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)

[statmonster]

I think that's why the Foundation (other that WATER) is a good place to start - and where I ended it too.

[Kelmych]

1.

I have a DDsopt questions I hope you can answer, couldn't find them anywhere else.  I have used DDsopt on all my skyrims textures but in the guide you use ddsopt on the official dlc's which include Meshes and scripts, sound files etc... and also have a guide to optimize all the vanilla bsa files.  My question can you use ddsopt on meshes and other resources from user made mods (would there be any benifit, could this corrupt a .nif file in some way etc...) and what types of files besides .png files should be avoid optimization (such as a script file or even an .esp).

DDSopt optimizes textures. For other resource types the only optimization it does is to use better compression if you store the resulting data as a BSA.

 

2.

Second question refers to BSA files.  The guide says to put the three Skyrim DLC's back into BSA format after optimization because it has multiple kinds of resources besides textures (meshes, sounds, scripts etc...) should this procedure be followed for all user mods that have multiple resources.  Moonpath to Elswyer or Vilja in Skyrim as examples.

If the resources in the mod do not affect any vanilla resource then you can store the optimized data as a BSA. For most resources checking this is fairly easy as private resources are usually in folders with the mod name. It takes more effort to check scripts and some other resource types to see if they replace vanilla ones. It's often easier to just leave the resources as loose files, but that's your choice.

 

There are also limitations on putting the DLC files back into BSAs as some users have identified problems when doing this.

 

3.

Would there be consequences if you didn't repack these mods into BSA format and just put them in Wyre bash as loose files.

Slightly longer load times, but not noticeable so.

 

I'm sorry if these questions were in the guide and I just didn't understand it. Love STEP, thank you for the guides.

Thank you for your time.:D

[GuyFarting]

Thank you for the quick response, it was very helpful.  Kinda happy to since all my mods with bsa's I unpacked and I dont have to waste time repacking them.

 

So you recommend I take the skyrim DLCs and extract them from there BSA's format into loose files. (STEP Guide says this is not prefered, others say its not so brain fart) FYI I have no BSA files from user made mods Ive unpacked them all.

(should Skyrims other original BSA's stay in their original format?(animations.bsa, meshes.bsa, interface.bsa etc...) I already optimized them with BSAopt and repacked them.

[Kelmych]

Thank you for the quick response, it was very helpful.  Kinda happy to since all my mods with bsa's I unpacked and I dont have to waste time repacking them.

 

So you recommend I take the skyrim DLCs and extract them from there BSA's format into loose files. (STEP Guide says this is not prefered, others say its not so brain fart) FYI I have no BSA files from user made mods Ive unpacked them all.

(should Skyrims other original BSA's stay in their original format?(animations.bsa, meshes.bsa, interface.bsa etc...) I already optimized them with BSAopt and repacked them.

We'll edit the guide to mention the problems with putting vanilla resources back into BSA format. There are some known problems, but some don't use the resources that are affected. It is probably safer to leave the resources as loose files as discussed in some recent posts.

[Gwardinen]

I have been trying to put the vanilla resources back into BSA format because I have a bunch of mods that use BSA files, and I believe they won't actually be used in favour of the original resources if the original resources are loose files? Just as a brief example, a number of STEP mods use BSA files; Acquisitive Soul Gems, Convenient Horses, Enhanced Blood, the Paarthurnax Dilemma, the unofficial patches, etc.

 

However, I've run into a problem in that while the Skyrim - Textures.bsa file went back fine, as did the first HRDLC file, the HighResTexturePack02.bsa resource folder is giving me a "cannot read BSA file!" error at the end when I try to process it back into a BSA file. Does anyone know of anything I could try to make this work, or whether there's a way to have them as loose files without interfering with my mods?

[Omolong]

If you unpack the BSAs from the mods, and install those files over the top of the unpacked Vanilla files, they will be used instead of the Vanilla stuff.

[Gwardinen]

If you unpack the BSAs from the mods' date=' and install those files over the top of the unpacked Vanilla files, they will be used instead of the Vanilla stuff.[/quote']

 

That would require... a lot of time. Is there any other way?

 

Edit: Not just to do the actual extraction, but more importantly I'd basically have to reinstall every mod in turn to make sure the right stuff was overwritten.

[Kelmych]

If you put all the resources back into BSAs then mod load order and installation order are locked together. Many of the STEP changes need to have these two be separate. Look at the "Loose Files vs. BSAs" sidebar on this section of the DDSopt guide. 

[Gwardinen]

That sidebar is exactly what makes me think I want the vanilla stuff back in BSAs. If I extract them into loose files I'm going to need to go through every mod I've installed again (which is the majority of the STEP mods, ie. a lot) and extract them all in order again to make sure the right stuff is taking precedence. If I put them back into BSAs then the installation and load order I've already configured is preserved.

 

My only problem is that the second High Res texture folder is not currently going back into BSA, with that "cannot read BSA file" error at the very end that I mentioned before. Does anyone know of a way to fix that?

 

Here is the list of things I did to HighResTexturePack02.bsa if it helps or if anyone could recreate it:

• Extracted into a folder, using DDSopt.
• Deleted placeholder.txt files.
• Ran batch fixes from the DDSopt guide.
• Processed with DDSopt, using the values in the guide and max texture resolution 2048x2048.
• Processed just the *_n.dds files (normal maps) again using max texture resolution 1024x1024.
• Attempted to re-integrate into BSA using DDSopt - failed due to "cannot read BSA file" error.

I did all of this before with the first high res texture pack file, with no problems.

[bpr5016]

Ran the DDSOpt on Skyrim HD, Serious HD, and Vurt's flora just for the _n.dds "normals" as suggested.  I compressed to half of the 1024x1024 default size (so 512x512). Retains the same performance that I saw after disabling the mods altogether!  Working great now in the cities and wilds, thanks for all the help!

[Aiyen]

Ouch if you have to go below 1k in resolution... :s

 

The benefit in memory is normally very small... only about 700kb pr texture... where from 2k to 1k you get several Mb in difference. So should really not be required to go so low.

[Kelmych]

 

 

My only problem is that the second High Res texture folder is not currently going back into BSA, with that "cannot read BSA file" error at the very end that I mentioned before. Does anyone know of a way to fix that?

 

Here is the list of things I did to HighResTexturePack02.bsa if it helps or if anyone could recreate it:

• Extracted into a folder, using DDSopt.
• Deleted placeholder.txt files.
• Ran batch fixes from the DDSopt guide.
• Processed with DDSopt, using the values in the guide and max texture resolution 2048x2048.
• Processed just the *_n.dds files (normal maps) again using max texture resolution 1024x1024.
• Attempted to re-integrate into BSA using DDSopt - failed due to "cannot read BSA file" error.

I did all of this before with the first high res texture pack file, with no problems.

If you want to make a file with combined normal resolution and reduced resolution textures with DDSopt, then I suggest that on the first pass you exclude all the normal maps and only process them in the 2nd pass. The example in the DDSopt guide is related but would need changes. On the first pass inintially select all the textures then instead of unselecting all the regular textures as in the example unselect the normal maps (similar to steps 4 & 5 in the example) then process the remaining textures. On the second pass use steps similar to the example to exclude the rest of the textures and process just the normal maps. That way you are not trying to overwrite textures that DDSopt already wrote in the output file.

[bpr5016]

Hmm I see, so if I keep all the .dds files at 1024x1024 (including normals) I should have the same performance? I am using a gtx470 GPU which is a bit older, so I was concerned with running high resolution textures

[Aiyen]

Depends on what you mean by performance... FPS wise there is no difference since VRAM is never the bottleneck. You will get increased stuttering perhaps as the textures are loaded but that is about it.

Skyrim is mainly a CPU intensive game since shadows etc. are all done by CPU and not GPU. So the real bottleneck performance wise is how fast your RAM is, and how old your CPU is.

The gtx470 should be able to handle full 1k textures without any real issues.

Here I also assume you have at least 8Gb of RAM... DDR3. If you still have DDR2 then you might get really noticeable performance drops with stuttering because the RAM are fairly slow relative to the texture sizes then.

[bpr5016]

Ah okay, makes sense. I have 9gb of ram actually. What's DDR3? I built my PC back in 2010 so I'm not sure what that gives me. Maybe I'll see how it plays if I return normals to 1024x1024 and reduced my shadows