Why bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles=0 is dumb [image heavy]

[junkacc]

Let's get a discussion going about this, because it doesn't work for generic NPCs that get spawned multiple times. I found three so far, a23b5, 15e238, and 15e239. These tests were done with only vanilla TTW and bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles=0.


You can already see the legs don't match the face.

The following contains nudity:

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I didn't really see any performance degradation having bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles=1, plus you get these benefits:



And there's no mismatch (contains nudity):

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I also have a beef with the way TTW did the facegen textures. It uses DXT compression on an already small 256x256 image. The video card will scale them with a fast algorithm like none or linear to match the diffuse (usually 1024x1024). The images become blocky and artifacty when viewed up close. You should redo them without the DXT compression, at least you won't get the 4 pixels averaged into 1 effect.

[junkacc]

Also, why does "TaleofTwoWastelands - Textures.bsa" have facemods folders in two locations, "textures/facemods" and "textures/characters/facemods"?

[RoyBatty]

So you found a vanilla bug, I've fixed these before, probably wrong flags on the NPCs. I just checked, neither is edited by TTW.

I use DXT compression because it's the same as Vanilla, TTW is meant to be vanilla, as in it should run with the minimum requirements for New Vegas.

As for the textures in the bsa, this is just a bug which is fixed in 3.3

EDIT

As expected, they have the wrong flags = can be all races. This is an obsidian bug, I'll fix it and look for more.

EDIT 2

Some quick flag fixing, remove can be all races, make sure Use Traits and Use Model/Animation is set and...

I must give credit where it's due, Qwinn discovered how to fix this bug properly and shared the info with me last year.

a2b34



a2b35



15e238



I fixed a total of 29 which were broken (all in FalloutNV.esm)

The only NPC that has this flag (or should) is DAD because he changes race with the player. It may also be intentional with Ghost at Mojave Outpost, didn't test her yet.

[junkacc]

You know what? I've decided to do the facegen files. The advantages are that I can customize on a per NPC basis, like skyrim. All those NPCs with scars and wounds in NVR3 can be done with facegen files instead of creating the folder mess NVR3 has.

But I think you should be careful setting those flags. I can think of three reasons but I'm sure there are more.
1. 127955: Gomorrah Receptionist. She has a history with the courier and with the legion. She respawns in 3 days if she dies. She might look different the next time you see her.

2. 129762: This one is strange. NPC record is female but if you set "use model" and "use traits" she will always spawn male. And the body and face will mismatch.

3. "use model" + "use traits" is equivalent to bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles=1 for that NPC. Given how often these NPCs are spawned, your memory savings will be gone.

I did an experiment.


The default and TTW method of dxt1 compression causes the artifacting shown on the right. bLoadFaceGenHeadEGTFiles=1 would use the uncompressed format shown on the left. All I ask is you package the uncompressed files instead.

[RoyBatty]

Yeah I tested them all yesterday, I have a list of them. Some of them do not work correctly with the flag removed, but is is likely due to some other issue which I'll investigate.

The male/female one is rather odd, but such things make potato NPCs, perhaps intentional? There was one in Fallout 3 as well.

Ghost and other NPCs become broken too, but I think that I just need to regen their textures after changing the flags, will test thoroughly.

I can make the unompressed textures a separate download, the ones which come with TTW will still be compressed for reasons already stated. They are also too big to fit in a single bsa uncompressed when combined with the other textures in the game.

[FiftyTifty]

Do either of you have an NVidia GPU? If so, try running those .dds files through ESRGAN to get an AI upscaled .png, then rescale down and recompress as .dds.

If you give me the .dds, I'll run it through Topaz and do the same thing, so we can compare both to the original.

[junkacc]

Do either of you have an NVidia GPU? If so, try running those .dds files through ESRGAN to get an AI upscaled .png, then rescale down and recompress as .dds.

If you give me the .dds, I'll run it through Topaz and do the same thing, so we can compare both to the original.

The 256x256 version is fine for most purposes. That's when NPC faces occupy about a quarter to half the vertical space on a 1920x1080 monitor. But sometimes you get a zoomed in face. The main problem I have with the dxt compression artifacting is that it occurs mainly around the mouth, nose and eye corners where also the face normal maps have the steepest delta. You can see the green color bleeding out to adjacent boundaries on the picture to the right. In other words, it's not the size or resolution, it's about the artifacting.

[junkacc]

On second thought, this might be worth a try.

This is the uncompressed facegen for the NPC above.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 4449295012

What happens if you rescale it with ESRGAN to 512x512 and then dxt1 compress. Then scale to 1024x1024 with "none" algorithm? Does it look blocky like the picture on the right? The result should be a file of 170kb, which is smaller than the 341kb of 256x256 with no compression.

[RoyBatty]

I've been trying to patch geck to just make 512 or 1024 tint maps, but haven't figured out how yet since it's done in the facegen code which is highly optimized.

I don't like upscalers at all, it doesn't look any different than doing it in photoshop manually.

[FiftyTifty]

I've been trying to patch geck to just make 512 or 1024 tint maps, but haven't figured out how yet since it's done in the facegen code which is highly optimized.

I don't like upscalers at all, it doesn't look any different than doing it in photoshop manually.

I beg to differ. I've been using Topaz for upscaling low res and heavily compressed .jpeg photos, and it's night and day. You can't get anything as good as it out of Photoshop.