Optimizing Unofficial Patches?

[Zerocloud411]

I just used DDSopt on the texture & meshes folders from the Unofficial Skyrim Patch to see if they weren't optimized. Turns out the file size goes from 235 MB to 228 MB. Is there any reason to not optimize these textures?

 

P.S.: My settings in DDSopt are https://i.imgur.com/R74wsjZ.png I use these settings for optimizing everything.

[mothergoose729]

A uskp guy would probably tell you not to optimize. Realistically, the optimizers are really good at treating files appropriately and its very unlikely to do you any harm

[Zerocloud411]

A uskp guy would probably tell you not to optimize. Realistically' date=' the optimizers are really good at treating files appropriately and its very unlikely to do you any harm[/quote']

Alright, thanks for clearing that up. Also would you say my settings are good for general purpose optimizing? Or shoudl it all be DXTx?

 

Edit: And I don't see much mention of Meshes anymore in the guides, should I only be processing textures in general now?

[Kelmych]

What kind of system are you using? It's hard to comment on settings without knowing a little about the system and how you plan to mod Skyrim. Are you going to try and add mods until the game no longer work well then eliminate some mods so it is somewhat stable. Are you going to be fairly conservative about adding mods to try and ensure stability? How much does graphic quality matter to you; as you read the STEP forums you will find users who want the best possible rendering of objects and others who are willing to accept a little less quality in order to be able to get some other capability (e.g., more mods used, game stability, or a more immersive experience)?

[mothergoose729]

It depends on your hardware settings and what other mods you are using. If you have a 2gb graphics I think that should work out just fine. If you have a 1gb graphics I recommend resizing to 1k for most textures.

 

Meshes should not be optimized. There are no mainstream tools that do so. If you try and use DDS to optimize a mesh folder it just won't do anything. Mesh optimization exist but I have never seen a tool that works properly. Avoid using them, bad things happen.

[Zerocloud411]

What kind of system are you using? It's hard to comment on settings without knowing a little about the system and how you plan to mod Skyrim. Are you going to try and add mods until the game no longer work well then eliminate some mods so it is somewhat stable. Are you going to be fairly conservative about adding mods to try and ensure stability? How much does graphic quality matter to you; as you read the STEP forums you will find users who want the best possible rendering of objects and others who are willing to accept a little less quality in order to be able to get some other capability (e.g.' date=' more mods used, game stability, or a more immersive experience)?[/quote']

I've got 16gb of RAM, radeon 7950 3gb VRAM OC to 1263mV, and quad core 4.5ghz. I was wondering about the constraints, the resolution I know to not go over 2k especially with the current 3.1gb RAM limit. And last time I modded I just optimized over 200 mods that I liked (roughly half of which were hi res tex packs) and used them, I don't really think about it any other way and stability has never been an issue from a graphics pov. I'm just confused because of all the different constraint settings STEP is using now for optimizing mods, whereas back when I modded STEP was just using one uniform setting. I'm trying to recreate that since for non-step mods I'm not going to analyze what each and every texture relates to.

 

tl;dr: Should I be using Ethatron's constraint configuration besides resolution https://wiki.step-project.com/images/f/f6/DDSopt_Fig7.jpg or the "Optimizing the Step Mods" equivalent https://wiki.step-project.com/images/9/94/DDSopt_Constraint_Menu_Fig1.jpg (I am using the rest of Ethatron's configuration though since I've seen no alternative)

[Zerocloud411]

Is Dxtx like the new default?

[Kelmych]

You might want to read the threads on "3.1 Gb limit" on problems users have even with high end systems without at least doing some selective texture size reduction. There are different sets of constraints in the DDSopt guide to reduce the size of selected textures (to allow more textures to be used), and to select different texture formats (to eliminate some of the graphic quality problems that choosing a single set of constraints and using it for all textures can cause). That's why I asked about your style of modding; for some users these quality losses aren't very noticeable and not worth the extra effort to prevent them.

 

We don't have any particular recommendations for a "one size fits all" set of constraint values. You could use the first set of constraint values you listed (created by one of the STEP staff) and make the resolution limit sufficiently high that DDSopt replaces mipmaps but doesn't change any texture formats. The ones in "Optimizing the STEP Mods" assume you are using different constraints tab parameters for different texture types; no individual constraint set in that part of the guide is intended for use with all texture types.

 

Most of the textures in Skyrim have DirectX compression, thus the Dxtx default for many texture types.

[Zerocloud411]

I've read the threads about the 3.1 limitation, I definitely understand them to be a problem. However, what is your general recommendation for non-step mods? Is it better to not optimize if I don't know exactly what settings it relates to? And I guess to clarify, I care about stability more than anything, but at the same time I won't be able to enjoy myself if I played skyrim with those terrible vanilla/hrdlc textures.

 

"You could use the first set of constraint values you listed (created by one of the STEP staff) and make the resolution limit sufficiently high that DDSopt replaces mipmaps but doesn't change any texture formats."

 

What is the purpose of this?

 

"The ones in "Optimizing the STEP Mods" assume you are using different constraints tab parameters for different texture types; no individual constraint set in that part of the guide is intended for use with all texture types."

 

All the ones in the step mod are identical except one uses a 4k texture which I don't care about, and one is for uncompressed textures which are a very rare sight so from my understanding there is a one size fits all for STEP mods aside from a few exceptions.

[Kelmych]

I've read the threads about the 3.1 limitation, I definitely understand them to be a problem. However, what is your general recommendation for non-step mods? Is it better to not optimize if I don't know exactly what settings it relates to? And I guess to clarify, I care about stability more than anything, but at the same time I won't be able to enjoy myself if I played skyrim with those terrible vanilla/hrdlc textures.

 

The recommendations for all mods (other than vanilla textures) are the same; there isn't any difference between STEP mods and other mods.  The DDSopt guide has some recommendations on which STEP mods are best to not optimize; hard to say for other mods but you can usually optimize them, but you might not want to optimize mods with body-related textures.

 

DDSopt changes the mipmaps (smaller versions of texture maps) so the graphic cards don't need to recompute them.

[Zerocloud411]

Ok thanks I guess I'll just use the dxtx settings for most. When you say body textures do you mean player body or do stuff like the official space core mod fall into that category too?

[Kelmych]

Portions of what is found in \textures\actors\character .