Aiyen

Well in general crafting needs an overhaul... sadly most mods that do it are either not updated to dragonborn or just do not do a good job at it. When one comes I will be first in line to endorse it! Only thing that I find that is easy to get is enchanting overhauls that also fit into SR.

Well neck seams are a good example.. those can be worse if you use too strong a compression on say the head but not the body texture... Also if you have two textures that are meant to blend well but suddenly dont anymore because the compression alters the color gradients that are possible... Most of the time you would just get blurry messes with higher compression due to this.. but I guess if you have something blurry next to something sharp then it will also look... clipped. Perhaps it is a bad terminology, but I do not know what else to call it right now! If there is a better term I am all ears.

Another reason it normally does not matter to have better quality for characters is that they all use the same textures.. so it is only loaded once for an entire scene. The problem is much bigger with AV where any given texture can be loaded many many times in any given scene. So any optimization, better compression etc that can be done to those textures would give a lot more improvement. But yeh an uncompressed 4k file is just silly.. there is no way the game engine or any resolutions can resolve the extra detail it provides anyways.

Main problem with altering the character textures is weird clipping or other compression artifacts... might be possible and not noticeable somewhere, but under other lighting conditions you might end up with something that looks very wrong. You can have no problem under one lighting condition, but under the next the texture can suddenly turn way too red... at least I have seen that effect by doing it. Granted that was many ENB versions ago.. so more testing will need to be done! :D

I like it as well...even with SSAO on... only issue is that I got clipping in the far distances... which is unfortunate. Gonna try to see how much I can salvage later today. Well fixed most SSAO issues, but this clipping issue is just not possible for me to fix.. properly gonna need an ini change. If someone knows some then give me a shout. https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnxn7kgz95akvi4/ScreenShot77.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/xckaai32jjnf782/ScreenShot78.jpg Other then this issue then I would use it with my ENB preset since it is far superior to the normal foggy weather. Also tried his morning fog edition... that is however very lack luster since it is way to easy to see the squares of fog he has added... especially at solitude and riften.

Yeah shields are way way better... even more so if you actually scale the enemies to your own level and/or use a combat overhaul mod as well... Also if you block... then you do not do damage... and you take more damage when hit compared to a shield..so I would say that it balance out fairly well. In general just a must have mod imo.

Also about the BSA´s vs loose files.. it does not matter.. MO will extract the bsa´s into loose files anyways.

But here it is really vital that you do not touch character or water or LOD etc... altering their normal maps will produce really visible effects! :) So remember to have backups, before you overwrite any normals so you can always go back if there is a problem with a texture. The general effect if you reduce the normals is that the texture will start to look more fuzzy/blurry when you get closer to it then it otherwise would... another reason not to do it to armor and weapons etc... since those are always close when you are in combat and in 3rd person. But the effect is mostly only really noticeable if you are standing close face up in a texture.. if you are playing and moving around then there is not really any issue.

Do not be sad! I would have thought it was a major problem myself if I had found it! :D If you or anyone else finds something similar that just looks horrible with RLO + CoT let me know! I already fixed the SFO "bright LOD tree" problem when using ENB´s... optimized the texture for my own preset.. but I guess it should work for a wide array of other presets as well. Also working on some sunglare goodness... since my preset is fairly picky with sun types apparently... If they are not of sufficient quality then they will just look like concentric colored circles. But back to tweaking! Still have some lacking understanding about how the glowmaps work for this texture... gonna try out a few things to see if I can make any good changes! Also if someone can find another cave then shimmermist where the texture is used please let me know! Update: Okay updated and tested the poo out of this... Remade the specular map from the ground up, and added even more compression so the textures are now only about 700kb each... that should allow every computer to use it! I got higher resolutions, but I see no change going up to 4k compressed or 2k uncompressed. Other then a slightly better color transition when standing with your face really close up into some glowing rocks.

You would get a bit yes... but what you want to do after you have optiimzed them is to filter for all the _n.dds files and reduce their size to 1024x1024 (So long as it is possible.) This will reduce the amount of RAM required significantly. The difference between a 1k and a 2k texture is roughly 4Mb... so you save roughly that for every texture that loads at any given time.

Well the game engine cannot handle exterior 4k textures in large amounts... I use 4k only for caves and dungeons where there are not as much stuff that needs to be rendered and that still works fine on a 2Gb card. Also use a fair amount in my interiors. Also most interior textures are widely reused. Remember that the memory usage does not scale well with higher resolution Avarage size pr texture give or take. (This assumes the most optimal compression between space taken and quality. ) 1k = 1.3Mb 2k = 5.5Mb 4k = 15+ Mb This goes for both the texture... normal maps, glow maps etc. etc. so every "texture" that is shown ingame is almost always double this, sometimes more. As for the visual change... Well 4k looks better in almost every way. However since you cannot have mostly 4k in the exterior areas due to the RAM limit... then it is better to reserve 4k usage for stuff like weapons and armor that really benefits from the extra fine detail. The game cannot even handle the exteriors with mainly 2k textures without reducing the normal maps to half size to compensate. And even then you can in some instances run fairly close to the limit, due to the games rather bad ability to cleanup unused textures and information.

hmm you should only need to set the binary (.exe) in MO for BUM and it should work fine.

Best advice is take one texture package at a time to get familiar with the process. Start with smaller packages as well since some large packages can take quite some time to do the process on... and that is worse then a funny looking texture imo.

The main way to avoid just about all pitfalls is to backup your textures before you perform any operations on them! This means extract the bsa archives to losse files... then make a copy of those files and perform DDSopt on those. Then overwrite the original files with your DDSopted ones and test them out ingame. As long as you have a backup you can always revert any errors you might make. Also you should never DDSopt EVERYTHING... some textures have a specific format for a reason! Yes they might take up more space then normal but there are reasons for it! This is mainly when dealing with water mods, LOD textures, and all armor and character textures! Changing them in any way can cause weird clipping and speckles of color... etc.

I only used 2k because well.. habbit. In this case there really is no point in 2k. The only difference I can see is a slight variation between the relative distance between glowing spots and also how wide they are. The actual quality is not really visible due to some weird...blackish texture that is on top of the glowmap to make it blend in better with the rock. I already use the optimal compression based the the STEP settings of DDSopt. (BC3/DTX5) so a 2k file is about 5.5 Mb.. which is comparable with other 2k files I have already DDSopted. A 1k version is about 1.33Mb like other 1k textures. There are 2 files so I will let people test the 1k version unless they REALLY want a 2k version just to feel good about themselves! Just throw me a pm if you are interested! Also people who do not use RLO are welcome! If I get enough good feedback and requests I might just release it as a standalone... even though I think it is really silly to have just a pair of textures as a "mod" >_> Also glad that you like the screenshots Vond! :D

Okay in relation to the previous talk about Shimmermist cave and the... rather horrible texture that is used to simulate some sort of gem glow in falmer caves. The issue really annoyed me since it does not go well with RLO dungeon settings! Or vanilla in my opinion... So I set out to create a new and improved texture! First a picture of the vanilla texture with SR installed... well the texture and lighting parts of it anyways. I also use darker dungeons for ENB but it does not affect this particular dungeon as far as I can tell. ENB has been disabled for the screenshots for better reference! https://www.dropbox.com/s/9euv69u1h1m0j3l/ShimmermistVanilla.jpg Followed by a screenshot of my improved texture... increased the texture resolution from 512x512 to 2048x2048 and.... worked some weird GIMP Rituals that I do not yet understand... but it produces pretty results! https://www.dropbox.com/s/71uprf90jyrlw4z/ShimmermistModified.jpg I am interested in a few "beta testers" if anyone is bothered/interested in trying out the new falmer cave glowy textures. I will most likely release them along with the ENB preset I am working on atm... Hopefully in about a week or two! Here are a few teaser wip shots if anyone is interrested... https://www.dropbox.com/s/nkfe9iimgxliz2e/ScreenShot54.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6ghfqjccl8x7dg/Screenshot17857.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/o41m0ub8vx6foab/Screenshot3751.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/vbrcmy8uok0d4hn/ScreenShot49.jpg There is a slight artifical contrast/brightning from the screenshot process, and the following conversion from bitmap into jpeg. Edit: Hmm guess I need to figure out how to put in screenshots in posts properly... but too late to figure it out now!Â

In general you only want to use the papyrus log to test if a CTD is due to script failure. It stresses the game engine if you activate the log and it will make the game a bit more sluggish and unstable because it has to log everything. For performance monitors get an external program and start it before you run the game. The one STEP uses is decent. I personally use the EVGA precision X because I have an Nvidia card from EVGA But there are similar applications for AMD cards...It allows me to follow my VRAM usage on my keyboard LCD. I also have a RAM + CPU monitor so I can switch between them ingame if I test. Just remember that it is not advised to do it while having an ENB or another postprocessing file activated since they might conflict (CTD at start), as they try to access the same resources. Also depending on which OS you have and settings there are some security issues since they try to access the resource manager in windows.

In general if you add or remove .esp/esm then redo all the patchers etc... since they all involve a list of active mods etc. If those lists are not correct then down the road you will properly run into some issues. However if you just add a small esp to change the lights in say.. lanterns then you do not need to redo everything just for testing purposes. Since those esp only contain color information about stuff already implemented in the world. However once you settle for something you like then you need to reupdate all the patchers.

Awww boooo! Currently using another mod for glass while I wait for his... Since yeh... the vanilla one is really horrible! Makes me really miss the oblivion one! That one actually looked like glass!

Instead of actually starting a new game every single time you can just open the console in the main menu and type coc For example "coc riverwood" will put you just outside of Riverwood. To get the ID´s just type help and use pgup to scroll up to where the "CELL" entries are. You can always switch out textures and meshes with no real issue because there are vanilla files for all things... except if you are using a mod that adds new weapons etc. You should not need to rerun AV or Dual sheath either unless you delete something... as long as you replace a file the game does not care what is in the file, as long as the filename used is the same.

Solist: If you have an ENB on it can make the issue even worse! To get something good out of it I am currently trying to design my own ENB interior values around this stupid cave to try to make it look somewhat decent! But yes.. I do not know what the hell the design team was thinking when they made this... it really does look like a texture issue. Also about the book of silence.... I believe today is cabals birthday and he would upload the glass stuff. At least that is what he wrote earlier if I recall! Good times!Â

Yes I recommend higher level enemies for the scaling.. by far the best in my opinion. As for ERSO... in general I find that most of its modules are already taken care of in other mods, some even on the SR list already. And these other mods in general does a better job since they have had a more focused development. Like level progression is redundant since we have the uncapper already which is very easy to tweak yourself... dragon spawn timers are already handled by deadly dragons... The list continues but I am in the middle of my dinner atm so most of the other examples will have to wait for another day! But as for compatibility then it does a fairly good job explaining what to be on the lookout for...and in general since no scripts are involved you can always test it out with no real hassle and then revert afterwards.

You can just follow the guide as it is, then install those two mods last and run the skyproc patcher, Bashed patch etc. as normal. They do not add any textures etc. and are on the BOSS masterlist so you do not need to do anything else. Here I assume that you are not going to be using any other weapon or armor mods. In general Skyrim unleashed is the most simple overhaul to get working.

Lag during super swift turning is to be expected. Skyrim has implemented a forced vsync feature and the turning lag is (most likely) because of this. It becomes more noticeable if you are also running with an ENB since this reduce your overall FPS... But it is generally not a huge issue since skyrim is not meant to be played as an action FPS where you need to turn 180 super fast all the time. For testing for memory/performance CTD´s just running though Riverwood from Helgen and then onwards to Whiterun. If you have installed the FULL SMIM then Riverwood is a real memory hog due to all the extra poly counts that mod brings. Even more so if you are using the "more farm animals mod" since AV makes it so that you load in even more textures. I have removed that mod because I would rather sacrifice a few farm animals then some of the other stuff. Lowering the Shadow resolution helps free up CPU... All decals, animations, shadows etc. etc. are all handled by the CPU... Mods like enhanced blood increase the decal count as well. In general it is easy to test if this is your bottleneck since the CPU cooler will start to spin more when more work is being performed... at least that is how I test it! :)

Well you should not expect to get any FPS boost, since RAM-VRAM transfer is most likely not the bottleneck in any computer... You can use silly high texture sizes for anything in the game... once it is loaded into memory no further computation is done on it other then to call when it needs to be rendered. And then it does not really matter how much space it takes up, since VRAM reads so fast that you cannot notice it. The performance boost you can get from optimization is when you need to swap large amounts of textures (like when you change cells or go from interior to exterior), since then the RAM-VRAM transfer might be a bottleneck... or in the case when you do not have enough and cache have to be used.