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Texture Optimizer vs. DDSopt


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Any drawbacks with using the former (less complicated -- or is it me??) over the other one? https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801/?

 

I was getting constant VRAM crashes with all my HD texture mods* (despite a GTX 980 4 GB), and this fixed it. Moreover, the loading screens only take 2-3 seconds now instead of 15-20.  ::O: Textures folder was decreased by ~5 GB.

 

* Not 100 % STEP, e.g. I have NMC's Maximum, amongst other things.

Edited by Matt714
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Matt, theres an easier way of doing all the optimization textures following the step guide (or maybe its just my simple mind playing tricks!), anyway I also find that guide to be very confusing, maybe because my english is bad for technical terms.

 

(Assuming you know basic file structure and pathing AND did read the https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt/Fallout, do the following:)

 

1 - You should probably skip optimizing vanilla/DLC stuff cause those are pretty much small/fast textures anyway, DDSOpt ain't likely to do much (if anything) for those textures. In this case jump to #4.

 

2 - Extract all the vanilla/DLC textures until it all ends up inside the DATA 'textures' folder just as the game would have it, move the textures folder inside the 'vanilla extracted' then run "2_Fallout_Pre-optimization_NoSort_2.8.bat"

(I tried the alternative one that sorts textures in the first run but anyways you're going to use the same value (1024 or 2048) for likely every texture so sorting ends up being pretty much redundant)

 

3 - Run DDSOpt (configured as per the step guide) in the 'vanilla optimizable' folder, after that you'll have a 'vanilla optimized' folder with a 'textures' folder inside it, throw this 'textures' folder back on top of your original textures folder (inside the 'vanilla extracted' folder), so there you've optimized as per the step guide all the vanilla/dlc textures. (textures folder inside 'vanilla optimizable' is not needed anymore, delete)

 

4 - After you've all your mods and textures installed, place the 'textures' folder inside the 'mod extracted' folder, run "4_Fallout_Mod_NoSort_2.8.bat", apply DDSopt (as configured by the step guide) on the 'mod optimizable' folder, when it ends you'll have a textures folder inside the 'mod optimized', this textures folder contains the optimized textures so just throw it on top your original textures folder inside the 'mod extracted' (yes to overwrite) and move this 'textures' back in the games data folder where it was originally, DONE!

(delete the 'textures' folder inside 'mod optimizable', not needed anymore as those were the pre-optimization textures).

 

Btw I'm not using Mod Organizer since it changes file structure and pathing to whatever MO uses (wich is very confusing to me and the reason why I'm not using MO), if you use MO then you can probably "drive" inside and around its file structure and pathing, so hopefully you can translate these steps to something that works within MO ^^

Hope it helps if you ever wanna try, or if you need more info ask! :)

Edited by Himself
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello, I have a couple of questions, I hope they aren't too stupid...

 

1. assuming that I won't change the original resolution during the optimization, and I restrain myself to compression/mipmaps creation, I understood that the main difference between OT and DDSOpt is the quality of the normal maps, is this right? Since I didn't even start to learn to use the latter, would it make sense to optimize everything with OT, and then re-optimize the original normal maps with DDSOpt (or maybe the other way around, first DDSOpt for normal maps, then OT for the rest), that is to use DDSOpt only for normal maps? So that I'd need only one kind of configuration for DDSOpt. Only in the case that the resulting color map textures from OT are of the same quality that DDSOpt would give.

 

2. Regarding OT, it gives inferior quality textures, and I could go with that, but do they have at least the correct compression type/mipmaps or can OT mess something up?

 

Thanks if you can answer.

Edited by mg979
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1. Don't use the output of one optimizer as the input to another optimizer; this can degrade image quality. DDSopt detects whether it has already optimized an image (at the same output resolution) and will skip an already optimized image. Personally I would delete any outputs from OT and start over with DDSopt because I don't know what types of images cause problems with OT. If you aren't changing the resolution of the output the DDSopt optimization can be done fairly simply; admittedly not as simply as with OT. Note also that with only a few exceptions the benefit of optimization with Fallout 3 images doesn't seem to be as great as it is for Skyrim ones. This is likely because Fallout 3 doesn't cause as many VRAM challenges as Skyrim.

 

OT will probably not create any significant problems; I prefer DDSopt since graphic artists have commented that it creat3es good quality images.

 

2. The other main advantage of DDSopt is in mipmap creation; it creates better quality mipmaps than OT as well as most graphic editing programs. For some reason the UHQ texture set has no mipmaps so it is particularly useful to optimize it to reduce GPU usage.

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1. Don't use the output of one optimizer as the input to another optimizer; this can degrade image quality.

 

Definitely I wouldn't have done that. I'm going to optimize only some mods, not vanilla texture, by the way. Anyway DDSOpt doesn't seem too hard to use, I understand that if I use the DXTx Constraints (as labeled in this guide) this should replicate totally the standard OT's behaviour, but I should get better results?

 

I just made a quick comparison test with these settings on an unoptimized mod and OT didn't compress the normal maps at all, only compressed color maps (from 234MB to 145MB), while DDSOpt compressed everything (from 234 to 48MB), so that's definitely better anyway. Only problem I have with it is that it always forgets settings and path, is it possible to insert them in the INI?

 

I don't get the point of using lossless format since you don't save any space or RAM. I'd like to understand a thing, the advantage of having compressed textures is only the VRAM saving (avoiding related crashes), but uncompressed textures would give better performance if VRAM usage isn't a problem?

 

I found another problem with DDSOpt, that is it doesn't resize non-square textures (I set the limit to 512x512 for normal maps, but 2048x1024 weren't resized).

 

Thanks for your answers

Edited by mg979
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You can use the DDSopt GUI to control which files are optimized, by the way, such as avoiding normal maps if you want to. Just select the file types you want and uncheck the others; you see examples of this in the DDSopt guide. DDSopt handles non-square textures; use the percentage reduction options vs. the specific size options. Uncompressed textures provide better image quality, and if there are uncompressed textures (there aren't many in Fallout 3 mods) you can still reduce their size or format (to R5G6B5 for example) for VRAM reduction if you need it. With my system I don't need to do this for Fallout 3, but for those using a laptop this could be useful. When you see uncompressed textures in Bethesda games they are often body related and you need to be particularly careful with these to avoid corrupting the texture.

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