[LE] [Skyrim] All about Textures

[Niedel]

Not sure if you'd be interested in including this in your topic, but I have recently uploaded a resource library to the nexus that provides picture examples of specific meshes that textures are attached to, as well as locations where they appear within Skyrim. It's unfinished, and I might not ever complete it - but I still think it could be really useful for texture modders (especially those who are just starting).

 

Here's the link: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/79076/?

 

Feel free to include it or not, at your discretion. Thanks for the topic by the way, it has been quite informative - you've pointed out a couple of mistakes that I made while messing around with textures that I won't have to make in the future!

 

~N

[Deleted133263User]

Adding a recommendation to Post #2

 

If you are working with Skyrim Special Edition textures - Recommend you use the Intel Texture Works plugin instead of NVidia plugins

( At time of writing there is not a version of this plugin for G.I.M.P .. So SSE Modders need Photoshop currently )

Reason : See this topic on Reddit

In short, SE can use textures with newer forms of DDS compression. Why is this note worthy? Some of you may or may not know that in original Skyrim compressed textures could either be DXT1, DXT3, DXT5, or 5.6.5. These are all problematic in some way because DXT1,3,5, reduce file size, but really destroy the quality on some textures especially normal maps. For comparison, a mod author would create a normal map that looks like this, but saving it with DXT compression would make it look like this. To combat this, some authors would just leave their textures uncompressed or use 5.6.5. This fixes the artifacting problem, but file sizes becomes a problem with even a 1k texture being 4mb rather than .6mb when compressed, this adds up fast when your game loads lots of textures.

So on to the new stuff. From my testing, SE will use textures saved with BC7 compression. The Intel Texture WorksPlugin will do this for Photoshop users. GIMP and Paint.net I haven't found any alternatives for you but they might be out there. BC7 offers very nearly the same quality as uncompressed while still being the same size as DXT5 compressed textures. It does this so well, I can say that in SE, there's almost no reason to use uncompressed textures when BC7 can be applied. This is pretty cool. Those textures we 'must not compress for fear of blockiness' can now be compressed without fear of loss in quality. Here's that same normal map from above with BC7 now.. (Compare it with the first one I linked, they're very nearly identical.)

Here's another example using body normal maps from Mature Skin which up until now should have always been saved uncompressed for the best look. Here's femalehead_msn.dds uncompressed. With DXT1. With BC7. I also put together an animated .mp4 to show a quick side by side comparison. And Since imgur compresses the crap out of things, here's an original tga download with the screenshots.

Another way to visualize the difference between our uncompressed and compressed textures is the 'difference' blend mode. If you don't understand or know what this is, it's simply just a way of showing which pixels are different between two images. (Pretty straight forward). Black means theres no different between the two images and colored pixels represent a different. The images are probably explanation enough though. So we'll take the uncompressed femalehead_msn place it on the bottom layer and then take the DXT and place it on the top layer and switch its blend mode to difference. This is the result. As you can see all the non-black pixels are what's difference between our uncompressed and DXT compressed texture. It's not too bad I guess, but there's quite a lot. This is the result for BC7. Far less colored pixels which is good because it shows us that very little has changed going from uncompressed to BC7.

So where does this leave us? Well going forward, I'd recommend that all mod authors use BC7 when they can for SE textures. Normal maps especially since the artifacts are very apparent with DXT compression. For diffuse maps without alpha DXT1 is still 'fine' in most cases, it still yields a smaller file size than BC7 and it's okay to use unless certain patterns or designs fail to look good using this method. For Diffuse maps with alpha layers, there's no reason not to use BC7 since it gives the same file size as DXT5 at a higher quality.

I hope this was helpful and my droning on about texture quality didn't bore people to sleep. I listed some general FAQs people might have about this new finding.

• Q Wait, does this mean I should go out re-save everything using BC7 compression?

• A Well, probably not. If you have a texture that's already compressed, saving it with BC7 won't take away the artifacts that are already there. You'd need the original uncompressed textures and then you can re-save them as BC7 to see any improvements. It's up to mod authors to re-save their stuff with BC7. But like I said most diffuse maps are okay with DXT1/DXT5 compression. It's mostly normal maps that would benefit from BC7.

You should also consider the fact that if you've never noticed compression artifacts, you probably won't see any benefits to using BC7 to begin with.

• Q: 'BC'?

• A: Block Compression. it's in reference to the method in which the algorithm compresses the images. Read more about it here.

• Q: What's with 'BC7' not DXT7?

• A: Well technically 'DXT' naming for compression was dropped a long time ago, but Skyrim being 'old school' it's still a useful term for us. But technically DXT1 is BC1, DXT5 is BC3. DXT3 just sorta got dropped, because it's practically useless anyway.

• Q: What about the other newer forms of BC compression?

• A: I haven't tested them extensively, but some just can't be used because of the way they save the information to the RGBA channels. BC6H i've ruled out already, but that's mostly for cubemaps or HDR images. BC5 might be usable for normal maps, but it yields the same file size as BC7 anyway, so i'm not sure of the point. I haven't tested it in game however. BC4 Might be able to be used for saving parallax maps, if parallax ever makes it to SE.

• Q: What about fast vs. fine compression in the Intel Texture works plugin?

• A: The fast preset just uses their fast compression method when saving the texture. Which is much quicker than the fine preset. However, I don't really notice a huge different in quality between the two presets. If you don't mind waiting an extra 3 or 4 seconds then just use the fine preset if you're in that big of a rush, then the fast preset will do.

• Q: So textures work the same as they do in Fallout 4 then?

• A: Honestly I have no clue about FO4, I know then engine can load BC7 and BC5 textures and that's about all. The game hasn't held very much interest for me so maybe someone with more expertise can give a comparison.

I'd like to give a shout out to /u/zilav for originally bring up the idea. It would have never occurred to me on my own. Also to /u/eejoseph for finding the comment by zilav and sharing it with me.

TL;DR : Skyrim SE now supports BC7 texture compression. This is far superior to the older styles of texture compression original Skyrim uses. BC7 is so good, it can be used to save textures we previously had to leave uncompressed while keeping the file size the same as the old textures for Skyrim but maintaining nearly perfect quality compared to the uncompressed textures.

Edit: I've been told that BC5 can also be used for specular and normal maps and is preferable over BC7 in terms of quality while still being the same file size. I haven't tested this myself, just passing along what I hear.

Edit2: Tested BC5 on normal maps in game. Would not recommend it. It makes objects appear much darker than they should be. Likely due to the fact that BC5 makes the blue channel completely black.

You will also notice Skyrim SE face normal maps if you load them using the old plugins, some of the channels are swapped - BUT in game it makes no difference .. So whats going on there then ?

Load the same files up with the new Intel Texture Works plugin and the channels are not swapped. So the new normal maps for faces are fine, and the old NVidia plugins / G.I.M.P open source plugins are loading these files wrong.

Also see the quote from Jon in this post

Edited December 10, 2016 by Guest

[ReiPirata]

excelente postagem, porem gostaria de acrescentar que os modders fizecem mods g´raficos para placas intel hd graphics 4000 para quem joga em

note boocks por exemplo eessa placa ja vem por padrão. texturas corporais eu gostaria de aprender a desenvolver tenho algumas idéias para melhorar as testuras corporais tanto femininos como masculinos. outra coisa....arrumem o bug de witerrum a cidade conforme adiciona mods fica mega pesada e trava com alguns mods, mesmo colocando o patch corretamente que corrige o erro. minha outra duvida talvez não seja o tópico correto também eu gostaria de saber como faz pra tirar os screenshots excelentes se alguem puder me ajudar na idéia de melhorar as malhas corporais fico grato. outro mod interessante

é um mod adulto prostituição em skyrim e beenging com payrus vocêpode ter relações com os nopc e ter seus filhos como na vida real porem poderiam fazer um patch compativel com todos incluindo bathing e outros mods. existe um patch ja com isso mas falta alguns detalhes pra ser perfeito.

 

enfim seriam estas ideias iniciais.

 

sou muito fan de vocês dos mods comuns aos adultos. um forte abraço para toda equipe do nexos e não desistam dos projetos pois os mods estão cada vez melhor ja que a bethesda não investe em melhorar o jogo nem no reloading rsrsrs. adoraria ser um futuro moder. abraço a toda equipa do nexosmod.

 

By ReiPirata

[Deleted133263User]

I has news, very nice news.

I am no longer keeping Adobe Photoshop and its damned subscription going .. Step asside Adobe and make way for :

 

Affinity Photo, currently just shy of 50 of your english pounds - https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

 

It was only available for Mac, but now is available for Windows, and its superb - Dont just take my word for it, here are some reviews ..

 

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/graphics-and-media-software/image-editing-software/serif-affinity-photo-1295010/review

 

https://www.softwarehow.com/affinity-photo-review/

 

And check this getting started video out, it has some features that are frankly amazing

 

https://vimeo.com/channels/affinityphoto

 

It imports .psd files

 

Plugins : They are coming, a few are supported already but the main one we are interested in is ..

Intel Texture Works plugin for all the new DDS texture formats ..

Sadly at this time its on the developers to-do list, so could be a while.

 

----------------------------------------

 

So what to use to export those BC7 Linear fine textures in the meantime ?

 

Save your texture image out as a lossless format ( say .png ) from Affinity

 

Now please do not laugh, Paint.Net now supports all the new DDS formats if you use this plugin https://github.com/0xC0000054/pdn-ddsfiletype-plus

 

Seriously, when you go to Paint.Net "Save As..", use the drop down menu to select DDS2

 

Now you can save textures and generate mipmaps in all the new Intel Texture Works formats, from Paint.Net.

If the image you load is Lossless format, and you dont do any editing in Paint.Net, just save it out as whatever dds format you need and the whole procedure is as good as if you used Photoshop to edit and export your dds texture.

 

Note, when Paint.Net saves the dds file, it will give it a file extension of .dds2, just rename it to .dds and it will work fine

But also note, if you try to load up say a BC7 texture into Paint.Net, rename it to have a .dds2 extension again, and Paint.Net will now Load it.

 

Paint.Net now comes with the above linked plugin as part of its standard installation ( in C: \ Program files \ Paint.net \ Filetypes \ ), but the GitHub page I think is getting updated faster than newer versions of Paint.Net, so manually overwriting the same three files with these is easy enough to do.

So good resource file for your texture image, edit it with Affinity instead of Photoshop, save your image in a lossless format.

Load it up in Paint.Net, then "Save as" DDS2, select your format, generate MipMaps etc.

Rename the file name.dds ( removing the 2 )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Limbic2Node]

Nice info. Tried it out an saved 29768 mb, I did loose the particular shimmering effect this skin comes with, but now I can load my tats unto the skin without the body going black. Seems the custom race mod I'm using may have memory issues.

 

PS just realized that's 29K and it has a custom tattoo.

[Darklocq]

... what you can see in optical illusions with a layer of lines on transparent cell overlaying another cell with lines at a different angle .. into infinity ) on the surface of the water which I think is also a result of compression artifacting on those textures.

 

Maybe a real graphic artist will have better terminology for it

 

 

Since you asked, it's called a moiré pattern, and is definitely a curse in gaming graphics. :-)

Edited October 27, 2018 by Darklocq

[Deleted133263User]

 

... what you can see in optical illusions with a layer of lines on transparent cell overlaying another cell with lines at a different angle .. into infinity ) on the surface of the water which I think is also a result of compression artifacting on those textures.

 

Maybe a real graphic artist will have better terminology for it

 

 

Since you asked, it's called a moiré pattern, and is definitely a curse in gaming graphics. :-)

 

 

Thanks Darklocq for clarifying that :)

 

-----------------------------

 

@All - I no longer have any Bethesda games installed, so sadly I will not be updating topics like these anymore or contributing to the various Bethesda communities .. No longer have any interest in Beth' games and dont have the time.

[Skybroom]

I am looking for answer to one question:

Where is the record in the ENB ini files to provide higher textures quality?

 

To use ENB I need to set this to 0:

skyrimprefs.ini

iMultiSample=0

 

I need to find the line in ENB ini files which restores the texture quality.

[Deleted133263User]

I am looking for answer to one question:

Where is the record in the ENB ini files to provide higher textures quality?

 

To use ENB I need to set this to 0:

skyrimprefs.ini

iMultiSample=0

 

I need to find the line in ENB ini files which restores the texture quality.

 

Personally I dont know, its been a fair few years since I used ENB well enough to know it inside out .. Skill fade

 

Does ENB still have its own forum where you can ask the dedicated users / Boris ?