GUIDE [WIP] DDSopt & Texture Overhauls

[z929669]

Discussion thread:
DDSopt Guide by STEP
Wiki Link

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GET DDSopt:
Github Pre-release versions
Official Nexus versions (select pre-release update 4)

[z929669]

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Found another one!

 

wrplasterdecals.dds in Skyrim HD - Towns

This is the result of an alpha mask I think. It may or may not be an issue in game. Looks like a shared texture.

[TechAngel85]

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Found another one!

 

wrplasterdecals.dds in Skyrim HD - Towns

This is the result of an alpha mask I think. It may or may not be an issue in game. Looks like a shared texture.

I didn't notice this in-game. I was actually in search of the moss texture that is on the side of the Whiterun outer walls (never did find it) and ran across those couple textures that I posted.

[z929669]

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It looks like Serious HD rocksedgetrim01's alpha is a height-map, while Vanilla Skyrim rocksedgetrim01's alpha is a transparency-map ... Is this a modder misunderstanding? Or are there special NIFs floating around?

Vanilla Skyrim rocks01 seems to be a height-map. Vanilla volcanictundraminerals looks super weird, looks more than a specular map than anything else, or an erronous texture.

I guess all the files directly in landscape are actual height-map carrying, except the trim-file, all the sub-folders have transparency-maps.

OK, I will take this to mean that having these files in the Wiki INI is appropriate then ... ?

 

... and thanks for all of the recent feedback on the latest barrage of questions!

[z929669]

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Found another one!

 

wrplasterdecals.dds in Skyrim HD - Towns

This is the result of an alpha mask I think. It may or may not be an issue in game. Looks like a shared texture.

I didn't notice this in-game. I was actually in search of the moss texture that is on the side of the Whiterun outer walls (never did find it) and ran across those couple textures that I posted.

DDSopt seems to remove redundant texture information at each mip level. If you look at many alpha maps, you will find that the black portion will overlap with the crappy-looking edges in the primary and the new black parts of the converted version will mask that stuff. By removing the additional unnecessary texture information in the primary channel, DDSopt may be enabling more efficient rendering in game (but I am not sure about that!)

[TechAngel85]

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Found another one!

 

wrplasterdecals.dds in Skyrim HD - Towns

This is the result of an alpha mask I think. It may or may not be an issue in game. Looks like a shared texture.

I didn't notice this in-game. I was actually in search of the moss texture that is on the side of the Whiterun outer walls (never did find it) and ran across those couple textures that I posted.

DDSopt seems to remove redundant texture information at each mip level. If you look at many alpha maps, you will find that the black portion will overlap with the crappy-looking edges in the primary and the new black parts of the converted version will mask that stuff. By removing the additional unnecessary texture information in the primary channel, DDSopt may be enabling more efficient rendering in game (but I am not sure about that!)

 

Yeah...DDSopt is still Greek to me.

[JudgmentJay]

Probably a dumb question, but is there a way to check if a texture was messed up by DDSOpt outside the game?

[z929669]

  'JudgmentJay said:

Probably a dumb question' date=' but is there a way to check if a texture was messed up by DDSOpt outside the game?[/quote']

Yes, use DDSopt preview tab to look at each individual texture to compare. The Compressonator does a decent job too, but misses some things.

[JudgmentJay]

Seems like kind of a pain to go through each one by double clicking like that. What about TES Texture Pack Merging Utility? It revealed a messed up texture in a mod I was DDSOpting earlier, and it has the nifty feature of copying one of the two textures, so if any textures are corrupt you can click the Copy button for the non-corrupt texture and it saves a copy of it in the application's folder. Once you're done you can just drag the textures folder in the application's directory and overwrite your optimized texture folder and merge them, thus eliminating the bad textures.

 

A side note... so even something like this should theoretically be OK in-game?

 

[z929669]

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Seems like kind of a pain to go through each one by double clicking like that. What about TES Texture Pack Merging Utility? It revealed a messed up texture in a mod I was DDSOpting earlier, and it has the nifty feature of copying one of the two textures, so if any textures are corrupt you can click the Copy button for the non-corrupt texture and it saves a copy of it in the application's folder. Once you're done you can just drag the textures folder in the application's directory and overwrite your optimized texture folder and merge them, thus eliminating the bad textures.

 

A side note... so even something like this should theoretically be OK in-game?

 

 

The problem is that in game, you will see the composite result of the texture after all layers are combined around the model. AFAIK, the model also defines aspects of texture behavior, and the shader computes even more of the net result. Thus, you are only seeing a small part of the issue when you look at texture primary channels only. You need to see what the alpha channel is doing as well to get a better idea from just looking at textures (i.e., view in DDSopt), and this is still not a complete picture. For that, you need to see the in-game result.

 

The texture above is probably fine in game, but without seeing the alpha, it is not possible to know.

 

Speaking of the preview though ... I have a feature request:

 

Enable moving between textures using the arrow keys. Presently, the L/R arrow keys control tab switching behavior; however, I would assign these keys to functions within each tab. For the Preview tab, I want to use the L/R arrows to go between textures and the U/D arrows to switch between primary/alpha.

[JudgmentJay]

  'z929669 said:

Enable moving between textures using the arrow keys. Presently' date=' the L/R arrow keys control tab switching behavior; however, I would assign these keys to functions within each tab. For the Preview tab, I want to use the L/R arrows to go between textures and the U/D arrows to switch between primary/alpha.[/quote']

 

That would be great.

[Ethatron]

Okay ... how about a spitter-line which you can move between origdest? Just kiddin'. I mean I'd love such a feature, but I may have not much time for implementing it (I don't mean the key, the splitter ofc :P). I got a new job in two weeks, and it's going to eat all my time the first months (you know ...).

[Kelmych]

Congratulations on the new job. We certainly appreciate all the work you've spent on DDSopt and BSAopt, and hopefully you'll have some time to work on them again after you finish creating a good initial impression.

 

The new Skyrim Texture Viewer does a reasonable job of supporting quickly moving between textures. If we could get the author to add views of primary and alpha channels it would be even more useful.

[z929669]

  'Ethatron said:

Okay ... how about a spitter-line which you can move between origdest? Just kiddin'. I mean I'd love such a feature' date=' but I may have not much time for implementing it (I don't mean the key, the splitter ofc :P). I got a new job in two weeks, and it's going to eat all my time the first months (you know ...).[/quote']

Kudos. We appreciate whatever time you are able to put towards your projects. We are greedy, yes, but also reasonable ;)

[Kelmych]

Do we need to make any changes to DDSopt.ini, or is it alright for a while?

[PCG4m3r]

This may be slightly off-topic here, but maybe not. Hoping someone can give me advice or can answer the questions below. If this is the wrong thread for this, I apologize. It seems like it could be applicable to this thread.

 

Since comparison screenshots are very useful to determine in-game how textures look between vanilla and modded textures or after optimization, I want to go through and try to capture as much as I can for each distinct texture in-game. However, doing this, as you might suspect, is very cumbersome. 

 

Here's my current method, taking Whiterun area as an example:

 

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• I look at the individual .dds files for Whiterun and surrounding landscape
• I go in-game to get good screens of each one that I can find (save games)
• I sometimes save multiple screens for the same texture in different views or different light conditions (night/day)
• My process is slow, because first I launch completely vanilla Skyrim (no DLCs, no mods, just Skyrim.esm and Update.esm)
• Then travel around the area (Whiterun), saving at different locations and taking a screenshot at the same time
• So I not only have a good save of the in-game texture(s) to re-use (with or without mods/DLCs), but I have a vanilla capture ready to go and then will later reload to take screenshots after optimization and/or with same textures from other mods
• I think I ended up with ~250 saves just for Whiterun alone and it took a while to get those

It takes Skyrim forever to load just the save names in a simple list when I go to the Load menu, which makes it even slower. I can't imagine continuing this process for all the other big locations (Windhelm, Markarth, etc.) or the Skyrim landscape, but I think the effort may be worthwhile since comparisons are quite often needed and helpful. 

 

 

 

Anyway, besides the implied question "is there a better/faster way to go about doing all that?" I have some questions about mods that may exist or not, which could help.

 

 

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• Is there a mod out there, which helps Skyrim's Load menu make all the save files appear faster?
  • I don't mean loading times to get in-game; I just mean something that makes the files in the Load menu list show up faster on screen?
  • With ~250 files, if I scroll to the bottom of the list I have to wait foooreeevvvveeeer before the save file names appear, meanwhile I'm staring at a blank Load menu

  • Each time I go to the menu it does this!
  • The save names help me stay organized, but if I can't see them it's hard to know what to select
• I have no idea what the game is doing as it's loading those saved file names that makes it take so long
• It would be nice if there was a mod that could fill the screen like Categorized Favorites Menu, but list as many save games as could fit and load them FAST!
  • And also allow us to sort the list or filter to find something specific (like SkyUI's menu does)

• Is there mod that would facilitate the following automatically?
  • Load up each save game, in order, one at a time
  • Turn off UI elements like compass, health, etc. after loading
  • Turn off any SKSE related messages
  • Take a screenshot after turning off UI / messages
  • Rinse and repeat for each file stored in the user's \Skyrim\Saves directory until the last file is reached
  • Then exit game or go back to main menu (optional)
  • If that doesn't exist SOMEONE NEEDS TO CREATE A MOD LIKE THIS! 
    • Something you could kick off then walk away while it's doing it's thing

    • After maybe 10-30 minutes (depending on how many saves and how many mods are installed) you could have a directory full of screenshots ready to go
  • Maybe an MCM based mod or just a script that can be called with a keystroke?
  • If I knew scripting I would do it (if it's even possible) -- unfortunately I don't! :(
• This probably will just remain wishful thinking I'm guessing?

• Is there a mod that would allow us to identify a specific texture (.dds name) applied to a particular mesh while in-game?
  • My thought is along the lines of how you can go into console mode and click on-screen to get cell hex values (something like that), but instead it would be for textures
  • Or maybe a mod that you can tell it in-game by keystroke or menu options that you want it to identify mesh names, cell names, texture names, normal map names, etc. wherever you click on-screen

  • Even better would be to have it capture the screen and name the save based on whatever was clicked (i.e. texture name without .dds or whatever)
• I know! More wishful thinking! I'll go back into my dream world now.... 

 

 

Since those mods probably don't exist, I'd welcome any suggestions on quicker ways to improve my "method" above. It's beginning to feel like work and isn't fun waiting for the load menu or repeating steps over and over and over. My aspirations may be set too high on this one.