ACCEPTED Relighting Skyrim (by NovakDalton and JawZ)

[JawZ]

Funny...

 

When doing the quest The House of Horrors the default light bulbs are turned off, and then later on replaced with other ones, red fast flickering light bulbs, for a time being until a certain quest stage has been completed. Then the default light bulbs is switched on again.

 

The meshes stays visually on all the time. The fix I just implemented corrects that by replacing the light source meshes with meshes that are visually turned off, so it demonstrates that candles have in fact been turned off/blown out and doesn't emit any light.

 

This is in the comparison album I posted before, showing the default state of the interior.

Ambient lighting is "turned off"/set to 0.0.

[TechAngel85]

More or less what I thought you were doing with these. It makes sense.

[Shadriss]

That's what I was agreeing with, Tech. The flames (visible in the first screen) are clearly not giving off light. So now, I can't see that the candle flames are not not giving off light because there are no candle flames. :)

[Nazenn]

Great to see an update on this, I recently swapped to this and ELE instead of ELFX for my main usage as STEP recommends it and am really enjoying its style, and the following update looks fantastic.

[JawZ]

Searching for fellow mod developer

 
What is this then, well the v4.1 is going to be a large update.
I've gone over the current state of Relighting Skyrim/RS, and I found that it is a "mess"
compared to how I would like it to be setup for very easy end user customization.
 

So I'm writing this in search for fellow modder/modders out there that could help me to develop
the new version of Relighting Skyrim that will, hopefully, be the most user friendly and best lighting
mod out there. Saying it will be the best is quite a large claim, but that is what I think it could
become if everything I have on the "development table" is actually put in to the mod.
 
Best in a large generalized term, it will not excel over ELFX in amounts of possible lights,
only way that would be possible is to start altering meshes by splitting them up internally into
several smaller pieces, but that will just make the mod less compatible friendly with other
none light bulb related mods.
 
 
Requirements

• Basic Creation Kit and TES5Edit knowledge. I'm willing to forward my knowledge to anyone out there willing to help me in this endeavor.
• Understand English and writing/typing in English is of course a must, a fellow Swedish fella wouldn't need that requirement though for obvious reasons.
• Follow my directions, but of course come with new ideas, corrections, alterations themselves to improve on my initial approach of the mod.

The plan

• Starting from scratch, with a better base and approach on altering the light bulbs, light sources and anything in between there.
• Mod in sections, splitting up locations per person. 1 focus on doing for instance Markarth while another one works on Whiterun etc, etc. By following a base development plan.
• Work on Legendary intially and then split it up to it's individual DLC's and main part(Skyrim.esm, Update.esm).
• Naming Light Bulbs with intuitive and thus informative names, i.e 1rs_CandleNS or 1rs_FireShadow. 1rs_=Letting users now RS uses this light bulb, Candle/Fire=what type of light source it should be placed at, NS/Shadow=What type of Light Bulb it is.
• Place Light Bulbs at their right light sources, 1rs_CandleX is only placed at candle light sources just as 1rs_FireX is only placed at fire light sources. Why? to allow easy customization of colors and animation behaviors and such through presets and eventually, hopefully, a MCM menu.
• Add in shadow fixes I developed. Makes the shadows display more properly in any given interiors with these fixes.
• Add in fake shadows and light FX for users struggling with performance.

Contacting me
So if you would like to help me with this work, send me a PM to anyone of the following sites;
STEP-Project
NexusMods
ENBdev
Facebook
Youtube
Flickr
 
Hope to see some interest in this, I would really appreciate the help.
I want to play the game once more you know not just mod it ;)

Edited January 14, 2016 by JawZ

[Kesta]

I'd say "count me in", but I'm known to start things and never carry them to their final point :P

 

I can most likely do the whole checking against USLEEP and other major mods (with a bit of care, i'm pretty sure this can be 100% compatible with mods like CRF and ASLAL - which edits cells and move lightsources and objects supposed to emit lights - without the need for compatibility patches or dedicated versions).

 

I'm kinda interested in working with lighting on dwemer ruins (will have to give you a few samples to see if you like my vision of it, I think I tend to give them a bit to "fantasy" atmosphere with blue/green lights).

The blue palace would be a lot of fun as well I think.

 

Not interested to work on houses/shops nor glacial caves at all. Regular caves, crypts and other dungeons -> Why not.

Edited January 14, 2016 by Kesta

[JawZ]

That doesn't really matter how much or how long you stay with me, every bit helps you know ;)

 

I'm thinking of using USLEEP as a master this time around to be certain things are going together nicely, it's a well developed mod and I don't see any reason not to include as a master at this point in time. Sure there will be users complaining about it, but when will there ever be a total unanimous liking of all changes.

However I'm going back and forth about this.

 

Well I'm going to setup a .esp file, Legendary version, with base alterations done to it for other modders to start working on.

Creating/renaming the light bulbs that should be used, add mesh additions and then with a sample of various interior cells to give a good example on how things can be setup with a good balance of lights.

1 .esp that is for the actual work and 1 with duplicated interior cells, to have an in-game and in-Creation Kit fast and easy comparison between my changes and the vanilla interior. So one for work one for dev illustration.

 

Blue palace has potential but it can quite quickly become limited by the amount of possible light bulbs to add, sadly that is the case for many locations in the game. Would be great if Bethesda split the meshes up more like ELFX has it.

 

Of course I wouldn't force you to do work on things you don't feel interested in doing, just let me know where you are editing things so I can put that in a list of "being worked on" areas. Going to have to look at some easy hosting site for development notes, sort of like github but for text I guess.

[Neovalen]

Honestly I don't think mesh edits are a huge problem in a lighting mod so long as there are parallax versions available and the base texture mapping works like vanilla.

 

Additionally, I think a USLEEP requirement is appropriate and welcome. This does limit you to Legendary only but I think at this point it is also appropriate to lessen workload.

 

Just my 2c.

[JawZ]

Well with such mesh alterations, SMIM patches are necessary, just one example, and then it would just become the new "make multiple versions for every DLC option", which with this "remastered" Relighting Skyrim version is meant to remove. Except for the finalized version which will have the multiple DLC options re-introduced, but not before that.

Focus should be on completion rather than install options this time around. However if there is someone joining up with mesh alteration skills in any 3D tool that can do it and is willing to do it, I'm all for it. I just don't have the skills nor tools available to do so, tried it briefly in the past with O.L.S.E/Overhauling Light Sources for ENB, but couldn't quite get the hang of it.

 

Yes I think we are past the worries of not every users not running with Legendary as that is the only purchasable version around now, I think haven't really checked that since I purchased Skyrim in 2011.

Edited January 14, 2016 by JawZ

[Neovalen]

I suppose it depends on the alterations in question. If it's a matter of segmenting triangles/sections just overwriting with SMIM would be as good or better.

 

I don't pretend to know the details of the edits your referring to in particular but there really aren't many large mesh mods other than SMIM and Parallax for environments.

[Aiyen]

Hmmm you really tempt me now JawZ! :) 

 

I do kinda want to get back on the horse, and it would be awesome to work with you! 

 

You know me, I love lighting and colors and all that jazz... it is one of the main attractions for me. I also do have the mesh abilities... however much. It is most likely going to involve a lot of complaints about the nif format and how I wish it would burn etc. (did I mention I really do not like the nif format at all?)

 

So overall if you got a plan, I would not mind providing some at times decent banter, and create some pretty locations. 

[JawZ]

Maybe it is better to just have the SMIM option as a solo option, but I would need to dig deeper before going down that path.

 

It's why I'm still doing this ;) It's really a dinosaur of formats.

 

Working on it as we speak setting it all up maybe I will have the base done this weekend. working on the dev .esp file now, the nI will go over some dev tools I use alongside Creation Kit, other than TES5EDIT. I have for instance a special ENBSeries preset solely for relighting Skyrim and ELE CK development.

[Aiyen]

I would have time this weekend to look over your ideas and see if I can contribute anything. I would also not mind looking at your special presets etc! 

Would also allow me to test out this new fancy 980ti I got... Perhaps I can even go above 40 FPS now! :o 

[JawZ]

That's propably when I have it all setup if nothing else comes in the way. Finished a demo of Dragonsreach now in the RSDev.esp file. From 28 to 50 light bulbs, it's a start at least :)

 

The dev preset is just a enbeffect.fx with AGCC applied to splitscreen and then having color clipping effect available. Too easily switch between game color correction and ENBSeries without any effects as well as seeing if anything is over or under exposed in the scene. For RS I have AmbientLighting set to 0.0 to easily see where light is actually needed.

That's one of the primary goals with RS, add light to needed areas and reduce/remove where it isn't needed, while maintaining a vanilla look to it.

Everything I use during mod development will be made available in a dev zip folder along with the RS files themselves.

Edited January 14, 2016 by JawZ

[GrantSP]

I have a question about one of the stated goals:

• Work on Legendary intially and then split it up to it's individual DLC's and main part(Skyrim.esm, Update.esm).

Why? Now that every man and his dog has all the DLC and even the glacially slow USKP team are combining all the work into just one.