XnView, .dds files and re-sized textures... : Fallout 4

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 4:57 am

Hi.

I'm trying to create a compressed texture pack for the game.

I've tried two different methods, both using the Texture Optimization Project files in /Data/Textures as my original files.

1) I used IMR image resizer to resize a few files to 10% of their original size. It produces .jpg files. I then used a file converter to turn the .jpg files into .dds, replacing the originals. I tried one batch with DXT1, another bacth with DXT3. Neither had any effect on the game.

2) I used XnView to directly resize the thousands of .dds files down to 2% size, saving them as .dds and replacing the original files. In anything, the textures in the game got even better.

Is there some obvious thing I'm doing wrong? How do the authors of Texture Optimization Project go about doing their own re-sizing from 2k to 1k? Is there some specific format of .dds that XnView is saving into that isn't being picked up by the game or something?

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 5:20 am

Are you sure you added

[Archive]bInvalidateOlderFiles=1sResourceDataDirsFinal=

to Fallout4Custom.ini?

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 10:16 am

Yes, I followed the installation instructions.

» Sun Jan 10, 2016 8:36 pm

Is this actually worth doing ?

I have not experimented with Fallout 4 games original files yet purely because I know there is not currently any way of putting them back in a custom BSA in the same format as the game uses ..

.. ie the two part textures, where the bigger mipmaps for each texture are saved separately so as not to be loaded by the game all the time when most of the time they are not used

I think all texture mod projects which currently claim to be optimising textures are in fact doing a bad job of it, because there is no tool to remake BA2s correctly ..

See http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4300-bae-bethesda-archive-extractor/page-1

1. Without correctly remaking a custom BA2 you lose out on the advantages of having textures load faster from a compressed archive

2. Having just loose files which have all of their mipmaps in the same file the game has to load the higher res mipmaps when it only needs the distant ones = Also less optimal than the game originals.

Additionally - Has anyone actually created plugins for Photoshop or G.I.M.P to handle correctly all the new texture formats ?

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 10:09 am

I vaguely understand the advantages of ba2 texture and the way they store mipmaps in separate blcks that can be loaded into the game separately, but consider this:

If we make the textures smaller than 256x256, then any disadvantage from incorrectly piecing the files back together will disappear, right?

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 2:53 am

Well apart from making the biggest mipmap only 256x256 and the game looking awful, then I guess it will work

But heck, even for Skyrim on my old laptop ( which started out life only having 256mb VRAM ), my old mod http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14504/? did not have to be that severe in reducing textures. There were quite a lot of textures stayed @ 1024x1024, some ( but not all ) 2048x2048 got reduced to 1024, and a lot of 1024s got reduced to 512x512.

The biggest portion of the Skyrim games 33000 textures which were reduced, were mostly just the normal maps to make the biggest savings on VRAM and optimisations for low spec machines, while still preserving as much detail as possible so as not to spoil the artistic theme of the games designers.

You may have different objectives of course, but reducing everything to 256 seems very dramatic, your distant mipmaps at an even lower resolution than vanilla will be a blurry mess.

If your top mipmap is 256, then you are only giving the game 6 or 7 ( depending on what this games uses ) lower power of two step downs for distant detail ( 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4 ).

Anyway it doesnt matter, you will gain experience as you go, and no doubt the dearth of tools situation at the moment will become better as time goes on and community support develops.

Good luck with your mod, and a few tips from previous games texture manipulators can be found http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4283-all-about-textures/

No doubt Fallout 4 has a fair few more texture tricks up its sleeve since then that we all need to catch up on. I think specular maps are heavily used in this game, and there are tricks with the texture channels to be learned too from brief conversations I have seen

Oh and keep an eye on http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1762/? - Its beta at the moment but proving very useful already

I used Skyrim Performance Monitor extensively while developing Vanilla Reduced Textures, just to see the effect my changes overall were having with the game. Invaluable tool for texture modders.

Edit : PS you will not be having any competition from me, I have no need to do anything with this games excellent textures, my new machine can handle them on Ultra ( uses up to 2.6gb of my 3gb VRAM ), so I will not be doing any optimisation mods for this game. All I want is official patches solving game engine bugs, and unofficial patches for any genuine model / texture / script glitches, so will be spending my time on this game helping http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/forum/350-unofficial-fallout-4-patches/ team where I can.

» Mon Jan 11, 2016 8:04 am

I have a 1GB AMD 8600M HD graphics card and a 2.4GHz 3110M cpu. While I don't mind loading times, it's the texture-related lag in cities that completely kills my gameplay experience. I literally have to wait 30-50 seconds for the game to resume after switching view by 90 degrees, and this is AFTER I installed both TOP and Wasteland512 textures (which noticeably helped).

I'm relatively certain that if I manage to replicate this: pkwot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/90-compressed-textures.html (yes, from 25% down to 1.5%), then this lag will disappear.

I know this isn't a performance issue, because I regularly get 30-60 frames per second in interior spaces.

Currently, I'm not getting any progress.

Paint.NET is the only program which correctly resizes textures, but it only works on a file-per-file basis. MIR Multiple Image Resizer is fast, but only reads .dds files, and cannot save the resized images in .dds format. XnView reads and writes .dds, and has the option to output resized images in 'original format', but here's an example of its work:

Wasteland512 texture for Airport Runway (342kB): mediafire.com/download/3okphqe7fpm5ftx/AirportJetway01_d.DDS

10% resized texture by XnView (4kB): mediafire.com/download/yfgd6n8znw3h0ne/AirportJetway01_d%282%29.DDS

You'll see that the lower and right border or the resized texture are a mess. Lower border has a transparent band, right border has a 'zebra' texture of duplicate and trasparent bands, according to how the file is visualized in paint.NET.

I've been trying to enter into contact with authors of both Texture Optimization Project and Wasteland512 to learn about their own texture resizing methods, but I have been unsuccessful so far.

PS: I'm not allowed to post links (?).