Desperate; Weird shadow around my character

[Lopsang47]

I've had an incredibly annoying graphics glitch in my Skyrim. I know this glitch occurs on the Xbox 360 as well as on the PC, don't know about other systems.

 

There is a weird aura/shadow in about a 20-foot radius around my camera that makes said 20 feet much darker. It follows me everywhere. It manifests itself on a varied scale based on environment, and sometimes does not seem to be present while other times it is readily apparent. Mostly it occurs solely on floor textures but also sometimes also on trees, rocks, bridges, and everything (but always the floor first).

 

Here is a video of the bug. It is short and you may have to look real close to see it; the video is not good. but I hope it gives you an idea; mine is much worse than that a lot of the time.

 

Looking on the internet, I have only found one thread where the problem is discussed, but multiple people commented there and in the above video so it is not just me. Some people have replied that it is caused by the remnant of some ice spell on your character. As such, I used console commands to try to fix it. I used player.resurrect 1 and player.dispelallspells. This seemed to work the first time. However, after a couple of hours of playtime, it came back in full force. This leads me to believe that fix was just some sort of fluke and, obviously, temporary. As it has come back, I have tried dozens of times to fix it with the console again, using the same method, but it won't relent.

 

I just remembered; when I downloaded my ENB mod stuff, I downloaded Climates of Tamiel. This hugely aggravated the issue, and messed with the shadows of objects/lighting in various other ways. The climates of tamiriel mod increased the radius of this effect doubly, made the area darker, and made more things dark (like rocks and buildings which usually are unaffected).

 

Since I noticed this bug first, I have done numerous things, including;

-Uninstalling all mods.

-Reinstalling Skyrim and playing completely vanilla a dozen times.

-Replacing my graphics card, motherboard, and processor.

-Formatting both of my harddrives and installing my OS on a new SSD.

 

I am at a loss. Anything anybody can do to help me permanently and concretely fix this bug will be much appreciated and I may even reward you with some game on your Steam wishlist.

 

If you have questions about my post, or even if you can't help but want to let people know you have this bug as well or can otherwise add to the discussion, please post.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Lopsang47

[DeltaAgent26]

1st) What graphics card(s) are you using?

2nd) If using more than one card are you in SLI or X-fire mode?

3rd) What are your graphics settings at?

4th) Are you using any ENB or other graphics mods?

5th) If using any of the ENB or other graphics mods, are they updated to the latest versions and have you made sure they have compatibility patches or updates? I know that with ENB, there are either patches or compatibility updates to them for Climates of Tamriel.

Edited June 4, 2014 by DeltaAgent26

[Lopsang47]

Thanks so much for the reply.

 

I am using a Nvidia Geforce GTX 660ti by Asus. Just one card, no SLI.

I am running on ultra high/maximum now besides AA because I have an ENB. Before that, my settings varied, as I had a different machine, so I've ran the game at a ton of different levels.

Currently I am using Project ENB but that was just recently.

I don't know about any compatibility updates on my Project ENB. I did not install the Climates of Tamriel weather patch, if that matters, because I CTD after the Bethesda logo loads. Besides, this bug occured long before I got said mods so that can't be the issue.

[Lopsang47]

Bump

[lacisum]

maybe it's just the shadow fade distance set in the skyrimprefs.ini? just sayin'. solutions can be easy sometimes ^^

[Lopsang47]

I certainly hope it's easy. So what should I set that to?

[DeltaAgent26]

I certainly hope it's easy. So what should I set that to?

I am starting to get the same "wierd shadow" you mention, and it shows up depending on the time of day in the game, as well as if in 1st or 3rd person view.

It is caused by your graphics settings.But before you do that,

try opening your game through the steam launcher, and change

the view distances on the advanced window (2nd tab). Also make

sure the "Object Detail Fade" box IS Checked. Then start the

game, when you get to the main menu quit. Then start the game

with the skse shortcut, and play and save as normal.

 

If you still get the the same effect, change the settings back to all max/ultra, etc.

 

 

Once you've done that, go into your enblocal.ini and enbseries.ini (located in the main skyrin folder... where the TESV.exe file is) files and make changes there.

You should probably read the "S.T.E.P." series notes, and enb tutorials, and such, to make sure you don't change any unnecessary settings that could potentially fry your card.

[Lopsang47]

I've changed said settings around a lot before, and it's never helped. I uninstalled all my mods and i'm back to vanilla for now. I guess there really is just no fix for this, I don't get it.

[DeltaAgent26]

I also have a GTX 660TiOC. and by adjusting the rendering distances through the main launcher window, I was able to get around the issue. My settings are set to ultimate, but the draw distances are set one tick left of the right hand side of each slider. This seems to have worked for me. Also one other thing to take into consideration is if you have wearable lanterns, or Dawnbreaker equipped, as they have their own light source. and as such they emit light to a certain radius from the player character, and can cause these weird bubbles of light and shadow around your character.