Archive and texture BSAs for SSE

[Beermotor]

I've used various search things to try to find an answer to this but came up empty handed.  I'm posing it here because you guys are the most likely to know.

In SSE we need to pack textures into a 'espname - textures.bsa' file.  Is this done for the same reason that there are separate texture BA2s in Fallout 4? 

To clarify, in Fallout 4 you should compress texture assets using a different method than regular assets (meshes, sounds, scripts, etc) because texture BA2s are structured to optimize the way DDS files (particularly mip maps) are streamed out of the archive. I got this information from the S.T.E.P. article on Archive 2 and compressing BA2s.

From TFA, quoth ianpat:

There are two types of ba2 archives: general, and texture. General archives can contain anything, while texture archives are optimized for storing textures. There is no significant size advantage when comparing the two, but texture archives store textures in a more intelligent way that is friendlier to the runtime texture streamer. When reading a DDS file, finding the lower resolution textures requires seeking to, and therefore decompressing most of the file. This is inefficient, because in most cases you will care about the lower resolution mips first, when the object is off in the distance. Texture archives store any mips higher than 256x256 in their own separate blocks, while the 256x256 and below are all in their own block.

— ianpatt

Obviously being the curious person I am, I wondered if this was the purpose of the separate texture BSAs in Skyrim SE. Does anyone know? Did I completely fail at search? :)

[zilav]

No, the special storage system for textures was introduced in Fallout 4 only.

[Beermotor]

Thank you @zilav that's exactly what I was wondering.

[Arthmoor]

For PC the separate textures BSA is not required.

If you are porting to console though, then yes, you will need the separate file because the textures in it need to be processed into the format the XB1 is expecting. The CK will do this automatically if you use it to pack the files, but that's only really feasible with a small mod where you can quickly find all the necessary files. Large ones it's going to be better to run the textures through the process the CK would have done and then pack them up with the external SSE Archive.exe tool.

[Leonardo]

Maybe this should be mentioned here.

6 hours ago, Beermotor said:

I've used various search things to try to find an answer to this but came up empty handed.  I'm posing it here because you guys are the most likely to know.

In SSE we need to pack textures into a 'espname - textures.bsa' file.  Is this done for the same reason that there are separate texture BA2s in Fallout 4? 

To clarify, in Fallout 4 you should compress texture assets using a different method than regular assets (meshes, sounds, scripts, etc) because texture BA2s are structured to optimize the way DDS files (particularly mip maps) are streamed out of the archive. I got this information from the S.T.E.P. article on Archive 2 and compressing BA2s.

From TFA, quoth ianpat:

There are two types of ba2 archives: general, and texture. General archives can contain anything, while texture archives are optimized for storing textures. There is no significant size advantage when comparing the two, but texture archives store textures in a more intelligent way that is friendlier to the runtime texture streamer. When reading a DDS file, finding the lower resolution textures requires seeking to, and therefore decompressing most of the file. This is inefficient, because in most cases you will care about the lower resolution mips first, when the object is off in the distance. Texture archives store any mips higher than 256x256 in their own separate blocks, while the 256x256 and below are all in their own block.

— ianpatt

Obviously being the curious person I am, I wondered if this was the purpose of the separate texture BSAs in Skyrim SE. Does anyone know? Did I completely fail at search?

 

[Beermotor]

17 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

For PC the separate textures BSA is not required.

If you are porting to console though, then yes, you will need the separate file because the textures in it need to be processed into the format the XB1 is expecting. The CK will do this automatically if you use it to pack the files, but that's only really feasible with a small mod where you can quickly find all the necessary files. Large ones it's going to be better to run the textures through the process the CK would have done and then pack them up with the external SSE Archive.exe tool.

Ok that makes perfect sense, thank you. I did some digging into the XBOne DDS formats and was enlightened.  Right now I'm mainly doing this for personal use since my data folders are a horror show, but if I ever get around to releasing Mertz's Waifu Army I'll need to make absolutely certain it isn't Xbox compatible.

[GenRabbit]

HI all. I've been googling and cruising the web for hours trying to find anything about the rules SkyrimSE use on the PC when loading BSA files. Like if you have mymod.esp, it will automatically look for mymod.bsa. But also "mymod - Textures.bsa" can be used. Is there anywhere on the net where these rules how to name the files is present? Is " - Textures" a keyword, or can you say also use " - loadme.bsa"?

Thanks in advance for all answers

[zilav]

"MyMod.bsa" and "MyMod - Textures.bsa" only I think.

[GenRabbit]

Oki. thanks. Weird there ain't any place where the rules is written. Outside of bethesda.