Heal your meshes, folks, heal your meshes !

[Gnafron]

Now that we have so many tools to help stabilize this programming mess that is Skyrim, I'd like to share my experience.
I have recently started a new playthrough with a mod list of about 140 mods (from tiny to fairly large) and about 100 plugins, throwing in it some utterly lore unfriendly ones just for the lulz.
I had been accustomed to a rather stable Skyrim, thanks to the various patches and fixes some very talented and dedicated modders have produced through the years.
But this time, I felt I was back in 2012 stability wise. It was a CTDs feast. And as everyone knows it, Skyrim does not crash before you are level 30, just to make sure you wasted enough time on a character...
Long story short : it was the meshes. "Crash fixes" warned me and recorded everything in its log.
TERA armors, TERA weapons and BLESS armors meshes (among others) were filled with critical errors which, according to NifScan, cause unexplainable (at first) and completly random CTDs.
So, to people who cannot fathom why Skyrim insists on crashing at random while they have followed every sensible modding rule, I'd say this : check your meshes with NifScan. And then fix them with NifSkope. Yes, it may be tedious at times, especially when you stumble on a "nest".
Also don't hesitate to signal such faulty meshes to modders.
People always make a fuss about dirty edits in an .esp but this... this happens to be even more detrimental to Skyrim stability.
Heal your meshes !

[yatol]

TERA armors, TERA weapons and BLESS armors meshes (among others) were filled with critical errors which, according to NifScan, cause unexplainable (at first) and completly random CTDs.

 

 

and what are those critical errors you are talking about?

nif is bigger than necessary, that's about it for that one

 

and you took a look at bethsda nifs?

 

 

you won't crash because wood mesh 1 was snap at the bottom of wood mesh 2 instead of top

but that drop your fps to have the cpu calculate what to render depending on where you look

 

you won't crah either because after copy pasting 15 wall meshes, he didn't merge the borders

same as above, nif is bigger than necessary that's all

there's an impact on performance to have vertex color enabled for nothing?

that floor had flag cast shadow

that, that was removed (useless to have the floor shadow on the stuff under the ground, useless to have that stuff under the ground too)

 

 

[Gnafron]

About TERA amors : I cannot recall exactly but it was a mixed bag of missing Bit9 and environnment map flags. A lot of them.

[Lodakai]

Although I have nifscope and Nifscan... I couldn't even begin to address nif errors.

Problem is that most of us do not understand the details of messing with nif files, let alone addressing errors in them.

 

Do you have a link to the tutorials you used to fix such errors?  At best, I can add heels heights for use with netimmerse high heels =p

 

 

[yatol]

from nexus page....

 

Drop in the folder with models and/or textures, it will check all nif and dds files from the same directory including subdirectories.
Redirect output to a file if needed nifscan.exe >errors.txt

Command line options:

• -nodds Do not perform checking of textures
• -fixdds Convert textures to the nearest format supported by SSE, right now R8G8B8 or A8R8G8B8
• -nosse Do not check for mesh issues that affect SSE but not a problem for Skyrim
• -nowvc Disable the check for redundant all white vertex colors

Here is the list of checked issues:

• String indexes out of bounds, that always crashes the game
• Duplicate children names. Causes random elusive crashes in game, but not on all meshes. Vanilla meshes have dups in skeletons and some armours, so maybe it affects statics and clutter only.
• BSXFlags node must have BSX name. No crashes, but disables collision and finding the reason could be a pain.
• If NiAlphaProperty is before shader property in children of shapes/strips, that will crash
• SLSF1_Environment_Mapping and EnvMap shader type are both set together, the same for eyes envmap flag and shader. Crashes CK and random crashes in game.
• SLSF2_Vertex_Colors and HasVertexColor flag in shapes/strips should match. No problems in CK or game, but a sign of broken mesh import since vanilla meshes don't have that issue.
• Bit 9 flag in BSX and SLSF1_External_Emittance should match. Random crashes in game.
• Redundant all white vertex colors, no issues but bloat meshes
• NiTriStrip node is not supported by SSE. Ignore if mesh is for Skyrim only
• NiSkinPartition with strips is not supported by SSE. Ignore if mesh is for Skyrim only
• DDS textures with formats unsupported by SSE (R5G6B5 and others). Crashes the game

 

here it's true

 

but not here

there's a difference between have vertex and don't have vertex

a part with and a part without -> seam

 

[Gnafron]

Although I have nifscope and Nifscan... I couldn't even begin to address nif errors.

Problem is that most of us do not understand the details of messing with nif files, let alone addressing errors in them.

 

Do you have a link to the tutorials you used to fix such errors?  At best, I can add heels heights for use with netimmerse high heels =p

 

Almost every error NifScan detects is in BSLightingShaderProperty (others are BSXFlags for Bit 9).

Click on the entry number reported by NifScan then look down at Block Details and you will see two Shader Flags entries. Double-clicking in the value column on either SLSF lines will bring a drop down menu with selectable items. Enable/disable as NifScan instructs.

For instance, a very common error is a lacking Environnment mapping flag. This one is always in the Shader Flags 1 entry.

 

[Lodakai]

Thank you   I guess I shall start by checking out my tera armors =)

[yatol]

here's something nobody check

 

 

left boot is a reverse of right boot

uv map was reverse too

so the left boot texture is a reverse of right boot texture

they have a use for that for 3d films, but for games... you give the right boot texture to the left boot to divide the ram usage by 2

 

here there's a difference

unless that armor have a _gnd, that is that meshe without weights, that drop to your feets when you remove armor from inventory, hard to see it in game

feather 2 can be copy paste on feather 1 (it can also be resize to 1024*2048, and you load a brown 1*1 _s for brown feather, or mess with emissive color of the meshe)

the transparent part of the skirt can be put on a 2048*256 texture, to save the 2048*2048 as dxt1 for the rest

hat texture can be put in boot texture

etc etc

 

 

loading nifscan or texture optimiser can't do much about that

[jamesjones52]

Sticky???