I used this tool several years ago on Oblivion's vanilla textures, then re-compressed them into a BSA and replaced my "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.BSA". I thought "It's smaller now, so that's probably good" und didn't really notice any issues with the textures. However, I've recently started playing again and used the same BSA from back then, and now I realized that there is in fact a small problem.
There are a number of normal maps in Oblivion that are just blank (a blueish color that results in a perfectly "smooth" surface with no bumps) and only 8x8 pixels in size. Mostly, these are the normal maps for distant objects (which can't use normal maps very well, as they create a "shimmering" effect) like town walls. DDSOpt automatically resizes them to only 1x1 pixels, probably because no information is lost, but they are no longer DXT1 but A8R8G8B8 uncompressed, which is actually a few bytes smaller than DXT1. However, this means that there is now an 8bit Alpha channel that wasn't there before, and Oblivion uses the alpha channel for glossiness - but if the texture is DXT1 it is treated as if the alpha channel was completely black (=transparent), that is, no glossiness. This is not a problem for distant objects, apparently they can't use this information. However, the low poly houses inside the town walls that you can see in the main game world use the same models and textures as the distant ones, including the normal maps. That means that they will appear "glossy", which basically means that their lighting looks a bit off, they are always too bright or too dark. It is especially noticeable during foggy wheather, if the player is in an elevated position near the town walls. it looks as if the houses are not affected by the fog at all.
I haven't been able to find an easy solution for this, besides manually replacing these textures. There appear to be a few more objects that use normal maps like this that are not distant objects, but they probably don't cause any noticeable issues, not like the houses, anyway.
This was really driving me crazy for a while as I couldn't find the cause of the problem. There is probably no real reason to use this on Oblivion's vanilla textures in 2021, anyway, especially not with texture mods like Oblivion Upscaled Textures that replace most vanilla textures (but NOT these, since upscaling them would not make any sense).
I got into that too. But luckily that the folder which is applied is very small and i read the log that some file change from hundred of kb to 1kb. That seems strange so open it, turn out that is alpha channel being change to DTX1 or something i didn't remember, but the alpha channel size now is 1x1. Looks like we need to take a look about folder's contents and see any dds file that should not be change.
I'll also throw this out there, that after I optimized Oblivion - Misc.bsa my construction kit started to crash on launch, claiming that it couldn't find CTL. Admin didn't fix it, unlike most of the other folk with CS, CTL errors. It started working again after swapping back in the original bsa, and I haven't bothered investigating further. Oblivion itself seemed to run just fine, although around that time I started to notice some strange OBSE errors.
This utility is used for DDS files which is for optimizing textures thus increase in performance. Misc.bsa contains xml file and icon for menu layout used in game. Xml files which are code line for positioning menu and icon on menu in-game. You should have never touched Misc.bsa for whatsoever reason, since mod that change menu like UI mod will come with it's own xml file.
Any chance there will be a version compiled working on Windows XP? Still on old stuff here and no budget in sight for new computer and Windows 7 so naturally interested in optimizing performance for my old one. :-)
Thank you for this awesome utility (and NifOpt in that regard), always happy to see another tool that automates things.
I do have one question though. Is there an option to force not to create mip-maps when compressing an uncompressed texture if the texture doesn't have any (or, in that regard, delete mip-maps if it does)? I have fiddled with the related options (I believe those are in the Behave submenu), but nonetheless they were still created in the resulting texture. I'm asking because there are DXT-compressed textures in Oblivion that don't have mip-maps, such as loading screens. If there is no way in the current version to accomplish what I just described, could it be, by any chance, included in future versions?
I'm also curious about the feasibility of using this tool via command line. Having taken a glimpse at the source code, there's a usage string describing quite a few options that could be used in CLI, so I went ahead and tried some of them (-verbose, -optimizetexts and -compressimages among others). In my case, however, the compression-related options don't seem to have any effect, as the output directory/bsa still contains uncompressed textures. Likewise, with the -verbose option, there were no accompanying messages. Hence I'd like to know if this tool is fully usable via CLI with all of its options. Edit: I should also mention that I ran cmd with admin rights.
Running as admin did it, thanks. I'm a little puzzled as to how it could process loose files correctly, even create a BSA with the right structure, but I can't argue with success.
Thanks for the help! Now to optimize some files...
I'm having some trouble running DDSopt x64 0.7.3 on my Oblivion Textures bsa, wherein every file in the output BSA is of 0 bytes.
I don't think that I've changed any settings, so my procedure was roughly to create an "in" folder for good housekeeping, an out folder, drop "Oblivion Textures - Compressed.bsa" into the in folder, open DDSopt x64, and click "Process". It takes about an hour to run, creates a mammoth log file, and the resultant bsa has files in all the right places, but the files themselves have no content.
Finally, for reference, if I have DDSopt run on any texture files not in a bsa, it handles those just fine.
My apologies if I'm doing anything silly, but any help would be appreciated.
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There are a number of normal maps in Oblivion that are just blank (a blueish color that results in a perfectly "smooth" surface with no bumps) and only 8x8 pixels in size. Mostly, these are the normal maps for distant objects (which can't use normal maps very well, as they create a "shimmering" effect) like town walls. DDSOpt automatically resizes them to only 1x1 pixels, probably because no information is lost, but they are no longer DXT1 but A8R8G8B8 uncompressed, which is actually a few bytes smaller than DXT1. However, this means that there is now an 8bit Alpha channel that wasn't there before, and Oblivion uses the alpha channel for glossiness - but if the texture is DXT1 it is treated as if the alpha channel was completely black (=transparent), that is, no glossiness. This is not a problem for distant objects, apparently they can't use this information. However, the low poly houses inside the town walls that you can see in the main game world use the same models and textures as the distant ones, including the normal maps. That means that they will appear "glossy", which basically means that their lighting looks a bit off, they are always too bright or too dark. It is especially noticeable during foggy wheather, if the player is in an elevated position near the town walls. it looks as if the houses are not affected by the fog at all.
I haven't been able to find an easy solution for this, besides manually replacing these textures. There appear to be a few more objects that use normal maps like this that are not distant objects, but they probably don't cause any noticeable issues, not like the houses, anyway.
This was really driving me crazy for a while as I couldn't find the cause of the problem. There is probably no real reason to use this on Oblivion's vanilla textures in 2021, anyway, especially not with texture mods like Oblivion Upscaled Textures that replace most vanilla textures (but NOT these, since upscaling them would not make any sense).
Anyhow, thanks again for the great utility.
Still on old stuff here and no budget in sight for new computer and Windows 7 so naturally interested in optimizing performance for my old one. :-)
I do have one question though. Is there an option to force not to create mip-maps when compressing an uncompressed texture if the texture doesn't have any (or, in that regard, delete mip-maps if it does)? I have fiddled with the related options (I believe those are in the Behave submenu), but nonetheless they were still created in the resulting texture. I'm asking because there are DXT-compressed textures in Oblivion that don't have mip-maps, such as loading screens. If there is no way in the current version to accomplish what I just described, could it be, by any chance, included in future versions?
I'm also curious about the feasibility of using this tool via command line. Having taken a glimpse at the source code, there's a usage string describing quite a few options that could be used in CLI, so I went ahead and tried some of them (-verbose, -optimizetexts and -compressimages among others). In my case, however, the compression-related options don't seem to have any effect, as the output directory/bsa still contains uncompressed textures. Likewise, with the -verbose option, there were no accompanying messages. Hence I'd like to know if this tool is fully usable via CLI with all of its options. Edit: I should also mention that I ran cmd with admin rights.
Thanks for the help! Now to optimize some files...
I don't think that I've changed any settings, so my procedure was roughly to create an "in" folder for good housekeeping, an out folder, drop "Oblivion Textures - Compressed.bsa" into the in folder, open DDSopt x64, and click "Process". It takes about an hour to run, creates a mammoth log file, and the resultant bsa has files in all the right places, but the files themselves have no content.
Finally, for reference, if I have DDSopt run on any texture files not in a bsa, it handles those just fine.
My apologies if I'm doing anything silly, but any help would be appreciated.
Thanks for the wonderful tool!