SKYRIMLE Skyrim Mod Combiner

[iBeas7n]

If any of you use the Texture Pack Combiner (TPC) or may have stopped using it due to the mod author not updating and supporting it any longer, then check out Skyrim Mod Combiner (SMC)!

 

It was created by Drigger and continues where Cestral left off with TPC.  If you really want to see how beautiful Skyrim can become then I highly recommend you give this a try. Even Cestral recommended it's use on his page ;)

 

::EDIT by rootsrat::

 

 

 

1. WHAT IS SMC AND WHAT IT DOES

Skyrim Mod Combiner (SMC) is a free, fast and light-weight mod combiner for Skyrim created by Drigger, it is designed to be as universal and user-friendly as possible. SMC was initially made as an extended GUI wrapper for a batch-file from the no longer supported Texture Pack Combiner (TPC) by Cestral, but uses its own updated batch-files now for compatibility with newer mods. SMC improves upon where Cestral left off, and its use has been recommend by him.

 

When you run SMC, it will hand-pick textures from all available texture packs and merge them into a new customized texture collection, where each and every texture has been tested, compared and selected with careful consideration. So what you'll end up with is a stunningly beautiful Skyrim where the majority of the game's textures have been replaced.

 

You no longer have to extract archives or manually place mods in particular folders. However, with this installer, you can simply direct it to the downloaded archives for each mod. It will then extract and combine everything automatically, and can even compress it and place it in your NMM mods folder for you.

 

...

 

3. BUT WHY?

Typically, if you wanted to install more than one texture pack, you would have to install them in a particular order. This was not only confusing, but also extremely inconvenient, and neither would you have any control over the fact that better textures could get overwritten by worse ones. Neither were there any control over different texture combinations. Some textures might look great individually, but when put together would create a totality that just looked unfitting or outright terrible. The only way to work around this would be to manually look up which texture is used on which surface, what its name is and then find a better replacement. If you'd do it properly, you'd even go as far as to try each and every texture in different combinations to see which would be the most appealing. The downside to this is that it'd require a lot of time and work. A lot of it. Luckily enough, this is exactly what SMC will do. Automatically. For you.

[rootsrat]

This certainly looks interesting. Even if I wouldn't probably use it for what it's made for, there is a long list of mods to look through!

 

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[rootsrat]

I think this deserves our attention. I finally had some time to read through the description and if I understand correctly it has a great potential for STEP as a texture selector and combiner. We have some mods that we only use some textures and delete other ones (Trees HD is an example that comes to my mind) and perhaps similar mods will join this group (there was a massive thread about hand picking textures for farm houses a while back...). 

 

Maybe we should look at this in more detail? I allowed myself to edit the OP and add part of mod description from Nexus.

[bitstream5]

i am really interested in this but do not know enough to gauge whether or not i should use it..pros vs. cons.  any further insights or discussion anywhere else i should look at? (found this topic using forum search)

[Eglyntine]

I see this topic ended around July of this year and I was curious if anyone from the S.T.E.P crew was still looking into this program for addition to the process.I took a break from Skyrim for about a year and after a new uber laptop and clean install I am trying to add newer mods or newer versions of mods from what I have done in the past. Although I have 16GB Vram and 32GB of system ram I still do not know how much better it is going to make Skyrim with it's engine limitations, etc.  I just stumbled across this mod when I was looking for newish AV mods and I can say that I am definitely intrigued. I am a modding glutton when it comes to Skyrim and cleaner, tighter, more beautiful textures is really my biggest downfall. I am only a quarter of the way into setting up my mods for Skyrim and I already have a 25 GB mod folder in MO.

 

I have used S.T.E.P. for pretty much every Skyrim run I have started but the one thing that I dread the most is having to go through all of the texture upgrades and organizing them properly. I think looking into SMC would definitely be worth the time for most S.T.E.P users. I am very curious as to what you all think of it (pros/cons).

Edited October 4, 2014 by Eglyntine

[Nearox]

To setup SMC for the first time takes at least as long as installing STEP, if not longer...

[crime_syndicate]

I personally use it mostly as a reference to know which texture mods are worth getting or not. It's also great for knowing when updates are out without tracking 10000 small files, and of course I do use it for its main purpose, which is dynamically combining mods into a single archive. I can't imagine using all the mods recommended though, because outside of sheer personal reference, the list is massive and I'd fear running out of vram/esp slots/destroying my framerate. Some are alternatives (must choose between one or the other) anyway. There's quite a few mods that are included that I don't combine either, like SMIM, SFO, Better Dynamic Snow and such. Great tool and amazing work by Drigger, but (in my opinion) you should at least know a little about what you're doing before using it. I'm not sure having a noob running through the list and downloading everything would give great results lol

[Glanzer]

I used the TPC and then finally the SMC after it came out. It's an awesome tool although it takes time to become familiar with the scripts and the main config file if you really want control over what it's doing. It doesn't add too many ESPs to the game since the vast majority of the mods it combines are just texture mods. As for it adding too many high textures that's not really the case since you can usually choose the light version of a mod for the biggest texture mods, e.g. Skyrim HD 2K.

 

@Eglyntine How could you have 16gb of vram? LOL Even if you had quad sli with 4 cards that each had 4gb ram, that would still only give you 4gb of usable vram.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Glanzer

[Eglyntine]

I used the TPC and then finally the SMC after it came out. It's an awesome tool although it takes time to become familiar with the scripts and the main config file if you really want control over what it's doing. It doesn't add too many ESPs to the game since the vast majority of the mods it combines are just texture mods. As for it adding too many high textures that's not really the case since you can usually choose the light version of a mod for the biggest texture mods, e.g. Skyrim HD 2K.@Eglyntine How could you have 16gb of vram? LOL Even if you had quad sli with 4 cards that each had 4gb ram, that would still only give you 4gb of usable vram.

I just upgraded my laptop this summer to the new Alienware M18, it comes with Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M graphic cards with 16GB total (2x 8GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI® Enabled and 32 GB system Ram. So while yes "technically" it is only 8GB useable it is still a total of 16 GB sitting in my system.

 

 

 

I personally use it mostly as a reference to know which texture mods are worth getting or not. It's also great for knowing when updates are out without tracking 10000 small files, and of course I do use it for its main purpose, which is dynamically combining mods into a single archive. I can't imagine using all the mods recommended though, because outside of sheer personal reference, the list is massive and I'd fear running out of vram/esp slots/destroying my framerate. Some are alternatives (must choose between one or the other) anyway. There's quite a few mods that are included that I don't combine either, like SMIM, SFO, Better Dynamic Snow and such. Great tool and amazing work by Drigger, but (in my opinion) you should at least know a little about what you're doing before using it. I'm not sure having a noob running through the list and downloading everything would give great results lol

 

After playing around with SMC for about a week or so I can totally see what you are saying. I prefer to have a lot more control on what is being combined, etc. and there are a lot of redundant mods that are mostly just personal preference. So I can see why just adding it to the main STEP setup would not make a lot of sense for ppl that do not know a lot about how mods work and/or have experience using the tools like Mod Organizer, etc.

 

It is really a handy tool though since it has the Compatibility section to help find out what you need to make different mods work together. Thanks for the input, it is greatly appreciated. Now I am off to find a post somewhere that will explain why my Memory Blocks.log stopped seeing the skse.ini in Mod Organizer. :D

Edited October 17, 2014 by Eglyntine

[crime_syndicate]

I just upgraded my laptop this summer to the new Alienware M18, it comes with Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M graphic cards with 16GB total (2x 8GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI® Enabled and 32 GB system Ram. So while yes "technically" it is only 8GB useable it is still a total of 16 GB sitting in my system.

 

 

 

 

After playing around with SMC for about a week or so I can totally see what you are saying. I prefer to have a lot more control on what is being combined, etc. and there are a lot of redundant mods that are mostly just personal preference. So I can see why just adding it to the main STEP setup would not make a lot of sense for ppl that do not know a lot about how mods work and/or have experience using the tools like Mod Organizer, etc.

 

It is really a handy tool though since it has the Compatibility section to help find out what you need to make different mods work together. Thanks for the input, it is greatly appreciated. Now I am off to find a post somewhere that will explain why my Memory Blocks.log stopped seeing the skse.ini in Mod Organizer. :D

You gotta love nvidia, you basically couldn't get 6gb GTX780s or 780Tis, had to get a 4GB 770 or a Titan but they release 8gb vram laptop cards, nice :p

 

 

Anyway you're welcome ;) No idea about the memory blocks log issue sorry.

[phazer11]

Just to alleviate your confusion the 16GB is referring to their system RAM not VRAM. VRAM is not cumulative anyway so even if they somehow made a 8GB graphics card for laptops and put them in SLi there would only be 8GB of VRAM usable.

[fireundubh]

I believe my experience with SMC was a) installing every mod supported by SMC and b) watching Skyrim fail to load. So that was fun.

 

I don't remember if I fixed that, but the main problem with SMC is that you can't check with MO if any mods need to be updated.

Edited October 26, 2014 by fireundubh

[Glanzer]

"the main problem with SMC is that you can't check with MO if any mods need to be updated."

 

yeah I have the same problem with merged mods in MO.  And you can't update just one mod within SMC without rerunning the entire SMC build scripts and then reinstalling.  On the other hand, who wants to manage a hundred little texture mods individually in MO?  bleh

 

Actually I would prefer that the SMC author would limit the mods to TEXTURE/MESH mods ONLY and not allow any mods that have ESPs or scripts.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Glanzer

[crime_syndicate]

I agree with you that -no esp / -noscript options could be good, however you can still download and open mods manually and not install them if they're scripted and stuff. That's what I do and I don't think it's a lot of work really

[crystaldragon141]

I know that this is an old topic but I'd like to point out that mods with scripts and/or plugins have different colored text. It's very easy to ignore the mods that are not texture only. Personally I'm trying to get this to play nicely with my STEP because it very conveniently combines many of the very best textures into one mod.