To all mod authors: useless white Alpha channels

[MentalGear]

Why do all mods here have useless purely white Alpha channels in their DXT1 textures?

I ask because fact is: they do nothing except double the filesize and only strain the graphics card without benefit?

I've found them in mods like EVE, AWOP, Project Nevada, NMC and countless others.

Another mistake often seen in texture mods is that they use awkward filesizes(way too big). If you take a look at the vanilla textures you'll discover that there are fixed filesizes for certain resolutions. That is because games with .dds texture file format use the DXT1/DXT3/DXT5 standard. So if you know about this system you'll ALWAYS end up with the same filesize for a certain resolution; e.g. DXT1 textures without Alpha channel 2048x2048 always have 2731kB.

The last days I took some time to remove all those needless purely white Alpha channels in DXT1-textures and resave the wrongly formatted files (not saved in DXT standard). The size of my texture folder is down from 15,3GB to 13,7GB, no quality loss.

So if you own Photoshop+Nvidia dds plugin and want to make you texture folder slimmer while preserving the same quality, open your addon textures and look for PURELY white Alpha channels in DXT1 textures, delete them and save.

[mnemnoch]

FYI: AWOP only contain a single ESM file. No additional textures, meshes etc. Just pure vanilla assets.

[Jeoshua]

I did this myself. Some of the biggest offenders are weapons mods. I even found one weapon that had, get this, a 2048x2048 RGB16 Alpha channeled, Normal Mapped, Glow mapped, Reflection Mapped.... TRIGGER.

 

Just the damned trigger took up 15 megs of v-ram to give it a slightly shiny, ridged black sheen.

 

I mean, there's detail... and then there's just being an a**hole :rolleyes:

Edited January 3, 2012 by Jeoshua

[MentalGear]

@mnemnoch

Thanks for the clarification.

I was just refering to the textures of the creatures that are appearing in the AWOP areas. That would be the creatures of MoMod I guess. I use AWOP with about 15 patches, sorry if I can't keep them apart anymore.

But I really don't want to point out any single mod. I was much more speaking generally for mods.

 

@Jeoshua

He he, yes thats real overkill :) . It was quite astonishing to see how huge some files were, I mean more than 21MB for a 2048x2048 texture is just mad. Was more than once that I discovered files with way to big filesizes. I suspect they were using other modes for saving than the DXT mode. The Nvidia dds plugin has 16bpp, 32bpp, 64bpp and even 128bbp modes which gives you those overlarge dds files.

 

 

EDIT:

In the other thread this was brought up:

ATI Compressionator

Tutorial:

http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/textures/making-dds-using-ati-compressonator.php

 

Download:

http://developer.amd.com/tools/compressonator/pages/default.aspx

Edited January 3, 2012 by Mental Gear

[mnemnoch]

Maybe you could release those edited textures? Or offer them to the mod authors since you mention that you already remove thos white channels. I myself will be grateful for any extra optimization for my FNV

[MentalGear]

@mnemnoch

A release is out of question sorry, because I have no permission to do so. I already wrote to several mod authors about this problem. None of them has released an update without the aforesaid flaws so far.

That's why I opted for making this thread and leaving the users themselves with removing those bugs.

[Heffy]

Totally agree, that a 2048x2048 ddx dxt 1 texture larger than 2,65Mb is suspiciously big. One thing needs to be mentioned nevertheless Photoshop + the Nvidia dds plugin automatically create a white alpha channel upon importing. If you import it, delete the white alpha channel and resave (DDS DXT1 RGB 4 bpp | no alpha) and re-open the re-saved file, the white alpha is there again... Also, lets not forget that every time a dds texture is re-saved, it looses quality.

 

The example below shows a DDS DXT 1 texture opened in photoshop and re-saved under the same format and settings :

 

 

[MentalGear]

@Heffy

 

Well, some do but not everybody experiences this bug in PS as said by some posters here:http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/516316-to-all-mod-authors-useless-white-alpha-channels/.

Could have to do with the newest version/older version issue that darthsloth74 mentioned (A current issue with the latest DDS Nvidia plugins is that DXT1 no alpha has a bad habit of saving with an unwanted white alpha channel. This issue does not occur with earlier versions of the plugin).

I have this bug but not when importing. For saving DXT1 w/o Alpha I found a method to avoid the unwanted white Alpha channel.

Good example of the quality loss, luckily I only make the dds files for my own texture pack from the much larger source .psd file. But as for my corrections on the other mod textures I certainly will have lost quality. Thats why it would be best if the mod authors themselves who have the higher quality source files would correct those unwanted white A-channels.