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)

[Octopuss]

Either I had enough coffee, or the changes to the wiki made my brain able to chew through all the informations.

I THINK I managed to do it, and have

- original vanilla textures and hi-res textures saved somewhere

- deleted the above from Skyrim's data folder

- the original DLC .bsa files still in data folder

- apparently optimized and compressed textures files saved where rest of the mods will go

 

That right?

 

I guess what I do now is to add these optimized textures as new mods and manually moving them right below skyrim.esm and update.esm by using BUM. Right?

[Kelmych]

You can do it using BUM or manually change the priority of the files in MO.

[Octopuss]

Not sure about BUM, because the compressed optimized textures don't contain any .es? files.

But I added all of the stuff at the very top of my MO mods list, so I assume I am fine.

[Kelmych]

Indeed, BUM can only be used for the mods with plugins (esp or esm files). The vanilla textures go early in the installation order (low priority value). The optimized STD and any optimized DLC texture archives should have lower priority than the optimized HRDLC archives.

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Previously the only optimization examples in the DDSopt guide were those associated with the vanilla textures, and there were some comments about confusion in using DDSopt for some small optimization tasks. Three short examples have been added to the Using DDSopt tab that cover some of the common uses. The vanilla texture set is quite large and the optimization is fairly long, and isn't necessarily a good example for those who have not used DDSopt previously and want to do some simple optimization on a few mods.

[Octopuss]

like so?

[Nearox]

Yep that's it Octopuss.

[Kelmych]

 

Anyway, from random dude who tries to understand the whole thing's point of view, I would suggest:

 

1)

Go through all the links and make sure they are not dead or partially broken. Lots of them point to nonexistant parts of pages. Few examples:

Consider texture optimization link from the main guide is broken in that it opens the initial DDSOpt guide.

That's the intended landing place

DDSopt instructions in the "repair vanilla HRDLC textures" part.

I'm not aware of any remaining link problems in the guide after the most recent changes, but there could be some.

There are LOTS of these across the entire Wiki, and it makes already confusing pages even worse, because key informations are essentially missing.

When you see them feel free to edit the wiki to fix them if you know where they should point. 

 

2)

Simplify the guide.

 

3)

Confusing instructions and/or inconsistencies.

 

 

A number of small changes were made and one large one (the new examples) based on these and comments from other STEP forum participants

[Octopuss]

Great, thank you.

However, the second link opens the "Introduction" tab of the guide, which, looking at the address (https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt_%26_Texture_Overhauls#tab.3DUsing_DDSopt ), seems wrong.

The first link is probably old, and redirects to the guide anyway, so it's probably ok.

[Kelmych]

Yes the link is bad, but I didn't find that link in the guide text. Where is it?

[Octopuss]

I think I found it on the Skyrim installation page https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Skyrim_Installation, possibly with some other broken links, but I am not sure. It's been a few days. Either way, I think there are some bad links too.

[Kelmych]

A new section has been added to the DDSopt guide for examples of optimizing sets of mods. The first example is now available. It describes two approaches for using the batch files to sort a set of mods with exterior textures and then optimize the textures using DDSopt. The example includes all of the mods in the STEP guide that have exterior textures. The result is that in a single processing session all the STEP mods with exterior textures, which are the ones with the greatest effect on VRAM use, can optimized and rearchived.

[Kelmych]

The Quickstart guide tab has been revised. It now has step-by-step instructions for optimizing vanilla textures that can be used by most users; excluding the more unusual cases makes the instructions in the Quickstart tab much shorter than those in the main guide sections. The main guide sections still cover all of the situations including systems with limited VRAM.

[Kelmych]

The Quickstart tab now has brief instructions for optimizing the mods in the STEP guide that gain the most benefit from optimization. Overall, the Quickstart tab is now organized like typical Quickstart guides providing an initial set of useful steps to perform.

[Kelmych]

Q3 has been added to the General FAQ in the DDSopt guide. It provides a summary of the functions performed by the 2_Pre-optimization batch files used with optimizing the vanilla textures. Of particular note, since there has not been much discussion of this on this thread, is the processing of uncompressed textures from the vanilla BSAs to ensure that these remain uncompressed after DDSopt optimization.

[Kelmych]

The batch file for organizing the vanilla textures, 2_Pre-optimization.bat, has been changed to eliminate optimization of a few uncompressed model space normal maps that could be corrupted while optimizing. An additional test was added for the presence of the "robocopy" program used to do the copying in the batch file.

 

Batch_Files_for_DDSopt_guide_v2.65-beta.7z is now available in the guide.