Is it actually necessary or not to 'port' meshes?

[InDarkestNight]

Lately, Mihail's been posting on all his mods claiming its not necessary to convert meshes. This has left me paranoid about using any of his mods.

 

I've found that meshes do technically display properly in both versions. In fact, for a time I was running SE with mods that hadn't had either their meshes or esps properly converted. Of course, my SE was hopelessly unstable.

 

I once tried to backport a mesh myself that was original made for LE. While I had it installed, I kept getting random crashes even if the mesh clearly wasn't present (it was a werewolf replacer). After that experience, I never made another attempt to port a mesh myself.

 

I know however that textures and sound files work fine between both versions of Skyrim. I don't even keep such mods in separate folders (I have single folders for both versions of skyrim containing all of my mods for each), and this has never given me a problem.

 

Honestly, not to diss, but I've been wary of Mihail lately. He keeps 'upgrading' all his LE mods to 4k textures. From my understanding you can't use those in LE because it'll cause an overflow error. Now with these recent posts, I've been wary of using any of his mods even if I can find 2k textures for them.

 

So, what is the truth here? Do meshes need to be converted or not? Like I said, they do display fine, though that doesn't necessarily mean using meshes for the wrong version is a good idea. Strangely, esps function fine even if not converted, but they do cause all manner of issues that aren't visually obvious. I've even heard that people often get mislead by the fact that meshes display fine in both games regardless of which they were made for. Also, these meshes weren't made with official bethesda tools. Honestly, I don't know how they're made. I know about nifskope, but honestly I don't use it much (I couldn't make a decent mesh to save my life, I can hardly even use the in-game character creation, I mostly just use a default head with one or two tweaks, its why I've never used racemenu or any other character creation overhauls).

 

Can mihail be trusted on this? Better yet, can anyone offer any proof either way that meshes don't need to be converted? If they do, then that means Mihial's mods are unsafe to use. I would find this highly annoying because I've long used Xtudo's skytest replacers, some of which are models made by mihail! Now, I'm afraid to use even those, or the new ones Xtudo is releasing. Fml...

[IsharaMeradin]

I always used this as a guide to what needed adjusted when ported. https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/4633-skyrim-se-porting-a-mod-from-le-to-sse/

 

If you are not comfortable with a specific mod, I would recommend using Cathedral Assets Optimizer.

[InDarkestNight]

That's actually the exact program I used to try and backport that werewolf mesh. After that experiment, I haven't tried to use it again (as much as I would like to back port Dragon War for my own personal use).

[IsharaMeradin]

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I wouldn't try to backport. The only thing that I am 100% confident would backport are papyrus scripts that DO NOT use SKSE events or functions. And most of those that do use SKSE would backport fine provided they did not use any of the SSE only functions.

 

It is almost always better to create for 32-bit Skyrim and port forward to 64-bit Skyrim. SSE only features can be added after porting. That said, I can certainly understand why some authors would choose to mod for one or the other rather than both. (Less version juggling, not enough space for both games, only owning one version, etc...)

 

But just because I say that I wouldn't backport, doesn't mean that it is technically impossible. With enough patience and testing, one could probably learn what needs to be adjusted on each file type in order to work with the 32-bit version of the game. It is possible that some authors who have backported their mods have done the testing necessary to ensure that it works.

[InDarkestNight]

So then I guess Mihail's mods are all unsafe to use then? Pity. If only CAO would work on my computer. Of course, half of tools don't seem to work. My antivirus blocks java applications like ASIS, and won't stop doing so no matter how many times I tell it (it thinks every time I run asis is a separate program for some reason). Even half the features of the creation kit don't work for me, and I can find no fix. Fml...

 

Either way, I guess it means I shouldn't use mihail's mods anymore. Better to know than not I guess. I wonder if my stability problems in the past were caused by me using all those skytest replacers made using his models? Guess if I want better models for skytest I need to stick to real wildlife...