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Redundant fixes


alt3rn1ty

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This topic is for anyone who finds anything which has been transferred from USKP / USLEEP into the new USSEP, which is fixing something no longer required to be fixed.

 

I am going to look at Textures, which have obviously had many Hi Res versions imported into the game from what used to be the Hi Res DLCs for Skyrim original, replacing the low res originals, and they may well have worked on more than just including those.

 

But the topic is not limited to just textures, once that job is done there are other resources being used as fixes in USSEP which may no longer be necessary .. Any help from community experts in any given field would be most appreciated to log your progress below which may cause differences which need recording in the Unofficial Patch Projects changelogs.

 

 

For  a kick off ..

 

 

A couple of textures originally fixed by lnky, are no longer needed for Skyrim SE

 

Textures \ architecture \ solitude \ smanhole

Textures \ landscape \ roads \ roaddetails

 

They originally had an obvious black edge which increased in width the further away from it you were in Skyrim original

 

The problem is no longer evident in Skyrim SE - Original problem files were DXT1, lnky's fixed version were DXT3 .. Bethesda have chosen to use DXT5 on the new ones ..

 

gallery_1652_58_154679.jpg

 

gallery_1652_58_74837.jpg

 

gallery_1652_58_175300.jpg

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Sweet. I'll pull those out for 4.0.1 as well. I wonder how many others we've fixed need to be looked at now.

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Well you definitely need these and hopefully in the higher res versions for archery target and hagravenveins ( stonequarry is ok at 1024 ) :)

 

I am going through the rest of the textures side-by-side to see if I can determine what is not needed anymore ..

 

.. Are there any notes with clues somewhere for each of them as to what the purpose of their edits were originally ?

 

Disregard the last question .. I know its all in among the mountainous changelog

( For those that gave explanations anyway )

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I just saw the archery texture. It's still in the USSEP archive. How could that not be working?

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Ehm, its working fine, its just still old Skyrim vanilla sized 512x512

 

With everything going hi res including the Hi Res DLC in Special Edition, the better resolution 1024 Dirty version of the archery target looks slightly better and fits the general resolution choices made by bethesda throughout the rest of the games textures .. As does the 2k Hagravenveins texture compaired with the 1k version included in USLEEP .. Which I explained in the other topic

 

Edit : The screenshots in that topic are showing what vanilla Skyrim SE is using, which is just as bad as old low res Skyrim

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Found another to pull out of USSEP :

 

Textures \ architecture \ windhelm \ whoutwall ( both diffuse and normal textures )

 

These were a fix in USKP 1.2.2, to correct a seam

 

 

In the following screenshot, the diffuse texture on the left is the one currently in USSEP

 

The one on the right is the newer texture in Skyrim SE

 

 

USSEP textures = 512x512 - These textures are for the big outer wall of windhelm

 

Skyrim SE textures = 2048x2048

 

And the latter shows no sign of any seams that I can see, looking at it zoomed in or looking at it in game walking around windhelm

 

gallery_1652_58_287508.jpg

 

 

imho its been fixed by Bethesda, and is now a much higher resolution texture for the area it covers in game

 

Texture format remains the same, both the USSEP version and Skyrim SE are DXT1 diffuse, and DXT5 normals

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And another one ..

 

Same goes for this texture as the previous whoutwall

 

The texture fixed in USKP 1.2.3 - wrdragontile01.dds

 

 

The one currently in USSEP is on the left .. 512x512

 

The one from Skyrim SE is on the right .. 2048x2048

 

 

The original fix in USKP was for a "visible line through it"

 

No longer evident zooming into the new texture, nor in game 

 

gallery_1652_58_299204.jpg

 

gallery_1652_58_233344.jpg

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Possibly another pull .. ( I know I was going to bed but this one grabbed me as a one last one before sleep ... I'm fairly getting through a lot of them and the only ones to pull are the ones mentioned so far - I know of one more at the moment but that needs to wait a bit until I find it in the changelog for reference )

 

 

Arthmoor, or maybe call on Hana to have a look at this one for a good second opinion :

 

USKP 2.0.1 had the following fix

 

  • Dragonbone greatswords had a seam visible in the 1st person view. (meshes\dlc01\weapons\dragonbone\greatsword.nif, textures\dlc01\weapons\dragonbone\claymore2.dds, textures\dlc01\weapons\dragonbone\claymore2_m.dds, textures\dlc01\weapons\dragonbone\claymore2_n.dds) (Bug #13869)

 

Skyrim SE has what I believe are newer textures, and at a higher res

 

In the following screenshot, USSEP texture on the left = 1024, Skyrim SE texture on the right = 2048

 

There does not seem to be a seam just from looking at the texture from Skyrim SE, and aswell as it being bigger resolution, the texture is slightly different if you look at the details

 

gallery_1652_58_36679.jpg

 

Which makes me wonder have the meshes also been redone for this weapon in Skyrim SE, and the texture fits differently ?

 

I would say if there is no hint of a seam for this weapon in Skyrim SE with no mods installed ( and in first person where apparently it is most evident ) .. Then not only the textures need pulled, but also the meshes .. Or maybe this new texture can still work with the fixed meshes ??

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Every mesh in the game has been run through some sort of process. So yes, it's entirely possible whatever they did fixed it. I think we'll just err on the cautious side and pull the Dragonbone Greatsword back out.

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Another one to pull ..

 

One more - I think that the Terrain \ dlc2solstheimworld \ objects \ dlc2solstheimworld.objects atlas textures need to be redone

 

I know you have done work on that to include the Miraak LOD texture, but the Skyrim SE original has had a few changes to its layout which may be important ..

 

.. So the new texture needs grabbed and the Miraak LOD added to that instead

 

 

USSEP v4.0.0 on the left, Skyrim SE on the right

 

gallery_1652_58_211294.jpg

 

 

Edit : I also referenced this in the USSEP Relz topic, Post #25, regarding the other Terrain textures in deepwoodredoubtworld ( which I think are still valid fixes and should not be removed )

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dlc2solstheimworld.objects was already yanked in 4.0.1 and I suspected the changes would be a problem anyway because they were so different looking. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out how to rig up Miraak's temple again.

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Yep, understood, the world and his dog are being impatient and keeping you in the hot seat - No pressure 8) Keep a cooool head and a thick skin

 

 

Well I have another Redundant fix .. Sort of

 

Its actually still ok'ish ( even though its lower res than the Skyrim SE version of the same texture, it still fixes the problems which the new texture does not .. )

 

.. But not too well. So I have spent about six hours redoing this one, using the Skyrim SE high res texture as the base for working on - and will refer it and the download in the Resources for USSEP topic, as a replacement for the current one in USSEP .. See this Post #3

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And I just finished checking the last of the USSEP textures versus Skyrim SE textures

 

Apart from what has been mentioned above, or replaced in the Resources for USSEP topic ..

 

.. The rest of the textures in USSEP are still valid fixes  :dancing:

 

 

The only ones I did not bother looking at were facegen related because I know you have to regen those

 

 

Tip : For anyone researching what has gone before, highlight and copy the whole changelog into notepad++, then use "Mark" to search for a few keywords which relate to what you are searching ( for textures I did textures / texture / .dds which got everything I wanted ), and for each search tick the Bookmark line box

 

Once all relevant lines are bookmarked, Invert the Bookmark selections, then delete all bookmarked lines ( these are batch commands in notepad ++ which carry out the same action on all bookmarked lines ) .. And you are left with everything you searched for.

 

Saved me trawling through a billion mesh fix entries trying to see textures among them anyway.  :gnight:

 

Anyone wishes to use this topic to document checking other resources in USSEP are still valid for Skyrim SE .. help yourselves

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One thing I'd like to mention though is that if a USSEP fix, valid or not, is not matched to the resolution of the files SSE supplies we'd consider this an issue needing a re-fix and those files would need to be pulled from USSEP until said ref-fix had been done.

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I will need to look again in a few weeks .. I think there was one or two, but most were the same size. The one that comes to mind was a door texture which is 1024, and the SE version is 2048 - That was also the only texture I could not find any info for.

 

There were slight differences in detail ( the bottom edge of the door was sort of highlighted whereas the USSEP one was not ) .. But there was nothing else obvious in its format / mips or visually obvious to tell what had needed to be done with that in the first place

 

With no documentation on it, I decided just to leave it alone, for a hi res special edition it ought to be 2k ( at least as big as body textures in game for a door which is as big as your PC stands in height ), but I dont think its a commonly used texture so most will not even notice it ..

 

For that one I kind of felt if I cannot determine what has been done, then how do I repro the same fix when I dont know what to fix, so left it rather than maybe re-introduce something not so obvious ( textures can be tricksy things when viewed in game )

 

 

Just found it again affore I go : textures \ architecture \ solitude \ sdoor02.dds

 

( The window glow map in the same folder is the same size as SE, and still needed because the edit that texture had applied is not present in the original )

 

If there is any documentation about that door I will give it a look ( and whatever else it was I cant remember right now which could do with upping the res ) when I get off shift again in a few weeks.

 

It was only a couple of them though out of the lot, and I am pretty sure the other texture was not much different in size for the job it was doing ( whereas the SE version was a bit overkill in that regard .. A case of Bethesda upping the res because we can and change its DXT format to take up more VRAM .. none of which in that case was necessary, so better off with the USSEP fixed texture really )

 

 

Edit : Was that door something to do with Mindflux fixes on ENB forum ?

 

Edit 2 : Oh and just remembered something surprising, there are quite a few in USSEP which remain bigger in resolution than the SE texture, have a look at some dragon textures, theres a swamp one which is the same size as SE and still fixing a problem, but the other dragon textures in there are double the size of the pixellated originals which bethesda still havent fixed in SE

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If the USSEP files are bigger I'm less inclined to care because it indicates we probably did so because the originals were just that bad.

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I've been following this thread since it started and am a bit confused as to what it is you are checking for with regards to the textures.  Correct me if I am misunderstanding, but is your goal to find all textures that are different between USSEP and SSE? The idea being that the new textures might have officially fixed something and should be used(Assuming they fix what the changelog documents was an issue)? I also assume that any file that has changed you don't want to overwrite with an existing texture fix and would want to create a new fix to alter the updated texture.

 

I was just wondering if this whole process could be automated.  Comparing images on a per pixel basis.  Every file that is not pixel perfect is an altered file and deserves a human decision.  By comparing Skyrim and SSE textures you would see all textures that have been updated, then you would cross reference that with the files that USSEP has altered.  The reason I say to check at the pixel level as opposed to a diff is to compensate for new ways of compressing and whatnot.

 

Is this approach feasible? Am I misunderstanding the complexity?  Can .dds files be compared on a per pixel basis easily using existing software?

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There's no documentation anywhere for what textures\architecture\solitude\sdoor02.dds was doing in the file so we're removing it.

 

As for automating it, that may well be possible, but it seems like a lot of effort for little gain.

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I was just wondering if this whole process could be automated.  Comparing images on a per pixel basis.  Every file that is not pixel perfect is an altered file and deserves a human decision.  By comparing Skyrim and SSE textures you would see all textures that have been updated, then you would cross reference that with the files that USSEP has altered.  The reason I say to check at the pixel level as opposed to a diff is to compensate for new ways of compressing and whatnot.

 

Is this approach feasible? Am I misunderstanding the complexity?  Can .dds files be compared on a per pixel basis easily using existing software?

 

No not really. Only the mark one eyeball and a fair bit of experience with these games textures can determine what needs to be fixed / has been fixed or not

I cant see how you would automate such a thing ; A missing normal map for a diffuse texture may not be required ( if its just an interface texture that does not need one for example, whereas another texture may need one which bethesda just plain old forgot to include it ( and is also evident in the mesh which has a path entry for the missing texture ) / Another texture which is shiny and reflective like glass when it should not be ( say a skin texture for an animal ) and it just needs a property of the texture and / or mesh tweaked .. How would you automate such tasks ?.

 

The job here as far as I was concerned with textures, was to determine what has been carried over from the old fixes for Skyrim Original ( from USKP / USLEEP to USSEP ), which may have been fixed by Bethesda in Skyrim SE, so the fixed resource in USSEP would no longer be necessary and can be removed to make the mod smaller. But it needed doing carefully so as not to ditch anything still valid as a fix and step on someones previously applied expertise in the area.

 

No need to go possibly programming a tool for a job which is already completed, and the task I dont feel is something a tool could automate, its certainly not just a case of diffing files and is a lot more complicated.

 

The tools I used are not evident in the pictures included above, but I have employed PhotoShop ( and a fair few plugins I use for the same ), G.I.M.P plus DDS plugins ( Though this is getting a bit out of date now with new DDS formats, I still prefer G.I.M.P to PhotoShop though when I can get away with using it on what remain older format textures ), plus just simple old Paint.NET still comes in handy for quickly loading and greatly zooming in to inspect details. Irfanview remains good too for its detailled information on textures and quickly inspecting them ( so long as you have its specific version plugins set installed ). You also need something like Jons BAE to extract the new format BSAs and get at the loose files

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Ok, now that you clarify I understand it better.  The reason I was confused was because it seemed as though you were inspecting the textures as an image, but I wasn't sure if you were also looking at things like normal/diffuse etc.  And both Photoshop and Gimp seem to have the ability to do image comparison so you have the function of comparing two files for differences automatically already, just not for directories of files at once(maybe).

 

The reason I thought this would be a good candidate for automating was because I thought there were many images that needed to be checked for variance. And those that varied had to then be inspected by a human to determine if those changes were necessary/sufficient.

 

As far as writing a tool, it wouldn't be too hard. There are many programs that can do image compare and the tool would simply walk through your directories comparing images using the existing program. Its harder to find a quick one that can read .dds files and has a command line tool, nut I found one called imageMagic.  I have a lot on my plate so I probably won't be doing the tool, but I might look into it more.  I've already seen other programs that can handle a large volume of compares, but they didn't support dds.

 

My concern was also with the idea that an image could have been updated by Bethesda to look different, but still suffer from an error that USSEP fixes.  Someone might see that an error exists(but not that the image changed from the original) and leave the fix in place, but what really needs to happen in those situations would be a new fix be made using the new SSE as a base(to ensure that the game runs using as close to official assets as possible).  It would, of course, find all files that have a different resolution too.

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Well I already said that what I needed to check you would not be able to program, a lot of it needs a humans eye balls for judgement calls

 

.. and the job is already completed

 

Arthmoor would not have accepted anything for this project that was just passed through an automated process, everything for the Unofficial Patch Projects needs to be done to the best of our abilities, it is scrutinised by thousands of enthusiasts and should bear being carried forward into other mods too so that we are all as a community singing off the same hymn sheet as it were and sticking as close to the vanilla files as possible, fixing only what is necessary without introducing anything unexpected ourselves

 

Can we get back on topic now ?

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@ Arthmoor think I found another to pull ..

 

I cant find any reference for this texture in the changelogs, and it is smaller than SSE

 

Normal map : textures \ architecture \ farmhouse \ stonewall01_n.dds

 

Its DXT3, 1024

 

SSE = DXT5, 4096

 

 

Quite a difference, whether the leap in size for a normal is warranted, and the change to DXT5, I would say this is probably overkill ..

 

.. But USSEP is currently reducing its size in a different DDS format so erring on the cautious side without any reference as to what it was needed for - I think its a pull

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UHRP changelog lists this:

 

Stone farmhouse walls had a seam in the texture caused by a bad row of pixels in the normal map. (textures\architecture\farmhouse\stonewall01_n.dds) (Bug #13092)

 

The bug entry on the tracker has little in the way of details and the old image links are dead now. Stupid PostImage.

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Edit :

I cant see anything wrong with the new SSE texture, examined in game and out of the game at 800 x zoom, looking for a bad row of pixels ( and also checked all the edges where these things tend to be aswell as the whole texture surface ) ..

.. Nada. I think the new texture is ok

 

Edit : See post #27

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