DDSopt - General Runtime for optimization?

[Holymartyr]

Just started running DDSopt from the Wiki, and just got to the point where it is optimizing everything.

Anyone have an idea on how long it will take? DDSopt is estimating a full 24 hours ATM

 

I have a AMD Tri Core 3.5GHz OC (Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition) and 4GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 Ram.

 

Seems a bit long imo, but I've never done this before. Any feedback appreciated =)

[z929669]

Do you mean all installed textures or just one of the overhauls?

 

All STEP textures could take up to 24 hours, but vanilla HR should take about 1-3 hours, depending.

[Holymartyr]

All I think. I followed the guide to the dot. Every step.

[z929669]

the guide only refers to the beth vanilla texture packs which will require 3 separate runs at about 1-2 hour each.

[stoppingby4now]

If you followed the guide, you should only be doing vanilla textures plus HDDLC. In that case, as zMan said, should only take a few hours. When I first started, it estimated 13 hours but quickly dropped down. I ended up around 1h10m, but YMV.

[frihyland]

It shouldn't be much longer than an hour per GB processed.

 

 

I assume that you mean you are processing the entire textures directory, right click on your textures directory, select properties and check the size.

[Holymartyr]

Uhm.

 

Yikes - very confused now.

 

I followed the guide exactly. Got to this point.

 

DDSopt Optimization

• Beside the "Vanilla Extracted" directory created in step 1 of the preceding section, create a directory called "Vanilla Optimized" to serve as the current working directory.
• Launch DDSopt if it is not already running, and--unless you are experimenting--ensure that the application is configured according to the preceding screenshots.
• As the source folder, choose the previously-created "Vanilla Extracted" directory as the current source and the newly-created "Vanilla Optimized" directory as the current destination.

    Quote

  NOTE: The textures\interface\books\ directory of the STD vanilla textures contains many PNG files that do not need to be processed. Use the filter in the center of the Browser Tab to type in a "*.png" wildcard, then click the [Apply] button, unselect the files, remove the "*.png" wildcard filter, and click [Apply] again. This will ensure that the PNG files will not be processed into DDS file type. Furthermore, these files will be copied to the destination unaltered, because [ignore] > [Copy unprocessed and ignored files (passthrough)] option is ticked by default.

• Click [Process] to begin optimizing the textures from all three sources under "Vanilla Extracted" into corresponding locations under "Vanilla Optimized."
• Finally, package the contents of the three directories into ...... three compressed archives (or optionally a single complex BAIN archive if using Wrye Bash)... three BSAs if using plugins or INI registration to load (not recommended).

And did step number 4. I didn't have anything individually selected. Not sure how much more I can help. Here is a SS of the screens currently on my computer.

 

As you can see it has sped up a LOT, and I had the '/' (forward slash) selected when I clicked process. And if I'm right, I'm processing the whole Vanilla Extracted directory into the Vanilla Optimized directory.

[stoppingby4now]

I don't know anything about that particular processor, but that's estimating now at over 6 hours. I reckon it will go down a bit more as time goes on, in which case that seems about in line.

[Holymartyr]

Alright, so it's about 'on-time'. The last part of the guide, says to: '

package the contents of the three directories into 1. three compressed archives (or optionally a single complex BAIN archive if using Wrye Bash) or 2. three BSAs if using plugins or INI registration to load (not recommended).'

 

How do I go about doing that? Does this software do this as well? And do I want BSA files, or the loose files? (Ex. is one faster than another, etc. etc...)

 

Edit: Nevermind, found Step 7 on the original Skyrim Installation Wiki post: Now use BSAopt (or DDSopt) to recompress directory 1 and 2 back into HighResTexturePack01.bsa and 02.bsa, alternately if you are using a mod manager you can deactivate the esp's and create a single zip file instead. Moving it to the mod directory of your manager and installing as the second mod (USKP is first).

 

Not sure how I'm supposed to use DDSopt to recompress. Anyone have a quick tip?

 

Only thing I don't understand is why do we deactivate the esp's? Isn't that what loads the HD textures?

[stoppingby4now]

DDSopt doesn't package them, so you need to do that yourself. Generally having the files loose (installed into the Skyrim\Data\textures folder) is better for performance. To pack them, you'll want to move your "Vanilla Optimized" folder out of the Skyrim\Data folder, then rename it to "textures". Then you can create an archive of the textures folder and install it with whatever mod manager you use. Or, you can copy the textures folder into the Skyrim\Data directory.

 

Using a mod manager will be better since you will be able to control when it is installed so that you can allow other texture packs to overwrite the files, and Wrye Bash is a personal favorite for several of us.

[frihyland]

The esp's are what load the original bsa's, you don't need them if you are using your newly created custom texture mod instead. It will still work fine if you keep them active but it might become confusing as to which textures are actually getting loaded.

[Holymartyr]

Alright thanks. I've heard of Wrye Bash a whole bunch, but I think I've used the Nexus Mod Manager in the past. I'll go read up on it. Thanks a bunch!

 

And as to the esp's - so once I've packed the new texture files together into a BSA, it will be loaded automatically? Or is that where the File Selection comes into play on the Skyrim Launcher (Data Files)?

[stoppingby4now]

BSA's are loaded by ESP's of the same name. If you go that route, you will need to create 3 separate BSA archives as there is a 2GB file size limit (total is over 4GB). In that case you can backup "Skyrim -textures.bsa", "HighResTexturePack01.bsa", and "HighResTexturePack02.bsa" somewhere, then distribute the contents of your optimized textures into those three archives. Then all you need to do is make sure that the ESP files for the HD DLC's are enabled, or add them to the archive list in the ini file per the STEP instructions from the last version.

[z929669]

To clarify the following from the DDSopt guide:

 

  Quote

Finally, package the contents of the three directories into ...

 

• ... three compressed archives (or optionally a single complex BAIN archive if using Wrye Bash)
• ... three BSAs if using plugins or INI registration to load (not recommended).

You can use 7z, WinZip, WinRar or whatever compression program you prefer to package into a *.7z, *.zip or *.rar archive. Then you can drop this Wrye's Bash Installers directory and install using that app.

 

If you want to go back to a BSA, then you can use DDSopt for that by setting [ignore] > [Don't process any of the know file types] and by sending the output to point to "YourOutputPath\YourFileName.bsa". I don't recommend doing that, as then you will need to register the BSA and use one or more plugin slots, not to mention it slows load time just a tiny bit (and it is just more complicated).

 

Maybe I will add this explanation to the wiki guide. Thanks for using it and asking these questions ... that is how things get improved upon ;)

[Holymartyr]

Well I think I finally read enough about Wrye to get my optimized textures pack to work. Right now I'm so fizzled out that I'm not sure 1+1=2 (if you catch my drift)

 

When I got the optimized files, they were in this directory heirarchy:

 

• Vanilla Optimized
  • Skyrim - HRDLC FIX
  • textures
• Skyrim - HRDLC1
  • textures
• Skyrim - HRDLC2
  • textures
• Skyrim - STD
  • textures

What I then did was take each of the texture files, and over wrote them 1 by 1, taking STD first, then HRDLC1, HRDLC 2, and finally HRDLC FIX.

This created one MASSIVE textures file, that I then used 7zip to create an archive (used the store method since that is the fastest - will this create a performance issue vs a fully compressed archive?), and dropped that into Wrye's Installers tab. Then right clicked that, and clicked 'Install'.

 

So now are the HD Optimized Textures installed? I have the Old HR DLC esp's disabled, and only the Bashed Patch, Skyrim.esp enabled (no clue what that is but I guess it's necessary lol)

 

Thanks once again for all your help. Not sure what to do with the title of this topic (if I can even change it) since it's moved more into a help category =3 Sorry for all the time this has taken and thank you very much once again!

 

P.S. Should Skyrim.esm and Update.esm be set as 'Active'?

 

Edit: Skyrim.esm and Update.esm need to be active for the USKP (Unoffical Skyrim Patch) to work. So I figured that out.

 

Still can't tell if the HD textures are loaded or not. Most everything I look at seems low quality. And another question, since I only have 1gb of VRam, should I be using the optimizer on every mod I download for step? I know a few authors out there already used it for their mod, but a large majority haven't. Last STEP that came out (2.0.1a), I followed completly and used the 2048 textures for mods that had it, and ended up with lagging from time to time. Not sure why, because turning down AA, Vsync and view distance didn't help either. Only thing I noticed was that GPU Vram usage was within 10mb of capping every time I checked it.

[blacksol]

AA, V sync, view distance etc wont help with stutter, they affect FPS not stutter. The stutter is caused by VRAM maxing out. I have 1280MB VRAM and use 1024 textures generally as all 2048 caused stuttering for me