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)

[tony971]

I'm not able to extract the 2.78 batch files with winrar or 7zip.Edit: One suggestion for the batch files that I've been meaning to put out: Bethesda accidentally named one of their folders incorrectly in HighResTexturePack03.bsa. What should be "textures/actors/dragon priest"  is actually "textures/actors/dragonpriest" Any chance of getting 1_HRDLC_Clean.bat to fix this?

Edited October 6, 2014 by tony971

[Kelmych]

I'll check on both of these when I get home this evening.

[Kelmych]

The folder name error you mentioned was corrected in version 1.0 of the Unofficial High Resolution Patch, so it doesn't need to be included in the HRDLC fix batch files here. The HRDLC batch cleaning files are primarily for removing duplicate and extraneous files, something that would be difficult for UHRP to do. For a while we discussed adding capability to fix other types of errors such as the one you mentioned. However, once UHRP became available we expected it would fix other types of errors, as it has been doing.

 

To test the DDSopt guide batch file extraction problem you mentioned I downloaded the batch file archive from the DDSopt guide. I didn't have any problem extracting the files. Has anyone else had any problems with extracting the files?

[z929669]

@Kelmych et al.

 

I think the DDSopt guide is too big now for the tabbed layout. It would be much easier to get at information if there were a a floating TOC. Same goes for some of the other larger guides. Tabs are great for four or fewer tabs; also, it is a pain to link to specific sections of a tabbed page, so restructuring will benefit internal navigation and maintenance quite a bit.

 

Any opinions?

[Kelmych]

I agree that a TOC could be useful since it is currently very hard to find individual topics of interest. I also think the QuickStart guides should be pulled out and put into two separate QuickStart guides, one for Skyrim and one for Fallout. Even the remaining guide might be best broken into two pieces, one with the current tabs on optimizing vanilla and mod textures and the other piece on background information, test results, examples, etc. That way the table of contents can provide the topics at a lower level without the TOC becoming too long.

[z929669]

Yes, I agree that the guide can be broken into a few pieces ... probably within a unique Guide subcategory even for association.

[z929669]

Due to my findings in my most recent work optimizing the vanilla base textures, I have determined that it is prudent to make some revisions to the relevant section(s) of the guide, which I have started doing. The problem is that there may be other areas of the guide that need to sync up with these revisions, and the batch scripts could probably use some minor revisions as well in order to sync it all up.

 

@Kelmych

You may want to go in there and review what I have done ... it relates to our discussion on the admin thread, and any edits i made can be rolled back; however, I think that we should combine our efforts and work towards the changes I have begun to make. For example, the uncompressed vanilla terrain color maps should be treated same as the high/very high uncompressed normals and not converted to DXT (accept for performance version, which may benefit if there are no artifacts produced in the conversion, which is highly likely).

 

I think that categorizing in terms of ...

• Very High
• High
• Performance

... will mesh better with the terms 'Standard' and 'Performance', which are what we will be using for the STEP optimized vanilla textures. I also was confused by the idea of 1-3 versions of each performance group (originally: very high [V1-3], high [H1-3], and standard [s1-3])

[Kelmych]

I've tried several approaches for relating the Constraints tab settings to quality settings; hopefully the new approach works better than the previous ones. Typically some users liked and other didn't like each of the previous approaches..

 

For the past year or so the vanilla sorting batch file has been separating the uncompressed terrain textures from HRDLC2 from the compressed terrain textures from Skyrim - textures and the DLC, and then recommending different constraint tab settings (uncompressed for the uncompressed ones, DXTx for the compressed ones). Many of the compressed terrain textures get collapsed by DDSopt, but only a small percentage of the uncompressed ones (a little less than 10%). I like your idea of using R5G6B5 for the uncompressed ones.

[z929669]

Yes, and more modification to where I was heading may be in order ... after you demonstrated (and I have confirmed) that DXT conversion occurs even when constraints compression formats are all set to uncompressed formats, I am growing more convinced that the following is the way to go with just about any texture that can be passed without issue (e.g., *facetint, *interface, etc). For those textures that require either special treatment or no optimization at all, the INI and the DDSopt filters can be used very simply.
 
Optimal Hi constraints (as a baseline for vanilla or generally anything):
 

 

Performance versions would simply reduce the resolution cap.

[killmenow]

Due to my findings in my most recent work optimizing the vanilla base textures, I have determined that it is prudent to make some revisions to the relevant section(s) of the guide, which I have started doing. The problem is that there may be other areas of the guide that need to sync up with these revisions, and the batch scripts could probably use some minor revisions as well in order to sync it all up.

 

@Kelmych

You may want to go in there and review what I have done ... it relates to our discussion on the admin thread, and any edits i made can be rolled back; however, I think that we should combine our efforts and work towards the changes I have begun to make. For example, the uncompressed vanilla terrain color maps should be treated same as the high/very high uncompressed normals and not converted to DXT (accept for performance version, which may benefit if there are no artifacts produced in the conversion, which is highly likely).

 

I think that categorizing in terms of ...

• Very High
• High
• Performance

... will mesh better with the terms 'Standard' and 'Performance', which are what we will be using for the STEP optimized vanilla textures. I also was confused by the idea of 1-3 versions of each performance group (originally: very high [V1-3], high [H1-3], and standard [s1-3])

I don't understand options under "DDsopt Optimiaztion" tab, under the "Optimize the Vanilla Textures".

 

In guide it says: 1. "...make sure the Constraints Tab settings match those in the Ordinary choice..."  - that's for "Vanilla Ordinary Textures"

  2. "Change the Constraints Tab settings, if needed, to match Ordinary choice settings.."  - that's for "Vanilla Normal Maps"

 

My question is what picture shows that setting as i don't see it and a images are named as body;ordinary:. I don't understand what is it.

 

Same thing is for "Vanilla Body Textures", "Vanilla Exterior Normal Maps" and "Vanilla Exterior Textures".

 

Now, as we know we have now 5 settings and 4 images , from which two shows "Exterior".

 

Also would be good to implement data structure images, so that we can see exactly what folders are actually optimized during particulary process.

 

Something similiar like the images above me.

[z929669]

That is all in turmoil right now and under construction/destruction. If you use the following constraints prior to optimizing, you will be fine:

 

Use the following filters (copy/paste into filter box on [browse] tab and click [Apply] to activate a filter before ticking/unticking files in the window). Filter masks changes to anything other than what the filter currently has applied, so if you want to see the overall result, click the root and select the *.* or blank filter and hit [Apply]:

 

*facemods
*facetint
*tintmasks
interface
coastbeach0*_n.dds
dirt0*_n.dds
dirtpath0*_n.dds
dirtsnowpath0*_n.dds
snow0*_n.dds
tundra0*_n.dds

[killmenow]

May i ask what was reason for revisiting ddsopt tutorial? What exactly did you find or saw that made you changing it?

[Kelmych]

Yes, and more modification to where I was heading may be in order ... after you demonstrated (and I have confirmed) that DXT conversion occurs even when constraints compression formats are all set to uncompressed formats, I am growing more convinced that the following is the way to go with just about any texture that can be passed without issue (e.g., *facetint, *interface, etc). For those textures that require either special treatment or no optimization at all, the INI and the DDSopt filters can be used very simply.

 

Optimal Hi constraints (as a baseline for vanilla or generally anything):

 

 

Performance versions would simply reduce the resolution cap.

Since some users of the forum are not as familiar with DDSopt settings as we are, a few comments might be useful:

• These settings would directly control only the formats of uncompressed textures;
• when using these settings any DirectX compressed textures would get the default DDSopt behavior in which DDSopt automatically determines the best DirectX compression format option to use for the DirectX compressed textures;
• there aren't very many uncompressed textures in vanilla and most of these are in the HRDLC; I'll provide a list once I've checked it. I'm also not sure there are examples of all of these uncompressed formats in the uncompressed textures in the vanilla Skyrim textures, but most of them are relevant.

 

One example of uncompressed textures in "Skyrim - textures" is in the tintmasks folder. Based on comments in the forums these textures seem very sensitive to changes; there were reported  problems when these textures were changed during optimization. We might not want to change the format of these particular texture type. There are only 189 files in the tintmasks folder in "Skyrim - textures", so changing the format doesn't save much space. Currently the vanilla sorting batch file doesn't change these textures.

[z929669]

See my prev post on applying filters, which thus avoids processing textures that are known or suspected to be problematic.

 

The guide is being revised in light of the fact that the modding community has been given permission from Bethesda staff to modify any vanilla assets and distribute them under certain general and reasonable conditions. Well ... the permission was always there, but nobody had expressly asked the appropriate personnel (yes, you can thank me for that :P ).

 

In other words, we no longer need to define for users how to optimize their assets themselves for licensing concerns ... we and others in the community can simply provide them. In light of this, we are going to simplify the guide as a general guide to using DDSopt and omit the idiosyncrasies of facilitating vanilla texture optimization by providing the complex detail that exists now.

 

Stay tuned.

[phazer11]

Yeah it'll be nice to simplify the guide some.