Universal Texture Downscaler

What it does

A texture file holds the same image at several sizes: 4096, 2048, 1024 and so on. The game shows whichever one fits the distance, but all of them are loaded into video memory.

This tool skips the biggest sizes when a texture is created. Loading a 4096 texture at 1024 uses a fraction of the memory it normally would, at the cost of visual quality, textures will look blurrier than at full resolution, especially up close. Your files are never modified, so uninstalling brings back full resolution immediately.

Unlike the original Skyrim-only version this is based on, it works on D3D11, D3D12 or Vulkan games, not just one title. No per-game setup, it hooks the graphics API directly.

Installation

Run the installer exe, pick the game's .exe, and install. It detects the game's graphics API on its own; you can override it manually if needed. No other dependencies, it doesn't touch the game's own files or need anything like SKSE.

A manual install option is also available.

Settings

UniversalTextureDownscaler.ini, in the game's folder:

MaxSize=1024

FakeVramBudgetMB=0

MaxSize is the limit in pixels, textures larger than that get their top mip levels dropped. Verbose logs every reduced texture plus every candidate that got rejected and why, useful for checking a specific game, otherwise the log stays short. FakeVramBudgetMB is for testing how a game's own texture streaming reacts to less VRAM than the card actually has, leave it at 0 unless you're specifically testing that.

Notes

Works with any texture, vanilla or modded. Nothing on disk changes, textures just load smaller.

Some engines (Unreal Engine 5's virtual texturing in particular) stream textures through small, fixed-size tiles rather than full mip chains, this tool has nothing to reduce on those.

HITMAN 3 (Glacier engine): reduction runs cleanly but causes visible texture corruption. Likely Glacier's own cached texture metadata going stale, unrelated to what the resource reports. Out of scope.

Whether this actually lowers a game's total VRAM usage depends on the engine. Some reload the space freed up with other content instead of actually using less, so results vary game to game.

Avoid it in online games with active anti-cheat (EAC, BattlEye, Vanguard and similar). It hooks the graphics API the same way some cheat tools do, and anti-cheat systems generally flag any unauthorized DLL regardless of what it actually does. Fine for singleplayer or offline use.

For D3D11/D3D12 games, if ReShade is set up to proxy dxgi.dll (its default) there's no conflict since it's a different file. If it's set up as d3d11.dll/d3d12.dll instead, that's the same name this tool needs, and the installer will warn you before overwriting it.

Original mod and Skyrim-specific version: TextureDownscaler

Source