Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to install STEP currently, and I've successfully gotten to 2.B Utilities so far, including optimizing my vanilla textures with DDSopt. However, now I'm sort of confused, because the next utility on the list is "Optimizer Textures," but on the STEP wiki it gives no information at all about it, and when I installed it via Mod Organizer I got a bunch of errors about the install, so it's currently just sitting uninstalled in MO.

Do I actually need this in addition to DDSopt? And if so, the error I was receiving was something about folder structure, but I couldn't figure it out. If I do need it, could someone point me in the right direction to figuring out the issue with it?

Thanks!

I havent followed S.T.E.P but I reckon you are probably reading something wrongly, I cant see them recommending using two tools which do the same job

If you did run DDSOpt on a bunch of textures, and then run Optimizer textures on the same textures, whats the point ?

Have a read of what these tools do and then you will understand. I think DDSOpt is recommended as the tool of choice for optimising textures in their guide, it is certainly technically better than the other. Maybe they give Optimiser textures as an easier option for those who do not understand how to use DDSOpt properly ?

Also, and this is a big also, you used Mod Organiser to install Optimiser Textures ?

Would you use Mod Organiser to install Adobe Photoshop ?, or Microsoft Office ?

Its for installing mods, not executeable tools

Again, you need to read the instructions for Mod Organiser and understand what that tool does for you.

All the direction you need is in the tools descriptions. Read them thoroughly.

S.T.E.P also has a forum which you can ask questions to the makers of that guide, if something did not make sense in the follow through guide, maybe they need to reword it for better understanding in your case ?, I reckon you need to ask your questions http://forum.step-project.com

Thanks for the advice! I did know that DDSopt optimized my textures. However, the STEP wiki basically said (at least it seemed to me) download the mods/tools in the order you see them. Neither DDSopt nor Mod Optimizer was labeled as a "Core" utility, however DDSopt was listed higher on the list and there was nothing in the "note" section that said either use one or the other, though maybe that was because they assumed it was common sense =P

And I am using Mod Organizer but I'm just getting my feet wet with it so far, I just saw the "Download with Mod Organizer" tag on the Nexus website and figured it must be compatible, since SKSE and Skyrim Performance Monitor didn't have that option available and thus I manually installed them according to STEP.

I'll be more careful next time and try to remove Optimizer Textures from within my MO folder now, thanks again! And thanks for the link to the STEP forum, I'll re-direct any future questions there.

EDIT: Just to save me some searching, is something like "Stable uGridstoLoad" something compatible with the "Download with Mod Organizer" feature?

Edit 2: After looking at the files for Stable uGridstoLoad, I'm dumb and it's obviously not compatible!

Ah, no thats Nexus sites fault for confusing everyone

It actually says "Download with Mod Manager" ( Nexus Mod Manager, or NMM for short ), which is another executable tool for organising your mods, similar to Mod Organiser.

Nexus makes that button enabled for everything on Nexus by default, no matter whether the file is a mod or not. The idea being, Nexus users should all use NMM, and all files on Nexus should be Mods

Anyone posting a file on Nexus is supposed to switch that off if it is not applicable to the file .. In the case of executable tools for example

However, not all tool creators regularly pop in to Nexus to see new dumb buttons added to their files

It would have been better if that button was made to be switched on by mod creators for each file, instead of being switched on nexus wide by the site for everything.

DDSopt is all you need. I tried to use Texture Optimizer after compressing textures with DDSopt and it didnt do much honestly