laager Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 (edited) Hello. I've been working on a texture mod and I'm pretty happy with the results, but first I want to make sure I've made everything correctly before releasing it. I'm not adding completely new textures, but modifying some textures that are already there. First of all, compression. There have been discussions about which DXT compression to use, but most people seem to talk about compressing textures made from scratch. Since the textures I'm editing have already been compressed by Bethesda, doesn't further compression lower the quality even more? I've saved every texture using DXT5, and the file sizes seem to remain the same as the original ones. Is this the best way to do it? edit: I had another question but I solved the problem. Edited November 29, 2011 by laager Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MShoap13 Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 In order to view the textures in any program (an editor or the game) they must first be decompressed... so no, you aren't compressing a compressed image. DXT5 is considered a "lossless" compression method, hence it's the least efficient out of the DXT's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laager Posted November 30, 2011 Author Share Posted November 30, 2011 In order to view the textures in any program (an editor or the game) they must first be decompressed... so no, you aren't compressing a compressed image. DXT5 is considered a "lossless" compression method, hence it's the least efficient out of the DXT's. I'm not sure if I understand. If the game has to decompress the files before they can be used in the game, what's the point of compression other than saving space? I thought more compression makes the textures look worse, but how can that be the case if the textures get decompressed before they are used? Also, is there a way to find out what compression method the original textures are using? Using DXT3 compression instead of DXT5 seems to shrink the file sizes from the original size, so I would imagine it means that the originals are using DXT5. Is that correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MShoap13 Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 The data loss happens upon compression. The normal maps appear to have used DXT1, hence they have blocky artifacts. see: here Most of the main textures from the game do appear to have been saved as DXT5, though I'm no pro when it comes to textures. I'm not really sure if there is a method to determine exactly what form of compression they used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zuluknob Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/DDS_Files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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