DROPPED Better Males (by Chris57 and FavoredSoul)

[TechAngel85]

From the description, it's a bunch of meshes tweaked and put into one. There's no harm in adding it if there is a vanilla friendlier option which we'll probably need to figure out, especially if this is going into Core.

 

On another note, let me just say that looking through the author and user submitted pics this mod is just...weird. Honestly, what reason do you have for a nude male pc or npc running around slinging his shlong here and there? There's even a picture of two characters appearing to "enjoying their guard duty". Which I have nothing against what-so-ever...it's just strange to see nude men running about in a game.

Why? For the joy of a naked courier running up to you saying: "I have a package for you, your eyes only!". :)

 

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

OMG! Just picked myself off the floor from laughing so hard!

[z929669]

OK, we digress :P

 

Yes, the mod page is a bit silly in so many ways, but boys will always be boys, especially when you go around shouting words like 'tiolet', and 'poop', ... and 'penis'. We never really grow up you know ;)

 

So, other than pointing our users to a mod with some potentially offensive material (we in the US are shamed by sex and nudity, you know ... all part of good'ole-boy politics and religion), I think this mod stays true to vanilla and shortens the mod list a bit, so I am for it.

[Trexasle]

Well I agree if we're going to go for non-nude.

 

Even then I will Probably stick to SOS.

[Aiyen]

Also you know..... girls might be playing the game! :o

[torminater]

Is that good ... Or bad? ;-)

[TechAngel85]

I agree. No harm in adding this one.

 

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[z929669]

Accepted for Core 2.2.9 (unless anyone can present a good reason to not accept)

[DoubleYou]

Created wiki page, but didn't check any mod attributes.

[Nearox]

It is a great mod and I use it. Now, I might be nitpicking here but I think the uncompressed textures add too much extra VRAM usage.

 

The texture folder (unpacked) is worth 364MB and most of the head msn's are 22MB (!)each in size. Now compare that to STEP-DDSopted size of 683 KB (at high ddsopt settings from the guide). Yes the detail is a major major improvement but does it justify THAT much extra VRAM? 

 

Imagine a common city or village scene where not only nord male faces & body's, but also e.g. an Argonian, Dark Elf, Orc male, Red guard male, Imperial male etc. are loaded. You will be easily be adding 100-150mb vram at minimum to your average village scene and 150-300mb vram to cities.

 

I speak from experience with this mod with SRLE and it was the cause of significant stutter on my system (see signature) because it meant going from 1800mb vram in cities to being capped at 2gb (resulting in more dynamic switching etc etc). In the end I DDSopted all the _msn.dds to DXTx (8192x8192) and I abrely notice the difference. I compared the DDSopted versions with the orignals via the previewer in Mo and the difference is rather minimal if you ask me. There's one texture which doesnt like being DDSopted but I forgot which one it is (can look it up if you want).

 

Just want to say: This mod has potential to add a lot of VRAM use to STEP setups. Not sure if this has been sufficiently taken into account. 

[DoubleYou]

Interesting about that. I've not tested this mod yet. BTW, where would we put it? After or before XCE and Better Male Feet, Coverkhajits, and what options from those two files?

 

Edit: Okay, more research suggests to place it right after Better Male Feet.

[z929669]

When DDSopting this and other uncompressed world-space normal maps, you should use the R5G6B5 uncompressed conversion format. this will reduce the size of those normals by one third without any noticeable quality loss. Combine this with maxing at 2k, and the reduction is significant without much quality loss at all.

 

I can provide detail as to install order when I get home.

[Nearox]

Yeah I know. I actually did that at first but then decided to try out DXtx. Honestly when I look at the individual normals then I notice the qualtiy difference between R5G6B5 and DXTx, but when playing the game I don't. Also capping the textures to 2K caused a slightly noticeable seam between body and head, I suspect this is because the body is orignally a 4k texture and reducing it to 2k causes the edges to go a bit rough. The 4k body texture is already provided in DXTx format. 

 

I'm not really a DDSopt expert though... I'm sure DDSopting this mod texture-by-texture will lead to very little quality loss and major vram reductions.

 

Just saying that this mod is a much bigger texture addition than what it appears to be at first glance... It's more like an ultra-resolution pack.

[z929669]

Yeah I know. I actually did that at first but then decided to try out DXtx. Honestly when I look at the individual normals then I notice the qualtiy difference between R5G6B5 and DXTx, but when playing the game I don't. Also capping the textures to 2K caused a slightly noticeable seam between body and head, I suspect this is because the body is orignally a 4k texture and reducing it to 2k causes the edges to go a bit rough. The 4k body texture is already provided in DXTx format. 

 

I'm not really a DDSopt expert though... I'm sure DDSopting this mod texture-by-texture will lead to very little quality loss and major vram reductions.

 

Just saying that this mod is a much bigger texture addition than what it appears to be at first glance... It's more like an ultra-resolution pack.

OK, we'll need to devise a solution then. Maybe instructions for optimizing in the detailed notes

[DoubleYou]

If we have optimizing requirements for this mod, we will have to either promote DDSopt to Core or change this to Extended.

[z929669]

If we have optimizing requirements for this mod' date=' we will have to either promote DDSopt to Core or change this to Extended.[/quote']

Yep, TBD let's see what Kelmych has to say. he may have more XP with this one.