SKYRIMLE Realistic Lighting With Customization (by The Realistic Lighting Team)

[ivactheseeker]

You may want to check the RLwC page again, it was recently updated and describes what version 4.0 will be.

They plan to add over 2500 unique weathers, that's just insane :ohmy::ohmy:  

[Spiffyman]

Sad that the update just includes the Riften fix and removes that buggy rain mod. That Reighly thing was difficult to follow but I did see that it makes sunrise/sunsets different every time. That's cool. Sadly, I doubt 4.0 will be out any time soon...

[frihyland]

Pluto been planning this upgrade for about 4 months now so its pretty well thought out, he just has so many pots in the fire it takes a while to get to them all.

[DracoArgento]

Before I found out about STEP I used this mod and I must admit I find it's nights much more extreme (in a good way) than the mod suggested by STEP. Although the problem is that indoors (meaning houses with windows) are a lot darker then they should be (You need a torch during day)!

 

I used both mods with the most hardcore option though (Yes, I like that shivering HORROR feeling when in woods or dungeons during the night :D)

 

Anyways I hope Pluto will finish that mod soon. But again, unless TheCompiler implements this mod in the STEProject I'm not gonna install it, so I would like to hear from him, too.

[frihyland]

It was originally in STEP and I can guarantee the next release will make it back into an optional pack but its unlikely to ever be put back into base STEP, lighting is just too subjective a thing.

[Besidilo]

I like RLwC with the Vision preset better than RCRN from STEP, but I'd stopped using it after the reports about incompatibility with some other mods and potential files corruption.

[skwareballz]

Eventhough I've tried and liked RCRN, I keep coming back to RLwC. It just gives Skyrim the harsh, empty feeling outside of the cities that I want. The small update made doesn't come with a WB friendly version though.

 

I saw on Beth Forums that yet another major lighting/weather mod was coming out in July, called Project Reality - Climates of Tamriel. There is a youtube video

The video isn't all that great, so I'm not sure if that's how it's going to look or if the video is just bad. The clouds still look spectacular though.

 

I bet when major releases for these lighting mods approach that TC has nightmares.

[stoppingby4now]

I used RLwC for awhile pre 3.4. The problem with it now is there is too much being added that conflicts with other mods.

 

But I originally dropped RLwC personally due primarily to the shadows. It's not realistic, as they adjust the shadows in an attempt to keep them uniform when you adjust lighting. The problem is, the entire shadow is uniform such that ambient light does not affect them anymore, and the only way to fake it is to adjust the brightness. This also breaks depth of shadows, which is especially noticeable when looking at trees.

[ivactheseeker]

The problems and file corruptions were caused by Natural Skyrim Rain which was removed in the last update. 

 

About compatibility with other mods, which one? because the new version will include a lot of weather changes; for example PlayerTwo, the author of Real Rain, is making a custom rain mod for the next version of RLwC

 

Here is a partial changelog for version 4.0

 

  Reveal hidden contents

General Changes so far for 4.0.

 

Some changes here are not noted because;

 

1. They are top secret and I want these things to be unique to RL 4.0 (surprises are awesome!)

2. I am still working with other people to confirm a collaboration directly into the new esp

3. Some minor bugs are just not worth reporting, ie like spelling errors, a random green rock or something along those lines.

 

New patcher released with much more power and flexibility. (BETA)

Removed all config's as now most older optionals have been successfully merged into either RL or VL. This means that users will need to learn to use the ini patcher to make any other changes they want.

Further research into torches. Torches are usually made of cotton, wax, wood and metal framing. They burn from 20-25 minutes (in real life). Thus changed the torch time from 240 seconds to 1200 for default and vision lighting versions of the mod.

Increased torch brightness from 1.3000 in vanilla to 2.2000.

Increased light spell brightness from 2.5000 in vanilla to 2.6000.

Increased player held torch radius from 512 with vanilla to 900.

Ensured candle light radius set to default minimum radius of 256 (as a guide for all other light sources)

Increased wall placed torch radius from 512 to 700-800 (depending on location and scene lighting)

Increased brazier radius from 256 to 450-500 (depending on location and scene lighting)

Decreased lightcampfire radius from 1280 to 800.

Increased light spell radius from 415 with vanilla to 800.

Made torch (player held) light warmer to resemble more an orange burning flame, rather than an electrical neon white light.

Altered all light sources in the game (candles, lanterns etc) to have the same uniform orange flame colour so that light sources did not seem drastically different from one another, ruining immersion.

Altered all torches in the game to match the same light radius, colour and brightness as torches held by the player and npc. Some slight variations were made to fit better with the scene.

Spells now cast light when equipped. Made an optional esp for this. The radius is very small and should not be a primary source of navigation. It also affects sneaking – so be careful.

Added more saturation to the loading screens of both versions of the mod.

Altered flicker movement of flames throughout the game to be more realistic.

 

Exterior Changes

 

Major changes to the variation of weather across regions using real life meteorological data. Colder zones will have far less fog, rain and rain storms, but have more clear, cloudy and snow weather. Warmer zones have more precipitation, rain storms and fog. This is due to low and high pressure systems and have tried to mimmic this in game.

In the process of adding new weathers to the game, alreaded added a plant dispersal weather effect to the game. The kind of seeds which are often wind dispersed are smaller seeds that have wings or other hair-like or feather-like structures. You will see these floating along in the wind on certain windy occasions!

Added a weather where you will see lots of leaves blowing in an almost spiral direction.

Added more snow storms for regions surrounded by mountains.

Revamped skies using a mixture of 74's modder's resource and Vanilla Skyrim as a guide.

Added slightly more contrast to clear days.

Darkened shadows slightly for clear days.

Increased brightness slightly for clear days.

Removed blue from clouds during snow storms at night.

Totally revamped the god rays to have a bigger impact on the scene, especially with it's vibrancy.

Lowered the chance of Foggy weather across ALL regions. Some regions were set to have far too much fog (some over 90% chance). Set fog to have a chance of between 5% and 15%.

Lowered sunglare and “sundog†look for clear days as it made certain areas of the day sky look white.

Balanced morning cloud colour contrasting it better to the sky, before they were an odd and pale green-blue rgb.

Brightened dusk a little.

Added more saturation at dusk for default plugin.

Fixed some tinting rgb errors for clear dusk.

Added more contrast at night.

Changed RGB for clear nights to make them slightly less blue.

Brightened clear nights very slightly to aim for a more realistic “two moons†feel.

Altered ambient lighting for clear and cloudy nights to better balance grass with the night light.

Pushed back fog slightly for foggy nights for default plugin. This was to help navigation slightly.

Fixed an issue where Riften had an old fog setting which made nights too dark for the Vision Lighting plugin.

Decreased the rate in which weather changes for a more realistic weather pattern. Volatility is now set to 20% instead of 50% with vanilla.

Added snow weather to most regions in Skyrim. It did not make sense that there was snow covered rocks and land in almost every area of the game, yet not even light snow would drop on occasion. Most areas that once did not have snow fall, now have approximately 5% chance of light snow fall.

Reduced skyscale for snow storms during the day.

Ensured that weather changes to exterior region world spaces were also duplicated for cities which were flagged as their own world space.

Lowered Skyscale a little for clear and cloudy nights.

Changed colour of clouds at night from green-blue to a more grey-blue.

Removed green from clear night's cinematic tinting and added more of a blue tint.

Made night sky seem less faded across clear and cloudy nights.

Changed the flicker movement of exterior lighting sources at Whiterun as they had a very unnatural slow pulsating movement. Made the light flicker more chaotic to resemble motion the wind affecting the flames.

Saturated the exterior flames for Whiterun.

In the process of adding Reighley Scattering to the game. This will alter skies depending on fog levels and scatter different colours into the sky. More info on this toward the release date.

 

General Interior Fixes

 

Decreased sunscale indoors at night for a more natural look for all interiors.

Decreased Skyscale indoors for a more natural look for all interiors.

Reduced brightness of sunshafts for all interiors as they were very bright.

Removed “Fake†fog from all interiors from default and vision lighting plugins. This allowed for true colours to shine through. This does not affect the brightness of the dungeon nor the texture based fog that floats about setting ambient mood.

Lowered brightness slightly for all dungeons to make blacks more of a “true†black rather than a washed out dark grey.

Greatly increased the intensity of all light sources for all dungeons.

Ensured dungeons required a torch or light spell in order to be navigated through successfully.

Greatly increased the brightness of all non dungeon interiors.

Added very slight saturation to all homes and interiors such as stores or inns to give them more of a welcoming feel.

Balanced different interior saturation to match new warmer lighting scheme to avoid some interiors becoming a little too saturated with overly bright orange flame light.

Ensured all non dungeon interiors had better visibility for better playability.

Added very slight contrast to several interiors for a shaper image (contrast between blacks and whites) without losing image quality. (0.0200)

Completely revamped interiors for Vision Lighting to be closer to vanilla brightness yet keep that distinct feel of Realistic Lighting. Torches might not even be needed with Vision Lighting.

Added global saturation to all vision lighting interiors and dungeons of 1.3550. (More vibrant than default mod which is 1.1500 to 1.3000 depending on area)

Increased natural light emitted from outdoors to brighten interior areas with lots of windows. (please note this does not affect sun-shafts etc as they are just textures).

Fixed a very serious issue with ATI cards in which the entire screen would become black if interior FOG settings were set too far.

 

Specific Interior Changes

 

Fixed issue with Whiterun's Temple of Kynareth being too bright at night.

Decreased Whiterun's Temple of Kynareth's saturation slightly.

Noticed an odd setting with Solitude Temple of the Divines imagespace. Changed it from Bleakfallsbarrowdungeon01 to SolitudeInteriorLgIS

Noticed HighHrothgar had a caveimagespacedungeon imagespace assigned to it, yet was not using its own imagespace which was already designed for it. Assigned back its original imagespace as intended, then altered it for better lighting.

Fixed issues with Solitude buildings having different coloured window lighting.

Changed Blackreachsewers from darkdungeonimagespace to dwarvenimagespace01Dungeon due to the fact that all the architecture seemed to be of Dwemer origin.

Added saturation to dwarven ruins to make them appear more golden as the game lore suggests.

Added slight saturation to caves so that plant life had more of an organic feel.

Reduced Saturation and Lighting brightness for all falmer dungeons. This was done for a couple of reasons, one the Falmer dungeons are known by lore to be super dark. Secondly this was done to put more emphasis on the glowing/luminescent features and objects in that dungeon.

Added slight saturation to bleakfallsbarrow as lighting such as flames seemed to be too washed out.

Heavily desaturated the roof lighting of Solitudes Temple of the Divines.

Created a new limagespace/lighting template called sydney666template which caters for areas in which should be welcoming to the player and include all player homes and inn's in the game. These areas will never be super dark and always be well lit with a very warm (saturated) friendly lighting scheme. This template may also include interiors that are usually much too dark but needed to be brightened (inn's not listed here did not need to be brightened or did not match the mood of the locale:

- RiftenHoneyside

- MarkarthVlindrelHall

- SolitudeProudspireManor

- solitudetempleofthedivines

- Solitudebluepalace

- kynesgrovebraidwoodinn

- falkreathdeadmansdrink

- Dragonsbridgefourshieldstavern

- solitudewinkingskeever

- morthalmoorsideinn

- nightgateinn

- dawnstarwindpeakinn

- OldHroldanInnlocation

- IvarsteadVilemyrInn

- Roriksteadfrostfruitinn

- riverwoodsleepinggiantinn

- whiterunthebanneredmare

- winterholdthefrozenhearth

- windhelmwhitephial

- WhiterunBreezehome

- WindhelmHjerim

- Windhelmbloodworks

- windhelmpalaceofthekings

- windhelmpalaceupstairs01

- windhelmpalaceupstairs01

Created a new template 666templeoftalos for the following imagespace due to lighting issues.

- windhelmtempleoftalos (this was set to vanilla and should never be edited as the lighting in this cell is buggy) 

 

 

 

@ DracoArgento

 

It will be at least 3 months before 4.0 , all we can do is waiting...

 

@ s4n

 

mmm, i didn't notice that. You could try to post your concern on the Nexus i see Sidney666 answers comments often. Maybe they already improved it in 4.0 :)

[stoppingby4now]

There are known compatibility issues with mods that modify torches, spells, and fog. I'll be honest and say I haven't kept up with the latest development to know if they have been resolved or if any new issues have surfaced. But the with the incompatibilities that have surfaced with the small changes to date, one can't but think there will be many more with the massive inclusion of weather effects. I'm of the camp that users should be able to choose what they want to use. As Fri stated, PP is subjective, and one size does not fit all, which is what they are trying to do. It will surely fit a lot of users tastes, just not mine.

 

I had brought up the shadow problem awhile ago, so either my voice wasn't heard, or they just don't plan on working on it at all. It may not be a simple thing to change either, I don't know. I'm just more discriminative when it comes to lighting mods, but that doesn't mean it's not a good solution.

[Bealdwine]

For those on the gnarley edge as far as FPS goes (like me) there is still a place for RLwC. I also still prefer the darker nights and dungeons. Have to say I've not encountered any issues with RLwC thus far although I did update to the sans Rain version

 

Atm though I'm very interested to see how Staynd's stand-alone Vibrancy ENB mod turns out.

[ivactheseeker]

@ s4n

 

I think their phylosophy was: instead of having different mods  that alters different aspects of the weather/lighting system let's work together and create one stable mod with everything on it that is stable and coherent. So, for example fog, torch radius have been heavly modified and something like "spells give off light" has been included in the mod.

 

  Quote

I'm of the camp that users should be able to choose what they want to use. As Fri stated, PP is subjective, and one size does not fit all, which is what they are trying to do. It will surely fit a lot of users tastes, just not mine.

I don't understand what you're saying here. RLwC has been the lightning mod with more customization that i know of. The BAIN installer let you choose between different presets and the patcher let you customize many aspects of the lighting. And now with new weathers and now with the weather / lighting / shadow mods included we'll get less bugs and maybe more customization ( from RLwC 4.0 changelog: New patcher released with much more power and flexibility. (BETA) ).

 

So presets + patcher + Imaginator + FXAA/ENB will give a decent range of customization IMO. Of course we can't customize everything and some changes will remain like the mod authors want (like the 10000 light sources/flames changes :) ) but that's the same for every other lighting mod. I can understand when Sidney says one should test the mod fully before making any changes.

 

about shadows you could try again, i see Sidney is answering every post on Nexus but that's oc up to you :) .

[stoppingby4now]

  Quote

@ s4n

 

I think their phylosophy was: instead of having different mods  that alters different aspects of the weather/lighting system let's work together and create one stable mod with everything on it that is stable and coherent. So, for example fog, torch radius have been heavly modified and something like "spells give off light" has been included in the mod.

That's exactly what I don't want. What if I don't want increased torch radius, or I want more, or I want differnent looking torches with a different light source. What if I like the fog, or want it modified in a different way that another mod provides? This is where conflicts start to happen, and it proves difficult to find a right balance between what YOU want as options. If all of these additional changes were made completely optional (which they weren't when I evaluated it), that would be another thing.

  Quote

  Quote

I'm of the camp that users should be able to choose what they want to use. As Fri stated, PP is subjective, and one size does not fit all, which is what they are trying to do. It will surely fit a lot of users tastes, just not mine.

I don't understand what you're saying here. RLwC has been the lightning mod with more customization that i know of. The BAIN installer let you choose between different presets and the patcher let you customize many aspects of the lighting. And now with new weathers and now with the weather / lighting / shadow mods included we'll get less bugs and maybe more customization ( from RLwC 4.0 changelog: New patcher released with much more power and flexibility. (BETA) ).

 

So presets + patcher + Imaginator + FXAA/ENB will give a decent range of customization IMO. Of course we can't customize everything and some changes will remain like the mod authors want (like the 10000 light sources/flames changes :) ) but that's the same for every other lighting mod. I can understand when Sidney says one should test the mod fully before making any changes.

To clarify further...I know that a lot of what sparked all of these extra additions was to try and improve the look of their lighting specificaly, but it's being done at the cost of incompatibilities with other mods. I would much rather see all the non-lighting related changes as completely optional. I shouldn't be forced to take in non-lighting changes when all I want is lighting and have to deal with incompatibilities and modifying load order to accomodate, all while hoping that nothing collides in such a way to break one or the other.

 

Unfortunately, there are other lighting mods going this route as well, it's not unique to RLwC. I would prefer to see more collaboration in all of the "extras" into stand-alone mods. Again, I'm about choice. I use STEP as a baseline, but I don't take everything. Some mods I replace with ones that I like better, some I don't install at all, and in several cases I add mods. This one size fits all mentality doesn't sit well with me personally, but that doesn't mean it won't be the perfect solution for others. But to truely cater to more people, you need options, plain and simple.

  Quote

about shadows you could try again, i see Sidney is answering every post on Nexus but that's oc up to you :) .

I need to evaluate the current release again, but unfortunately I'm trying to track down a problem with SU, so I haven't been able to play the game.

[bitdman]

I started out using RLwC because it seemed simpler to use than RCRN, Then I tried RCRN and found it more to my liking. However! I find myself having to use Imaginator to make adjustments all the time, especialy when going from indoors to outdoors. This effects overall imersivness of the game. But a lighting mod is a MUST so putting the good aspects of each mod together and achieving compatabilty is very important IMO. All and all I think things are going really well. As a matter of fact. I played yesterday for about 8 hrs before a crash. That's pretty good for this game.

 

My specs.

Win 7 Home 64 bit

Phenom IIX4 970~3.8GHz

12 Gb memory ~ 1600

Radeon HD 7870 

[ivactheseeker]

  Quote

That's exactly what I don't want. What if I don't want increased torch radius, or I want more, or I want differnent looking torches with a different light source. What if I like the fog, or want it modified in a different way that another mod provides? This is where conflicts start to happen, and it proves difficult to find a right balance between what YOU want as options. If all of these additional changes were made completely optional (which they weren't when I evaluated it), that would be another thing.

I quoted the changelog before because probably they're going more customization with the patcher, like torch radius, fog and more, to make little tweaks to the original mod. You're right, you have less choice regarding which mods to install as or you install only RLwC 4.0 or not but that's the only way they can a weather/lighting mod stable and without bugs. They can't make many standalone mods perfectly compatible with each other in every possible combination, that's too much work and depends critically on updates, which makes it unstable.

 

About lighting without weather,they said that they are connected in the CK as they are in real life, and you can't fully enhance the first without changing the second.

 

I agree that choice is important and again, there is the patcher for that.But what if you arrive mid-game and you realize there is something wrong with your personal combination of lighting / weather mods ? You mentioned STEP: STEP has a strong baseline that you can download and use to play the game and you know is well done and stable. Now, you worked on STEP with the others so you know exactly why some mods were included, why others removed and in general how was developed so you can tweak it as you like. But now everyone can do it unless they have some knowledge, as a personalized STEP is untested and may cause bugs if done in the wrong way. So i respect your views ,and i too like to have a choice, but i can't complain because i think they found the method to get the best results( in their opinion) and easily accessible to everyone.

Personalize lighting is difficult, and they spend hundreds of hours doing it, so i will at least see the results and test them fully before trying to customize it.

 

Btw, i'm not a RLwC fan, i actually used URWL more, i just liked the idea behind it.