How and what optimize?

[SSL]

Hi,

I'm in middle of installing SR (I hope so, just ticked FNIS on that list of awesomeness on the MO's left), though I have some questions regarding ddospt & SR:

 

1. I believe Neo settings for ddsopt are suited for his PC, not my Chinese notebook (see signature). Any ideas if I should change something when processing textures? Or just leave it anyway?

2. What mods should I optimize? I go with SR, with the exception of STEP's resolution choosings (ie. not more than 2K, generally). That applies to SRO (I have light version kept on HDD). So I'd like to keep that cap (but it's not a Holy Grail, you know ;) )

3. (in conjunction with 2.) If I should optimize everything as is, I should do it in each mod folder, or just from inside MO Data directory? (with output to new mod directory). Or it doesn't matter? (HDD space is not an problem)

 

Yes, I could TRY to figure out everything by myself, but I don't know much about textures in general.

[Vond]

Figured I'd post it in this thread, as I couldn't see it mentioned anywhere else. In a desperate attempt to reduce VRAM/RAM load (I'd freeze/crash instantly upon hitting Riverwood where I'd get to 3k RAM load and my poor 2gb GPU would be maxed out as well) I looked over all the folders in MO/mods.. Noticed the files for Better Makeup SKSE (including all the optionals Neovalen suggested in SR) are uncompressed files that are simply huge. I went ahead and used DDSOPT on them, sticking to 2048x2048 and loaded up the game after doing the same for Better males and the Mature Skin textures.

 

Loaded up the game and went to the same area I had just had the same result at 4-5 times in a row, and everything worked flawlessly. RAM load kept itself around 2gb rather than 3, VRAM wasn't maxing even on my 2gb card etc. I honestly can't tell any difference on the quality ingame as they're still the same resolution, just compressed, and I didn't notice anything weird going on. This for me atleast made a MUCH bigger difference than optimizing any other mod(s).

[Neovalen]

Thanks for the feedback, definitely something to consider.

[Aiyen]

Main problem with altering the character textures is weird clipping or other compression artifacts... might be possible and not noticeable somewhere, but under other lighting conditions you might end up with something that looks very wrong.

 

You can have no problem under one lighting condition, but under the next the texture can suddenly turn way too red... at least I have seen that effect by doing it.

Granted that was many ENB versions ago.. so more testing will need to be done! :D

[hylskrik]

This is something I've noticed with pretty much all the custom face/body textures -- high resolution and no compression in sight. One in particular had a 4k uncompressed body texture -- 64 MB file size! >.

[Aiyen]

Another reason it normally does not matter to have better quality for characters is that they all use the same textures.. so it is only loaded once for an entire scene.

The problem is much bigger with AV where any given texture can be loaded many many times in any given scene.

So any optimization, better compression etc that can be done to those textures would give a lot more improvement.

 

But yeh an uncompressed 4k file is just silly.. there is no way the game engine or any resolutions can resolve the extra detail it provides anyways.

[Vond]

Main problem with altering the character textures is weird clipping or other compression artifacts... might be possible and not noticeable somewhere, but under other lighting conditions you might end up with something that looks very wrong.

 

You can have no problem under one lighting condition, but under the next the texture can suddenly turn way too red... at least I have seen that effect by doing it.

Granted that was many ENB versions ago.. so more testing will need to be done! :D

Indeed, that is why I was hesitant to do it and just made new folders in MO for DDSOPTed versions to try it out. I did try to see as many different lighting combos as possible to look for artifacts etc but could not find any. I have had issues with it in the past as well (LONG ago) when I tried this, but it seems fine now. So far atleast

[Brighty]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking (I know, there are normal maps) clipping is not the issue with textures, but meshes and/or skeletons or animations. So I don't see how compressing can cause clipping.

 

I don't remember any artifacts related to skin documented in DDSopt thread, and I have my skin textures compressed. Stating that they might be some not defined "issues" is not enough for me.

[Aiyen]

Well neck seams are a good example.. those can be worse if you use too strong a compression on say the head but not the body texture...

Also if you have two textures that are meant to blend well but suddenly dont anymore because the compression alters the color gradients that are possible...

 

Most of the time you would just get blurry messes with higher compression due to this.. but I guess if you have something blurry next to something sharp then it will also look... clipped.

 

Perhaps it is a bad terminology, but I do not know what else to call it right now! If there is a better term I am all ears.

[statmonster]

When looking at the Better Makeup Optimization suggested above I realized that SR does not list the optional "SKSE tweak to see Makeup in High Def -repackaged-" as a file to download. The mod author seemed to think this was important.

 

Is this required/recommended?

 

Was it needed with the 1.0.0b options to support Fitness Body but is no longer needed for the mature skin option?