Texture Weirdness

[thunderclam]

So I'm at the "Creatures of Skyrim" part of SR and I've been testing a bit. I am not currently using an ENB and have noticed some cave textures acting weird. Because I've got all my AA turned off (as per the guide) until I activate ENB, I think textures doing weird **** when I move around is "normal" at this point.

 

Thus far fences and a few interior rock/cave/ice walls and floors have a weird twitchy effect. It's small and I initially mistook it for stutter (it's not). For example, if I look at a rock wall in Bleak Falls Barrow, standing still, everything looks nice and high res and beautiful. The second I move the camera a bit, the texture seems to shift like it's not quite loaded. It's not a flicker or a shimmer, exactly, but it's something.

 

What I want to know is whether or not this is happening because I am using no AA or if I should be down-sizing textures or what.

 

I'm running 8gb RAM, i5 2500k 4 core, and a Radeon 6950 (2gb) at present.

 

An additional note: exteriors work pretty wonderfully. The only thing screwy is the fences but I'm 99% sure that's the lack of anti-aliasing.

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https://imgur.com/a/aJqaq

 

That's weird, too. Which mod handles those little stones? It's a bit of a busy screen considering the snow, but you'll notice that the small cluttery rocks are weirdly whitened. They sort of glow in game too.

 

I thought I installed/DDSopted all the dang texture mods correctly...

[Aiyen]

The two last female ones I can sort of reproduce, but that is simply due to the way the mesh is. The first one one the male has me puzzled. With that hair I did not notice it looking that bad. It was a bit out but not to that extent.

 

Other then a few alpha map issues with my current ENB´s lighting then nothing looked really out of the way.

[thunderclam]

So what do you suppose could cause this? I thought meshes but now I'm not so sure since there are no hair meshes in the MO data file. I don't know why this is also affecting vanilla. It could be not having anti-aliasing or ENB active but I did have this same issue once WITH my GPU AA activated (4x).

 

I fixed it by deleting the hair mesh files or something. I remember distinctly that it had something to do with More Realistic Hairs. I wish I'd left that mod out but oh well.

 

As for the wood elf clipping, that's the problem that bothers me the most. The hairs floating off my characters' heads as in the pictures only affects SOME hairstyles (though most of the vanilla ones now look pretty bad even with retextures due to whatever is causing the "floaty detached" effect). I can live with it.

 

But I REALLY don't like that wood elf thing. I also REALLY don't like that going to vanilla profile doesn't fix the issue because that suggests that whatever went wrong went wrong a lot deeper than my SR install.

[Nearox]

Maybe a silly question but did you try starting a new game already (i.e. not loading the autosave that is made before character creation)? It is possible that the bad mesh got caught up in the save so if you haven't already you should try start a new character.

 

If all else fails, I would simply reinstall your Skyrim. Since MO saves your mod list anyways it is really easy to do a clean skyrim reinstall. Just make sure you follow the first couple of steps of the SR guide properly.

 

Oh yeah also, I DDSOpted the vanilla texture according to the SR:LE guide and not according to the SR guide (which has different instructions). All my textures look great.

 

It's really a ***** (excuse my language) to get a full SR install up and running, but once you got it I can tell you it is worth the effort :P

[thunderclam]

I hadn't tried a new game. I just did. Problem seems to persist.

 

Can you explain how to reinstall Skyrim while preserving my mod profiles step by step? I'd really appreciate that as I feel like every time I've run into trouble with this stuff, it's because I didn't fully understand the "procedure" or it relied on common sense/experience I don't have or something.

 

I don't remember which SR guide I used for DDSopting the vanilla. It was days ago now. I did use LE by accident for a bit before seeing that it's recommended not to use it (why, by the way?).

 

It's been a worthy and taxing obsession since I started the install. Right now, I screwed up AV somehow and it's causing SUM to plant a debug file in my overwrite folder without launching properly. Once I have SUM figured out, some more mods I want running nice and stable, I'll be in business.

 

On a happier note, got my first taste of ENB last night. Wow. Unreal Cinema as per SR:LE but I think I'm going to try RealVision too. Which do you recommend?

[Neovalen]

SR:LE changes daily... adds, removals, complete revamps. That's why :)

 

However the enb and setup stuff is pretty solid now. :)

[Nearox]

Can you explain how to reinstall Skyrim while preserving my mod profiles step by step? I'd really appreciate that as I feel like every time I've run into trouble with this stuff, it's because I didn't fully understand the "procedure" or it relied on common sense/experience I don't have or something.

 

I don't remember which SR guide I used for DDSopting the vanilla. It was days ago now. I did use LE by accident for a bit before seeing that it's recommended not to use it (why, by the way?).

 

1. Uninstall

2. Make sure your Skyrim directory is completely empty

2a. Remove 

2b. Close MO and all other Skyrim related programs

3. Reinstall Skyrim (can be to same directory)

4. Open MO

5. Load vanilla skyrim profile

5a. Ensure that you install the SKSE dlls and .exe

6. Run Skyrim with SKSE only (without the SKSE scripts you installed via MO). Start new game. Save it. Preferablly take this char to multiple locations so you can ALWAYS go to a clean saved vanilla save game (can be from same char). you can use these savegames to load a profile with mods and to quickly check how different regions/cities respond to your install. never overwrite the clean saves and you will have a proper testing environment. I use this for testing and it works great. Costs you 30min of time to set it up but it's worth it.

7. Gradually enable each mod group (e.g. foundation, then add bricks, then add mortar etc.) and check at various savegame locations how stuff looks (check actor faces in particular in your case) and how your VRAM use it. Best to make some notes in a word or excel file.

8. Do nor run Skyrim with AV's or SUM or Dual Sheet Redux yet (do use NFIS though). First check if everything works without the AV's and the Gameplay mods. The latter two can cause most issues since a lot of them are script-based.

9. Do not run with a Bashed Patch yet. Remove it if it exisits in your MO/overwrite directory. First test without most of the script stuff, and then enable all the script stuff at the end and run the patchers etc That's how I did it and it worked.

 

As for ENB: I Only use ENBoost and couple it with SweetFX. Grab a prest profile form the internet and you good to go. But I wouldn't bother with it until you got a stable SR, just to rule out that ENB is the cause for instability.

[thunderclam]

Gawd. That actually sounds fairly daunting after all the work I've already put in. I may just live with the issues until I come across something more game-breaking. As it is, I simply can't use a few hairs (or any of the vanilla ones for wood elf male) and otherwise my game is actually running pretty well. I have no idea whether I'll get script-related freezes and the like, but if I do I have a pretty good idea about what I need to get rid of (ex: BFS).

 

I think I'm gonna try running w/o an ENB or with all the extra effects turned off. I don't like the saturation of Unreal Cinema very much and it does weird things to water. Running with "effect off" also has some issues but I actually don't mind vanilla Skyrim.

 

I'll look into SweetFX. One thing I've noticed with and without ENB is some odd shadow flicker on characters, mostly NPCs.

[Nearox]

Well if you install all the mods in MO/mods and name them with the numbers of the SR guide then it takes merely a few clicks and you will not lose your mod install order.

 

E.G.

4.5.1.04 (or simply 5.1.04 since they all start with 4): Skyrim HD Lite - Towns

4.5.1.04: Skyrim HD Lite - Towns - DDSOpt version

4.5.1.05 Skyrim Realistic Ooverhaul

 

etc.

[thunderclam]

I did not think to name them according to the SR guide numbers...

[Nearox]

Well I'd personally advice you to do it sooner than later. It helps immensely to keep track of things.

[thunderclam]

Is it necessary to rename all the mods? Won't they be listed in the same order, given the profile, as I installed them?

 

Tell me if this procedure will work, so I understand:

 

1. Close Mod Organizer.

2. Follow STEP guide to making Skyrim vanilla again.

3. Do initial Skyrim config with client, etc as per Skyrim Revisited.

4. Fire up Mod Organizer.

5. Load appropriate profile.

6. Profit.

 

???

[Nearox]

If you do it like that, then they will. I was mostly describing the general procedure on how it would work best in the long run :)

 

Also, are you following both STEP and SR?

[thunderclam]

No. Just SR mixed with SR:LE. For example, I'd used mods like Falskaar and stuff before learning about SR. Before Neovalen dropped most of the mod list in LE, I was cross-referencing mods and versions between the two guides. I avoided anything that I wasn't sure about.

 

I am, however, using SR:LE's ENB (Unreal Cinema) and I'm not sure I like it. Apparently it doesn't play nice with Climates of Tamriel, which I'm using. But I have a Radeon 6950 and I get a lot of weird texture shimmer and stuff with native GPU and driver settings so it seems like I should use an ENB. I have ENBoost going also.

 

My game seems really stable in high-stress areas and I'm getting 40 FPS (minimum) in exteriors. The trouble is, I don't like the ridiculous contrast between the core effect settings.

[Neovalen]

Yeah Unreal Cinema is definitely NOT designed for CoT and will not get a real feel for what UC is when using it. I don't use CoT anymore, at least, not at this time due to this.

[Nearox]

No. Just SR mixed with SR:LE. For example, I'd used mods like Falskaar and stuff before learning about SR. Before Neovalen dropped most of the mod list in LE, I was cross-referencing mods and versions between the two guides. I avoided anything that I wasn't sure about.

 

I am, however, using SR:LE's ENB (Unreal Cinema) and I'm not sure I like it. Apparently it doesn't play nice with Climates of Tamriel, which I'm using. But I have a Radeon 6950 and I get a lot of weird texture shimmer and stuff with native GPU and driver settings so it seems like I should use an ENB. I have ENBoost going also.

 

My game seems really stable in high-stress areas and I'm getting 40 FPS (minimum) in exteriors. The trouble is, I don't like the ridiculous contrast between the core effect settings.

thunderclam, I also run a 6950 and have been having huge issues with texture shimmering, which happens 90% when moving around and affects mostly foilage/bushes/trees/fences etc. anything with transparent stuff basically.

 

See my post in the Troubleshooting forum of yesterday. I found a solution for it, with the help of Aiyren.