Water Effects Brightness and Reflection Fix (by wSkeever)

[D1Z4STR]

Discussion topic:
Water Effects Brightness and Reflection Fix by wSkeever
Wiki Link

---

I do not know why no has pointed out the bright water at night with STEP. Just seeing this issue for the first time and it should be corrected. I tried this mod with the RWT patch and addon and problem solved. Proper lighting, no flickering, no issues at 3 bodies of water I have checked so far and 2 waterfalls. Adding this to the LO to see if I see any out place lit/unlit water. All shots with STEP ENB (heavy) on. The RWT patch also includes LOD resources.

I do not know if there will be a strange interaction with Sky Reflection Fix or not

 

 STEP 2.3 no fix - Embershard Mine

 STEP 2.3 with fix and RWT patch - Embershard Mine

 STEP 2.3 no fix - Outside of Embershard Mine

 STEP 2.3 with fix and RWT patch - Outside of Embershard Mine (not same angle as above picture)

 STEP 2.3 with fix and RWT patch showing day time - Outside of Embershard Mine

[z929669]

These look like mesh changes. If RWT covers these meshes, it would be best if that mod made the changes. If they are all vanilla meshes in Step, then this could be considered.

I don't have time to investigate myself right now, but I will when I can carve it out.

[D1Z4STR]

These are RWT meshes. wSkeever flagged them correctly with that info on the mods main page. This is something that Tech should/could hopefully get around to sometime or consider having it as a patch.

[DoubleYou]

I honestly prefer the look before the fix. It is possible that this is just due to the compares here.

[z929669]

3 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

I honestly prefer the look before the fix.

I was going to say something similar. Whitewater is visible at night with ambient light in RL (when moon(s) out). I think something in between those two shots would be best. Waterfalls and whitewater should be visible to some degree, depending on the ambient light.

Also, notice the mist/spray from the waterfall in the 'fixed' shot. It's still visible, but the waterfall is not really. Water is water, so they should both be similar.

[D1Z4STR]

I dont mind the exterior as much if there is moonlight per say. But inside of caves and dungeons seeing 'lit up' waterfalls, etc is very strange and leave more to be desired.

Marking this for consideration or testing? If no to either or then I will not add to the testing setup for 2.4. Luckily, there is no plugin, and you can tick it on anytime like I did for the screenshots. I did not generate LOD with the water fix + RWT patch in mind.

[z929669]

10 hours ago, D1Z4STR said:

I dont mind the exterior as much if there is moonlight per say. But inside of caves and dungeons seeing 'lit up' waterfalls, etc is very strange and leave more to be desired.

Marking this for consideration or testing? If no to either or then I will not add to the testing setup for 2.4. Luckily, there is no plugin, and you can tick it on anytime like I did for the screenshots. I did not generate LOD with the water fix + RWT patch in mind.

We only add mods to testing when we are committed to testing the mod. I'd rather have Tech's input on RWT before we add yet another 3rd-party mesh replacer.

[TechAngel85]

Looks like he's breaking some things to fix others. I never consider mods that fix one issue to cause another an actual "fix" to anything.

RWT includes many of the changes but we don't remove the lighting from the water, which is the reason this mod seems to be in debate. This lighting can be turned down on the mesh itself, via the gradient system in RWT, or by adjusting ENB settings. Doing what they've done here will effect all waterfalls, everywhere. So if you have some weather outside on a very, very dark night for some reason then you're going to end up with dark waterfalls that are nearly invisible at night. Which is not realistic. They've already mentioned this is an issue in dungeons where little to no lighting is around.

What is being desired, from what I gather, are just changed interiors. To do this without affecting exteriors, you'd have to create new waterfall assets with the lighting adjustments desired and replace all the interior waterfalls that are desired to be switched out. No water mod available does this. Could it be done? Certainly. Should it be done? Idk, I'd question how nitpicky we're being over visuals that aren't perfect vs playing the game; a trap most modders fall into at some point. Are we trying to make a fun gameplay experience or are we trying to make art out of the game for screenshots? The later would certainly say all those details are worth it because it creates a more realistic art piece. The former would likely hardly notice as they are running through the area killing and looting whatever is in their path, vs stopping to notice the lighting on that waterfall looks slightly off.

In any case, RWT certainly could just switch out the assets with ones that have the lighting turned down and call it a day. Since they're within interiors, DynDOLOD wouldn't be affected. Honestly, there shouldn't be any lighting issue at night in exteriors in the Step Guide as we should have that controlled via the ENB. We can also include adjusted gradients, if ever needed. These two things allow changes without ever touching the RWT meshes.

And, no, this mod is not compatible with RWT meshes. It would overwrite them and you'd loose all the RWT custom changes to the meshes. The patch available might make them work together, but hasn't been updated since the RWT update, recently; meaning it may be outdated by not carrying forward the name change that we did to one of our textures. This change was to force these 3rd party mods to update or become obsolete, while also making it obvious that someone is using the RWT asset. It's just one more "gotcha" designed into our assets so that we know when someone is using them without permission.

[D1Z4STR]

Thanks, Tech, for pointing it out. In the end there are options like you said. I personally like a mix the art and the gameplay and I only wanted to point out what I thought was a issue with the water meshes lighting amount/flag. I can press on and just want to mention what I saw. 

[z929669]

8 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

And, no, this mod is not compatible with RWT meshes. It would overwrite them and you'd loose all the RWT custom changes to the meshes. The patch available might make them work together, but hasn't been updated since the RWT update, recently; meaning it may be outdated by not carrying forward the name change that we did to one of our textures. This change was to force these 3rd party mods to update or become obsolete, while also making it obvious that someone is using the RWT asset. It's just one more "gotcha" designed into our assets so that we know when someone is using them without permission.

This was my main concern. I just checked the perms and am surprised that the assets are being "improved upon" without any communication with you guys.

... my secondary concern.

[TechAngel85]

14 hours ago, z929669 said:

This was my main concern. I just checked the perms and am surprised that the assets are being "improved upon" without any communication with you guys.

... my secondary concern.

They're using the vanilla mesh and not ours so it's not really anything to worry about. The patch likely had permissions as the author's name looks familiar to me. Since RWT has been turned over to me, I would love to simply revoke all permissions handled out to 3rd party authors, but I can't really do that. The next best thing is to change asset names. This forces some of these mods to update or become obsolete and kinda tells me what is and isn't being maintained by the 3rd party authors. I have been considering pulling together some type of file that contains patches for various mod, again. I just haven't been in the modding mood for a while now.

[z929669]

10 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

They're using the vanilla mesh and not ours so it's not really anything to worry about. The patch likely had permissions as the author's name looks familiar to me. Since RWT has been turned over to me, I would love to simply revoke all permissions handled out to 3rd party authors, but I can't really do that. The next best thing is to change asset names. This forces some of these mods to update or become obsolete and kinda tells me what is and isn't being maintained by the 3rd party authors. I have been considering pulling together some type of file that contains patches for various mod, again. I just haven't been in the modding mood for a while now.

Good to know, thanks