drose25

Yeah, I knew I brought it on myself with my love for texture mods, but I wanted to better understand exactly what I screwed up so I could fix it and not do it again in the future. :D Thanks for that tweakguides link, BTW, it was very informative.

Hi All, Historically my Skyrim experience has been very smooth -- usually 58-60 FPS when I track it and my panning is so quick and smooth it makes me dizzy. :biggrin: Recently, however, I started getting a little stutter/jerkiness/lag occasionally, like the game was loading something from a cache. This would be especially noticeable panning in new areas sometimes, but once I panned around the problem went away. This started happening very frequently over the last few days and I think the problem stems from too many texture mods and not enough VRAM, but I wanted to make sure this behavior is symptomatic of that problem. I tried various other stutter fixes recommended in the forums and none of them helped (tried windowed mode, disabling mouse acceleration, capping FPS, etc.) Checking VRAM usage while running Skyrim, it was hovering around 950mb. My full specs are below, but the grapics card is a GTX 560 Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II OC. I figured this was cutting it pretty close so I deactivated the last couple of texture mods I added and saw a little improvement. I then deactivated the official High Res DLC packs (which I installed a long time ago and hadn't been problematic previously) and almost all of the stutter cleared up. Ironically though, my VRAM usage has increased to ~ 1000mb. I would think that an increase in VRAM usage would lead to more stutter, not less. Can anyone explain this to me? I'm getting ready to go through my mods and be a little more selective about my texture packs, etc. to help avoid this stutter problem in the future but I want to understand what I'm looking for better. Is it just texture file size or are there other issues associated with textures that can impact VRAM usage and performance? Will optimizing/compressing textures save VRAM or are they all uncompressed in memory? My CPU doesn't really break a sweat while running Skyrim and many other things in the background so I don't think it's part of the problem. I've been gaming while it encrypts/backs up some 10gb virtual disk files and never had a problem. I run Skyrim in fullscreen mode, 1920x1080, Ultra for the most part. AA 4x, AF 4x. Playing with these settings impacted FPS some, but didn't help with the stutter/jerkiness. Here are my specs just in case there may be a HW issue: CPU: AMD Phenom II x 6 1055T RAM: 16GB DDR3 Vid: GTX 560 Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II OC (at factory 880/1760/2100, overclocking it higher didn't impact the stutter issue in Skyrim) HDD: OS - SATA6 SSD Steam/Skyrim - SATA3 SSD OS: Win7 Pro 64bit Mainly I'm just looking to understand the VRAM/texture relationship so I can optimize and keep an eye out when installing future mods. Thanks!

Is it still necessary to do the uncheck texture packs / edit skyrim.ini file if you want to use simple texture replacement mods? I don't recall seeing many mod authors refer to this, but most of the mods I've installed so far have been for assets that probably weren't covered in the Bethesda packs.

No bounty in Whiterun, just a small one in Winterhold. I tried resetAI previously with no luck. Tried targeting Uthgerd in the console and using the "stopcombat" and "setrelationshiprank player 1" stopped the combat. She sheathed her sword and walked back to her seat with her back towards me. However, as soon as she sat down and saw me again, she immediately became hostile again and attacked. Tried it twice just to be sure. I'm really not sure what's up.

I started encountering a little random NPC hostility in Whiterun a few days ago and I can't figure out what's up. The only mods I've installed recently have been model/texture mods, so I don't think it's mod-related, although I did also just get the Dragonborn DLC. Here's what's up: The first NPC to go hostile was Ardwen's dog outside Whiterun at the stables. Normally the dog is just a fixture, but I fast traveled to Whiterun stables and the dog was immediately hostile and attacking. I checked the wikis and didn't see anything about the dog going hostile (or what I might have done to cause it) so I re-loaded from a saved game (I can kill orcs, but not puppies :biggrin:). If I fast travel to Whiterun proper and then go out to the stables, the dog is fine. If I fast travel to the stables, the dog is hostile immediately and stays that way forever. The second NPC to go hostile was Uthgerd the Unbroken. This happened as I was heading up Whiterun to Dragonsreach. I encountered her in one of the plaza areas and she immediately bee-lined for me weapons drawn and spouting "I knew I'd find you" and other prepare to die language. Again, nothing in the wikis about this (there was a bug about her going hostile in the Bannered Mare Inn and how to fix it, but that did not work). This was even odder because according to the wiki she never leaves the Bannered Mare Inn but I encountered her outside in a plaza. I wound up killing her and using the console command recycleactor to bring her back. She was immediately hostile again when I went to the Bannered Mare to check her. I also tried using the console command resetAI on both NPCs with no luck. They're non-hostile for a split-second afterwards and then they go immediately hostile again. I thought maybe I had some item or contracted some illness/condition that was causing their hostility, but the dog only became hostile if I traveled to the stables directly so I don't think that's the case. Any ideas what might be going on? Any way to reset the hostility flag other than the resetAI command? I'm not real familiar with the console so I'm hoping I missed a command somewhere. Thanks for any help!

Is there a mod that adds a paperdoll to view equipment in the various equipment slots, or even one that just lists the available slots and what's in them? I can never remember what all the slots are and can never tell from my inventory if I've remembered to equip/re-equip everything in this game. It might not be so bad if there was an on-screen stats bar somewhere so I could easily tell if something was low, but even that's at least 2 key presses away. Alternatively, anyone got a complete list of equipment slots so I can make sure I'm not missing one? Thanks!

So the weirdest thing just happened. I was in Winterhold and encountered one of the Traveler NPCs added by Dawnguard. After talking to it we engaged in combat as usual. My character and two town guards standing by killed it. One of the guards delivered the final blow. I looted it and was about to talk to one of the guards a few seconds later when the dragon soul absorb animation started and I got the "Dragon Soul Absorbed" notice on my screen. There was no dragon around, much less killed. Turning around, though, there was some kind of dissolving cloud effect going on with the Traveler's corpse that I don't recall seeing before. The corpse remained the same after the effect stopped. I also got the standard guard dialogue from after a dragon kill. Anyone else had this happen or know if this is a bug? I searched the forums but didn't see anything similar. EDIT: Just to be sure, I circled out quite aways from the fight scene just to make sure there wasn't a dragon taken down by guards at the same time...no dragon carcass anywhere around. Not sure what's up with that.

Same here, and I've gone through dang near every mod on the Nexus looking for one that actually had something wholly new and not based on an existing creature's skeleton or animation.

I'd like some guidance and information on this as well, as I'm trying to introduce some new environmental creatures (fish, turtles, etc.) into the game but I'm at a complete loss as to how to bring in the wholly new stuff. Fish at least I can use an existing nif and skeleton.

If you want to send me a sample line or two to read, I'll record it and you can see if I have the male voice you're envisioning.

Thanks for the NifSkripts info -- looks like a new version was released very recently. I have 2.5.8 which required Blender 2.49 (ughh). Glad to see there's a newer version that will run with Blender 2.60.

Hi, I am trying to import some new fish models into Skyrim. Working with the vanilla salmon nif, I can import the new mesh from a .OBJ file and get it linked to do the jumping and feeding animations. However, I can't get it to properly do the idle animation, which is the basic swimming animation and the one I need most. :D This appears to be because the vanilla salmon mesh is actually four subparts, and each subpart moves with an individual bone point. I can attach my whole new mesh to one of these points and get some movement, but it appears I need to break my .OBJ mesh into four parts as well to duplicate the complete idle movement. My question is how do I go about breaking up my mesh into multiple parts in Blender? I'm still very new to Blender and it's driving me bonkers. To make matters worse, the older version that works with the nif scripts has terrible display issues for some reason on my PC. I run at 1920x1080 but Blender has ragged/fuzzy text and graphics like it's scaling way down to display. This makes it a bigger pain because half the time you can't tell what the menu or icons are... Anyway, tips or pointers to a tutorial or guide would be appreciated, especially if you know of a non-video tutorial. Being deaf I find the video variety not nearly as useful as regular folk. :D

Hi, I am completely new to 3D graphics and animation, so bear with me as I ask some stupid questions...I've been googling for hours and only wind up with more questions. Goal: create a new, ornate fish model (think koi or other decorative fish) for use in Skyrim. My favorite house mod (The Reserve) has some small pools with a couple of salmon swimming in each of them. I'd like to create a more ornate fish resource to use there. I want to make sure I have the workflow down and understand the right tools to use. I found some very nice (and free!) 3D fish models from the Toucan Virtual Museum available in .3ds format. They are not rigged, however, at least from what I can tell. I can import the .3ds model with NIFSkope and save it to .nif format but I am unsure about how to go about doing some very basic animation. Do I need to import the .3ds file into another program, like Blender, to rig and animate it, then bring it into NIFSkope to export for Skyrim? Are there any other open-source tools I can or should use in the process? Blender is currently giving me a headache, but I'm going through some tutorials since I'm out of aspirin at the moment. :D A few other basic questions. I've seen some 3D models available on resource sites, but I'm confused about some of the terminology. What is the difference between "rigged" and "animated" or what does it mean to get an animated model that is not rigged? Any pointers to good learning resources or just some clarification on terminology and recommended programs would be greatly appreciated.

The only thing I didn't like about Morrowind was being a damn "outlander" all the time. Well, that and those annoying cliff racers. :D

Actually Morrowind's graphics were not bad, even compared to today's standards. Yes, Oblivion and Skyrim way outshine them, but they're not unplayable-bad by any stretch if you're interested in experiencing a predecessor game.