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)

[Aiyen]

Yes you are correct.

 

All other texture mods should have priority after the HDDLC.

 

If you have any issues with any textures you can just move the HDDLC down to higher priority and it will overwrite everything!

[GuyFarting]

Hiya been following Step forever and recently started playing Skyrim again.  Saw your DDsopt guide updated and gave it a go.  I'm pretty experienced using DDsopt to optimize mods and vanilla Skyrim in the past but I noticed somthing wrong during the Pre-Optimization batch file process that I am confused about. So is the Vanilla Ordinary textures folder supposed to have some normal map textures in it?  The DDsopt guide says that all normal map textures (besides the uncompressed ones of course) are supposed to be put in the Vanilla Normal Maps folder via the Pre-Optimization batch file, but it didn't for me.  I have a good amount of normal maps and msn.dds files in there including land textures. Just checking if this is an error on my end or if there's supposed to be some in there.  HRDLC clean, HRDLC clean error, and log are all clear of errors (exept log text has 16 blank lines in it instead of 17.)  Thanks in advance. 

[Kelmych]

The smaller compressed normal maps from Skyrim - textures and the 3 addon DLC were put in Vanilla Ordinary Textures so they wouldn't be reduced in size during optimization. They were put there in case Vanilla Normal Maps was processed using the percentage reduction option for the resolution limit parameter; the smaller normal maps should not be reduced in size. The percentage reduction option isn't the recommended option, but this was done in case it is selected. If users are unlikely to use the percentage reduction option the batch file can easily be changed so these normal maps would be put into Vanilla Normal Maps.

 

In any case, the documentation should reflect what is actually being done so the guide and batch file readme need to be changed. The guide and batch file also need to be changed to say there should be 16 blank lines.

[GuyFarting]

All right. Thank you sir.

[Luisangre]

So I get 6385 planar textures 1x1 when optimizing my vanilla ordinary textures folder with ddsopt (after using the batch files), is this correct?

A lot of these files are face/ tint masks and I'm wondering if they all get overwritten by a mod later on or if the 1x1 collapse is meant to be.

Anyone?

[Kelmych]

Vanilla Skyrim textures include a large number of monocolor textures, especially in terrain folders. DDSopt collapses these to 1x1 since all the points in the color map have the same value. This collapsing saves VRAM. Graphics cards are supposed to be able to properly handle these collapsed textures; a few users have reported problems where their graphic cards have problems with such textures in some circumstances.

 

The current version of the batch files moves the uncompressed tintmasks (in STD\textures\actors\character\character assets\tintmasks) to Vanilla Uncompressed Textures. These are not monocolor textures and should not be collapsed by DDSopt. When these are optimized with DDSopt using the recommended processing parameters they remain as uncompressed textures, and DDSopt makes almost no change to these textures. In some previous versions of the batch files DDSopt changed these to compressed textures, but they were not collapsed.

[Luisangre]

Thank you for the info, Kelmych.

I would also like your suggestion on resolution limits for heavily modded setups.

I am planning on SR: LE with Requiem + azirok's patches and wanted to know if going with SR's 2k interior/ 1k exterior setup would be optimal or if I should just limit everything to 1k.

Thanks again.

[Kelmych]

There seems to be a reasonable consensus that limiting exterior color map and normal map textures to no greater than 1Kx1K helps reduce VRAM use. You might even want to have the exterior normal maps reduced to 512x512 and the regular normal maps to 1Kx1K, but it depends on how much texture load there is with the mods you use.

[Nearox]

Kelmych, in the mod Skyrim Distance Overhaul there are two world object files in uncompressed format. The second one is a a normal file in X8R8G8B8 format, designated as a "world-space normal map for terrain". 

 

Would you recommend to DDSopt this a file?

 

textures/terrain/tamriel/objects/tamriel.objects_n.dds

 

(btw first file is textures/terrain/tamriel/objects/tamriel.objects.dds in A8R8G8B8)

 

EDIT: posted my results in the SDO thread.

[Kelmych]

There haven't been many comments on world object textures in the STEP forums so there doesn't seem to be any consensus on how to optimize these. A number of mods with world object textures provide them as uncompressed, including the tamriel.objects texture & normal map in High Res DLC2 as well as those in SDO. As you did with these, keeping uncompressed textures (especially normal maps) as uncompressed files is recommended. Changing the format to one with a little less numeric precision, as you mentioned in your SDO post, yields some performance improvement and there might be very little quality loss in doing this. Z didn't see any noticeable quality loss when changing the Terrain Bump normal maps from R8G8B8 to R5G6B5.

 

The batch files for vanilla textures put the HRDLC2 tamriel.objects textures in the Vanilla Uncompressed Folder so they can remain uncompressed after optimization. The new batch file for sorting mod files prior to optimization (4_Mod_Sorting&Pre-optimization.bat) also sorts terrain folder uncompressed world object textures into the Mod Uncompressed Textures folder so they can be left alone or reduced slightly to R5G6B5 or similar uncompressed format (like what you did with SDO).

[Nearox]

Hmm thanks for answering. I think I'll keep using the A4/R5 format for the SDO objects, no visual harm done and (surprsingly) a big performance gain. Not evern sure how the fps gain is possible... But it works for me that's all I can say :(

[BLUcody]

I have one more file then what's supposed to be in the Vanilla Extracted folder (76,396), it's supposed to be only 76,395 right?

 

Also, when I did the pre-optimization step, there was no STD folder in the Vanilla Uncompressed Normal Maps. (I have all DLC and HRDLC.)

 

I assume since that the guide says something like "Vanilla Ordinary Textures" and "Vanilla Uncompressed Textures", it's basically now "Vanilla Textures" and "Vanilla Uncompressed Normal Maps?"

[Kelmych]

A while ago in the batch file versions the "Vanilla Uncompressed Normal Maps" folder was changed to "Vanilla Uncompressed Textures", and uncompressed tint/tone textures in STD were added to the folder. It doesn't affect the results in "Vanilla Optimized", but it is more consistent with the strategy for handling uncompressed textures that is now also used in the batch files for STEP mods.

 

I'm not sure why there would be one additional file, but I don't think it will cause any problems.

[whocares7]

Hmm thanks for answering. I think I'll keep using the A4/R5 format for the SDO objects' date=' no visual harm done and (surprsingly) a big performance gain. Not evern sure how the fps gain is possible... But it works for me that's all I can say :([/quote']

 

I'd say subjectively or not there are some performance boost when I optimized the SDO textures with the ''uncompressed'' preset.

 

Now I need some advice about Apachii hair textures/Retexture also/, Mature body and skin/_msn*, face tint maps/, Prince and The Pauper (uncompressed textures) :) .

[Kelmych]

There have been very few posts on the appropriate DDSopt parameters for optimizing uncompressed textures. The majority of the uncompressed textures in mods (vs. vanilla) are in body-related textures.

* The comments that have been posted are almost all about using the DDSopt preset that changes numerical precision, and all the posts so far have said using this change does not seem to noticeably reduce graphic quality for color maps or normal maps.

* The other major comment is that uncompressed normal maps are noticeably better than compressed ones, so if the author provides uncompressed normal maps (e.g., *_msn.dds) it is best to keep these textures as uncompressed.

* If the uncompressed textures are 512x512 or less there isn't much value in changing them.

 

Recently I've been using the reduced precision uncompressed preset in DDSopt with mods for both color maps and normal maps (this requires sorting or filtering the uncompressed textures and doing a separate DDSopt processing step), but I haven't done much comparison yet with the unaltered textures in game.

 

The hardest part of creating the new batch file for sorting mod textures prior to DDSopt optimization has been in finding a way to automatically identify uncompressed color map and normal map textures so these textures can be optimized separately with potentially different resolutions and preset values. I'm currently using texture size which works in a almost all cases but isn't 100% accurate.