If I DDSopt my textures, can I skip the HRDLC in step 2.F. ?

[KiloWatts]

Or, do I install my own DDSopt archive INSTEAD of the HRDLC available from Nexusmods?

 

Thanks

[Kelmych]

There are only a few (I counted 5) vanilla Skyrim textures in the new version that weren't in the version of DDSopt.ini in the release 4 archive, ignoring the interface textures I just added which aren't that critical. I'm not sure which texture Torminator is referencing; I can't relate the missing texture in the picture you sent to any of the textures in DDSopt.ini .

[KiloWatts]

That fixed it, thank you.  I simply went through each and every listing in the new INI and copied them to their respective location in my STD 7z. Annealed in WB, and all works well.

 

I don't know which one it was, since there's nothing in the INI that says anything about blacksmithing, so someone must've used a texture from something else to wrap those metal rods.  Anyway, it's good to know I don't have to optimize everything all over again.

 

PS:  You're harping on me not reading the directions, but bear in mind this is an incredibly complicated guide for me, and it's often easy to overlook any of the small (but crucial) details.  I've never modded a game before to this magnitude, so I've been making sure I'm following everything as closely as I can.  In my humble opinion, the entire process is entirely too complicated, and I never planned to get into it this deeply.  But obviously once I got a taste of how great it can look, I couldn't quit.  ;)

 

I believe the process can be simplified greatly, and theoretically it should be possible in the future to release the STEP project as one gigantic single mod.  I think people are working on it in the other forum here, but that should really be the goal - especially for people like me.  

[EssArrBee]

I'm almost sure that it's one of the solid color textures, like black.dds or something. Open your textures folder and look for the textures that are just named after color (black, white,...) and delete them. See if that works.

[KiloWatts]

I'm almost sure that it's one of the solid color textures' date=' like black.dds or something. Open your textures folder and look for the textures that are just named after color (black, white,...) and delete them. See if that works.[/quote']

Yeah, that sounds right.  The rods are, in fact, completely black.

[Kelmych]

The black.dds texture was listed in the DDSopt ini file that came with DDSopt pre release 4 (the version you should be using), so it should have been skipped in your initial run. I wonder what happened.

[KiloWatts]

Pre-release 4?  I guess I missed that in the guide too.  I was using the latest release 0.7.3 (not wanting to use a possibly-buggy pre-release).

 

In fact, it barely had anything in the INI.  Here:

 

 

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; syntax and compression-formats are:

;

;  subdirectoryoftextures/texturename.png=DXT

;  subdirectoryoftextures/texturename.bmp=BIT

;  subdirectoryoftextures/texturename.dds=RAW

;

; =DXT -> compress to a suitable DXT-format (DXT1, DXT3, etc.)

; =BIT -> compress to a suitable bitfield-format (565, 4444, etc.)

; =RAW -> don't compress

;

; - you don't write the "texture/"-path it will be stripped anyway

; - you can omit the compression-type, then it'll only make DDSopt understand

;   that it's a specific file-type which it oserwise couldn't recognize

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; - mark textures to be tangent-space normal-maps, enables specific compression

;   taking unit-halfsphere property into account

; - compression-format is supported here

[NormalsTangentSpace]

 

; Realistic Water Textures

water\creek.dds=BIT

water\defaultwater.dds=BIT

water\lake.dds=BIT

water\ocean.dds=BIT

water\river.dds=BIT

 

; Pure Waters

purewaters\purewatercalm.dds=BIT

purewaters\purewaterdefault.dds=BIT

purewaters\purewaterstorm.dds=BIT

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; - mark textures to be model-space normal-maps, enables specific compression

;   taking unit-sphere property into account

; - compression-format is supported here

[NormalsModelSpace]

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; - mark textures to be color converted

; - compression-format is supported here

[DiffuseColor]

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; - mark textures to be greyscale converted

; - compression-format is supported here

[DiffuseGrey]

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; - mark textures to have an alpha-channel with opacity, enables specific

;   compression taking this into account

; - compression-format isn't supported here

[AlphaOpacity]

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; - mark textures to have an alpha-channel with something custom, disables

;   specific compression only working for opacity

; - compression-format isn't supported here

[AlphaCustom]

 

; Dragons have dissipation-maps

actors\alduin\alduin.dds

actors\dragon\dragon.dds

actors\dragon\dragon_boss.dds

actors\dragon\dragon_earth.dds

actors\dragon\dragon_snow.dds

actors\dragon\dragon_swamp.dds

actors\parthurnax\parthurnax.dds

 

; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; you don't know or don't care to specifically define the contents of a file

[Automatic]

 

[EssArrBee]

I thought we were up to pre release 5? Is no one else using that? Does it matter?

 

I find that the older .7.3 release is slow compared to the newer versions. Almost twice as fast if you ask me.

[KiloWatts]

Ayiyiyi....

 

I guess I'll just redo the entire lot then.

 

I noticed there were a couple options missing from this menu, but I thought I must've had a newer version or something.

[Kelmych]

I thought we were up to pre release 5? Is no one else using that? Does it matter?

 

I find that the older .7.3 release is slow compared to the newer versions. Almost twice as fast if you ask me.

We use v0.8.0 pre-release 4 from Nexus (Jan 2013). pre5b is an older release (Oct 2012) before Ethatron put v 0.8.0 on Nexus.

[KiloWatts]

Got it.  Pre-release 4.  We can ignore 5b.

[Kelmych]

Pre-release 4?  I guess I missed that in the guide too.  I was using the latest release 0.7.3 (not wanting to use a possibly-buggy pre-release).

 

 

In the Download DDSopt section it does say DDSopt 0.80 pre-release 4 from Nexus.

 

 

 

There is a Quickstart Guide you might find useful to get an overview of the processing

[KiloWatts]

I find that the older .7.3 release is slow compared to the newer versions. Almost twice as fast if you ask me.

You weren't kidding.  I'm actually going to be able to get this done before dinner.

[KiloWatts]

Actually, I thought you meant the performance of the GAME was faster.  You meant the actual optimization processing is faster.

 

So technically the only reason for me to re-do mine would be to get the Tint/tone-maps, and Parallax-maps using the right compression algorithm. (since that option is missing in 0.7.3)

[Kelmych]

There have been other improvements since 0.7.3 . In some cases Ethatron made changes to the processing code to change how DDSopt functioned vs. just adding textures to the .ini . If you want to search the DDSopt guide forum you can find discussions of these, however it would take a while to do this.

[KiloWatts]

Cool, I was out for a bit, so I re-did them anyway.  At the very least I'll see a marginal improvement.