Lighting, Weather & ENB

[statmonster]

What lighting and weather mods do you like with SR?

 

I had been using Cot 2.1 (https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17802) with RLO 4.0.7c (https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/30450) but it was kind of dark at night and in interiors.

 

I upgraded to CoT 3.0 and RLO but now it looks like CoT has been recalled for bug-stomping so I'm just running RLO.  The nights seem very nice with this - perhaps too bright to be realistic but very pretty.

 

(CoT 3.0 Winter seemed very nice - I assume it would make for a much tough start using Frostfall and RND as Whiterun, Riften ,etc. would be so much more inhospitable.)

 

I've also been using Skyrim Project Optimization 1.4.

 

No ENBs yet, and I'm not sure I want to take the performance hit to include one - plus there seem to be so many options that it's not clear which to choose and which play nicely with which weather and lighting mods.

 

What are other people using?  How do you like it?

 

Do you generally use a weather mod (which one?) or the vanilla weather system?

 

What about for lighting?  ENB?

[Vond]

Testing Aiyen's ENB profile, the first thing that hits me is not related to the preset at all, but rather to ENB post-0.119 versions. The fact that we can't properly use AA anymore. While SMAA is not *crap*, compared to SSAA it truly is. I find it highly disturbing to run around, it feels like especially the foliage is 'shimmering' and so on. Sure, I can run the later versions with hardware AA as well but lose out on certain effects, but that rather defeats the point currently. I've tried tweaking the SMAA settings and so on, but nothing helps.

 

Does anyone have any tips on how to get a good AA setup without hardware AA for ENB releases older than 0.119?

[Neovalen]

Foliage shimmer I find mostly comes from shadows and AO settings than AA. Then again, on a 30" monitor AA isn't really required.

[Vond]

While that is most likely correct as I still have it without AA, foliage shimmer (it's not JUST foliage shimmer, it affects other things as well but it's most noticeable on foliage) *does* go away if I use hardware AA with supersampling however, but I would prefer an option that allows me to use all functions without reverting to 0.119 again. :)

[Aiyen]

Yeah the lack of hardware AA is a bit sad true.

 

The foilage shimmering is mainly due to the SSAO texture. I have chosen a rather high resolution to combat this issue, and on my monitor and rig it is fairly well hidden expect in a few weathers. At least in combination with the DoF. (The reason it goes away when you enable hardware AA is because the SSAO is disabled)

If you want to increase it then it is the following in the enbseries.ini

SizeScale=0.60

SourceTexturesScale=0.50

Under SSAO/SSIL

Just put them up to 0.75 and most shimmering will be gone.

 

Alternatively you can disable other features and hope your FPS gets up high enough this reduce the shimmering as well and also make the SMAA look a bit nicer.

 

The settings I have chosen are the ones that have the best tradeoff between quality and performance on my machine. I run a fairly stable 30FPS with those settings... if you run with 50 or more you can just crank up the quality!

Alternatively you can disable reflection and crank up the SSAO quality even more.

The SMAA in SweetFX is the best of the ones around.. you can crank it up at the cost of an FPS loss.

In the SweetFX settings under SMAA settings.

 

#define SMAA_THRESHOLD 0.01

#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS 96

#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG 18

#define SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING 0

Should be about the best it can perform.

 

Alternatively you can play around with the FXAA... might perform better to your liking. I have personally not tried it out yet.

 

(Sidenote: Also the ULTIMATE LUSH OVERHAUL actually reduces it in foilage as well due to the more detailed meshes...This is part of the reason I included it in the optionals :) )

[Vond]

Yeah the lack of hardware AA is a bit sad true.

 

The foilage shimmering is mainly due to the SSAO texture. I have chosen a rather high resolution to combat this issue, and on my monitor and rig it is fairly well hidden expect in a few weathers. At least in combination with the DoF. (The reason it goes away when you enable hardware AA is because the SSAO is disabled)

If you want to increase it then it is the following in the enbseries.ini

SizeScale=0.60

SourceTexturesScale=0.50

Under SSAO/SSIL

Just put them up to 0.75 and most shimmering will be gone.

 

Alternatively you can disable other features and hope your FPS gets up high enough this reduce the shimmering as well and also make the SMAA look a bit nicer.

 

The settings I have chosen are the ones that have the best tradeoff between quality and performance on my machine. I run a fairly stable 30FPS with those settings... if you run with 50 or more you can just crank up the quality!

Alternatively you can disable reflection and crank up the SSAO quality even more.

The SMAA in SweetFX is the best of the ones around.. you can crank it up at the cost of an FPS loss.

In the SweetFX settings under SMAA settings.

 

#define SMAA_THRESHOLD 0.01

#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS 96

#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG 18

#define SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING 0

Should be about the best it can perform.

 

Alternatively you can play around with the FXAA... might perform better to your liking. I have personally not tried it out yet.

 

(Sidenote: Also the ULTIMATE LUSH OVERHAUL actually reduces it in foilage as well due to the more detailed meshes...This is part of the reason I included it in the optionals :) )

Nah it's not because SSAO is disabled, as I was referring to using SSAA with 0.119 where both worked in tandem. :) I did some changes to the SSAO settings already to play around with it, but you suggested some things I'll try out so thanks! As for FPS, I have it fpscapped via RadeonPro to 35fps, with it off it varies between 35-55ish but goes up and down constantly. Will play around some. :)

[Aiyen]

Ah okay. Sadly my preset is not compatible with v.119 since it does not support the day night settings that where implemented in v.139 and up.

Of course you can also increase all the quality parameters to max 0 or -1 which might help a bit.

But I could talk all night about optimization hehe... so I will just let you play!

Let me know what you find out!

[Neovalen]

Looking forward to trying a non-ctd version tonight. :)

[Aiyen]

"Hides in shame" >_>

I blame the cat!

[Solist]

Foliage shimmer I find mostly comes from shadows and AO settings than AA. Then again' date=' on a 30" monitor AA isn't really required.[/quote']

 

Speaking of that new monitor, in a thread thereabouts you mentioned that you were going to update your tweaks/settings for INI files a week or so back. Something you're still planning on doing? Just curious.

[Neovalen]

Foliage shimmer I find mostly comes from shadows and AO settings than AA. Then again' date=' on a 30" monitor AA isn't really required.[/quote']

 

Speaking of that new monitor' date=' in a thread thereabouts you mentioned that you were going to update your tweaks/settings for INI files a week or so back. Something you're still planning on doing? Just curious.

[/quote']

 

Yeah... :)

[walkman80]

Enjoying the ENB so far. Usually around 35fps for me. Have had a couple CTD but for the most part its been stable. I did download a DoF pack from Nexus and am using a static DoF - just personal preference.

 

Hey Aiyen, is it supposed to get this dark when cloudy? This was at 3:15pm.

[Aiyen]

Glad that you like it.

The CTD´s are properly due to VRAM... since ENB takes up a little bit depending on the size of the reflection and AO texture. You can see in the ingame GUI how much it is using. So perhaps you need to compensate a bit more texture wise.

 

As for the picture.

Without knowing the weatherID I cannot say for sure....

But in general then yeah there are certain weathers that have low ambient lighting, so I would think it is perfectly normal.

I am a bit more curious about the saturation of the greens though.

If you see something you think is really odd. Then please try to go to the GUI and disable ENB and see how it is supposed to look with only vanilla post processing and color correction. If it is also dark here then it is part of CoT´s design.

[Iroha]

Some screens:)

[Aiyen]

I am going to be shameless and announce that I finally released my ENB :p 

 

Decided to call it Skylight ENB! 

 

Now I will return the the shadows and tinker on! 

[walkman80]

I am going to be shameless and announce that I finally released my ENB :p 

 

Decided to call it Skylight ENB! 

 

Now I will return the the shadows and tinker on! 

Hey, congrats Aiyen! *endorsed* Really good work man.