Overlays on npcs causing huge fps loss

[astrum_xeno]

As said in the title, i'm having an issue where texture overlays of any kind like slavetats for example if applied to any npc are causing my game's fps to go down a lot as long as i'm looking at them. The number of overlays applied doesn't matter and overlays on the player are completely fine, i can fill all available overlay slots on the player even if i crank them up to like 100 slots per area and not lose a single frame, but if i dare to even apply one single overlay on an npc my game acts like it's going to die. I have no idea what might be causing this so i'm hoping that someone here can give me some pointers as to what i should look for in order to find the cause and a possible fix.

[traison]

40 minutes ago, Stardust.exe said:

if applied to any npc are causing my game's fps to go down a lot as long as i'm looking at them.

 

As in...

• Immediately when on screen, fps drops. Immediately when off screen, fps increases. You can approach an NPC looking backwards without any issues.
• Immediately when within viewing range, fps drops. Fps increases when leaving the area. You can not approach an NPC looking backwards without issues.

42 minutes ago, Stardust.exe said:

overlays on the player are completely fine

 

As in, the exact same overlays that cause issues on NPCs are fine when applied to the player.

 

44 minutes ago, Stardust.exe said:

crank them up to like 100 slots per area

 

As far as I know, RM overlays are not limited by cell. What does this mean?

 

44 minutes ago, Stardust.exe said:

I have no idea what might be causing this so i'm hoping that someone here can give me some pointers as to what i should look for in order to find the cause and a possible fix.

 

Well first off, performance issues in Skyrim will be ranking in the upper tiers of difficult problems. Mainly because there's no real diagnostics tools available. This alone puts this in the "remove mods until the problem goes away" -category. But, if we try not to be so pessimistic just yet, then these things come to mind:

1. You've increased the papyrus budget, and you have a Papyrus mod that does something with overlays. Like glowing overlays, overlays with magic effects or some dirt and washing mod.
2. You have a mod with a dll (other than skee) that's doing something involving overlays. Mod candidates for this could be similar as in #1 above.
3. You have an AMD graphics card, or your current display driver is having issues.
4. While unlikely considering what you've said, but also considering how easy it is, I'd check VRAM load. Adding an overlay immediately resulting in a significant drop in fps is textbook VRAM shortage.
5. For some reason you didn't mention disabling things like Display Tweaks, ENB and CS. Mods like these should be the first to go with any graphics related issues.

[astrum_xeno]

48 minutes ago, traison said:

As in...

• Immediately when on screen, fps drops. Immediately when off screen, fps increases. You can approach an NPC looking backwards without any issues.
• Immediately when within viewing range, fps drops. Fps increases when leaving the area. You can not approach an NPC looking backwards without issues.

As in when on screen

 

48 minutes ago, traison said:

As in, the exact same overlays that cause issues on NPCs are fine when applied to the player.

Yes

 

49 minutes ago, traison said:

As far as I know, RM overlays are not limited by cell. What does this mean?

For the different bodyparts like hands, feet, face i worded that a bit weird sorry

 

50 minutes ago, traison said:

Well first off, performance issues in Skyrim will be ranking in the upper tiers of difficult problems. Mainly because there's no real diagnostics tools available. This alone puts this in the "remove mods until the problem goes away" -category. But, if we try not to be so pessimistic just yet, then these things come to mind:

1. You've increased the papyrus budget, and you have a Papyrus mod that does something with overlays. Like glowing overlays, overlays with magic effects or some dirt and washing mod.
2. You have a mod with a dll (other than skee) that's doing something involving overlays. Mod candidates for this could be similar as in #1 above.
3. You have an AMD graphics card, or your current display driver is having issues.
4. While unlikely considering what you've said, but also considering how easy it is, I'd check VRAM load. Adding an overlay immediately resulting in a significant drop in fps is textbook VRAM shortage.
5. For some reason you didn't mention disabling things like Display Tweaks, ENB and CS. Mods like these should be the first to go with any graphics related issues.

1. Yes, i have bathing in skyrim and scoe installed. But again i have no issues with those on the player and i have checked my papyrus log and found no errors or spam related to those mods. I also checked the save file with resaver and got no errors or suspended stacks.

2. The only other mod would be wet function redux, but funnily enough that one does not cause fps issues.

3. I have an Nvidia card and have also checked my drivers, no issues there.

4. Right after i made my post i thought of this, checked my vram load, 50% usage at most out of 12GB

5. Tried disabling both display tweaks and enb, sadly no difference or so minimal i haven't noticed it.

[traison]

Anything else you can do in skee.ini? Like how about a sanity check:

; Enables layering textures ontop of the player
bEnableOverlays=1 ; Default[1]

 

Considering the wording in that, we may have to assume that only affects overlays on the players, so how about also poking this one:

bBipedAttach=1

 

bBipedAttach would presumably stop RM from attachings its overlay mesh. But that's just me guessing.

[astrum_xeno]

58 minutes ago, traison said:

Anything else you can do in skee.ini? Like how about a sanity check:

I don't think so, at least nothing obvious. My sanity also has been absent for many years already lol

 

1 hour ago, traison said:

bBipedAttach would presumably stop RM from attachings its overlay mesh. But that's just me guessing.

Yes

[traison]

Just now, Stardust.exe said:

Yes

 

I assume this means the overlays are no longer being drawn, but the fps is still dropping?

 

In that case I'd rule out rendering and anything related to it. If nothing shows up in the Papyrus log, and you haven't tweaked your Papyrus budget, then you just have some mod with a dll that's getting hung up on overlays.

 

Still doesn't get us out of the "disable mods until the problem goes away" -park, but I'd definitely start with mods containg dll files - regardless of what you think they do or what they should be doing - this includes Engine Fixes SSE and my_coolest_hat_mod.dll.

[astrum_xeno]

10 minutes ago, traison said:

I assume this means the overlays are no longer being drawn, but the fps is still dropping?

No, i dont experience frame drops if overlays aren't drawn. as long as they are not visible performance is fine.

 

I'll have a look at mods with dlls and try disabling them, i'll report back if something interesting happens.

[traison]

Just now, Stardust.exe said:

No, i dont experience frame drops if overlays aren't drawn.

 

So then its actually a rendering issue. Unfortunately I got nothing more for that, considering display driver and enb/cs was already tested.

[astrum_xeno]

30 minutes ago, traison said:

 

So then its actually a rendering issue. Unfortunately I got nothing more for that, considering display driver and enb/cs was already tested.

 

Hm, alright. I'll still test disabling some mods, who knows maybe it magically fixes something idk. I did however also try to lower the number of available slots in skee64.ini again (i had them increased a little bit before) and that at least lowered the fps loss, but it's still bad with like more than 2 npcs with overlays on screen. Not sure what to do with that information though.