Blu02 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 Lol on Ghogiel :P Quite a coincidence about alpha-channels, as yesterday I took some time investigating this matter in Skyrim for my own sake. I'm not very used to saving colormaps this way, but logic says that alpha-channels shouldnt be there if it's not needed (Usually anyway), or at least not saved in high quality. When starting to work with Skyrim a couple of weeks ago, some post that said "Always save your new textures with DXT5 interpolated alpha, or it will not work in Skyrim" got stuck in my head, and I didnt think much more about it until now. Turned out to be bulls***, so now I'm working on re-saving the colormaps where alpha is not needed, and some other alpha-tweaks. Should lower the overall size quite a lot on my stuff :whistling: Mipmaps however should be good on standard-settings, right? Havent messed around with this much at all. It's a mystery why anyone would turn it off completely though, maybe that person had turned it off for some other reason before and forgot to switch it on again. But anyways, I think the problem here is that the information about how to save files, why and when, is so damn widespread on forums or located in the middle of huge threads, it's hard to put those pieces together. Many people are good with photoshop, but not so experienced with setting up and/or optimizing their work for games, or Skyrim in particular as this can be very differently done for different games. It would be nice to have all this information gathered somewhere in a sticky thread or whatever, because you know most people wont bother to google or check wiki's or whatever. Call them lazy, but we're still all affected by this in the end. Would be such a waste of talent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 Mipmaps however should be good on standard-settings, right? Havent messed around with this much at all. It's a mystery why anyone would turn it off completely though, maybe that person had turned it off for some other reason before and forgot to switch it on again..well you could just do that. I usually fiddle with my settings depending on the map. I would set a color map to Kaiser or something rather than box or whatever the default filter is, though there are other alternatives if you rally want to go into it.. Mitchell I have a tendency to use for normal maps, just something that stuck. Once you compress the map though it is slight I'm a total dork stuff.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baconstrip Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 Wow, interesting information for us uninformed. Its difficult because some of these textures DO look really good, but you're right, both my performance and load times have suffered since I installed. I guess that's why its the alpha release? I appreciate the efforts, though... its definitely something that will happen... just consider the poorly done textures a part of the learning process that will make the pack great :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthsloth74 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 Just wanted to add that performance in Windhelm has dropped quite a bit on my PC which is fairly decent, its somewhat sluggish in that city since I put in the new texture pack. Yet I never had a problem with Whiterun or any other large scale replacers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 I bet it's mipmaps, as not having them also hits the cpu... the alpha might gfx hit somewhat as well. But considering only like 10 textures were replaced in WH, it's rather incomplete atm, it's shouldn't be too bad combined effect equates to being performance unfriendly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthsloth74 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 I bet it's mipmaps, as not having them also hits the cpu... the alpha might gfx hit somewhat as well. But considering only like 10 textures were replaced in WH, it's rather incomplete atm, it's shouldn't be too bad combined effect equates to being performance unfriendly Have you had chance to check all the WH textures, I'm wondering if they're all saved in the correct format too, because if I remember with F3 performance got hit when things where saved incorrectly, made a few mistakes when I first started out myself. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 Nah I'm not checking everything, everything I did check though needed work... If you are curious check it yourself :biggrin: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthsloth74 Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 (edited) Nah I'm not checking everything, everything I did check though needed work... If you are curious check it yourself :biggrin: Okay took you up on that. I've been through a few and these are my findings. This is my own opinion before anyone accuses me of being nasty and trying to cause offense. 500wall.dds Enlarged to 2048x2048 looks like it been sharpened. Artifacts all over the place. Blocky pixels.500wall_n.dds Blocky normal map. Alpha is a complete mess. Looks like wrong bit depth for the alpha.Ign_color.dds Would be passible at 1024x1024. Nasty at its current 2048x2048outwall.dds Pixellated, colour artifacts present in a few areas.outwall_n. Possible to rescue normal map. Spec map not present.tgn.color.dds. Blue coloured artifacts present.whbigblocks02.dds Current resolution 4096x2048 Obvious performance hog for anybody.whbird01.dds. Heavily pixellated once again.Obviously enlarged and sharpened.whbird01_n.dds. Very blocky normal map. Spec map is a complete artifact, noise, infested joke. I'm not going through anymore. These are not remotely up to standard. There is too much shoddy work here. Actually its not work its just lazy. It looks rushed, unprofessional and clearly does not belong in a mod that intends to be high quality.Perhaps the artist is not familiar with dds format and in that case I could excuse some of this but to be frank I've seen better work from enthusiastic first time modders. I coudn't salvage this even if I had the time. It needs entirely reworking from scratch by someone who at least knows what they are doing. This is really bad and I'm just being honest not trying to offend. Edited December 7, 2011 by darthsloth74 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaikoten Posted December 7, 2011 Author Share Posted December 7, 2011 (edited) Well it looks like we were sold snake oil. Some of the textures from the HD2K pack don't look very perceptibly different from far away, so I think a lot of people WANTED to think they looked better. It's kind of like when an audiophile pays $200 for a pair of headphones that may not objectively be better than what they upgraded from, yet they swear they can hear a difference. Needless to say I'm going to look at things a bit closer before including them now. And I'll pass it on to you guys to look at too. One pack I was considering inviting to the project is Z4G4's landscape pack. You can find it here: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2146 Any thoughts about the quality of the work? (Unlike the last pack, I opened this one in photoshop. It seems muuuuuch better :D) Edited December 7, 2011 by Shaikoten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mystikhybrid Posted December 7, 2011 Share Posted December 7, 2011 (edited) Thanks for compiling this Shaikoten. Though it looks like the city textures need some attention. Quick note for credits: Currently this pack contains:Mystik's Mystikhybrid's plants Also, please list credits in the Mods description once it is posted, not only in the readme file. :thumbsup: Edited December 7, 2011 by mystikhybrid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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