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)

[frihyland]

Thanks for all your hard work, patience, and guidance :D

[z929669]

Thanks for all your hard work, patience, and guidance :D

 

 

+1

 

I already notice some very nice added features.

 

• Ability to preview each mip level (very nice)
• Added functionality to the Ignore menu, including extra file-format qualifiers (very nice)
• I see that the preview pane uses italics and now there is a new purple font color (ignored textures?)
• Three new Behavior-menu options

• Raise alpha opacity at each mip level (this is the automated mock of the custom edits to the lower mips of treepineforestbranchcomp.dds?)
• Contrast-correct mipmap filtering for alpha (not sure what this does, but I assume that it is intended to soften edges where opacity is increased maybe by adding gray levels to the alpha?)
• Don't eliminate lower mip levels (you added it at my behest, but I would like to know when this might actually be useful... perhaps it is not?)

All in all this looks theoretically fantastic. Testing now.

[Ethatron]

options: No changes here, only better names and positions for quick comprehension. :)

purple: Right, purple are files which could be processed (converted or optimized ...) but won't because of some setting (ini, or menu).

italics: Is for indicating compressed files in the input (compressed in the BSA or NTFS compression).

raise alpha opacity: This corresponds to a brightness adjustment to the alpha-channel when they are merged for the lower mipmap-levels from the higher resolutions. It doesn't appect level 0, just lower ones, and successively stronger. It's a balanced value, so it won't go really strong. It's tied to foilage, which can be marked as such in the ini.

contrast-correction: This corresponds to a contrast adjustment to the alpha-channel the same way as above, just that here dark-grey gets blacker and light-grey gets whiter. This helps a lot with the inevitable blurriness of the alpha-mask when you go down the mipmap levels, it works for any texture with opacity in the alpha-channel, and won't be applied to those which have other stuff in the alpha-channel.

don't eliminate: I wouldn't use it, but if someone wants to go purist, there is the option. :)

difference previews: Lots of them, nice ones, I like the angular ones (color hue and normal rotation) the most and those show the "bad" loss in DXT-compression, magnitudes (of slope or brightness) are not that "bad" losses, and for partial derivative normal-maps it's a concious adjustment (>60° slope will artefact the lighting to some degree - in plain words >60° makes normal-mapping look unrealistic fakery instead of quite cool fakery).

save as: Manually saving a texture to it's planned location (the default one) with automatically activate the difference view.

ratio: In the drop-down you can see now the ratio of "current format" vs. "choosen format", so you know if you go smaller, or stay the same, or grow in size.

All the fixes I made for next version BSAopt are in as well of course.

[z929669]

Wow, LOTS of enhancements. thanks for the detail. (also noticed that you added time formats in HH:MM:SS rather than the old MMM:SS for people that cannot easily divide by 60 :P)

[Ethatron]

LOL, yeah. Though after I managed to do the 40 minute run I thought to take it out again. :^D

[z929669]

Initial observations after running 64-bit pre-release version on Skyrim - Textures.bsa to loose files:

 

Ignore > Compress all known image formats [unticked]

Ignore > Don't process any of the known file types [unticked]

Behave > Raise foliage-map opacity ... [unticked]

Behave > Contrast-correct ... [unticked]

- Expected behavior: Compress & re-mip ONLY DDS image formats.

- Observed behavior: Presumeably, ALL image formats are NOT compressed and ONLY re-mipped

- Additional observations: This was default settings when first launching DDSopt, but the new version may adopt certain settings from my previous run of the old version. All PNG images were purple italics as were select DDS known to be problematic, and these were processed witout alteration. On Constraints tab, all compression dropdowns were grayed out EXCEPT grayscale alpha, which was set to compress as DXTx.

 

 

DDSopt 7.3 (64-bit)

 

 

Pre-release (64-bit)

processed files: 18670

modified textures: 18531

skipped textures: 10

fixed textures: 0

fixed files: 0

broken files: 0 (0 without fixed ones)

planar (1x1) textures: 3324

changed texture formats: 3542

i/o delta: -177702219 bytes

tex delta: -160150012 bytes

z delta: -1388180216 bytes

 

 

 

Ignore > Compress all known image formats [ticked]

Ignore > Don't process any of the known file types [unticked]

Behave > Raise foliage-map opacity ... [ticked/unticked]

Behave > Contrast-correct ... [ticked/unticked]

- Expected behavior: Compress & re-mip ALL image formats.

- Observed behavior: As expected

- Additional observations: All compression options on the Constraints tab were available for adjustment (NOT grayed out). When UNticking again "Compress all known image formats" and after refresh, PNG image formats DID NOT refert to purple italics. I had to close DDSopt and re-open, to get back the purple with this changed setting. This tells me that settings are not translated in the "soft" refresh. This is confusing because when viewing the Constraints tab, ALL compression dropdowns are grayed out (even the grayscale alpha). REticking "Compress all known image formats," causes all compression dropdowns to again become available, but UNticking again causes all to be grayed out.

 

 

DDSopt 7.3 (64-bit)

processed files: 18576 (filtered out all PNG and the four DDS)

modified textures: 18575

fixed textures: 0

fixed files: 0

broken files: 0 (0 without fixed ones)

planar (1x1) textures: 3329

changed texture formats: 3547

i/o delta: -167686684 bytes

tex delta: -167686684 bytes

z delta: -1370665099 bytes

 

Pre-release (64-bit)

processed files: 18670

modified textures: 18531

skipped textures: 20

fixed textures: 0

fixed files: 0

broken files: 0 (0 without fixed ones)

planar (1x1) textures: 3324

changed texture formats: 3542

i/o delta: -170648723 bytes

tex delta: -170648723 bytes

z delta: -1388180216 bytes

 

 

 

Have not looked at any of the results yet. How can I log the processing time? That seems to be missing from the logs.

[z929669]

Just finished running the pre-release over all vanilla textures (including DLC):

 

Ignore > Compress all known image formats [ticked]

Ignore > Don't process any of the known file types [unticked]

Behave > Raise foliage-map opacity ... [ticked]

Behave > Contrast-correct ... [ticked]

 

vanilla:

DDSopt 7.3:

 

 

DDSopt Pre-Release:

 

DDSopt Pre-Release (with vanilla foliage replacement):

 

Vanilla:

 

DDSopt 7.3:

 

DDSopt Pre-Release:

 

DDSopt Pre-Release (with vanilla foliage replacement):

 

As can be seen, there is an obvious loss of detail, presumably caused by the contrast correction to ALL textures? Also, there still seems to be quite a bit of foliage loss, presumably due to the alpha test transparency filter on the foliage. Not sure what to conclude other than I want to try again without contrast-correct enabled (and then again without Raise foliage-map opacity). Finally, the tops of trees are much darker with these new settings, as are rocks and other aspects of textures displayed at lower mip levels.

 

Thoughts?

 

PS: Also added the following to the ini... does this make sense?

 

 

[AlphaFoilage]

 

treeaspenbranchcomp.dds

treepineforestbranchcomp.dds

treepineforestbranchcompsnow.dds

treepineforestbranchcompsnowl.dds

treereachaddon01.dds

[frihyland]

Need to label those in highslide, I have no idea what I'm looking at as I go through the gallery.

[z929669]

Need to label those in highslide, I have no idea what I'm looking at as I go through the gallery.

 

 

This feature is not present on the boards edition I don't think. Why not just review the pattern prior to activating the first image (2 sets, 4 variants, same order)?

[frihyland]

I find that a bit hard to believe, but its certainly not something that can be done without documentation. Is that only in Stoppings brain at this point? Paging Mr. by4now

[z929669]

My final trial focused on running DDSopt 7.3 & the Pre-Release side by side using identical settings (disabling new settings in the Pre-Release) and identical vanilla-texture input:

 

DDSopt 7.3

 

Ignore > Compress all known image formats [ticked]

Ignore > Don't process any of the known file types [unticked]

 processed files: 21233
 modified textures: 21231
 fixed textures: 0
 fixed files: 0
 broken files: 0 (0 without fixed ones)
 planar (1x1) textures: 3333
 changed texture formats: 3665
 i/o delta: -156430493 bytes
 tex delta: -156429605 bytes

 

---

DDSopt Pre-Release

 

Ignore > Compress all known image formats [ticked]

Ignore > Don't process any of the known file types [unticked]

Behave > Raise foliage-map opacity ... [unticked]

Behave > Contrast-correct ... [unticked]

 

 processed files: 21233
 modified textures: 21093
 skipped textures: 50
 fixed textures: 129
 fixed files: 0
 broken files: 0 (0 without fixed ones)
 planar (1x1) textures: 3324
 changed texture formats: 3566
 i/o delta: -199097461 bytes
 tex delta: -199096573 bytes

zero byte files:
D:\_BACKUP\Mods\B2\B2_2X Clothing Re-Mix_BAIN-v1.2-5603\00 Fine Weave\Textures\Clothes\Merchantclothes\torsom_d.psd
D:\_BACKUP\Mods\B2\B2_2X Clothing Re-Mix_BAIN-v1.2-5603\00 K-Mix\Textures\Clothes\Merchantclothes\torsom_d.psd
D:\_BACKUP\Mods\B2\B2_2X Clothing Re-Mix_BAIN-v1.2-5603\01 Standard\Textures\Clothes\Merchantclothes\torsom_d.psd

 

There appears to be more detail loss than is likely intended, although I think that a hybrid between the 7.3 and Pre-Release results would be ideal, as the latter adds better depth and shadows to distant textures (but just too much detail loss).

 

Another oddity is the following redundant output to the log:

# bear.dds ####################################################################
D:\_BACKUP\Skyrim Mods\DDSopt\in\Skyrim - HR_Textures\textures\actors\bear\bear.dds
processing:
 Format           : DXT3
 Dimensions       : 2048x2048 - 12 levels

notes:
 Alpha-channel has 16 distinct value(s).
 Alpha-channel has 256 distinct value(s).
 Alpha-channel has 256 distinct value(s).
 Alpha-channel has 256 distinct value(s).
 Alpha-channel has 16 distinct value(s).

[Ethatron]

Thoughts?

Looks kaputt to me.

 

Sure, the foilage-files make sense.

PS: Also added the following to the ini... does this make sense?[AlphaFoilage]

treeaspenbranchcomp.dds

treepineforestbranchcomp.dds

treepineforestbranchcompsnow.dds

treepineforestbranchcompsnowl.dds

treereachaddon01.dds

 

[Ethatron]

I uploaded a "repaired" version now.

[z929669]

Thanks for the quick turnaround. Will check it out tomorrow night (about 19 hours from this timestamp) going to bed ;)

[frihyland]

trying to optimize the DLC with the DDSopt_v080pre2 and crashing whenever it tries to process \architecture\highhrothgar\hhdragoncol01_n.dds

 

Tried many different settings to no effect.