GUIDE ENB Guide Overhaul

[TechAngel85]

ENB Guide
Wiki Link
 

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NOTICE:
DO NOT use this thread as a place to ask and receive support from the authors or anyone else who is assisting in this endeavor!
 
There is an ENB Support Forum which is the proper place to request help and ask questions related to ENBs. Any form of these requests will be removed and placed in a more appropriate location. Lets keep this thread on topic and as knowledgeable and factual as possible!

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Purpose of this thread:
 
You may or may not know that the ENB Guide is getting a bit of an overhaul. It's very much out of date and desperately needs attention. The goal here is simple:
 
There is hardly any (easy to find) information out there about ENBs and all the parameters within. The aim of the ENB Guide is to pull together a magnitude of hard to find information into an easy to follow and detailed guide. User will be able to get what level of detail they wish from the Guide whether that is simply setting up their ENB very quickly or to gaining knowledge about the parameters in order to fine tune their ENB preset of choice. User will even be able to use the Guide to help them create a new preset from scratch if they so choice. This is quite a lofty goal; however, it really needs to be done... not only for the STEP users (STEPers) but also for the community as a whole.

One of STEP's philosophies is the cathedral approach to modding; thus, the ENB Guide will be overhauled as a community. This brings me to the reason why this thread is in an open forum. Although I've recruited a couple ENB authors to help review the information in the Guide for accuracy and provide us with corrections and suggestions where needed, this is also a call out to the community to help provide feedback and suggestions on the content of the Guide as well.

Anyone who is interested in contributing, please do so here in this forum. All help is welcome and especially from those who are knowledgeable about the workings of ENBs!
 

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Before getting started I would lay out the aim of each section of the Guide for reference:

•  
• Introduction - aim is to provide introductory text to explain what ENBs are and the purpose of the ENB Guide.
• Quickstart - aim is to have users who wish to simply get their ENB up and running quickly without a ton of detail to be able to do so. Quickstarts are also used for the STEP Guide and are; thus, required.
• ENB Choices - aim is to provide users with a small selection of very well rounded/up-to-date ENBs which also offer a verity of different styles. These are overviews and not meant to be installation instructions since it is best to rely on the authors for those instructions. This also prevents the choices from becoming outdated so quickly. Also in this section is an offering of mods that compliment most ENB presets.
• Installation - aim is to provide an overview of the general installation process for ENBs. This is meant for informational purposes and users are encouraged to use the author's instructions rather than relying on the ones provided here
• Editing Enblocal INI - aim is to provide users with knowledge of every parameter listed in the enblocal.ini and what those parameters do in order to help them make informed decisions when editing the file.
• Editing Enbseries INI - aim is similar to the Enblocal section; however, only very basic information is provided for users. This section's detail goes no further than providing users with the information to adjust the quality of features and not their individual settings. This is done to hopefully prevent users from unintentionally messing up the intended design (look and feel) of the ENB presets and potentially causing for support questions; thus, this section allows them to only adjust the quality of the features which the authors implemented.
• Advanced Editing - the original aim of this section was to provide in-depth detail about all parameters in the enbseries.ini file. However, do to the level of detail required, this will most likely be split off into a separate guide entirely. Much of the information is already present...just hidden.
• ENB Addons - this section's aim is to provide information about ENB addons such as SMAA and ELE as well as instructions on how to install them.
• Troubleshooting - aim is to provide valuable information about common issues regarding ENBs and how to fix them.
  




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I'd like to thank everyone here that contributed for you contributions. For now, I'm considering the Guide complete and will attempt to revisit it once a month to keep it up-to-date.
 
I will keep this thread open for the next couple of weeks for anyone to report any oddities or corrections. Once closed, I'll post a link to the ENB Guide thread for any future posts and replies.

[Lauren]

Welcome to the ENBSeries Graphics Modification¹ for Skyrim Guide. The ENBSeries is a special type of mod, different from most Skyrim mods², created and maintained by Boris Voronstov. ENB adds in effects to Skyrim that were not available before, like such as screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) and Depth of Field (DoF)³, as well as and providing provides a memory manager known as ENBoost. The This following guide will help newcomers become familiar with the basics of installing and using ENB and will also answer many questions for every user, from novice to expert. The STEP Forums now have dedicated ENB subforums: for ENB preset recommendations of ENB presets, go to the Post Processor Suggestions (ENB) subforum⁴, and for support, go to our ENB Support Forum⁴.

1. Would it be more beneficial perhaps to link to https://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.html, as the top level page does not have user-friendly navigation?

2. I feel as though this is unnecessary, but I leave it up to you of course.

3. I would usually suggest spelling out acronyms first then putting said acronyms in subsequent parentheses, but if we can use the "hover text" just like the forums, that would be an option too...

4. The wording is inconsistent. Is the first one listed a subforum, but not the second? I did not look at the actual forums yet, so I don't know if there is an appreciable difference.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Lauren

[Lauren]

ENBSeries is a powerful post processing modification available for Skyrim and other games. It was developed by Boris Vorontsov, who still maintains and updates the mod. The mod also enables Users to can create their own custom configurations (commonly referred to as ENBs or ENB Presets) designed to their own specifications by modifying rendering functions and the application of additional effects, such as bloom, depth of field, and SSAO and many more. ENBSeries has also added a memory manager known as ENBoost, which assists in offloading memory¹ from the system memory (RAM) to video memory (VRAM) and in order to prevent avoid crashes. ENBs often typically enhance the visuals of the game², including overall lighting, colors, and shadows among other aspects of the game, but comes with a performance loss of anywhere between 5% to 50% of total frames per second (FPS), depending on the user's hardware, the ENB features enabled and the extent to which those features are utilized. Most users find this loss acceptable compared to the enhancements and features gained from the ENB.

Use the Quickstart tab to jump right into using an ENB Preset or explore the other tabs for more advanced and in-depth information pertaining to ENBs.

 

1. Which memory? This does not make it clear.

2. Kind of struggling with what'd be the best phrasing for this sentence, so, best effort thus far...

[TechAngel85]

Welcome to the ENBSeries Graphics Modification¹ for Skyrim Guide. The ENBSeries is a special type of mod, different from most Skyrim mods², created and maintained by Boris Voronstov. ENB adds in effects to Skyrim that were not available before, like such as screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) and Depth of Field (DoF)³, as well as and providing provides a memory manager known as ENBoost. The This following guide will help newcomers become familiar with the basics of installing and using ENB and will also answer many questions for every user, from novice to expert. The STEP Forums now have dedicated ENB subforums: for ENB preset recommendations of ENB presets, go to the Post Processor Suggestions (ENB) subforum⁴, and for support, go to our ENB Support Forum⁴.

 

1. Would it be more beneficial perhaps to link to https://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.html, as the top level page does not have user-friendly navigation?

2. I feel as though this is unnecessary, but I leave it up to you of course.

3. I would usually suggest spelling out acronyms first then putting said acronyms in subsequent parentheses, but if we can use the "hover text" just like the forums, that would be an option too...

4. The wording is inconsistent. Is the first one listed a subforum, but not the second? I did not look at the actual forums yet, so I don't know if there is an appreciable difference.

1) no need for a link here. A link is provided on the pages where it is appropriate such as installation instructions.

2) you're probably right. I've removed a lot of this already form other pages. I'll remove this as well.

3) spelling them out the first time is grammatically correct. I will fix this as well.

4) Support is not a subforum, it's a top level forum but I'll look at the wording here too.

 

 

EDIT:

Okay, I've cleaned it up a bit.

 

EDIT #2:

Misunderstand you about the link. I've fixed it. Boris is unfortunately not that great with web design.

[TechAngel85]

ENBSeries is a powerful post processing modification available for Skyrim and other games. It was developed by Boris Vorontsov, who still maintains and updates the mod. The mod also enables Users to can create their own custom configurations (commonly referred to as ENBs or ENB Presets) designed to their own specifications by modifying rendering functions and the application of additional effects, such as bloom, depth of field, and SSAO and many more. ENBSeries has also added a memory manager known as ENBoost, which assists in offloading memory¹ from the system memory (RAM) to video memory (VRAM) and in order to prevent avoid crashes. ENBs often typically enhance the visuals of the game², including overall lighting, colors, and shadows among other aspects of the game, but comes with a performance loss of anywhere between 5% to 50% of total frames per second (FPS), depending on the user's hardware, the ENB features enabled and the extent to which those features are utilized. Most users find this loss acceptable compared to the enhancements and features gained from the ENB.

 

Use the Quickstart tab to jump right into using an ENB Preset or explore the other tabs for more advanced and in-depth information pertaining to ENBs.

 

1. Which memory? This does not make it clear.

2. Kind of struggling with what'd be the best phrasing for this sentence, so, best effort thus far...

Okay, I agreed with this too so I've edited it a bit.

[Percyjackson44]

I was reading through the ENB guide and noticed some minor spelling mistakes. They aren't exactly guide-breaking but I thought it would be helpful to let you know.

 

 application of additional effects, such as bloom, depth of field, reflections, and SSA among others. SSAO
 most are not kept updateed with the latest ENBSeries versions. updated
 It is highly recommended to make a back of the original file before doing any form of editing. backup
 You can adjust the quality of SSAO in the [SSOA_SSIL] section. fairly self-explanatory
 

I wish you the best of luck revamping the guide and I am glad to help.

[TechAngel85]

Thanks, I'll get to those when I get home this evening ( I'm about to head out to work ).

 

Also, just so everyone knows, I'll leave each section that I post in the OP that is ready for review up for about a week for a whole page and 3-4 days for just a single section of a page. This should give everyone time to review those sections before moving on.

 

Edit:

Got those spelling mistakes taken care of.

[TechAngel85]

I'm moved the Intro section into the completed area. The Quickstart is now ready for review: https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENB#ENBoost_Quickstart

[EssArrBee]

Looks good tech. I know I took most those screens but I don't actually remember doing it. Must of been drunk modding.

[TechAngel85]

Looks good tech. I know I took most those screens but I don't actually remember doing it. Must of been drunk modding.

Haha! Had a bit too much rum and coke myself last night. They're good though. I only replaced two of them due to updated stuff.

[TechAngel85]

Guess the only thing worth mentioning is that just about all presets which require the helper.dll will have it included in their download so there is no need to download it separately.Other then that I did not find something that stood out as wrong or hard to understand. But I am sure someone who have not been doing ENB´s for a year or so can find something that is hard to understand! :S

I added a bit of a note about it being included in presets which require it. We'll leave the line there, at least, for informational purposes.

[TechAngel85]

Since there isn't much to look over on the Quickstart page, I went ahead and finished up the ENB Choices page as well. So as you review one you can move over to the next.

 

The only thing I wish I could figure out is how to separate the galleries so they don't all come up as one when clicked on. I'll have to research some wiki code to see of that is possible.

[Mangaclub]

actually there is enb 0.264 but it seems some amd users had issues with it.

[TechAngel85]

actually there is enb 0.264 but it seems some amd users had issues with it.

Yes, AMD users and is the reason I've not mentioned it yet. I've mentioned it on the Enblocal INI page and made sure that page is up-to-date for it; however, I've held off on the other pages until Boris irons out the issue. Once it's stable, then I'll plug in v0.264 where you see v0.262 (except for on the ENB preset overviews unless their Nexus pages also state they're compatible with v0.264).

[TechAngel85]

Okay, since there hasn't been any feedback, I'm assuming that the two previous pages are good to go. Let us move on to the Installation tab. Please review it for accuracy: https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENB#tab=Installation

 

Keep in mind this page is for general information and not for any particular ENB preset.