For the first time ever I have a rock-solid stable game, and it's entirely thanks to Cathedral.
It's embarrassing that I never even tried this tool until now. I glanced at this and other "optimizers" in the past, but didn't see the point. If I'm going to all the effort of downloading gigabytes of HD textures to improve the aesthetics of my game, I'm not then going to undo all of that by downsizing the textures. It seemed counterproductive.
But that isn't the real point of Cathedral, at least it's not its most useful function. Where it really shines is that it actually repairs malformed assets, which it seems are the real cause of most CTDs and general instability.
I hadn't even considered that possibility.
Yesterday I made a test copy of my Skyrim folder, then ran CAO on the data directory (yes I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's just a copy). I selected every option except BSAs, and just for the hell of it I reduced the textures down to 512x512.
The results are breathtaking.
The original folder was 75.4 GB. The optimized copy is 44.9 GB, basically half the size.
I launched the game, expecting to find missing meshes and textures, but everything was there and looked perfect. Better yet, I barely noticed any difference in texture quality, which confirmed to me that 8K, 4K and even 2K are mostly a placebo. It's only when I went eyeball to ground zero that I could actually see the difference, and really, how often do you actually do that in game?
Yes, 512 is a bit too low, it looks slightly grainy and washed out, so next time around I'll be choosing 1K, but anything more than that is pointless, IMHO.
But that's not the best part.
I push things pretty hard in my load order, installing a large number of known stability-breaking mods, such as Immersive Citizens, the "Good Guy" series, and a tonne of "overhauls" that cause all sorts of conflicts. I also use a number of Oldrim mods that may or may not have been correctly ported, and mods that have either been abandoned or even deleted from the Nexus, and with each passing day become more and more incompatible.
I manage the patches as best I can, and go out of my way to correct problems with Creation Kit, SSEedit, zEdit, Wrye Bash and so on, but ultimately I have to accept that what I'm doing will inevitably cause instability, so I live with it.
I never seriously expected CAO to fix that, but incredibly, it has.
Yesterday I played Skyrim for 8 hours straight without even a single glitch. All the stutters have gone. No CTDs, no freezes, no lock-ups. Rock solid. My FPS hasn't improved at all, but that's because the GPU is bottlenecked by slower components, such as the CPU and RAM (I have a mostly potato-ish PC with a good GPU).
I'm not saying it fixed everything, I'm sure there's still plenty of broken quests due to conflicts, but in terms of simply running the game without crashing, CAO has achieved the impossible.
This is for this kind of comments that I am still modding (and also because I like it, of course :p) I really appreciate this write-up. I have a feeling CAO cannot be that good, but I'm glad if it is for you Thanks for your feedback.
User may pay attention to the Whitelist made by Gka1 what describes file types and how they get compressed (or not) if option "allow compression". This Whitelist is the result of extended testing and research made during past months. https://pastebin.com/JTCDDpqx
CAO 64 does not sort out/mark files with extention .txt in /meshes/, so run Windows search for .txt and check first if there are some .txt files that should not alive but need to get deleted.
Also, it is strongly recommended to use "Create dummy plugins" if checkmarked "allow compression" and more than 2 BSAs get created. More than 2 BSAs for same esp/esm may cause bad loaded files. Any dummy need to have set a dependency to the original esp/esm in header! (use SSEdit). CAP 64 does create dummies with ESL-Flag. If original esp/esm has ESM-Flag, add also ESM-Flag for the dummies.
CAO 64 will not pack in a BSA /music/*.wav. Wav for music is LE-Format and needs to get converted to .xwm manually. SSE requires .xwm for /music/
Remember, always make a backup of your mods! While CAO is mostly stable, any piece of software can have its quirks.
RECOMMENDATION
The issue described below cannot be reliably confirmed at this time, but due to the one aspect of the test I wasn't able to repeat, the following steps may help you avoid a similar experience.
If you intend on optimizing your meshes/textures, do so in small batches (such as in single mod mode in their own mod folders), so that if something goes wrong it's easier to correct the issue.
If you need to do a large asset merge, commonly seen with heavily modded games (especially in FO4 due to the much lower count threshold for archives), keep an eye on what does and doesn't get packed.
If you see any .caobad files after processing or packing assets, please report this to us ASAP. Whatever detail you can provide about what you did prior to noticing these files is extremely helpful.
Of course, if you want to help us test, we'd greatly appreciate it!
POTENTIAL ISSUE
Spoiler:
Show
Recently, using v5.3.13, I experienced some textures, cubemaps specifically, becoming corrupted during processing. The details of my experience were the following:
When process completed, all cubemaps scattered through various folders were converted to .caobad files. When changed back to DDS, these are 128x128 sized rainbow pixel images.
Following a large battery of tests, however, trying every combination of CAO settings I could think of, I couldn't repeat the issue, which confounds me. The only detail I couldn't replicate was the sheer size of the work that CAO had to perform. Recompiling original copies of all of those mods is going to take some time, and I wanted to get this notice out quickly. Because I can't replicate the issue, I also can't say for certain what triggered it, or even if it's limited to FO4 mode.
Hi. Thanks a lot for this tool. I've used VRAMr for the mod list I installed on my ROG Ally, and while it allowed me to play a portable modded Skyrim, the file size issue has come to bite my poor 512gb.So, I'd love to use CAO to basically optimize and reduce textures. I guess I'd be okay with 512 texture size. So a couple of noob questiona:Do I only select Meshes: fully optimizeTextures: compress and downscale 4x?Has anyone used this before on an ally? Any particular considerations to be taken before doing the several mod work? (I don't think it'd be posible to individually run the tool on all those mods one by one)Thank you very much in advance.
I am here once again to praise this mod after it saved me a headache for like the fifth or who knows how many times since I got it. Enjoying my heavily modded Skyrim, happy thinking that I finally had a stable LO, when suddenly my game freezes for no reason. Restarted the game, loaded most recent save, and it crashes on load. Crash logger points out NPCs from mods (specifically Lynx from Animallica). Right away I use this mod to Fully Optimize the meshes from the problematic mod. Then I try to load the save again, and like a miracle I can load the save normally! Seriously, no other mod has saved me as consistently as this one. I wish every modder used this mod to optimize the meshes in their mods before uploading to Nexus. I know for a fact I had to do it myself with multiple enemy mods I have installed over the years. Not to mention how much I use it to compress mods with ridiculously large textures. No other mod in this website deserves an endorsement as much as this one, just for how often it makes other mods work as they should. lol
best mod ever. skyrim modding community is suffering from oversized textures that you end up with 120gb of skyrim on heavy modlists(even when choosing performance options) that even 6gb of vram isn't enough but this mod to the rescue, hell yes best mod ever created. p.s: I managed to reduce 120gb skyrim to 85gb using 2x downsampling in most cases and freeing vram and gained fps in demanding locations and combat in the process, barely noticing visual loss on 23inch 1080p monitor
I'm running the CAO program but no changes are being made to my files. The program runs from 0-100% completion, and produces a log of all the files it "processed", but the files themselves, as they appear in the file explorer, remain unchanged afterwards. I've tried to process meshes/textures under the TES5 and SE profiles. Yes, I've selected process meshes/textures + necessary optimizations under their respective tabs in the interface. Yes, the files I try to process are unpacked. No, I don't have "dry run" accidentally selected. The Nifoptimizer program also doesn't seem to change my meshes after processing them. I want to use CAO as a means of backporting SE mods to LE. The only program that actually works for me in converting SE mod files is XnViewMP, as this program can convert bc7 texture files to bc3, but that still leaves me with unconverted mesh files. I've tried older versions of CAO, as well, to no avail. My C++ is up-to-date.
Any help from the CAO author or community would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!
So I had this same problem. I had Skyrim ..\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\Tools\CAO CAO.exe was there. It would "run" but not process any files. When I moved it out of that location into a folder on my desktop and used the latest version, it started working.
hi, wondering what the ideal process and settings options to tick for fixing up facegen, im about to output my facegen data and was referred to run it through CAO.
Making a comment to report that I seem to have run into the same issue as the one described at the bottom of the third pinned comment. Rainbow grids and all.
I was also using FO4 mode and, (iirc) the same settings. I was also trying to use "several mods" mode on my entire MO2 mod folder, which was not mentioned in the pinned comment, however.
If I'm reading that comment correctly, running CAO again is unlikely to produce the same result again? They did say they couldn't reproduce it. Has anyone else had any luck with optimizing their entire mod folder at once?
Give Feedback
2765 comments
To report a bug or ask for a feature, please use GitLab. Always enable debug log and post the log.
Do not process the Skyrim data folder.
Always make a backup of your mods.
Note: I do not always answer to comments. But be sure I read all of them
It's embarrassing that I never even tried this tool until now. I glanced at this and other "optimizers" in the past, but didn't see the point. If I'm going to all the effort of downloading gigabytes of HD textures to improve the aesthetics of my game, I'm not then going to undo all of that by downsizing the textures. It seemed counterproductive.
But that isn't the real point of Cathedral, at least it's not its most useful function. Where it really shines is that it actually repairs malformed assets, which it seems are the real cause of most CTDs and general instability.
I hadn't even considered that possibility.
Yesterday I made a test copy of my Skyrim folder, then ran CAO on the data directory (yes I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's just a copy). I selected every option except BSAs, and just for the hell of it I reduced the textures down to 512x512.
The results are breathtaking.
The original folder was 75.4 GB. The optimized copy is 44.9 GB, basically half the size.
I launched the game, expecting to find missing meshes and textures, but everything was there and looked perfect. Better yet, I barely noticed any difference in texture quality, which confirmed to me that 8K, 4K and even 2K are mostly a placebo. It's only when I went eyeball to ground zero that I could actually see the difference, and really, how often do you actually do that in game?
Yes, 512 is a bit too low, it looks slightly grainy and washed out, so next time around I'll be choosing 1K, but anything more than that is pointless, IMHO.
But that's not the best part.
I push things pretty hard in my load order, installing a large number of known stability-breaking mods, such as Immersive Citizens, the "Good Guy" series, and a tonne of "overhauls" that cause all sorts of conflicts. I also use a number of Oldrim mods that may or may not have been correctly ported, and mods that have either been abandoned or even deleted from the Nexus, and with each passing day become more and more incompatible.
I manage the patches as best I can, and go out of my way to correct problems with Creation Kit, SSEedit, zEdit, Wrye Bash and so on, but ultimately I have to accept that what I'm doing will inevitably cause instability, so I live with it.
I never seriously expected CAO to fix that, but incredibly, it has.
Yesterday I played Skyrim for 8 hours straight without even a single glitch. All the stutters have gone. No CTDs, no freezes, no lock-ups. Rock solid. My FPS hasn't improved at all, but that's because the GPU is bottlenecked by slower components, such as the CPU and RAM (I have a mostly potato-ish PC with a good GPU).
I'm not saying it fixed everything, I'm sure there's still plenty of broken quests due to conflicts, but in terms of simply running the game without crashing, CAO has achieved the impossible.
Thank you.
I really appreciate this write-up. I have a feeling CAO cannot be that good, but I'm glad if it is for you
Thanks for your feedback.
https://pastebin.com/JTCDDpqx
CAO 64 does not sort out/mark files with extention .txt in /meshes/, so run Windows search for .txt and check first if there are some .txt files that should not alive but need to get deleted.
Also, it is strongly recommended to use "Create dummy plugins" if checkmarked "allow compression" and more than 2 BSAs get created. More than 2 BSAs for same esp/esm may cause bad loaded files. Any dummy need to have set a dependency to the original esp/esm in header! (use SSEdit). CAP 64 does create dummies with ESL-Flag. If original esp/esm has ESM-Flag, add also ESM-Flag for the dummies.
CAO 64 will not pack in a BSA /music/*.wav. Wav for music is LE-Format and needs to get converted to .xwm manually. SSE requires .xwm for /music/
Edit: I just now published a very detailled 23 page PDF- manual How to convert and optimize a mod using CAO
Edit 2: A Word to BSAs - compressed or uncompressed
RECOMMENDATION
The issue described below cannot be reliably confirmed at this time, but due to the one aspect of the test I wasn't able to repeat, the following steps may help you avoid a similar experience.
Of course, if you want to help us test, we'd greatly appreciate it!
POTENTIAL ISSUE
Following a large battery of tests, however, trying every combination of CAO settings I could think of, I couldn't repeat the issue, which confounds me. The only detail I couldn't replicate was the sheer size of the work that CAO had to perform. Recompiling original copies of all of those mods is going to take some time, and I wanted to get this notice out quickly. Because I can't replicate the issue, I also can't say for certain what triggered it, or even if it's limited to FO4 mode.
Enjoying my heavily modded Skyrim, happy thinking that I finally had a stable LO, when suddenly my game freezes for no reason. Restarted the game, loaded most recent save, and it crashes on load. Crash logger points out NPCs from mods (specifically Lynx from Animallica). Right away I use this mod to Fully Optimize the meshes from the problematic mod. Then I try to load the save again, and like a miracle I can load the save normally!
Seriously, no other mod has saved me as consistently as this one. I wish every modder used this mod to optimize the meshes in their mods before uploading to Nexus. I know for a fact I had to do it myself with multiple enemy mods I have installed over the years. Not to mention how much I use it to compress mods with ridiculously large textures.
No other mod in this website deserves an endorsement as much as this one, just for how often it makes other mods work as they should. lol
skyrim modding community is suffering from oversized textures that you end up with 120gb of skyrim on heavy modlists(even when choosing performance options) that even 6gb of vram isn't enough but this mod to the rescue, hell yes best mod ever created.
p.s: I managed to reduce 120gb skyrim to 85gb using 2x downsampling in most cases and freeing vram and gained fps in demanding locations and combat in the process, barely noticing visual loss on 23inch 1080p monitor
Any help from the CAO author or community would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!
When I moved it out of that location into a folder on my desktop and used the latest version, it started working.
I was also using FO4 mode and, (iirc) the same settings. I was also trying to use "several mods" mode on my entire MO2 mod folder, which was not mentioned in the pinned comment, however.
If I'm reading that comment correctly, running CAO again is unlikely to produce the same result again? They did say they couldn't reproduce it. Has anyone else had any luck with optimizing their entire mod folder at once?