SSE Blurry Textures. Educate me.

[antstubell]

How can I avoid custom textures becoming blurred in game. Is there a specific resolution and/or dimension I should use? Scaling really messes some textures up. Attached screenshot is not scaled.

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B60C11D037429D8E&id=B60C11D037429D8E%2152563&parId=B60C11D037429D8E%21191&o=OneUp

[cumbrianlad]

I've seen blurry vanilla textures, let alone custom ones.

 

The blur comes in by stretching the UV map beyond what is reasonable, imo. If you are using Nifskope to adjust your textures, the UV scale in the Nif is only good for small tweaks and sometimes not even then. this is because that scale factor applies a blanket figure to the whole texture and can't adjust the textures on some parts of the mesh individually. To do the latter, do as described next.

 

Click on the tri-shape and right click 'Textures', then 'Edit UV'. Here you will see all the individual parts of the model and where they 'sit' on your texture. Select one node, right-click and 'Select Connected' to get just that bit of the UV map. Now you can move this around by dragging, or you can right click on one of the nodes (that should now be yellow) and choose 'Rotate Selected' or 'Scale and translate selected'.

 

You can see what you're doing (sometimes) if the part you're moving is visible in the Nifskope render window. If not you'll have to rotate the model until you see what you're doing. This makes the UV editor disappear behind the Nifskope window, so I adjust the Nifskope window size and the UV editor window so I can see both at the same time. You can now adjust the rotation, scale and position of each part of the UV mesh until it looks right on your texture. When you're happy, close the UV editor and save.

 

If it's impossible to do to your satisfaction, you'll need to re-do the texture!

 

Is this useful?

[maxarturo]

Unfortunately cumbrianlad, you are incorrect my friend.

Stretching the UV map results in applying the image X numbers of the stretching factor to the mesh, so the mesh will end up with a higher number of the image / pixels that equals less blur and higher pixel density on the mesh.

Blur can be caused only when you downscale the UV map, this causes the image applyed to the mesh to be less than the original, if you downscale the image's UV by 1/2 then you will end up with half of the original pixels.

* * Is always better to scale a UV map than to downscale it, since by downscaling it you lose resolution.

Another factor that contribiutes in "Bluring" the meshe's map is cause when you take an image that it's original resolution is 1024x1024 and then on an image editor program you scale that image to 4096x4096.

Since the original image 1024x1024 does not have the information required to fill those extra pixels that will occur when you scale it to 4096x4096, it will duplicate every pixel of the original image to fill those spaces, this will cause "Bluring" on the map.

You never scale an image since there is no information for the scaling no matter what image editor you are using, you only and always downscale the image.

This is one of the first and most important principles of graphic design.

* This is what Bethesda did with texture for SSE, they scale all textures from the original resolution to a supposed higher SSE resolution, but in the end those are the same textures (Sclaed) that's why the look so horrible !.

Edited May 25, 2020 by maxarturo

[cumbrianlad]

Lovely, Maxarturo.

 

I just play with it until it looks right. Nice to have the science behind it. Still, it may help the OP if they have been downscaling the UV map and getting blurred textures.

 

Also, what I posted about editing in Nifskope is not wrong. I'd hate the details to be lost in the rest of it. Lots of people don't know what you can do with the UV editor in Nifskope.

[antstubell]

Got work to do. I'll get back to you guys.

 

Ok. Very confused here. When I edit UV I see this and I don't know what I am seeing and what I should do.

Can I take as a given that I should always use high-res textures and scale down?

 

Model

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B60C11D037429D8E&id=B60C11D037429D8E%2152565&parId=B60C11D037429D8E%21191&o=OneUp

 

UV Map

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B60C11D037429D8E&id=B60C11D037429D8E%2152564&parId=B60C11D037429D8E%21191&o=OneUp

 

UV Map zoomed out

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=B60C11D037429D8E&id=B60C11D037429D8E%2152566&parId=B60C11D037429D8E%21191&o=OneUp

Edited May 26, 2020 by antstubell

[cumbrianlad]

All I can say is that using the vanilla mountain textures and nif my UV map looks the same as yours, so it should look no worse than vanilla, but the vanilla 'MountainRidge01' looks better in my Nifskope... that could just be the image you uploaded? Maxarturo's the man for textures, though. He's done some pretty awesome stuff, and I've never messed with mountain textures.

[maxarturo]

@ cumbrianlad

Thanks for your kind words.

@ antstubell

"Ok. Very confused here. When I edit UV I see this and I don't know what I am seeing and what I should do."

Each of the "Shapes" you see in the UV represents a face / part of the mesh that "that particular Shape" will apply the texture to the mesh.

One way to see and understand this is to select a "Shape" (all of the vertex of that shape), you will see that when you select it all it will turn from green to yellow, now move it around and you will see in the mesh (Render window) what part it's affecting.

* Select one vertex and then right click and select "Select Connected", this will select all the vertex of that particular "Shape".

Attention: some "UV Shapes" have more than just 1 shape inside of them and you will need to select them manually to edit the whole region that they affect in the mesh.

"Can I take as a given that I should always use high-res textures and scale down?"

You will need to be more specific into what you are trying to accomplish, i fear that if try to explain it in more detailed (in technical terms), it will only result in confusing you even further.

Edited May 26, 2020 by maxarturo

[antstubell]

Let's say for a new mountain texture I find a rock texture online that is 4096x4096. What I normally do is now open the image in Corel Draw. Make sure it IS 4096x4096 some are obscure oblong shapes so I crop to make them as square as possible then resize DOWN to 2048x2048, I'm never sure about altering pixels per sq. inch/cm so I usually leave that alone because altering pixel count means resizing again. I save and convert the image with a converter program, to .dds. Finally for the normal map, which I use Gimp to make if needed, then I compress the normal to BC7 Linear DX11+ in Paint.net. Sounds like a long winded process but has always worked for me... except for blurry textures - not all, just some.

[maxarturo]

Not knowing a bunch of other factors that can contribute in this, just from what you wrote, your issue lies here:

"I'm never sure about altering pixels per sq. inch/cm so I usually leave that alone because altering pixel count means resizing again"

All Skyrim texture resolutions and aspect ratios 1k - 2k - 4k and so on, MUST ALL BE,

DPI = 72 pixels/inch.

You can have a texture resolution of 1024 x 1024 but if the DPI is 36 pixel/inch your mesh will start showing symptoms of "Blurring", since it will have just half of the pixels for square inch.

- 1024 x 1024 is the resolution / SIZE of the image.

- 72 pixels/inch is the DPI of the image, which means the amount of pixel per square inch.

72 pixels/inch is what humans can see without been able to see pixels, the clarity of the image.

Edited May 27, 2020 by maxarturo

[antstubell]

Some textures I use are 96 pixels/inch. Should I change them?