SKYRIMLE Real Roads for Skyrim

[vfxninjaeditor]

Are you saying that adding bunch of 4k textures won't affect FPS? Come on, you don't believe that, do you? :P

Meshes probably affect performance, but with default ugrids, the radius within which everything is being rendered isn't that big...

 

Can you elaborate on the LODs? I'm not sure I understand what are you saying here.

A bunch of 4K textures won't hurt your performance at all, if you have the VRAM to handle them. In the future when 8GB GPU's are readily available we could easily play Skyrim with all 4K textures no problem. That's what people don't understand, which is kinda funny. Running out of VRAM in a scene is what causes the performance drop, not using the 4K textures explicitly. So, that's why the STEP project advocates nothing over 1K for wilderness scenes. I can easily do 2K textures for wilderness scenes. I also use 4K rocks. My VRAM never gets higher than 4GB (which is my limit).

 

EDIT: May I also make a note on poly count: Skyrim is unique in that the higher the triangle count, the slower the game gets. I know other game probably have this issue, but in next gen gaming this is not a problem. I am working with Druid Gameworks and we have an upwards limit of 35,000 triangles for certain objects. That's the low end for many next gen games. Killzone: ShadowFall used 40,000 on there npcs on PS4 for instance. Skyrim just has the worst engine ever, and it's not optimized for things like this.

Edited July 3, 2014 by vfxninjaeditor

[Octopuss]

Oh ok. Thanks for the explanation. I'm very glad I chose 4GB card.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Octopuss

[Aiyen]

You would not be able to use more then 4Gb VRAM anyways, since DX9 is limited like that. In the future this is not an issue since dx11´s cap is .... quite a bit higher. 

 

Also yeah triangles in meshes are in general a bad thing that should be avoided if you can... at least that is my understanding so far diving into the world of modeling. The reason for this is that they just cause all sorts of shader artifacts and general ****ups which are not desirable. 

 

I did not think it was that bad for this mod though.. but well the mesh do not lie! Oh well one can politely tell it to the author and then hopefully he/she has an interest in making a better one.  

[vfxninjaeditor]

You would not be able to use more then 4Gb VRAM anyways, since DX9 is limited like that. In the future this is not an issue since dx11´s cap is .... quite a bit higher. 

 

Also yeah triangles in meshes are in general a bad thing that should be avoided if you can... at least that is my understanding so far diving into the world of modeling. The reason for this is that they just cause all sorts of shader artifacts and general ****ups which are not desirable. 

 

I did not think it was that bad for this mod though.. but well the mesh do not lie! Oh well one can politely tell it to the author and then hopefully he/she has an interest in making a better one.  

I think you have your definition of triangles mixed up. Video game poly count = triangles. Every mesh in Skyrim is made up of triangles. Read this: https://wccftech.com/ryse-polygon-count-comparision-aaa-titles-crysis-star-citizen/"Our games are made of Triangles and a Triangle also happens to be the smallest Polygon."

[EssArrBee]

Where did you here about VRAM having a cap? It doesn't have a page file so there shouldn't be any cap at all. I've seen skyrim performance monitor reports from Titan owners with nearly all their VRAM in use.

[vfxninjaeditor]

That's what I was just thinking. I don't think there is such a cap.

[Guest]

Okay you all went nuts, but I personally meant 4k is bad per object basis. 4k on a small object would be wasteful, no doubt. We were using weapons as an example here, but it is irrelevant anyway. A mesh must be triangulated before import as said. You can't use 4+ sided polygons like you see in a 3D program. Also, hey Josh you little scamp you! 

 

Also Skyrim is not completely terrible with meshes as there is a detail fade option in the launcher. If everyone ticked this and authors added detail fade blocks to the meshes, it would be better. I use it on the heads of the reeds I created for WATER. It makes them unload after X distance before LOD.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Guest

[vfxninjaeditor]

Okay you all went nuts, but I personally meant 4k is bad per object basis. 4k on a small object would be wasteful, no doubt. We were using weapons as an example here, but it is irrelevant anyway. A mesh must be triangulated before import as said. You can't use 4+ sided polygons like you see in a 3D program. Also, hey Josh you little scamp you! 

Hey! Right back atcha! I should really frequent these forums more often. I don't have much time to mod anymore.I agree, a 4K texture on an object that is to small to see the detail would be wasteful. I was generally speaking about large objects and landscape related meshes. There are a lot of those in Skyrim, enough that would cripple any 4GB card right now.

[redirishlord]

Really informative discussion all, I feel I can make better decisions after reading. That and I should start shopping for a 4gb gpu (assuming a second gtx 670 won't play nice with Skyrim/FNV).

[Aiyen]

Ah yeah thanks josh! I still need to study much more modeling! Just so far all modeling and sculpting I have seen then they tend to avoid triangles unless it is impossible. But that is also for different applications then gaming. Good to know 

 

As for the memory.. Then dx9 has to mirror.. hence it is not because of page file, but because of how the API works. And the limit was made in the 32bit era, hence 4Gb is the max. Enbhost still allow you to use more memory, but dx9 would force the textures to be assigned to the new process and not skyrim itself. 

 

Edit: So in other words, skyrim can assign more memory for texture use.. but it can only actively render worth 4Gb. Hence why you can still overload even a titan if you go full 4k textures... At least that is the way I understand it so far. 

[Guest]

Isn't it 3gb for a 32bit app and not 4gb? Aiyen you should make sure all your faces have no more than 4 edges, otherwise it would not be clean to export. Luckily a lot of programs have a cleanup feature for this task. If you import a mesh for editing always quadangulate it if it is currently triangulated. 

[Guest]

I have had a look at the .nif for some of the longer road sections and they add a LOT of polys. There are some seams in them that are just crawling with redundant vertices.

 

Example : roadcurve01.nif (picking a worse-case example)

 

There are two NiTriShapes in this - one which is the hump of the road bed itself and this is a good low poly model with about 650 vertices. The second is the cobbles and this one goes mad at nearly 30,000 vertices, a lot of which are redundant. It seems to be made up of several sections and they have joins that are more or less straight and are riddled with spare vertices. I would suggest the mesh could be reduced in complexity by a good 50% and still look very good.

 

Here are the seams I spotted (and highlighted in PS) and they run across the middle of the stone tops so could be optimised heavily...

 

 

I missed this, thanks Dan. Well that seems overkill (edit: below the stones). From the looks of it was it remapped or not? I thought the authour could have removed the dirt. Why would 2D dirt be needed on 3D stones still? It would have improved blending too right?

Edited July 4, 2014 by Guest

[vfxninjaeditor]

I missed this, thanks Dan. Well that seems overkill. From the looks of it was it remapped or not? I thought the authour could have removed the dirt. Why would 2D dirt be needed on 3D stones still? It would have improved blending too right?

He needs to keep the dirt because Bethesda carved out sections in the landscape specifically for the roads (it's probably not like this 100% of the time). Skyrim has the most stupid designs for roads ever. They could have simple made semi 3D road stones and placed them anywhere with out carving out specific areas in the landscape for roads.

[Guest]

Fair enough, I totally forgot about Dre... I mean the trenches. I offered to do a reduction test, but god knows if it will work. If you design something as high poly it is hard to reduce it without breaking stuff. I hope that preserve UV slider does its job. I have no idea why I keep helping people though when my lack of free time sucks lately. I must be either a nice person, an idiot, or both.   I'm not asking by the way! 

[phazer11]

If you wish to continue discussion about DX9, VRAM limits, modeling, etc. please move it to Banter Inn, or as most of you discussing said features are mod authors there is the MA forum. Very odd what this mod does to the roads in SRO though it flattens it and you can't see the spaces in between that well. Have to check it out more in game and also holy redundant vertices.