 2560x1600 for everything else I do, but have the system (or drivers) automatically adjust to these 2560x1440 settings only when I launch Skyrim. Changing this manually before going in game is not a big deal, but would be nice to have it do it for me. Is there a utility that can do that? I'm guessing not. Thanks for the tips! :)

I also am noticing the same black textures as mentioned in previous posts, using the latest 8.0 pre-release update 1 from the Nexus. However, when I compared the same textures that I processed using 8.0 pre5b everything looked fine. I found another texture (mushrooms on stumps) that appears black in game after using pre- update 1. I wasn't sure what texture file it was coming from though (guessing one of the files in \textures\plants). Below is a link to my imgur album that shows the before/after images. I apologize, but I couldn't figure out how to link directly to the images themselves or how to upload to the wiki so that they would be embedded in this post. https://pcg4m3r.imgur.com/ Also, I'm following the recommended DDSopt settings per the OP.

First, do the following before applying DDSopt v8.0 pre III to the vanilla textures. Fri may elect to add this now that it is pretty clear that Eiwyn's mod has grown quite stale .... Download DLC tweaks 3.2. Extract to its own folder (e.g., HRDLC_Tweaks) in the working directory.Download DLC tweaks 3.1 beta. Extract to same folder as previous, overwriting all files.Download the HRDLC Fix. Extract to its own folder (e.g., HD_Texture_DLC_Fix) in the working directory.Extract HighResTexturePack01.bsa to its own folder in the working directory (e.g., HRDLC1).Extract HighResTexturePack02.bsa to its own folder in the working directory (e.g., HRDLC2).Extract the customized BAT files into the working directory (i.e., not into a sub-folder though).Run the START BAT and examine the logs as well as the resuting HRDLC1-2 folders.@z929669 Hey, thanks for those instructions. They worked perfect for me! :) I just wanted to point out something I noticed missing from the HRDLC_Fix.bat file, which DDSopt helped identify actually. It's a minor thing, but as I was setting up to process the HRDLC1 pack, DDSopt showed blue text on a file called "barkeeper - max.lnk". In the HRDLC_Fix.bat I noticed it included the following lines: del "r:\clothes\barkeeper\barkeeper - nif.lnk" del "r:\clothes\barkeeper\barkeeper - psd.lnk" del "r:\clothes\barkeeper\barkeeper - tga.lnk" It's missing this one: del "r:\clothes\barkeeper\barkeeper - max.lnk" I manually deleted file after I ran the bat, but just wanted to point it out in case others haven't noticed yet.

@Nirodha I did end up giving it a shot and so far I haven't noticed any problems yet. I do see the normal maps are now smaller resolutions, while other textures remain the same resolution, but have lower file sizes after DDSopt processing. I haven't done enough thorough testing to determine whether there's an improvement with VRAM usage/performance. So far no crashes or odd textures and I've gone to several locations. Here's what I did (I realized my previous post didn't mention the other two "normal-maps" settings in Constraints). EDIT (13 JAN 2013): Updating this post to avoid confusion and to reflect latest Wiki updates and tips from z929669. I had PM'd z some questions about this and he was kind enough to help me out, but I forgot to update this post, so hopefully this will help others who read this. Any changes to my original post are in this cyan color. Thanks again z!!! :) All textures, EXCEPT Normal maps: NOTE: With the latest DDSopt updates on the Nexus, some Bethesda textures have been known to turn black in game. This is not a problem with DDSopt, but rather how Bethesda made the textures (some were made properly, while others were not). Those identified have been added to the latest DDSopt.ini file by Ethatron. See later posts for reference and if you find any problematic textures not yet addressed, please identify them and provide screenshots. You can also add those yourself to the DDSopt.ini file. Setup Behave, Apply, Ignore, Compression, Settings, and Constraints per z929669's Post # 430 OP / Wiki Guide (https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt_%26_Texture_Overhauls#tab=Using_DDSopt)Per z's Post 430 (https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=228&pid=15687#pid15687) set the values under the >>Behave >>Textures sub-menus (NOTE: These values are not yet listed in the Wiki Guide):Resizing Normal maps by 50%: - Changed only Constraints as follows: - Model-space normal-maps: R8G8B8 (1:1, lossless) - Tangent-space normal-maps: R8G8B8 (1:1, lossless) - Tangent-space normal-maps with specularity: A8R8G8B8 (1:1, lossless) - Resolution-limit: 1024x102o4 (for normal maps 2048x2048) or 512x512 (for normal maps 1024x1024) First make sure all settings are configured per the OP / Wiki GuideUnder "Apply" uncheck "Re-compress and re-mip all textures (DDS)Also under "Apply" uncheck "Compress all known image-formats (PNG, BMP, etc.)Under "Ignore" check "Don't process any of the known file-types at all (DDS, PNG, etc.)In "Constraints" tab change "Resolution-limit" to 50%NOTE: Per z unchecking both options under "Apply" will effectively make sure "the Optimize / Compress options under Constraints tab will be useless". Filter *_n.dds files (include only those and no others) per z's suggestionI really hope I got the settings right. My understanding is reducing resolution size of normal maps won't have an impact, except improved usage of VRAM, as long as the reduction is lossless. Here's a post I stumbled on during my research that explains why/how: https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1330609-if-youve-released-a-texture-mod-or-plan-to-please-read/page__view__findpost__p__20017660 The only thing I'm not certain about is whether I should be using the same Resolution-limit settings for non-square textures like tree bark normal maps. Like I said, I didn't notice a problem in-game yet, to include forested areas (checked Falkreath, Riverwood, Riften areas). I noticed the Resolution-limit dropdowns have options for 100%, 50%, and 25%, but I'm not sure if those would produce different results compared to the the settings I chose (above). I've started going through several of my favorite texture packs (i.e. TPC) and running through all textures with those settings. You just have to remember once you've processed the normal map reduction to go back to Constraints and change settings per z's Post # 430 the OP / Wiki Guide or you'll end up reducing the size of other textures per the Resolution-limit settings...unless that was the desired action. :). I made that mistake a couple times before I realized and had to go back and redo.Â

Hi, I'm fairly new to DDSopt, but have read through all 45 pages of this thread and I'm excited about what DDSopt can do. I have a GTX 580 with 1.5GB VRAM, so want to spend the time going through all the vanilla+HR and all other texture packs I use (i.e. TPC and more) to try and free up as much VRAM usage as I can, while not severely impacting quality. I need some help in understanding how to setup DDSopt to do what z929669 wrote above. I would like to do a first pass by reducing the size of the normal maps and then run through all the remaining textures as a second pass. Based on what I've read here and elsewhere, I believe for the low res vanilla normal maps, which most are 1024x1024, I would want to reduce their size to 512x512 as uncompressed (1:1); likewise I would take the 2k HR packs and reduze the 2k normal maps to 1024x1024 also as uncompressed. If my understanding is correct, then does that mean I first setup DDSopt per z's Post #430 ("My recommended settings for DDSopt Pre5b"), then in Constraints I set "Tangent-space normal-maps with specularity" to "A8R8G8B8 (1:1, lossless)" while also changing both "Resolution-limit" values for "Uncompressed" and "Compressed" to 512x512 (for lowres vanilla) and 1024x1024 (for 2k HR packs)? I assume if that's all correct, then I would just deselect all texture files, filter on *_n.dds per z's post above and only select those to process first. Then once I've completed resizing all normal maps, I would change DDSopt settings back to z's Post #430 and select all other NON- *_n.dds files to process the second pass (i.e. Constraint size changed back to 8192x8192 and normal-maps set back to DXTx). Am I on the right track so far? What I'm also wondering is: I've noticed in the lowres vanilla folders, some normal maps area already at 512x512 size and in the 2k HR packs some are already at 1024x1024. Should I leave those as is or should I further reduce those to 256x256 and 512x512 respectively, while converting the rest as I mentioned above, essentially making ALL normal map sizes half of what they are currently sized at? Or should I just focus on converting everything at 1024 and 2048 to 512 and 1024 respectively, but not go lower than that? As a DDSopt feature request, would it be possible/worthwhile to get the file resolution sizes and display them as an additional column in the lower half of the Browser tab, next to each file? And also provide a second filter option so that we could filter on a specific size to isolate those? My thought is we could then filter all the 2k normal maps only and resize appropriately, then filter on 1k or 512 textures and resize those appropriately. Maybe it's not necessary, but just a thought I had. :) Last question. When resizing, what will happen with normal maps that aren't square in size, such as trees (i.e. 512x2048). Will DDSopt detect and match on the longer size, thereby reducing from 2k to 1024 for example, while retaining the proper size ratio...so 512x2048 would become 256x1024...or will it mess up the ratio? Sorry for the long post! I just want to understand and do this right. Thanks for this awesome thread and awesome DDSopt tool!! :D