Game Skyrim Forum

If Skyrim use DX11 it will be possible to creat a mod for make tessaltion?
Remake paved read and wall texture with tesslation.

If bethesda don't want recreat Skyrim World with tesslation. If they can make possibility for modder to do it (implement tool for it), we can really creat very good thing and enchance world.

You do not need a mod for this , direct x 11 enable tessellation if the textures do have any parallax mapping or the like enabled , but I doubt there is , since from what I have seen the pictures the surfaces look pretty flat and even the armours do not have bump maps or the like it's weird tough ....

The idea is to creat a mod for add tesslation in Skyrim. For have 3D texture and not just flat texture.
Creat an "add on" programme like OBSE to allow mod use tesselation and redraw skyrim with it.

u only have to turn it on, and then tesselation and paralax occlusion are controlled by a bump map texture.

I thought that tessellation was more complex than just turning it "on"... individual models need to be worked to utilize it, its probably more than just making a bump map.

But for bump map the engine must allow to use it?

It's A LOT more complex than that. Here's what I wrote before.

"I just want to make something very clear here about DX 11 and modders taking use of it:

I've spoken to one of the creators/contributors of OBGE (Oblivion Graphics Extender). He said that it will take years for a Skyrim Graphics Extender to come out. To implement DX features in a closed-source engine is VERY hard. You can't implement it normally. First, only very very very few people know how. Second, only even fewer people actually have the time and urge to spend so much time doing this. Third, modders are forced to "hack" DX features in. It's a whole lot harder for modders than for developers to implement DX features.

Do not expect a Skyrim Graphics Extender to come for a long long long time. Say, several years. Or don't expect a Skyrim Graphics Extender to come at all. Timeslip is the modder who is responsible for creating the foundations of both OBGE and MGE. I'm not sure what he/she is doing right now, but if it's someone who's good at creating these utilities, it's him/her. Shademe could also help, as he's been developing a lot of the OBGE.
Don't ever expect modders to add tessellation btw. Something like that would require immense amounts of works for a modder. It's not as easy as pressing on/off on a button.

In short: Don't expect modders to take use of DX 11 features. Most likely will never ever happen. And if it does happen, expect it to take many years."

According to an article linked to in another thread on this first page, Todd said “Basically, it’s mostly a DirectX 9 game in terms of [how the] shaders work,”

I expect that means that the required dx11 shaders required for tessellation and other features will not ship with the game. That means that unless Bethesda patches them in themselves, it'd be a long time before modders are able to write their own, making it even longer before tessellation will be seen in the game.

I am interesting to add tesslation in skyrim, but i don't have skill for it

I'm sorry if i may sound like i've lived in a cave for a few years but... what the hell is Tessellation?

No.

Firstly, there are already several open topics about this.

Secondly, no matter what certain people have claimed to know (in closed-by-now threads) on here about tessellation being possible in Skyrim via the modding tools, etc... they are flagrantly incorrect and only adding to the confusion and causing more topics like this.

Todd said that Skyrim will "support" DX11, while using none of the DX11 features. This is essentially meaningless. I'll temporarily ignore his further statements where he explicitly says that the game is based on a DX9 feature set... which is already a dead giveaway and we could otherwise stop the discussion here.

Basically, if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 you are already running DX11. Regardless of what card you have. The runtime version is in fact DirectX 11. What "supporting" DirectX11 (but none of the features) means is that the game will work just fine with the DirectX 11 runtime. Todd probably also meant to convey that the game certainly won't be gimped on DX11 hardware, and will make full use of the graphics power.

Now... When you start talking about using/supporting DX11-level features, you immediately require the graphics hardware capable of running those features... with some exceptions. For one, if they forego Windows XP support, they can actually have ONE executable file, and with the DirectX 11 runtime enact what are called "feature levels"... Then one EXE file can support DirectX 9-level and above GPUs without any fuss. The issue is, Windows XP will never have the DirectX 11 runtime, and they're not likely to drop XP support at this point. Generally, game makers aren't yet ready to drop Windows XP support and usually go with multiple DX9/DX11 files.

Since they've already stated they're using none of the DX11 features, you can immediately deduce several things:

1. There will be no need for and thus not be a DX11 executable.
2. They will not be requiring DX11 hardware.
3. The Creation Kit will not have any kind of tessellation options, as there is no DX11 executable.
4. Any tessellation support will have to come in the form of a patch which adds a DX11 executable.

Even if there WERE a DX11 executable, tessellation won't be an option until they actually write it into the EXE source, as well as create all the necessary tessellation shaders. The art pipeline also has to support tessellation from the get-go. Unless they simply add in PN Triangle or Phong tessellation at a later date, which is the smoothing of organic models, ala TruForm circa 2001.

And for all the people claiming tessellation is something you can "just turn on", please study the topic on a code/shader/hardware level and reassess those views. Even the art-less PN Triangle tessellation needs to be written into the engine code by people... the hardware doesn't automatically tessellate everything itself. Today's tessellation isn't like ATI's TruForm.

Lastly, if the art pipeline from Oblivion is any indication of Skyrim's art pipeline, it is suboptimal for tessellation anyway. They don't use height maps (though the information is still there in normal maps), and their UV mapping style is basically incompatible with tessellation. UV islands are an efficient use of space, but have many seams and usually only contain half of a mesh... as most meshes are symmetric on at least one axis. Tessellation doesn't work with UV islands whatsoever. The texture maps need to have basically one seam, and unwrap over the whole mesh. UV seams also lead to holes and other artifacts with tessellation, as the vertices tend to go away from each other at the seam.

And as a sidenote... As for "Extender" projects, we stopped understanding Bethesda's engines with Fallout 3... Oblivion Graphics Extender is essentially limited to doing things in screenspace, as post-effect shaders. Hacking in tessellation would most likely never happen in a "Skyrim Graphics Extender", especially if they only ever give us a DX9 exe.

Tessellation does several things. It can make a low-poly mesh look really high-poly. It can smooth the edges of everything.

What's most striking though is how it can make things look so real. A stone-floor/wall is flat in Oblivion. If Oblivion somehow were to use tessellation, this stone-floor/wall would look like if the stones actually were there, coming out of the wall/floor. It would look like if the floor/wall was a floor/wall, made out of specific stones.

Parallax occlusion mapping is another approach to get pretty much the same results. Which one is best for performance though, I don't know.

This video presents it (although a bit too extreme... imo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdvZPIQpsQo
You totally get the concept of what this could mean for Skyrim though, that is full of stone floor/walls everywhere.

Tessellation can also be added to water, hair or many other things. Low-poly meshes can look (literally) a thousand times better with tessellation, with an incredibly lower cost of performance than it would be to have all these super hi-poly meshes.

the coold thing about tesselation is you can make the entire game extremely low poly and then have layers of tessellation over that making it look like cash with massive performance gain vs high poly.

low poly mesh with tessellation> extremely high poly mesh

looks better & runs faster.

The only problem with that is that the game would need to be PC only to truly benefit from it. The models are already made on consoles otherwise. And until consoles are next-gen, we probably won't see things like this in multi-platform games.

It's very promising for the future though. Would save time for developers (I think) and make it look better and perform better at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkKtY2G3FbU :turtle:

I think you have it all wrong. Saying the game will support DX11 means it will use DX11 (if you enable that option) otherwise he would have said, "No skyrim will not support DX11" and it would ONLY use dx9, DX11 not being supported would not be used.



A tessellation mod on the other hand is not looking to good.

You "think" I have it all wrong? Well read Todd's quotes and tell me I'm wrong. He said the game does NOT USE DX11 features. He has explicitly stated this. He even explicitly mentioned tessellation. He then further stated that the game is a DX9 codebase.

Re read the quote "Yes, but I guess the real question here is do we take advantage of DX11's big new features and the answer is 'not specifically'." DX11 is in, just not all the features.

Nah, just sounds like your too lazy too use Google.

Exactly. DX11 is in (http://pc.ign.com/articles/115/1158651p2.html), but it is CURRENTLY not using all features... (tbh, I think almost no features at all and that most thing is DX 9). This is for the performance boost and for future games the Creation Engine will be based on.

Whether more DX11 features will be in, we don't know. We recently got to understand that the MIGHT in the future. If it's Skyrim's future or other BGS games' future, we don't know.

You're not reading all the quotes then. I'm not going to give you a compendium of all Todd Howard DX11-related quotes, but I've read all of them and he has specifically stated tessellation did not make it into the game, nor any of the other DX11 features.

Edit: Hence the point of this thread: "Can tessellation be modded in?" and the many other threads before this one which have been about the same topic.

But apparently DX11 itself... for performance and future BGS games.

Skyrim supports DX11, how does that translate to SR not using DX11 at all?

If we can't have tessallation, my idea is recreat a 3D impression on ground and wall

They did it in Crysis with dx9
http://www.gamerreaction.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/crysis2mw7.jpg
http://forum.i3d.net/attachments/modifications-crysis/14850d1205487998-crysis-mod-very-high-quality-config-1-3-00253815.jpg

Or stalker prypiat wall
http://www.lesjeuxvideo.com/img/jeux/5225/stalker-call-of-pripyat-pc-8.jpg
http://i40.tinypic.com/14e51xt.jpg

Look, I'm on parole, so I'll keep it short - What jonwd7 says.