Rays/Volumetric Rays?

[aaltair]

Completely random and trivial question here... Are "godrays" produced through adjustments to the Rays and Volumetric rays settings, or are they created through a more complex blend of ENB interactions I probably don't want to delve too far in to? 

 

I have two ENBs I love for different reasons, one of which is that one ENB has amazing godrays. I decided to mess about and try to give those godrays to the other ENB which has a sun that is more of a glow with rays you only really see when you're amidst trees at sunset, and they're still not as intense as the other ENB's godrays. I was given advice that I should be adjusting Rays and Volumetric Rays, including adding to the density of the volumetric rays, but I see little to no difference. They both use the latest ENB versions but the one with the more epic rays does not use weathers. I did adjust the rays within the individual weathers of the one that uses weathers to no avail. 

 

Am I simply missing some manner of ENB sorcery that cannot be explained by a simple adjustment of rays? 

 

To be clear, here's a picture of the godrays i'm trying to achieve:

 

unrealistic, but i love them

 

Pretty much the same shot, same savegame, but with the ENB that doesn't have the rays. This is after I adjusted density, rays multiplier, etc, to 3x what they were:

 

need more rays

 

Essentially I'm just wondering if this quest is far more complex than it would at first appear or if i'm missing something painfully obvious.

 

[JawZ]

Getting long and distinctive Sun rays is ahrd if you don't want a insanely bright an large "sun" in the sky.

 

These are the settings you should look further into;

[EFFECT]

EnableProceduralSun - Have it enable, higher quality same amount of performance. Unless you are on a very low end machine but then even ENBSeries without any effects would be a toll on such system

 

[sKY]

SunIntensity

SunColorFilter

SunGlowIntensity

SunGlowHaziness

SunCoronaIntensity - I always turn this "off"/set it to 0.0 and let the Sun Rays handle the rays alone. Unless I use my own very subtle Corona texture that doesn't pop in to the scene as immersion breaking as vanilla and other modded textures do.

 

[RAYS]

SunRaysMultiplier

 

[PROCEDURALSUN]

EdgeSoftness

GlowIntensity

GlowCurve

 

 

How they all should be tweaked for optimal visuals, well it depends on what you are looking for, how strong your various sky elements are, do you have Vol. Rays active, do you have Mist active.

If you could give me a preset you like overall except they don't have that strong Rays you seem to be looking for I can show you how to adjust them, and keep the original sun visuals intact, mostly.

[aaltair]

Yeah when i tried just adjusting volumetric rays and multiplier I ended up with a very blown-out sky. I'll mess with the other settings you suggested and see what happens. It's definitely harder than I originally thought it would be! 

 

The preset I'm trying to add rays to is Somber 3 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/54362/? 

[JawZ]

If it's only vol. rays your trying to add then lowering the GradientIntensity to compensate for the increased brightness caused by the Vol. Ray multiplier is the way to go.

 

I'll have a look at it and see how it could be added.

[aaltair]

Well, I've done some testing with lukewarm results. The following picture is a definite improvement, but still nowhere near the epicosity of rays I was going for:

 

The rays are better but you really don't notice them unless you're behind a tree. They're not nearly as far-reaching or as dense as the rays I see in the ENB I'm trying to base them off of, which is Grim and Somber Jyggalag. That preset has rays at high noon coming straight down from the heavens like a sunny transporter beam. The funny thing is, both these presets have the same parent, somber antique, so I feel like it should work and am frustrated at my lack of knowledge as to how to make it happen. It's like someone who doesn't know how to fix a car or whatever standing there staring under the hood, hoping osmosis will take care of the rest. 

 

These are the type of rays I am going for: 

 

and these: 

 

I doubled my sunrays multiplier bringing it to 2.50, raised the volumetric density to 10 and lowered gradient intensity and some of the sun glow intensity. I tried increasing the sunrays multiplier to 8 to see what would happen, and the moment I closed the GUI I crashed. So maybe I got greedy there.

[JawZ]

Ok good to have some reference shoots on what you are looking for. I will have a go myself and see if I can make something happen.

I'll do it once I find time to do so, working on my own "STEP" mod combination, Optimized Skyrim for a lack of a better word :P

[Aiyen]

There are two kind of rays in ENB. The first is the one you see through threes and besides structures etc. Which is controlled via. the settings mentioned above. 

 

The other is controlled by the settings under volumetric ray.  It mainly depend on which cloud texture you use, since just like with the trees it requires a decent alpha channel to look good. The main issue is that the trees etc. got fairly decent ones regardless of which textures you use. For clouds one set of settings will work with one but not another texture. 

 

So in your recent shots, the one with the clouds is one type, and the trees is the other one. 

 

The main issue like JawZ said is that to get intense rays, you most likely end up with a really blown out sky when there is nothing in the way. There are many reasons for this... both the alpha channel of the actual textures matter, but also the various settings. 

Depending on how your enbeffect.fx is setup there are certain visuals you are never going to be able to get on top of others because what produce one effect negate another....the trick is finding the balance where both are somewhat noticeable and bearable at all times. Also when it comes to rays the bloom effect is a huge contributor to the overall effect. Bloom works like a multiplier on top of what you have, so if you use high intensity values in enbseries... they will quickly go nuclear. 

 

I have always found that low values in enbseries and large in the shaders is a better way, since it allows you to use the enbseries values as a fine tuning instead of the coarse adjustment. 

 

The issue you have with what you are trying to do is mainly this. The preset you are trying to add a high intensity effect to is one where the entire visual style is about dim colors, and a smooth warm feel. This is more or less the opposite of having high intensity effects.. which is why it is going to be tricky to get done right. You most likely are going to have to make some compromises on the overall feel of the style to get your rays. 

[aaltair]

Yeah it just seems like it's too much to try to force those rays with this preset. I assumed that getting the style rays from one into the other wouldn't be too hard, considering the two presets share the same parent (somber antique) but it looks like I'll just have to switch back and forth every couple of days or so to get my fix, lol

[JawZ]

The better you know the settings and how they work together, the easier it will become to add the visuals you want. Keep on tweaking now and again and you'll soon be teaching us a few tricks I'm sure.

 

Here are some from me;

 

SunRaysMultiplier - Begin by setting this so it creates an overpowered result with the length you want, I suggest a value of 1.0 to begin with.

EdgeSoftness - Between 0.5 and 1.0 I usually have this at, controls the blurring of the sun disc in the sky

GlowIntensity - Set this to something around 1.0 or 2.0

Vol. Rays -Intensity - 0.0 and 0.5, depending on your sky intensity as well as sun intensity and bloom.

SunIntensity - 0.0 to 0.2, you will get your sun disc intensity from other settings anyway.

SunGlowIntensity - 10.0, similar to how Procedural Sun GlowIntensity works, yet with distinguishable attributes not present in the Procedural Sun setting

SunCoronaIntensity - 0.0, it will mess with your results in such bad ways and you'll get better rays of light than a texture can produce anyway.

SunGlowHaziness - 0.45 to 1.0, I would first try with 1.0 and then go down from there.

 

This is usually how I get my long and very distinguishable Rays of light without blowing out the sky.

Trick to make a nice blend is to half the value for the days compared to the the Sunset/Sunrise, mostly.

 

enb 2015_06_07 20_35_06_09 by Anders Wedin, on Flickr

 

enb 2015_06_07 18_50_43_03 by Anders Wedin, on Flickr

Edited June 8, 2015 by JawZ

[aaltair]

Thanks for your help JawZ, I tend to tweak things until either I get frustrated or my husband comes in and sheepishly inquires if we're ever actually going out to dinner, lol. Easy to lose track of time trying to get things just so but maybe someday I'll have even somewhat of a clue as to what I'm doing!

 

What ENB is it in the photos?

Edited June 8, 2015 by aaltair

[JawZ]

Yeah I tend to tweak until the frustration gets to big and I'll quit the game and do something else, same here though in my case it's my girlfriend. I also get the occasional "are you ever going to play the game or are you going to tweak and modify it", lol. Yes it is

 

That was one of my own, I created it just before I posted the images on Flickr.

[aaltair]

It would be cool if the STEP enbseries.ini guide could be fleshed out more, there are some areas of the guide that have no information, like the entire Environment section. Something about custom weathers would be great too. A lot of work though I'm sure. The weathers seem to really confuse people, and I think a lot of people end up trying to achieve what they want by adjusting ambientlight or directlight, but it's just so much more complex than that.

[Aiyen]

The guide could always be better, but it was never meant to be a tweaking guide... one of those takes a long long time to create (I have been working on one for ages, but every other week I tend to discover something new that makes what I knew kinda obsolete.) 

 

The problem is that you can do so much... and you can go about getting the same visuals in many different ways with only slight differences. Only by actually working with it and exploring options will you get around to how to do certain things. Another thing to consider is that eventually you get to get immersed so much in the technical aspects, that you tend to forget the artistic sides of things. At least I know I suffer from this. When I look at images people create these days I more or less see the code to the shader that make up the style.. and not the artistic aspects such as color balance etc. (JawZ is much better in that respect than I most likely ever will be! :) )

 

I do tend to agree somewhat about the weathers... the main issue is that there are two different save buttons... one global and one for individual weathers. However once you have made the mistake of editing with game time running, or running about in the game while editing a few times the system tends to sink in. :) 

 

As for the fustrations, then I agree with JawZ... it is vital to have something else to do. Another suggestion I can come with is to start from a blank slate. Do not try to build on top of another preset... it will confuse you a lot more than if you start from a blank slate and slowly build up what you want. You might end up with something close to what inspired you, but you might also discover things you did not know looked good in the process. 

I would especially suggest this if you do not have the technical insight into the various math involved. 

 

And finally... only try to do one thing at a time and accept the compromises you have to make along the way. And as always... try to avoid using the base enbeffect.fx and bloom file.. they are not really user freindly you understand. JawZ have made some excellent files that does the same but are much easier to understand. Again it helps to understand the shaders as well and it will reduce fustrations. 

 

Ofc. the problem with all of this is if you get hooked and you never get to play the game.... I have still been told there are dragons and such in the game, it does sound interresting.. but I JUST want to adjust this one thing! :) 

[TechAngel85]

It would be cool if the STEP enbseries.ini guide could be fleshed out more, there are some areas of the guide that have no information, like the entire Environment section. Something about custom weathers would be great too. A lot of work though I'm sure. The weathers seem to really confuse people, and I think a lot of people end up trying to achieve what they want by adjusting ambientlight or directlight, but it's just so much more complex than that.

Yeah, that Guide is still under construction and has been put on hold until this next release comes out.

[aaltair]

@Aiyen Wow yes, everything you said there makes so much sense. Anything artistic you create generally is easier if you start from a blank slate as it allows you to understand how things come together, rather than looking at a finished piece and trying to unravel it and start over. Not a very good analogy but yes, I definitely see what you mean. And I suck at math. 

 

Now I just have a couple more adjustments to make...and a couple more...and maybe this one more thing... :)