STEP Extended: Striped and pixelated shadows

[Nightysin]

Hey guys,I recently decided to pick up skyrim again and modded my game following the STEP guide.The problem is that some of my shadows (mostly exteriors) are visibly striped and pixelated.This persists in every constellation of installs (STEP: Core; STEP: Extended;). I even tried to enhance the Step: Extended install with some of my favorite lighting mods to see if that helps (CoT, Enhanced lights and FX, Skyrim shadow striping fix) but it did nothing in terms of removing the stripes or pixelation. I also tried to tweak my ini files (shadow resolutions and such things.), to no avail.Here are some screenshots of the problem with STEP: Extended and my own mods: https://imgur.com/a/olauW

 

thanks in advance

[TechAngel85]

Did you try changing your iBlurDeferredShadowMask in your ini to a higher value. Also, if you're using MO, make sure you're using the INI editor within MO.

[Nightysin]

Yes, all the changes made to the ini were made in MO on the profile I was testing on.But sadly, iBlurDeferredShadowMask=7 (it was 3 originally) did nothing.

[TechAngel85]

I still have some shadow striping as well, but the shadows themselves look okay. Unfortunately, if none of the INI tweaks are working fro you, the only other option is probably going to be ENB. We're planning on testing turning on ENB shadows and parallax with ENBoost; however, that might be a release or two away. It most likely will not be part of 2.2.9.

[Nearox]

Looks to me what you are experincing is default Skyrim shadow behaviour.

 

This video might help:

 

I know for a fact that the INIs linked in the video description do not work. In fact nothing really works except, as Tech has said, ENB shadows.

 

For that, you just grab the latest enb (254) and only enable shadows in enbseries.ini while having usepatchspeedwithoutgraphics=false in enblocal.ini.

 

You're gonna see your framerate drop though, depending on your system.

[TechAngel85]

I tested this out very quickly and with ENB shadows enabled I get anywhere from a 5-10 FPS drop depending on the area I'm in. However, the game looks soooo much better with just the shadow fix enable. There is a lot more depth to the visuals.

 

I have a GTX 760 for reference.

[Nightysin]

Thanks for the help,After a few days of trying enbs and other ini tweaks, I discovered a setting that semi-fixed my problem without having to use an enb. In the SkyrimPrefs.ini there's a line called fShadowBias and when I tuned that value up my shadowquality started to increase outsides. It doesn't look quite as good as an enb but the difference isn't enough to be enough for a 5-10fps drop.