Vividian - Weather & Lighting enhancement - CoT - RCRN and Pure Weather

[Mangaclub]

thanks for the awsome compare and hints Whitestar!

What settings/mods did you used for the shots?

Indeed i must say the RiftonOvercastFog is a bit too dark on your picture, i'll look into that again.

Well its a bit tricky about that colors. On one side i see you texture changes on your vanilla weathers, so i suppose they are older?

Different textures create often a different warmth feeling but i guess thats just a minor reason in this case.

As we updated the color system the generall coloring changed with it so it was impossible to recreate the old look without painting white areas Purple (result: purble snow, steam, particles aso..).

So yes we tryd to finda good solution.

Depending on your taste you can either try out benhat's Vanilla color edition (3 posts up) or the Pale & Cold edition in the special edition folder wich restores this freezing cold look a bit more but includes the

Vividian color corrections. If you still feel that it needs some more tweaks, feel free to have a look at the How to Customize guide so you can easyly change some basic settings

where you need it to fit exactly your taste.

btw if you like to compare between vanilla and enb quickly, just hit Shift+12, there you turn off ENB and see the actual vanilla look.

Thanks again !

[benhat]

Hey there,

Call it timing. (See 3 posts above)
I have uploaded another Early BETA Version of the "Vanilla Color Version" in Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l7q5uzycy8as42h/ehTxi10F7I

- Be sure to delete anything prior to this BETA. (Sweetfx files and Folders: injFX_Shaders, SweetFX)
- Your enblocal.ini should have "EnableProxyLibrary=false" again, or use mine from the beta folder
- updated to enbeffect.fx 3.1 from prod80 (changed a few levers, left some in place, others a bit more)
- effect.txt now has gaussianbloom and lumasharpen (thanks to Aiyen for the help)
- tried out some bloom settings

All in all it should be very similiar to the previous beta version.
Be free to test.
This Version will be updated several times a day, when work is done, without comment.

As for your comparison to the 4.x Version. Yes it looks good. Although i worked on it i have not played with it for more than 1h i think :) before continuing to 5.x with another effects file.
We are actually thinking about altering some things of the current 5.x Version, namely palette and RGB, to be more on par with 4.x
But the depth it had is hard to achive, it had another effects file. BUT the new enbeffect.fx from prods 3.1 version has some nice "toys" which might even be the tool for it. Let's see.

I hope i did not forget anything...

Edited March 30, 2014 by benhat

[Neovalen]

My minor feedback on your feedback: Funny you should mention Whiterun as being too warm because it's the warmest climate in all of Skyrim based on weather... I don't think it's meant to be overly cold. :)

[Aiyen]

The distant mountains are always annoying to deal with since they are 70% due to the fog color choice (which is 100% annoying in the best of cases), and 30% due to texture. I recommend getting some mountain textures that are grey with a tint of blue in them if you want a really cold feeling, rather then some that are brown/red. 

Normally you can alter the fog color settings between two extremes, one being blue the other red. Shifting the multiplier and curve will quickly make it apparent how to get either. This effect can be further amplified by altering the bloom values used, since Fog really loves to trigger the bloom. 

This assuming it is a CoT weather patch modified weather. 

[Whitestar127]

I follow Neovalens Skyrim Revisited guide, so I installed some of the graphics mods there. Here are those which I believe influence how the landscape in general looks:

 

Vivid Landscapes - Moss Rocks - Compatibility Patch

Vivid Landscapes - Classic grey mountains for

Vivid Landscapes - All in One - Update for 2048 only

Vivid Landscapes - All in One - Loose Files

Ultimate HD Fire Effects -Medium Resolution-

Serious HD Retexture LANDSCAPE 2048px

Realistic Water Two - ENB Textures

Realistic Water Two

Moss Rocks

HD Stone Quarry and Clay Deposit 2K

HD Enhanced Terrain PRO - Blended Version

Enhanced Distant Terrain 2 - Dragonborn

Enhanced Distant Terrain

Dramatic Clouds Ultra

SRO

Static Mesh Improvement Mod

Skyrim Particle Patch for ENB

 

I think you may be right that some of these maybe contribute to a bit "warmer" overall feel.

In addition to this I play with ugrids 7. I also left brightness slider in the middle as per your instructions.

 

Duh! I didn't know about that Shift+12 shortcut. I used ENB Manager to turn on and off the ENB effects and restarted each time. Silly me. :) Thank you for the tip!

 

I will for sure try both the Pale & Cold and the new Vanilla Color Edition. Thanks a lot! :)

 

Oh, and one more thing: In evening sunsets the sky turns red/orange/yellow all the way around 360 degrees of the sky, not just the area around the sun. I think I read somewhere that that's a bug or issue with the Skyrim engine. Is that correct? Normally only the area around the sun would turn red/orange/yellow. The rest of the sky would have a gradation from lighter blue just over the mountains to darker blue towards the center of the sky above you. If I remember reality correctly. :)

My minor feedback on your feedback: Funny you should mention Whiterun as being too warm because it's the warmest climate in all of Skyrim based on weather... I don't think it's meant to be overly cold. :)

Fair point. I just think it looks a bit too warm still. Like 25 degress summer, if you know what I mean. :)

Warmest months of tundra climate should be from 0 to 10 degrees or so. Not that it HAS to mimic reality of course. :)

Edited March 30, 2014 by Whitestar127

[Mangaclub]

Ah thanks, yes the vivid landscapes might also also be add something extra.

The thing with the Sky is correct. Its rather not a bug but a limitation of the skyrim engine as the skydome (wich is a half cut Sphere) is splitted up in 3 ring parts. Horizon, middle,Top.

It really would be nice to achive such effect you describe and its partly possible but this requires then a huge ammount of Precredual sun (not really a option) and Volumetric rays+Sunhaze & Suncolor tweaking....

...ill write that on my todo list! :D

[Whitestar127]

One more thing - where can I find the Special Edition folder with the Pale & Cold Edition inside it?

The Beta Files Section link on your Nexus description page only links to the Vanilla Color Version on Dropbox.

Sorry if this info has already been given.

[Mangaclub]

ah its inside the enb archive itself. There you got 2 Folders: Main files and Optional files.

In optional files folder are various subfolders with some nice toys and the special edition folder with the pale & cold edition.

[Whitestar127]

Thank you very much! Will test and compare. :)

[Mangaclub]

Had to try out this sunset thingy...because...screw sleep! :D

is this what you where looking for?

If yes have a look at it, i uploaded a test weather for you:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oo7vl4pts9p5q9u/SkyrimClear.ini

put that in  the enbseries folder.

then load the game, go to a nice spot where you have a great view to all directions and open up the console (^)

type in

set gamhehour to 17.90

close the console and open it again

then type

fw 81a

close the console and enjoy:D

Although i have to say i had to "rape" the sky gradients to get this result as the horizont gradient is yellowish/redish already by default from skyrim.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Mangaclub

[Aiyen]

That sort of sunset is kinda hard to get due to the skydome limitation. 

Main way to do it would be to set the sky colors to a blue tone in the .esp, then using sun glow and bloom make sure the sky take up one half of the sky leaving out the other looking blue. 

 

Main issue with this is that day time and sunset, and day and sunrise does some weird addition around 50/50 if you use Time of day. Hence if you have really extreme values there they will be really extreme x2 and most likely fill the sky. At the very least they will look quite off since the sun should not be at its most extreme brightness during that position in the sky. In an ideal world we would be able to set dawn and dusk duration independently from day and night... and have full control over what values are used at what position in the sky! Oh the pretty stuff one could make using such a setup! Sunsets and dawns you would not believe! 

 

Also the tundra is mostly red... hence with any amount of bloom and red emphasis then it will look like a dry region rather then the cold one it should. Guess if someone where to make a more cold looking terrain texture for the area that it would help quite a bit, instead of the brown orangeish ones that most texture packs include. 

But really nice image you got there manga! And yes.. sleep... once upon a time I enjoyed such a thing! :) 

[Whitestar127]

That looks good, Mangaclub. I wouldn't want you to mess up other things though - if that's a risk - just to get that one right. It's not that big a deal. :)

 

On another note: I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to installing ENB apparently. In that Pale & Cold folder there was just one file, enbeffect.fx.ini. I wasn't sure what to do with it, so I just copied it into the Skyrim folder, but that did nothing. Could anyone tell me how I should install it?

 

Looks like I'll have to take some time to read up on ENB stuff. I already spent a solid week and a half going through the STEP guide, and another one going through Neovalen's guide. Time consuming stuff this, but totally worth it. :) I wasn't really into ENB before I tried Vividian, and now I can't possibly go back to playing without, so thanks a lot.  :-P  ;-)

[Mangaclub]

Hi white!

the enbeffect.fx.ini goes to the enbersies folder inside your skyrim folder ;)

Yes i couldnt play skyrim without enb either now :D

@ayen

yes i i think all the gradient changeing stuff isnt worth for such effect as it got too much downsides imo.

Too bad it cant be archived more easy....but ill vertainly will continue look into that maybe something intresting comes up. Many promising weather mods out there, just looking into RCRN..phew anothing thing to support! :D

Edited March 31, 2014 by Mangaclub

[Whitestar127]

Thanks, looking forward to testing when I get home. :)

 

Another thing I'm wondering about: The "HDR eye" effect (in lack of a better term) seems to be missing. I'm talking about the eye adjusment effect you get in vanilla when looking at or walking into a dark area. Then your eyes adjust and you see it gradually becoming a bit brighter. If you look up at the sky then it adjusts the other way, making other areas darker and giving the sky the correct exposure.

 

Now, I don't know if this is because of the ENB or the mods I have installed (or some other issue with my setup), but the effect is gone right now. Do you know anything about this? Is it supposed to be like this?

[Mangaclub]

Ohyes the Adaptation.

For now the Adaptation is reduced to a minimum as we are still going through massive codechanges and adaptaion can mess up aloooot :D

But don't worry this will be back as soon as possible.