It seems a lot of people are running Skyrim with graphic cards with 1GB or less of RAM. I'm one of those since I always carry Skyrim with me on my frequent business travels and the company laptop I'm stuck with is a 3 years old HP Pavilion with a lowly ATi 4650 with 1GB of RAM.

I tried downloading and using the HD texture file but I got more stuttering, a sign that the computer is swapping textures in and out the vram (and probable the disk, too).

I want to make a smaller package around 1GB in size. I've looked inside the texture package and there are areas in which it could be improved. By converting most meshes to DXT1 (no alpha unless needed) by leaving out interface textures and other textures which already look 'good' on a typical laptop screen (I'm thinking of 1360x768 which is the default resolution for a 15" laptop) I think the goal is achievable.

Who would be interested in this? I'm asking because I've a few MODs in mind and I'm still undecided about priorities.

You will at the very least need to downsample the larger ones to 1024x1024 too.
You aren't going to be squeezing a whole lot by going to DXT1. Especially when the unpacked DLC is like 4 gigs...

From the sound of your screen resolution, and seeing how you are on a laptop you are probably better off with the sharpened texture mods that are floating around the nexus. They give a good good bang for the buck, and I've used them up to the point where I compared them side to side and packed the DLC ones because they were larger and had more samplings to take for the game rendering.

Wait... So you want to take the HD texture pack, and make it lower quality because your computer can't handle it... in which case wouldn't you just use the normal SD textures? O.o

The problem with Skyrim is that the artists didn't keep a consistent resolution across all the meshes. Look at the noble furniture or the big urns as an extreme example. Same with weapons and armors. For example, steel weapons have a very nice texture already and you don't see ugly 'pixellation' effects on them, not even in first person or when the camera is close. Ebony weapons and armors, on the other side, could benefit from a higher resolution texture: 2x would be enough. Most mods aim for 4x or even higher.

This reasoning applies also to towns textures. If you look at the wall of Riften, you'll see less pixelation than, say, Windhelm or Solitude.
Currently I use several texture MODs that bloat my Skyrim\data directory by about 1GB. This seems the 'sweet spot' for my system so, if I succeed in keeping the whole texture package within that dimension I *think* I won't have the stuttering problem I've witnessed with the HD texture pack.

PS: I'm not going to convert one by one LOL! There're more than a thousand texture inside the two files. I'll use batch conversion on a directory/theme basis.

Totally on board with this. Let me know if there is anything I can do to speed up the process. My VRAM is crying.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1345265-optimize-the-bethesda-hd-dlc/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1345050-vram-a-guide-yes-i-know-this-has-been-asked-before-but-please-help-me-understand/

Thanks!

I know it sounds stupid, but consider that even resizing the HD texture to half resolution (I'm talking about 2048 ones) they would be most of the times better than vanilla ones (that are mostly 512 res. as far as I know)

BTW today I'll try to do something about it, http://www.gamesas.com/user/780830-virustype2/ gave me a lot of advices about how to do this, but well.... skyrim textrues are a bit more complex than the ones I was used to work with some years ago

My only concerns are:

1. Do I have to keep the same kind of compression of the originals on the resized textures? I mean, if the original is DXT1 compressed do I have to keep it that way (to avoid alpha channel problems I guess...) with th modified one?

2. Normal maps... uhhh... they should be the ones with "_n" suffix... that's all I know, never worked on them Do I have to resize them too? If I resize a text. from 2048 to 1024, do I have to do the same with normal map?

3. What would you use? Paint.net or photoshop + dds nvidia tools (my fav.)? I mean as texture reducing quality

4. Ehm... there's a program that automatically sorts the dds files by texture resolution ? Or do I have to manually open every single one and check ( I'll be forced to do that to check if mip maps are used BTW)

Thanks to everyone!

A couple things :


1. IT would be best unless you know for sure the Alpha channel is not used and the texture has it saved ( Difference between DXT1 and DXT3 or 5 is 1 does not save the alpha channel which is not needed unless the game is using it for something (ie. in normal maps it is used for reflectivity - in diffuse textures it is used for transparency - etc. ) so deleting if not used is fine but if you delete it and it was being used like the potion bottles for transparent glass deleting it or changing the format would break the models looks in game !

2. Since the normal maps actually use the alpha channel info they are twice the size of most diffuse textures so if you want decent results in saving then yes you'll want to do them as well !

3. Doesn't really matter which is used as long as it has good support for the dds formats and does not introduce a lot of artifacts due to opening and resizing the texture and resaving. (though with downsizing this is not as big of a problem as it would be if you were attempting to upsize the original released textures !)

4. If your resizing some you'll probably want to resize all of them to maintain consistency on the looks in game - otherwise you might end up with some items looking much more detailed than other items (kind of like using an HD pack for only armors thus making the non armor items look blurry when displaying both) Or you'll need to spend a lot of time deciding\testing which to change and which to leave.

Thanks JD!!

OK, I think I'll use Photoshop + DDS utility, I'm fairly used to that, I'll just have to choose between nearest neighbor or bicubic sharper now... sometimes the first one works better (blurs a lot less the img)

BTW regarding number 4.. my idea was to just resize textures 2048 and beyond but keeping the 1024 ones orignal.. do you think there will be problems? A lot of the SD (default) textures are 512 as resolution, so I don't think there should be an improvement to resize the 1024 HD ones to 512 res (improvement in quality I mean)


PS. Thanks again, if I'll even do this little project you and virustype2 will end in the credits for sure!

Good luck. I'm wondering how painful this is going to be for you. Keep us posted!

Well... to tell you the truth.

A lot of the textures in the "HD" texture pack are simply upscaled. They've taken the original texture, scaled it up twice as much (this is the cheapest and worst way you can create "high resolution" textures; you upscale them and very slightly increase detail, but if you would make them HD from the start without upscaling, the result would literally be 5-10 times better in terms of detail for the same performance hit). Sometimes they've used a sharpen filter. These textures would be useless to use a smaller version of, because then you'd be back at an identical or very almost identical vanilla look.

Some textures however are actually really improved, and more than just upscaled. Cloth textures for instance. Those are worth downscaling, because they are actually changed.

You can have 4096 x 4096 resolution textures with the way Bethesda did them, and they still (almost) wouldn't look any better than a 512 x 512 texture, but at many times worse performance. For this reason, simply installing the full HD texture pack is not very smart. You're losing too much performance on very poorly "high resolutioned" textures that you won't practically see much more detail in any way, compared to if this was done properly from the start, by for instance... true HD texture mods.

Thanks Gibmoneky! And don't worry, it's not going to be painful, actually is quite funny

The only pain in the ass will be to compare the resolutions between originals and hi-res, because I found out that some originals are already 1024 res. so downgrading a hi-res 2048 texture will not help at all (Or that's what I think, what do you guys think?)

So I think I'll do 2 versions:

• A complete 1024 version, keeping all the 1024 original textures (from default .bsa file) and resizing just the hi-res 2048 ones that used to replace 512 textures, so we'll have every texture at 1024 resolution (still a good improvemente starting from default game with lots of 512 textures!)
  
• 2048 + 1024 version, I'll just resize the hi-res textures that used to replace 512 original textures BUT I'll keep the 2048 hi-res versions of already 1024 default textures (ie some armors) for people who have quite a bit more VRAM to waste

EDIT: thanks hlvr! So do you think that keeping vanilla 1024 textures would be "smart" other than resize the 2048 hi-res ones? I mean quality will be almost the same?

@hlvr That's why I think this mod is going to be more involved than originally thought. Really going to have to compare textures. Be really great if this could be made as a texture patch AFTER the HD patch.

This sounds fantastic. Sorry was posting before I saw your reply. Good luck!

Actually they scaled them up more than 2x in many cases (going from 512x512 to 2048x2048 which would be 16x the pixel count ! ) and I agree for the extra VRAM usage the change in looks is not worth it in many cases) -- Though actually not sure if they upscaled them or if the HD pack are the original textures they made which were downscaled for release and for use with the consoles due to hardware constraints.

The higher resolutions are absolutely not upscaled versions of the vanilla textures.

I think some comparisons are in order yes?

Though if you open them and downscale to the size of the originals they do produce exact results in PS (on the texture portion though the background unused portion is different in some cases)

I'm pretty sure it's upscaled... I mean come on, some textures are just a blurry, noisy mess. You always work at really high resolutions from the start and then downscale from there. Every texturer knows that. What I'm saying is, I think the textures look too bad for me to believe they were made like this from the start. I'd have to try really hard to get textures look that bad, and I'm not even a professional texturer.

That means the vanilla textures are downscaled versions of the higher resolution ones. Not the other way around. If you upscale the vnailla textures you do not get a result anywhere near the higher resolution textures.

That's what I wanted to hear !
So for the "all 1024" version of the mod I can keep the orignal 1024 textures (taken direcly from the skyrim-textures.bsa file) other than resize the hi-res version from 2048 to 1024 Pheew less work to do


BTW a question: I found out that DDSopt is able to apply DXT compression AND even resize the textures all by itself, do you guys think that as quality it will do the same job of photoshop (the resizing process especially)?

Depends which method it uses to resize.

I made a few experiments with the HD textures files

For some reason Betehsda developers use DTX3 everywhere. This leads to artifacts especially visible when alpha channels and normal maps come into play.

Speaking about alpha channels, it seems Bethesda employed them even when not needed (i.e. the map is completely white) and in normal/specular maps (I've tried deleting them and I couldn't notice a difference, for example in the fur of animals, it's the diffuse alpha channel that dictates transparencies and mask effects).

Thus I've decided to proceed this way and see the end result in the game:
Diffuse map:
-unless in the vanilla game pixellation effects are noticeable, take the 'HD' version and resample it by 1/2 its size.
-Save it to DXT5 with interpolated alpha (no artifacts) redoing all the mipmaps with a high quality algorithm.
-The end result is a file as big as the vanilla texture but with a somewhat higher quality.

Normal map
-keep the 2X version but discard alpha
-Save it to DXT1 redoing all the mipmaps with a high quality algorithm
-Noticeable increase in quality and detail compared to vanilla texture

Specular map
-keep the 2x version but discard alpha
-Save it to DXT1 redoing all the mipmaps with a high quality algorithm

Predicted savings in space: 1/4th of the size for diffuse, 1/2 of the size for normal and specular.

=WIN

Msxyz great job!! I'll send you a PM to know more about it!

I want to make a few more experiments, then I'll post a few screenshots for comparison. If the general consensus is that the difference is barely noticeable at a 1366x768 resolution (the resolution of my laptop), I'll give up and save myself a lot of time and hard work better spent elsewhere.

This gave me a nerdgasm. Intriguing really.