Hello,

I've recently tried to optimize my textures and meshes with Ordenador. The concept behind it is very neat, but for me it is unusable. I have approx 8k textures in my "Textures" folder. They all compress, but when comes to Meshes, at some point I got http://zapodaj.net/ea7022be22c7.jpg.html error. And from what I understand, when it optimizes the meshes, it also corrects the pathes for compressed textures (eg. Textures\leaf.bmp -> Textures\leaf.dds). Does anyone used this utillity with any luck? Here's my settings in it:

http://zapodaj.net/737682b37d72.jpg.html

Thanks for any help

A premise: I'm using the 5.0.3 version at present.
You should try and find crashing texture(s)/mesh(es) and temporarily move them.
Try examining the Ordenador.log that should be present in same directory as Ordenador.exe and temporarily move to a temp folder last files processed before the crash.
Also, you can just run the program on textures folder without changing the .nif, the game will automatically load .dds before .bmp or .tga so changing texture.bmp to textures\texture.dds inside .nif is not essential.

[EDIT]OK, just installed last 0.5.0.4 version, I've noticed it makes no more unnecessary changes from texture.dds to Textures\texture.dds when texture is in standard Data Files\textures folder :foodndrink:

I will need more time to test the new Fix .esp .esm feature.

[EDIT2] ok, I too have experienced a crash, and it is difficult to find the problem because the log is not updated enough.
I think a way would be looking in the log for last Data Files\meshes\subdirectory scanned correctly and choose as plugin/start directories the remainining Data Files\meshes\subdirectories, one each time, until you find where is the problem.
Not ideal, but still worth the effort IMHO.

Another possible problem. I am not sure MGE can load automatically .dds instead of .tga, so it is better to make a backup copy of/reinstall Data Files\Textures\MGE (at least, I have not found yet a way to automatically exclude that directory from scanning)

Personally I turn off any changes to meshes because I consider that part of the program to be incomplete.

Hi, while we are here, can I ask the expert if changing to .dds things inside Textures\MGE can effectively cause problems? I think the possibility to set a list of paths to skip scanning would be a good addon to Ordenador?

It will cause problems with the shaders that require those textures. Noise or functional textures should be uncompressed, which DDS supports, but auto compression is a bad idea.

Ok, thanks, so for nowI will backup/restore the Data Files\Textures\MGE\ folder until Ordenador can skip that dir

woops! I feel stupid now. I think the Ordenador window header shows a possible culprit in your screenshot
meshes\f\terrain_rocks_ai_01.nif
(by the way, my crash was probably due to meshes\nif_tx_local.exe)

@abot

Yeah, this may be the issue, but then I would need to check circa 2000 meshes (sic!) for this problem. I don't think if the effect is worth the time needed to achieve this. Maybe I just turn of all the options that alters meshes, like Hrnchamnd said.
But what about compressed textures? I could check if MW and MGE can read dds if tga's or other extensions is not avaible.

I've had good luck with Ordenador so far.

However, I only run it on individual mod folders before packing up a Wrye Mash installer (bain) archive for eventual installation into the game. Also, I always turn off the Plugins and Meshes options, which in turn causes the "remove duplicate textures" feature to be shut off. I got too many crashes with meshes and the benefit there is negligible.

I ran Ordenador on about 200 mods and I only ran into a few problems so far:

1. With Dark UI redux, it causes a few UI elements to turn bright white. I replaced 3 original textures to fix the problem. I think the problem here is that some of the resulting textures are very strange sizes (e.g. 512x2).
2. With Vurt's Ascadian Isles mod, the "tx_sun_gray.dds" or something became a totally wrong image and caused obvious visual problems. I just replaced it with the original. The original happens to be a 512x512 opaque black image IIRC.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Utilities.Detail&id=76 - Developed in MS VB 2010 express
=====================================
Hello everyone. I who work out the Ordenador.
Thank all for several tips. Critiques and suggestions are very welcome.
I love the English language but have a little difficulty there. The maximum that I understand, I do to improve the Ordenador.

will implement in next update (0.5e or 0.5.0.5):
1) editable list of folders to be ignored/skip (preedited with "textures\mge\*").
2) option to convert to DXT1a, DXT3 or DXT5. (DXT1a not be standard)
3) optional verify and make mips in all textures. (currently is done only in the converted)
4) when the image is 2 pixels wide: skip or convert for DDS_RGB (ex: UI menu_borders in vanilla BSA ) and not for DDS_DXT.
5) verify ESP for missing icons (not yet doing this, but it checks that music and voice are missing)
6) for now I'll disable "optimize meshes" for not being good yet (or leave only a minimal and safe option to optimize)
n) ... others.

The images are anolyzed internally, but the compression is performed by NVCompress.exe that has an awesome algorithm compression for DDS. Still not prevent failures caused by it to appear. But that does not stop the continuous process of Ordenador.
The meshes are parsed internally. In the event that any is crashing the program as the reason for this topic, I have to parse the file in question to see why that might be a possible parameter wrong or unknown character. (here in case terrain_rocks_ai_01.nif)
I'll be watching this.

Thanks AdP, this is becoming really a great tool!

I'm working on a simple version of this for integration with MGE, so I have found:

- There are people who made a lot of large textures with only 3-5 top mip levels, which makes them sparkle in the distance.
- People have often made mips without sRGB correction. You can't assume existing mips are done properly.
- DXT1a is a bad format in general. It doesn't mip properly; the mip downscale filter makes fractional alphas but the format can't handle that, and 2x2 blocks with alpha lose one of the 4 colours for alpha, making bad colour fringes for some textures.

Ok, if I understand correctly most of these could be redone properly using ordenador/your simpler tool, right?
and this is the difficult to always solve problem, because you would need the original uncompressed textures, right?
Frankly, with my current setup, I fail to notice such difference using DX3/5 vs DXT1a, but maybe my graphic card/playing setup is not good enough .

What I really notice is a problem with some trees changing from MGE to MGE XE I think due to different way of handling transparency. I have noticed this with some of Vurt's trees and Ayse's trees used in Silgrad Tower, they are blocky from distance.
Could fixing these meshes be automated some way (changing the alphaproperty?) with the same tool used for generating mipmaps?

Having just stumbled on this (love this community)... I downloaded and gave it a test drive. Love it. The ability to auto organize textures makes my OCD side ecstatic. It is a little techy though...so maybe just a clearer readme. Some of us less compression/mesh savy folk might not know what all the options do (or why we should use them). Hopefully you keep working on this.