How and what optimize?

[SSL]

Hi,

I'm in middle of installing SR (I hope so, just ticked FNIS on that list of awesomeness on the MO's left), though I have some questions regarding ddospt & SR:

 

1. I believe Neo settings for ddsopt are suited for his PC, not my Chinese notebook (see signature). Any ideas if I should change something when processing textures? Or just leave it anyway?

2. What mods should I optimize? I go with SR, with the exception of STEP's resolution choosings (ie. not more than 2K, generally). That applies to SRO (I have light version kept on HDD). So I'd like to keep that cap (but it's not a Holy Grail, you know ;) )

3. (in conjunction with 2.) If I should optimize everything as is, I should do it in each mod folder, or just from inside MO Data directory? (with output to new mod directory). Or it doesn't matter? (HDD space is not an problem)

 

Yes, I could TRY to figure out everything by myself, but I don't know much about textures in general.

[toshaka]

Neo's ddsopt settings are the same as step as I recall.

For the laptop just do the same as on the pc and try just to halfsize the normal maps (*_n.dds and *_msn.dds) of the major text packs (mostly make it 1024x1024)

As for wich, SRO, SHD, Skyrim HD 2K and AV if you use it would atleast be the best idea. (for me these were enough)

And you should do it in each mod folder (dont run ddsopt thru MO)

[SSL]

In order to make normals 1k^2 I should change both options in Constraints / resolution Limit, right? Also, is there a regexp that will catch both *_n.dds as well *_msn.dds?

[Aiyen]

Also remember to load textures from one folder, and save the optimized ones in another... It just sucks if you have to redownload SRO 2k for example.

[toshaka]

The major text packs like SRO and SHD etc dont have msn ones so dont have to catch both.

Just deselect all, select *_n.dds and apply and select and do the same for *_msn.dds, that way you can do both at once.

And yes both options (dont forget to set them back afterwards)

[Kelmych]

There is certainly some benefit from using reduced size normal maps with the large texture packs that have architectural and landscape textures; I measures some significant gains when I did benchmarks. There may be some value doing this with dungeon and cave textures. There haven't been any measurements yet to show the performance improvements with reduced size model space normal maps. If there is improvement, I expect it would be in situations where there are a number of NPCs on the screen simultaneously.

 

I created a table in the DDSopt guide to help determine which STEP mods to optimize. I plan to add the ones in SR soon; I have all the data I just need to add it to the table.

[Aiyen]

While I do see a small performance gain for dungeon and caves, it is normally so small that I prefer to just keep them as is since dungeons are normally so small compared to the outdoor that it does not matter, and the game flush the RAM upon a transition from in to outdoor.

 

Might help a bit for the infamous infinite load perhaps... but I still do not have enough of those that are not ENB related that I care to bother with them.

 

As for model space normal maps, I read that those could create some rather bad distortions, so for now I have refrained from doing anything character related outside of AV which was just in very dire need of optimization. Do you or others see any visible distortions in faces armor etc?

[Besidilo]

I think the best possible solution is to use a mix of 2048+1024 textures on most PCs.

 

1024 textures for clutter and small objects, 2048 for landscape+dungeons. You can double the resolution if you have a powerful PC with lots of VRAM ("lots" will depend on screen resolution and anti-aliasing methods used).

 

We should probably maintain a STEP recommended list that would let us know which textures benefit greatly from higher resolution (such as mountains).

 

DDSopt with recommended settings + half the normal maps.

 

Make sure to tweak the shadows in SkyrimPrefs.ini, as these tend to have a big impact on peformance as well. Don't forget to choose the right AA method for your system. I recommend SGSSAA for NVIDIA rigs that can handle it (2x or 4x, depending on your resolution).

[Solist]

  Quote

I think the best possible solution is to use a mix of 2048+1024 textures on most PCs.

 

1024 textures for clutter and small objects, 2048 for landscape+dungeons. You can double the resolution if you have a powerful PC with lots of VRAM ("lots" will depend on screen resolution and anti-aliasing methods used).

 

We should probably maintain a STEP recommended list that would let us know which textures benefit greatly from higher resolution (such as mountains).

 

DDSopt with recommended settings + half the normal maps.

 

Make sure to tweak the shadows in SkyrimPrefs.ini, as these tend to have a big impact on peformance as well. Don't forget to choose the right AA method for your system. I recommend SGSSAA for NVIDIA rigs that can handle it (2x or 4x, depending on your resolution).

All great suggestions Besidilo, and I agree. I'm using 2048 textures for landscapes and dungeons, 1024 for other bits and it's working great. Saw a great improvement by halving normals as well.

 

The one thing I still have yet to do is implement any AA, a lighting solution and an ENB final selection.

 

In regards to the SGSSAA - how would you recommend implemeting it?

 

Also, any STEP/SR'ers who have found a nice lighting/ENB solution that complements Skyrim Revisited well?

[Aiyen]

Is SGSAA not hardware driven just like normal MSAA ? In which case it would not work with the newer versions of ENB.

 

As for choice of ENB. The best ones that are optimized for the newest version are

K ENB, Unreal Cinema, Realvision ENB and yaenb v.155, phinix natural ENB as a few others that are slowly getting up to date as well.

 

If you want to use Skyrealism ENB then use the .ini file from yaenb instead since they share .fx files but Skyrealism do not have updated values for the new additions etc.

 

If you want to use hardware AA then v.119 is the latest edition to use, and in that case then project ENB is by far the best. It is still maintained at that version since the author do not want to leave his hardware AA.

 

Then there of course are a million others but most of them are not really up to date hence you will have to do alot of tweaking yourself or get strange stuff showing.

[Besidilo]

  Quote

Is SGSAA not hardware driven just like normal MSAA ? In which case it would not work with the newer versions of ENB.

 

As for choice of ENB. The best ones that are optimized for the newest version are

K ENB, Unreal Cinema, Realvision ENB and yaenb v.155, phinix natural ENB as a few others that are slowly getting up to date as well.

 

If you want to use Skyrealism ENB then use the .ini file from yaenb instead since they share .fx files but Skyrealism do not have updated values for the new additions etc.

 

If you want to use hardware AA then v.119 is the latest edition to use, and in that case then project ENB is by far the best. It is still maintained at that version since the author do not want to leave his hardware AA.

 

Then there of course are a million others but most of them are not really up to date hence you will have to do alot of tweaking yourself or get strange stuff showing.

That's not entirely true, the newer ENB releases support deferred anti-aliasing, but enabling it results in disabling some ENB effects.

 

I don't use ENB anyway, SkyRealism ENB uses v119, so it's not a problem for most users, and edge anti-aliasing that comes with it is a blurry mess, for the lack of better words.

 

I think the only alternative is using SMAA post-processing. Which is an OK solution for most gamers.

[Aiyen]

Yeh it "works", but why use an ENB if you are just going to deactivate the SSAO and skylighting etc?

 

Of course tweaking the ini´s and using the Nvidia tweak guide also looks decent, and you can saturate colors via the control panel.. it is a fair alternative.

But again only if you are satisfied with their SSAO solution, and I personally aint.

Also I get horrible performance with SSAO in v.119 compared to the newer versions, and I hate not having the GUI to tweak the stuff I do not like ingame.

[Besidilo]

  Quote

Yeh it "works", but why use an ENB if you are just going to deactivate the SSAO and skylighting etc?

 

Of course tweaking the ini´s and using the Nvidia tweak guide also looks decent, and you can saturate colors via the control panel.. it is a fair alternative.

But again only if you are satisfied with their SSAO solution, and I personally aint.

Also I get horrible performance with SSAO in v.119 compared to the newer versions, and I hate not having the GUI to tweak the stuff I do not like ingame.

 

Because I don't care much about SkyLighting (some ENBs don't even use it) and ambient occlusion looks better when forced through NVIDIA drivers.

 

The most important features of ENB for me are colour correction, sun rays, parallax, and above all, the detailed shadows that fix a lot of issues related to shadows.

[Aiyen]

Would not go as far as to say it looks better, but not much point in arguing over taste. :)

 

But in other news that are more related to this thread. Can you share some light on the performance hit and compatibility of the parallax texture packs ? I am considering trying them out, but I have not had the time to see how they would mix with the SR texture choices.

[mortimermcmire]

Pardon my horribly noobish question, but when you say "half the normal maps", that's when instead of 2048x2048 you select 50% / 50%?

[statmonster]

I think they mean to use 1024 x 1024 (for both settings) if most of your textures are 2048 x 2048 or 512 x 512 if they are 10-24 x 1024.

 

As I understand it, the reason not to use 50% is that it will further reduce those normals that are already below 2048, and those that are above it (say 4096) will only be reduced to 2048.