tektran Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 I've been looking over various forum post about packing textures into a ba2 and I think I've got the basics down. One thing I haven't found a clear answer on: some of the textures I want to pack also have corresponding materials and or meshes. If I pack the textures into a ba2, will it be fine to leave materials and meshes as loose files or do they need to be packed with the textures? Also, from what I've been reading, it seems I shouldn't exceed around 3.5g for the size of the ba2. I'm unsure what the compression ratio is. If I'm not mistaking, compressing the loose files into a ba2 will reduce the file size. If that's the case, is there a rough average? How big can the file be before I pack it into a ba2 to hit as close to that 3.5g number as possible? I ask because I've got something like 30-40 gigs worth of textures. Any help would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
payl0ad Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 For meshes and materials, use a general compression type of ba2 archive and name it yourmodname - Main.ba2. I know for certain that uncompressed archives can exceed 3.5G - Old World Radio has a 6G archive. Not so certain about compressed archives. Compression ratios are all over the place. Textures compress worse than other stuff, generally. For 40G, you might get away with using yourmodname - Textures1.ba2, - Textures2.ba2 and so on although I'm not sure that actually works for custom plugins. I know that's problematic for Skyrim SE. If those are only replacers, you can also split them up to different yourmodname.esp files. The game generally doesn't care where exactly in a load order some file gets loaded, everything works off a "final" fileset that's getting built on game startup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tektran Posted February 15, 2018 Author Share Posted February 15, 2018 Awesome, thanks for the info. I'll experiment and see what happens. I believe I read somewhere that I can include them in my ini to just avoid the plugin period. If that works, I might head that route, I'm running a pretty heavy load order and have had to merge a number of things already just to keep under that 255 limit. Was really just wanting to pack up all these texture replacers to help out with load times and from what I read ba2s just overall perform better than loose files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonathanOstrus Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 Awesome, thanks for the info. I'll experiment and see what happens. I believe I read somewhere that I can include them in my ini to just avoid the plugin period. If that works, I might head that route, I'm running a pretty heavy load order and have had to merge a number of things already just to keep under that 255 limit. Was really just wanting to pack up all these texture replacers to help out with load times and from what I read ba2s just overall perform better than loose files. I think the file size limit you heard of had to do with Skyrim and being 32bit. It would make sense seeing as 4GB is the top limit of addressable number for a 32bit pointer. Adding on with what payl0ad said about using dummy ESPs with ba2s. You can also use ESLs. That way you don't eat a spot in the load order for actual mods. This is what I personally do with texture and/or model replacers that I don't want loose. Since the dummy ESLs they won't have any internal forms it shouldn't impact your ability to use actual CC/mods as ESLs either. To make one just open CK fresh and hit the save button to get a dummy ESP. Then convert that to ESL. Then delete the ESP just to clean things up. If you need more dummy ESL just make a copy of the one so you don't have to keep loading CK just to make them. Also like previously mentioned you can split things up using the Main and Textures ba2. On PC, the game doesn't actually care what goes in either one. I've done meshes and textures into the Textures ba2 to get compression, then sounds and scripts into the Main without compression. You could mix and match as needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilav Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 There are only 2 rules:1) Textures must always be packed into BA2 DX10 textures format archive for proper mipmaps streaming. If not, they will still work fine but the game won't be able to stream them optimally.2) BA2 archive for sounds and voices must not be compressed (disable compression in Archive2.exe options) otherwise they won't work in the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pra Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 If I use the CK to create the archives, can I expect it to do the right thing, regarding compression and all that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonathanOstrus Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 If I use the CK to create the archives, can I expect it to do the right thing, regarding compression and all that? It will usually error on the side of caution and not compress it at all. Which I suppose could be "the right thing" :laugh: . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts