xtexconv.exe a good thing Texture converting a noobs perspective

[strawbqwerty]

As most all that have the all new Skyrim on pc have been doing, trying to set up the game with your old mods. Been doing the rounds of the forums. Bit of a debate about textures and whether they need converting or not. Far as i can figure. Beth has supplied a tool to convert textures, so just a stab in the dark and a wild guess. I believe they may need converting or at least run through the supplied tool so the game will recognize them properly. Not a quick process. Have used the tool and it has altered the size of a lot of DDS files. So some thing is being done. Appears though that not all textures are in need of a work over. But trying to find just the ones that may need to be converted in all the thousands of files , ah no. I found the tool in the Skyrim SE folder where the creation kit is installed in a folder named tools. I then copied the two files to the desk top. I then opened up the texture folder, selected at random a folder,say Tera armor, then once inside the main folder I simply typed in the search box in the window DDS. This then brought up all the DDS files in all the sub folders. Saves opening a LOT of folders and speeds thing up a lot. From here I highlighted a couple of hundred files then moved them over the xtexconv.exe. A message appears to say you are opening these files with the xtexconv.exe. It then process the files while you pick lint from your navel or what ever you do to kill time. This little batch file will not handle more than about three hundred files in one go, comes up with a error warning that the file is to big.

[strawbqwerty]

Here is a example of the difference of converting textures to the new skyrim. Mod Island Hobbit home. Just unpacked the bsa and separated the textures into a texture bsa with out converting them. Size was 18,015 KB, Made a converted texture bsa and the size is 24,05 KB Mod may have worked but I`m guessing it may have had issues.

[KnightBlade2]

I wasn't familiar with xtexconv.exe so I searched for data. It looks like it's designed for Xbox. Can we use this to convert textures for the PC too?

[strawbqwerty]

http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4633-skyrim-se-things-to-know-when-converting-standard-mods-to-sse/

As stated in this guide it is the type of texture file that is the issue. Xtextconv is converting the incorrect files to the right type. Wat ever platform uses them they have to be the right ones.

[aragonit]

Just in case someone needs this info, to convert a lot of dds files / textures from Skyrim LE to Skyrim SE format:

 

You need xtexconv.exe which comes with the construction kit and is in steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\Tools\Elric

if you need to convert a lot of dds files in many subdirectories, there is no real shortcut, but a bit of a workaround:

 

Copy xtexconv.exe and xg.dll to the textures folder with all the subdirectories you want to convert the textures from

Open a DOS prompt

write: dir *.dds /s /b >convert.bat

Open the convert.bat in any text editor (I use TextPad) which can use regular expressions for replacement.

 

1. Replace .dds with .dds"

2. Replace the drive letter with xtexconv.exe -o "<drive letter> like this: D:\ with xtexconv.exe -o "D:\

3. Duplicate the filepath, search for ("D:.*") and replace with \1 \1

4. To strip the dds from the path after the -o search for: \\[^\\]*" " (searches for a \ not followed by a \ and followed by " "), replace with " "

save the convert bat and run it from the dos prompt.

 

Enjoy your game

For all other issues, I recommend using Cathedral Assets Optimizer