Use USVFS and CAO to pack only used textures?

[RainingTacco]

So i would like to use CAO from inside MO2 to only pack my used textures, instead of using CAO on individual mods, or on all mod folder, which is not only bad practice, but also cumbersome. If i had packed just my used textures overrides from USVFS[virtual file system] then i could get benefit of bsa without the hassle of packing every individual texture mod. 

[z929669]

1 hour ago, RainingTacco said:

So i would like to use CAO from inside MO2 to only pack my used textures, instead of using CAO on individual mods, or on all mod folder, which is not only bad practice, but also cumbersome. If i had packed just my used textures overrides from USVFS[virtual file system] then i could get benefit of bsa without the hassle of packing every individual texture mod. 

From CAO:

MO creates only your 'used' assets in the instance 'mods' folder, so just run CAO on the installed mods folder to limit to what you have installed.

[RainingTacco]

So really there's no way? Maybe i could somehow copy the textures folder from VFS, into the "real" operating system folder explorator and run it outside of MO2? I cant find a way to copy files from VFS. 

[z929669]

3 minutes ago, RainingTacco said:

So really there's no way? Maybe i could somehow copy the textures folder from VFS, into the "real" operating system folder explorator and run it outside of MO2? I cant find a way to copy files from VFS. 

MO creates only your 'used' assets in the instance 'mods' folder, so just run CAO on the installed mods folder to limit to what you have installed.

Paste: %LOCALAPPDATA%/ModOrganizer in Start > Run or any explorer address bar to find your instance and mods folder.

[RainingTacco]

I want to pack ONLY textures of the mods i use. The mods folder in MO have also mods that i unticked in left pane[roughly 50-60% of my mods] and would therefore pack all the textures from mods that i dont use. I only want to pack the LAST texture overrides ie. my current  load order textures.

Also i think CAO can't target textures only for packing .bsa, octagon is a better tool for that.

Edited January 11, 2023 by RainingTacco

[DoubleYou]

One would likely need to craft a special bat file to be able to do this. 

[z929669]

I would use left pane of MO to see my mod priority and physically copy each mod from MO 'mods' into a temp folder beginning with lowest to highest priority. I would overwrite existing as I go and wind up with the final outcome in temp. Then I would remove any assets not wanted in the archive (plugins, etc.). Then archive that.

[Greg]

I'd do it this way. if you have a recent version of Mod Organizer, run "Explore Virtual Folder" from within Mod Organizer. This brings up a "File Explorer" like application right in the game's Data directory. Right click the Textures folder and copy. Select File > New Tab to open a new tab. In the new tab, select or create a temp folder somewhere outside of Mod Organizer's purview (e.g. C:\TempTextures or D:\TempTextures) or whatever. In this new folder, click Paste. This copies only the textures that are actually used by the game in an empty folder. Once complete, close Explorer++ and Mod Organizer, run CAO, and do what you want with the textures in the temp folder.

[z929669]

21 minutes ago, Greg said:

I'd do it this way. if you have a recent version of Mod Organizer, run "Explore Virtual Folder" from within Mod Organizer. This brings up a "File Explorer" like application right in the game's Data directory. Right click the Textures folder and copy. Select File > New Tab to open a new tab. In the new tab, select or create a temp folder somewhere outside of Mod Organizer's purview (e.g. C:\TempTextures or D:\TempTextures) or whatever. In this new folder, click Paste. This copies only the textures that are actually used by the game in an empty folder. Once complete, close Explorer++ and Mod Organizer, run CAO, and do what you want with the textures in the temp folder.

That's the easiest way by far. I just never tried it, since I never had cause to do so.

[DoubleYou]

The main issue I see with all this is... there is no automated way to disable the relevant loose textures files. The loose textures will still override any archive you make via this method, so you would need to manually disable all those textures.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, DoubleYou said:

The main issue I see with all this is... there is no automated way to disable the relevant loose textures files. The loose textures will still override any archive you make via this method, so you would need to manually disable all those textures.

You would need to secondarily handle archives independently by extracting with override into a common location according to plugin priority, then overwrite this with everything in ... let's call it step 1. Then you would have the correct result, I think.

[RainingTacco]

On 1/12/2023 at 4:04 AM, DoubleYou said:

The main issue I see with all this is... there is no automated way to disable the relevant loose textures files. The loose textures will still override any archive you make via this method, so you would need to manually disable all those textures.

I would put the dummy plugin tied to .bsa at bottom of the plugin order[loaded last] and it would overwrite everything relevant that way.

[DoubleYou]

It wouldn't though. Loose files overwrite archives every time. 

[RainingTacco]

CAO is open source, so theoretically one could make such addition, or use verbose logging from CAO and make plugin for MO2 based on that input, and disable necessary textures. Anyway, i see its a lot of work, hence no point pursuing the idea. 

[DoubleYou]

I wouldn't do that. I would probably just make a bat file that loops over all files in the mods folder, spit out the textures to another spot, and rename them all with a custom file extension, like texture.dds.archived. CAO the copied textures, and add to load order. 

[z929669]

Greg's answer above is the obvious/simplest solution. Super simple and efficient.

Then just do as I mentioned as a second step to take care of the loose files problem.