ACCEPTED The Ruffled Feather (By SparrowPrince)

[Guest]

Sparrow, why did you remove the 2k version of Stalhrim from the mod?

Performance and the fact that 2k is not really needed on objects as small as the deposits as the model tiles it twice anyway.

 

Edit: Yes on the other question.

 

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Ingot: I had a alternative texture hanging around with more damage and less shiny-ness. This texture was not made from any references at all, just the head of said youngling. The texture was made from no real world assets or stolen net photos which was the challenge of course! I promised to include it for the little scamp. The ingots in my opinion are meant to look old and worn in this game. I think they should have had two types, but what can you do...

 

File: As I put on the Nexus page, thank you again for your help guys and gals. I actually came back today to upload some RND files and update a few small things, but obviously I was too slow! If it's okay I will upload the files here which are WATER reed UV edits so they line up better and that ingot edit above.

 

Lush Trees: I could do with anyone who has the Lush Trees original vanilla edited files to upload them and add them to installer if that is no trouble. I thought I had these, but I don't for some reason. People seem to keep asking about this which is understandable.

 

Cheers.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Guest

[TechAngel85]

Yeah, if the files are small you can attach them and I'll get them added to the installer. If they're to large to attach, upload them to Google Drive or Copy and PM me the links to download them. If anyone has the original Lush Trees files, PM them to me as well.

[TechAngel85]

Next release will be ready tomorrow. It's ready now; however, I've decided to split the EDT files out of the installer as an optional file. This will help NMM users, poor guys.

[Kelmych]

I'm also curious why the Terrain Bump textures were changed from uncompressed in the original mod to compressed in the new mod.

[EssArrBee]

I'm also curious why the Terrain Bump textures were changed from uncompressed in the original mod to compressed in the new mod.

They are formatted with Ethatron's 565 format that doesn't have the crap fidelity that other formats suffer from. It was the performance version that was available on the Terrain Bump page.

[Kelmych]

They are formatted with Ethatron's 565 format that doesn't have the crap fidelity that other formats suffer from. It was the performance version that was available on the Terrain Bump page.

The ones in the Terrain Bump mod on Nexus are indeed uncompressed R5G6B5 textures. The Terrain Bump textures in The Ruffled Feather have DirectX compression and are much smaller. I still use the original Terrain Bump mod installed later than The Ruffled Feather so the original textures are used.

[Guest]

Terrain Bump had a compressed version done by Z, but it was not the same file size it was a bit bigger on some files. The reason I did it was because lighting on the terrain is inferior to the normal static meshes and they are always at foot level obviously.

 

I also removed any textures that pretty much only sit on static landscape objects to cut down file size, and because you guys always seemed to use alternatives for these (like ice etcetera). These files are also aimed mainly at people who use vanilla diffuse files so it made sense to me to keep th performance in check with that.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Guest

[Kelmych]

In STEP the Terrain Bump normal maps are primarily used to replace normal maps from SRO. Do you recommend the smaller DirectX compressed files or the ones Z did (R5G6B5) for the normal maps for those normal map textures in Terrain Bump used with the textures from mods vs. the textures in vanilla that are not replaced? I thought that uncompressed (at an appropriate resolution) was always better in quality than compressed since DirectX compression is a poor match with normal maps, even if the file sizes are the same (for uncompressed this would often imply lower resolution).

[TechAngel85]

565, according to Z (I'm not that knowledgeable about these things) is basically on par with uncompressed.

[Kelmych]

The file size for the R5G6B5 Terrain Bump normal maps is roughly 2x of the file size for the DXT5 files (e.g., cavebaseground01_n.dds) and 4x that of the DXT1 files (e.g., coastbeach01_n.dds) at the same resolution. The 565 files are better quality but also larger. SparrowPrince said that when the vanilla diffuse textures are used there isn't much need for the better quality uncompressed (888 or 565) normal maps with 2-4x larger file sizes. When the STEP recommended textures are used to replace the vanilla diffuse textures, however, STEP has recommended using the uncompressed 565 normal maps for the improved graphic quality, and for STEP I was curious whether SparrowPrince feels we should still recommend using these. If so we should amend the STEP installation instructions for this mod to add a recommendation to install the Terrain Bump mod after The Ruffled Feather so the better quality normal maps continue to be used for STEP.

[TechAngel85]

Terrain Bump isn't using up to much space in the installer so I can add these to the installer if that be the case, to not have to install Terrain Bump as a separate mod.

 

Someone sent me the Lush Trees and Grass files. I have them in the installer, but then realized they're just add large as EDT so I'll be providing them, along with EDT, as optional files (installer included for both).

[TechAngel85]

v3.3 is up. This version changed a bit and I have updated the mod page. It was a quick edit so we can add more detail later, such as the FOMOD template.

[Kelmych]

For Terrain Bump, it seems that both options we discussed (uncompressed 565 and compressed) are useful.

[Guest]

In this instance (even though I took my time to smooth things properly) I would recommend the compressed files because of the inferior terrain lighting. For example dirt weirdly looks better with compression in most instances (in this game) as it looks more busy and random. Things like ice in my Just-Ice/Suped-Up Stalhrim option though look better without compression as it is obviously meant to be a smoother surface.

 

I should have also mentioned, but forgot that I replaced some files with some others in the newer version. The main ones are the snow files because in the old version they introduced a grainy effect. I had a lot of files lying around and a lot of mods to focus on, so I may have simplified TB replacing more files and adding more depth to them. I think I did this, but it was months ago and I sometimes forget about things especially after I have done 5 other things after.

[Kelmych]

Thanks for the explanation. I expected you would have done some comparisons before changing to the compressed versions and I was wondering what the differences were.