[Emily Martell]

Just wanted to thank Lev for coming up with AV and all his hard work since, i'm a TES noob so hello all.

Have been tracking the thread for a while, along with Skytest, 83willows insects and the More Fish mod wildlife in Skyrim has a whole new Eco-system thanks so much again and now i'll scuttle back to my corner so you can all carry on

[Claire Lynham]

Hehe, welcome Jo! 8) Scuttle on back anytime.

Update for you record nerds:
I finished the "AV Prepping" code and consequently got a list of all the NPCs that AV can currently make variants for textures correctly.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?25elp9jni87s9s6

Of course, this implicitly includes any NPC that is templated with traits to anything on the list.
And also, any new creatures/NPCs added by modders will also most likely be supported as well even though they don't show up on the list (it's only a listing of vanilla Skyrim NPCs)
I'd like to mention and remind that female variants may not work as intended, however, this would probably only apply to humanoid playable NPCs and draugr.

If someone feels bored enough to compile a simpler list of all the NPCs AV supports, I'm sure someone would make use of it and appreciate it. 8)

I'm off to finish off 1.3!

[Danel]

I'm off to finish off 1.3!

Do you have a link I can try with the fix for storing the number of plugins in a byte allowing it to go negative?

[Marilú]

http://www.mediafire.com/?f3h6edgdbm1nuc4

• Restructured AV Packages to have another layer called the "Variant Group" layer. These groups will have their contained variants "multiplied" together, so that a combination of each of their variants is created. This is good when you have different types of variant files, such as skin group and eye group, and you want combinations of both kinds to be made into variant NPCs.
  
• Variant Groups will automatically have their probabilities adjusted so they don't overwhelm packages that don't make use of them.
  
• Added a "AV Prep" setting that creates "empty" variant setups for all NPCs that don't currently have AV variants for them. This will hopefully minimize or eliminate savegame bugging when AV variants are added to those NPCs later.
  
• Added an "original as variant" option that makes the current NPC setup a variant that can be chosen, in addition to the AV variants explicitly created in a package.
  
• Added a "Compress" option that can be accessed while right-clicking a package. This will reroute and rearrange files to save space and report the results.
  
• Added AV version numbers on the GUI.
  
• Added "Import Mods on Startup" setting.
  
• Added an AV Starter.bat to allocate more memory to AV.
  
• Fixed a bug when an imported mod had too many masters.
  
• Adjusted protocols to handle a previously unsupported NPC structures (such as Skyrim Trolls).

NOTE
AV now has a NEW package structure (an additional folder level).
http://www.mediafire.com/?t3qikbzck04jjdm can be used to convert an old package to the new format.
You may get errors or missing variants if you try to run AV with an old package structure.

A new Bellyache package in the new format has been uploaded.

[John Moore]

What about outfits for the giants? Any outfit in general for any NPC, really. Should I name it "Outfits" as folder or is there anything specified by AV?

I used the Package Converter and all the packages (StarX, Insanity, etc.) look the same like BellyAches.

I've only Skyrim.esm and Update.esm activated, and I ran the AV with BellyAche. No problems.

When I activated either one of the other Packages (StarX, Insanity, mine, etc.), I'm stuck at 10% (2/10 Linking Packages to .nif files). I waited for about 30 min. before I gave it up.

[Amysaurusrex]

@Multiplication package structure -> Variant Groups
You can find a similar structure existing in the Bellyache's werewolves where two groups are being multiplied together.
You'll see a skin folder (with 7 variants) and an eyes folder (with 20 variants)
Each skin is paired with each eye for a total of 7 * 20 = 140 variants

You can do the same structure for giants with their clothes. It doesn't matter what you name the folder, only that it's separate from the skin group.

As a side note, since the eyes * skins of werewolves creates an enormous 140 variants that would overwhelm another package's 5ish variants (if they just did 5 skin variants), it will automatically have its probability reduced.
So for the case of werewolves the average group size is (7 + 20) / 2 = 13.5 = 14, so the 140 variants the setup creates will have 1/14 the normal probabilty -> an overall probabilty of 10 "normal" variants.

Also
I reuploaded Bellyache's again, as the bear/rabbit packages were incorrect and weren't being generated as variants.


@Program Halt
EDIT:
Did you run using the new AV Starter.bat?
We've started to hit the default memory limit allotted the Java Virtual Machine with all our variants. This will result in EXTREME slowdowns as the program tries to scraqe by with no memory. The AV starter.bat will provide AV with a LOT more memory to prance around with.

If that doesn't work, let me know.

[Breanna Van Dijk]

Well this is interesting. Installing now. Can I use my older batch files that work?

{edit} well nevermind, new files and paths. Not sure how to get it working again. Any time I updated, I always kept my originally modified batch files.

I tried using the troubleshoot, but no luck. I'll figure it out.

[sam westover]

Batch files being the old "Gather Files.bat" and whatnot?
AV is still coded to accept the gather files command, so I suppose so.

The "official" replacement for it though is a button on the Textures -> Other Settings panel.


EDIT:
Also, if anyone wants to do a Karellan-style test to see if the new AV Prep functionality works, that would be awesome!

The idea would be to start a new game with a few variants active, and with AV Prep on. Adventure around a bit to explore and spawn some cells.
Then try activating some new packages and disabling the old and seeing if things bug out.

Hopefully the AV Prep system will keep Bethesda from bugging out.. but only testing will truly tell.

[evelina c]

Ah, I got it now. Thanks.

[OJY]

EDIT:
Also, if anyone wants to do a Karellan-style test to see if the new AV Prep functionality works, that would be awesome!

The idea would be to start a new game with a few variants active, and with AV Prep on. Adventure around a bit to explore and spawn some cells.
Then try activating some new packages and disabling the old and seeing if things bug out.

Hopefully the AV Prep system will keep Bethesda from bugging out.. but only testing will truly tell.

I'll test it as soon as I'm able to... a new game with only Automatic variants.esp (no other mods) should be the ideal setup, right?

[adam holden]

Ideally, I suppose. 8) Helps eliminate unforeseen other factors and narrows it down to either Bethesda or AV.

[carly mcdonough]

Oh, BTW, the download link to 1.3 alpha in the first page/first post takes you to the 1.2.4 download. Might want to fix that

[Erika Ellsworth]

Congratulations on the new release. I'll stick with 1.2.2 until all the packages are converted

[Catherine N]

Congratulations on the new release. I'll stick with 1.2.2 until all the packages are converted

You can convert the packages yourself with the included tool. You just place the packages in "Source Files" run the tool and that's it (at least it seemed to work for me). By the by, AV Starter.bat made the process so much faster! I actually saw my first variant after installing it as well.

I'll continue testing, CTDs were common with the previous version and ASIS; though it could just be ASIS or my large amount of mods. Regardless, thank you for your hard work

[Jade Barnes-Mackey]

Do I place the AV Packages directly into the Files folder? I'm trying out the new format using Bellyache's pre-converted set, but I don't know which folder I'm suppose to put the entire folder into (Files root folder, or AV Package anolyzer folder? Or the one inside the latter, Source Data folder?)

Could you add a dummy package to the upload to show where to place packages?

[Rodney C]

Yea, I started with av.bat for the extra "500m" of memory . Even upped it to 1024. No dice. Still hangs at 10%, 2/10.

[Courtney Foren]

Using the .bat, it said it couldn't run without the javaw.exe, so I just copied whereever mine was on my computer into the same folder the av.bat ran.

But I'm looking at the Memory used, and it didn't go up from the 300mb it was using when I didn't start up with the .bat file. It's hung on 10% too for me.

Going to try another round but turning off the debugging settings.

Edit: Okay I managed to get the .bat running complete (although I ran into an error).

I had to download the 64bit Java (I'm on Windows 7 64bit) and also I edited the .bat to allocate 4gb of memory (I have 8gb)

@echo offstart javaw -jar "Automatic Variants.jar" -Xmx4096m -Xms2048m

Limit to your own system's ram accordingly.

Edit2: Export success! Was just a bad convert for one of the packages. Going to test this in-game.

[Ymani Hood]

@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/794335-elementroar/

How exactly did you manage to run the .bat file? I copied over the jawaw.exe in the same folder but it still doesn't work. I had the problem where it hang at 10%.

Edit: I managed to run it but now it still seems to hang at 10%...

Edit2: It finally worked after I installed the 64bit Java.

[Guy Pearce]

So I put all the packages in the sourch folder and run the tool?

[Maria Leon]

I had to download the 64bit Java (I'm on Windows 7 64bit) and also I edited the .bat to allocate 4gb of memory (I have 8gb)

@echo offstart javaw -jar "Automatic Variants.jar" -Xms4096m -Xms2048m

Limit to your own system's ram accordingly.

You have set Xms two times in a row, which probably means that java will use the last value you specified (2 Gig). What I think you meant was:

@echo offstart javaw -jar "Automatic Variants.jar" -Xmx4096m -Xms2048m

With Xmx setting the maximum heap size and Xms setting the initial heap size.

[Caroline flitcroft]

@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/794335-elementroar/
How exactly did you manage to run the .bat file? I copied over the jawaw.exe in the same folder but it still doesn't work. I had the problem where it hang at 10%.
Edit: I managed to run it but now it still seems to hang at 10%...

I had that error too for a bit. I'm not sure exactly what I did to have it finally find the javaw.exe by itself (earlier I had to copy over the .exe file to the same folder).

The error went away when I downloaded the 64-bit Java version for Windows here: http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

You have set Xms two times in a row, which probably means that java will use the last value you specified (2 Gig). What I think you meant was:

@echo offstart javaw -jar "Automatic Variants.jar" -Xmx4096m -Xms2048m

With Xmx setting the maximum heap size and Xms setting the initial heap size.

Good catch, amended my post. Though I think it doesn't really need up to 4gb of memory. It just needed more than the 300mb it was allocated initially, and 1gb - 2gb probably is plenty.

[Carlos Vazquez]

@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/794335-elementroar/

Thanks. I finally got it to work. I followed the same steps as yours:
1. installed 64bit java http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
2. copied the jawaw.exe over to the folder containing Av Starter.bat file
3. modified the .bat file where I inserted:

@echo off
start javaw -jar "Automatic Variants.jar" -Xmx4096m -Xms2048m

[Cameron Wood]

http://afterimagemetal.com/AutoVar/Automatic%20Variants%20Readme.html#bat may help with any having bat file issues. It's an alternative to actually copying over javaw to the AV folder.
And yes, in my experience, having the wrong 32/64 bit version of Java installed causes issues. So make sure your java install matches your hardware.

The vast amount of google articles just take the easy way out and tell you to use bat files to allocate more memory, but I'd like to find a way of having the AV.jar give ITSELF more memory so that we don't have to deal with javaw pathing issues when using bat files. Pluto and I came up with a possible solution, but I haven't tested it yet.

If you guys are still hanging at 10%, then perhaps something else is going wrong. If you want to send a debug log I can take a look at it.

[koumba]

Well I'm getting CTDs when loading into any space with something that would be affected by AV.esp

I save in an interior cell, save file with no AV.esp selected. Then select the AV.esp and load game fine. But I try to exit into an area with spawns (chickens in this case) I get a crash on the load screen.

Edit: With AV.esp active, was inside Windhelm, went into buildings, saved etc. Then left Windhelm. Loaded fine and then crossed the bridge, but approximately a cell where creatures affected by AV.esp would spawn, had a CTD.

If it's a completely new cell I haven't been to at all in my game, seems to load fine.

[lolly13]

Could be the new AV Prepping? I tried testing it myself by spawning a handful of npcs without variants via placeatme, but maybe Bethesda doesn't like some thing about my AV Prep when changing cells?
Try disabling AV Prep in the options and seeing if the CTDs go away. Let me know what you find. 8)