TES Skyrim SE

[Guzio]

It's complicated in Skyrim. I've changed the environment map, diffuse and nornmal map and a few other parameters, like the specular value and color, for huge amount of nifs. The metal color is defined now by the environment map color, not by diffuse map (something like a very primitive PBR metal material).
For a few meshes I've changed also the UV mapping. So this modification is compatible with nothing and looks good only with ENB ;D
Another problem is that, in the SE version, the environment mapping, for example for roofs, works only at a very short distance, it's probably caused by aggressive LOD switching.

[Aiju]

I try to make the light more immersive,and the old Skyrim Flora Overhaul Summer Edition is still suitable.

[Pfuscher]

So we all got bsa and loose files.

Does Skyrim load the bsa first and then the loose files?
If I don't want to pack my 2000textures all over the place in a bsa daily, because of daily modding.
Should I extract the bsa texture files and then delete the bsa files?
So my Skyrim doesn't load the bsa and then the loose files.
Do I need to change the .ini for that?

Please share your knowledge.

[riki199973]

I'm pretty sure the loose files are loaded after since for BSA armor mods the retextures are in loose files.
I have installed the ESO nord armor from the nexus :https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecial ... /mods/6701
and i also installed the rustic retexture : https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69307 (textures only, meshes need changes).

The main mod is with a BSA file but i still get the retexture in game, it shows the loose files are loaded after and overwrite the BSA.

[mindflux]

Yes, loose files always take priority. For modding purposes I think it makes sense to extract all BSA files and just load everything loose, but it definitely increases the startup time.

[nova_stark]

Yes, loose files always take priority. For modding purposes I think it makes sense to extract all BSA files and just load everything loose, but it definitely increases the startup time.

It might just be me and/or my computer, but I do feel like having packed files reduces both load times and texture pop-in. Particularly in Fallout 4. I don't know if there is any evidence to back this up though. Given that we now can do ESL-flagged ESPs, I feel like it makes more sense to pack them and use the ESP load order to decide what should override what. If you want to get super specific about which texture loads, then extract those individual textures and let them load loose.

[Pfuscher]

Yes, loose files always take priority. For modding purposes I think it makes sense to extract all BSA files and just load everything loose, but it definitely increases the startup time.

It might just be me and/or my computer, but I do feel like having packed files reduces both load times and texture pop-in. Particularly in Fallout 4. I don't know if there is any evidence to back this up though. Given that we now can do ESL-flagged ESPs, I feel like it makes more sense to pack them and use the ESP load order to decide what should override what. If you want to get super specific about which texture loads, then extract those individual textures and let them load loose.

Fallout 4 has a newer and better bsa tech. It improves loading a lot. SSE has a better one than LE if I'm correctly informed.
F4 > SE > LE

My thought was that it is better to load
Only loose
instead of
BSA and then loose anyway
Best would be BSA only, but then I would have to pack my stuff daily. Not acceptable. Maybe one day.

How to improve the main menu fog? It looks like it's depandant on a low res dxt5 compressed gradient? Or what file is it? It looks so terrible.

[Guzio]

Perhaps:

meshes\interface\intmenufogparticles.nif

textures\effects\FXSteamThinAnim.dds
textures\effects\gradients\GradSteamThin.dds

Aiju -- Great looking Skyrim. More screen please

[ENBSeries]

That shader having dependent read of gradient twice for color and alpha channels. When i force color as constant, it's obvious that problem comes from alpha channel, but not sure alpha of particle texture or alpha of gradient, cause both looks ugly and applying dithering to any of them give the same result - almost no improvement about reducing artifacts (randomizing input coordinates of particle itself have much better result, but it's very bad idea). From my side via math this can't be improved.
Here is visualizations of 2d projected textures, gamma is wrong and they are tiled on the screen, but hope you can find pictures by browsing them.
Particle itself, color channels:



Gradient, color channels:



Gradient, alpha channel:

[Pfuscher]

Yes, those are the ones Guzio found.

textures\effects\FXSteamThinAnim.dds
textures\effects\gradients\GradSteamThin.dds

Tried blurring both diffuse and alpha in the gradient and effect texture. Saved as uncompressed 32bit and thought it would produce smoother transitions.
But it doesn't get any better. Seems like something on the engine side or maybe a higher resolution would help.

Then I tried giving the uv map 4 times the size, still no difference.

Why does the fog before the menu appears, look different than the fog when the menu appears? Or is that the enb kicking in and making it more noticeable via being brighter in my case?

Tried a 8192x8192 fxsteamthinanim, but no improvement
Tried a 256x2048 texture, as the uv map only uses 1/8 of the texture anyway, that gave me super big polygonal fog. at least this time something happened

My guess would be changing the mesh, would be the easiest thing to get a better result.