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mrpdean

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Posts posted by mrpdean

    How to find the texture path in the creation kit.

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    For the vast majority of object I don't think you can see the texture path in the CK. This is because the texture path is stored inside the nif. The exception is objects which use TextureSets. You can see the texture path in texture sets.

     

    The CK will tell you the path to the nif and opening the nif with NifSkope will let you see the texture path.

     

    Hope that helps a little.

    Gonna need some help with the mod i'm making

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    Just create 2 xmarkers in your house. 1 for clean objects and the other for dirty objects. Then set the "enable parent" of each object to the appropriate xmarker. That way you only have to enable/disable the 2 xmarkers and all of their associated object will get enabled/disabled automatically.

     

    This also makes it much easier to work in the ck because you can select, for example, the dirty xmarker and press CTRL+1 to hide all of the dirty objects that are linked to it so your only seeing the clean object. Etc.

    Elder Scrolls Display

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    Hi Ac3s,

     

    I don't have the answer but I've been working on black book and elder scroll displays myself. So I'll be following this thread :)

     

    It's especially tricky for me as I haven't got that far in the game yet so have not done any of the quests.

     

    I just assumed that as long as I made the displays in a way that would let the player take the items back then it would just be up to them to make sure they had the items with them when doing the related quests. Sounds like it's not that simple though if removing the items in the first place is enough to break the quest completely.

    Object problems between mod updates

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    Your not the only modder having this problem. I've also been wrestling with it without much progress. It's especially problematic for objects which the player can enable/disable themselves. They just refuse to relocate to their new position.

     

     

    I've had *some* success with scripting using MoveToEditorLocation but even then it doesn't always work. What's worse is that there doesn't seem to be any obvious pattern to it. For example I had to move 11 soil planters to a new location. 10 of them moved (using scripts) but 1 of them insists on staying in its original location no matter what I did.

     

    Sorry I don't have the solution but I'll be keeping am eye on this myself. Hopefully someone will be able to provide a solution.

    Is it Safe to Mod While Using A Modded Skyrim?

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

     

     

    So if I run an ENB, skyproc patches and a hundred mods, but I only load vanilla masters while in the editor, will I be okay?

     

    Yes, as far as the mod you're working on goes, you should be fine. Where you might run into trouble is if you leave the mod you're working on active while you're playing the game as this will lead to various data about your "work in progress" mod being added to your saved game. If you then change, remove things from your WIP mod it might have an adverse affect on your saved game. This is particularly true for scripts that your WIP mod might the using. When it comes to testing your mod, it's generally recommended do that on a clean, un-modded skyrim.

    light design challenge. Any ideas?

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by mrpdean

    Rather than having seperate and timed day/night lights have you tried using combined lights set to use external emmittence? That way the color and brightness of the lights automatically adjusts to match the time of day.

     

    You can also use this technique as a replacement to the cells ambient light. That is, set the cells ambient light to black and add a single omni light, set to use external emmittence and scaled so that it covers the entire house. That way you effectively have a dynamic ambient light. The downside of this is that it means you can't have quite as many decorative lights around the house before you run into the max "4 lights affecting each mesh" rule.

    Need Some Advice Before Completing My Mod

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    Ok. I will remove the ladder.

     

    So you just want normal/static nifs, and use a seperate furniture marker? At the moment these are proper furniture nifs so the furniture markers are built in to them, but its easy enough for me to convert them.

     

    Clever idea about filling the gaps in the rungs with tiny steps. Might have a play with that for my own mod. Getting ladders to work would open up many possibilities :)

    Need Some Advice Before Completing My Mod

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by mrpdean

    No problem. I didn't end up using them because I made the room larger and so single beds ended up looking better in my mod. When I was thinking of using them they were going to have to be up against a wall so I didnt have the option of having the top bunk accessible from the other side.

     

    Anyway, I'll center the ladder and give you left and right versions of both the top and bottom beds which should cover all options :) just give me a day to tidy it all up and I'll pm you the files.

    Lighting tips? Or "why do the pretty things hate each other".

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by mrpdean

    The flickering light problem isn't so much because of lights overlapping with each other but rather it's to do with number of lights overlapping (or affecting) each object.

     

    It helps to understand how shaders work under the forward rendering model which Skyrim uses as opposed to the deferred rendering model which newer game engines like UE4 use (some use a mix of both as both have pros and cons). Here is a good explanation of the two techniques:

     

    http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/forward-rendering-vs-deferred-rendering--gamedev-12342

     

    Anyway, the important point is that in Skyrim, when the engine goes to render an object it will look at all the lights that overlap that particular object and it will select a maximum of 4 lights (some say 3 but I think it's 4) and it will pass those 4 lights to the shader which in turn will calculate the lighting for that object.

     

    How the engine determines which lights to pass to the shader is a bit of a mystery but it's likely to be a combination of proximity to the player (which lights are closest to the player) and the viewing angle from the player to the object being rendered.

     

    This is why the lights appear to flicker on and off as you move around your house. The lights themselves aren't changing but the engine is constantly trying to determine which 4 lights to pass to the shader for each object being rendered.

     

    This is also why you will often get one object going dim (as if a light has been switched off) when an object right next to it will look fine. It's because the calculations are done per object.

     

    Multi-level houses are particularly hard to light nicely because not only do you have lights on the same level overlapping with object but you will also likely have lights on the levels above or below also overlapping objects. It does get quite tricky to find a happy compromise at times.

     

    Now what can be done to help?

     

    Well one solution I used a heck of a lot in my Lakeview Manor Evolution mod was to carve up larger objects into smaller pieces. The idea here is simple. The smaller an object is the less likely it is that there will be more than 4 lights overlapping it. Of course this can take a lot of work to do but if you find that there are only a few large objects which are flickering than it might be a good option. It's rare that you will get smaller clutter items flicking. It's usually the larger architectural object like walls etc.

     

    Other than that, you will just need to try to find a balance when positioning lights. Now that you know that it's the number of lights overlapping with an object that is the cause it might help you when position the lights. I have over 40 lights just in the main cell of lakeview manor and no flickering. Performance also seems fine to me.

     

    Note that everything I've said here is related mainly to non shadow casting light. Shadow casters have further limitation which The Vampire Dante has already mentioned.

     

    Incidentally there is a debug option in the CK to visualize the number of lights affecting each object. Green is good. Red is too many lights overlapping the object and flickering will occur.

     

    You can find it under: File > preferences > render window

     

    More info here: http://www.creationkit.com/File_Menu#Shaders

    Tel Nalta - Optimizing Exterior, how to?

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    It's unlikely that it's any one thing that is causing the lag but rather an accumulation of all the things you've mentioned combined. Unfortunately there aren't any really good diagnostic tools available for Skyrim (that I'm aware of) that profile exactly what's going on under the hood.

     

    Options for optimising are somewhat limited for exterior cells compared to interior cells. I don't think that portals and room bounds are going to work in your situation. You can try to place occlusion planes at strategic locations around the exterior, but this might also be difficult to find the right locations given the shape of the tower etc.

     

    I think you're just going to have to tweak/test/repeat.

     

    Here's a couple of tricks I sometime use to diagnose performance:

     

    1) Switch to wireframe mode in the console and look around the exterior of your house. This is a good way to visualise the density of vertices/edges/triangles in your scene. If there are area's of your cell which are almost solid with edged then those area's might be good candidates for mesh optimisation e.g. reducing the vertex count. Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish your meshes from background/distant meshes when in wireframe, in which case you can temporarily surround your cells entirely with occlusion planes so that you are "mostly" only viewing the meshes in your cells. Unfortunately the terrain will still be visible. Modern graphics cards can generally handle quite a large number of triangles though, so I would probably leave mesh optimisations as a last resort.

     

    2) In-game find a view of your exterior cells which seems to have to most lag or the lowest FPS. Bring up the console, target an object and then disable it using the console command, check fps, repeat with the next object.

    This is a bit tedious but it allows you to determine if there is any one object which might be causing the lag (though unlikely). Start with the largest objects (the towers etc) and work your way down to the smaller objects.

     

    If the lag still occurs with collisions switched off then it's unlikely to be an issue with the collisions on meshes, though I don't actually know if disabling collision in the console stopped the engine from calculating collisions, but I assume it would.

     

    From my experience, flora (plans/trees) can have a big impact on performance. I noticed that you have a lot of Ivy and moss around the place. You could try temporarily disabling all those and testing. This would probably be easier done in the CK than using the console in-game.

     

    What about lights? It's difficult to tell in your video but do you have a tonne of lights around the exterior?

     

    Finally, the UV scale of textures on meshes should have no impact on performance at all.

    My System Specs

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    I would think that would be more than enough vram to use 2k textures. If I were you I'd just give it a try and see how it goes. Texture packs a easy and safe to add/remove as they don't affect your saved games.
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