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Check out this video, it's helped and encouraged myself with modding struggles a lot. It's Todd Howards 2012 Key Notes speech, where he discusses Bethesdas own approach to working on the game. I think it's an excellent speech as it covers a hell of a lot of aspects, such as their game making / testing process, getting focus and balance right, only trying to achieve the achievable. The most appropriate Bethesda phrase was: We can do anything, we just can't do everything. Hope it helps and good luck with it all.

Directly speaking - No. Each face in Skyrim is made up from a major collection of adjustable attributes, like that used within the initial charactor setup at the very start of the game (or if using the showracemenu command) - so it's way more complicated than say just coverting a photo to a game texture. You could use the charactor creation menu to make a face that you want, then find the face data within the Creation Kit and apply that face data to a NPC so you could effectively include multiple customised faces at once. You can also adjust skin tone / colouring within CK too.

Has anyone thought that the item / carry system in Skyrim is lacking a hell of a lot of it's potential? Do you think it strange to be able to carry a ridiculous amount of items at once? Do you think the game mechanic could be more accomodating for carrying items and improving how you carry items? Yes, I know Skyrim is a game, and the original setup is part of the original game mechanic, but wouldn't it be more interesting if you could only carry what you're realsitically able to, and then integrate a few of Skyrims original game mechanics to customise and improve this system further? For a perfect example, look at Assassins Creed games - you have belts that can only carry a very small amount of items, and throughout the game you can upgrade your belts to be able to carry more. Forget about weight in general as being the controlling factor and rely almost totally on available inventory slots within your armour. A basic armour set could carry say 1 primary weapon (1 or 2 handed), 1 secondary (or mission based weapon), and a belt that can hold 3 potions. A more advanced armour could hold 2 (compatible) primary weapons (such as an axe on the players back and a sword at their side). Maybe make it so a 2 handed weapon takes up 2 primary inventory slots making only 1 weapon carryable, and 1 handed weapons can take only 1 slot each so 2 are carryable (as long as both primary weapons are 1 handed - couldn't allow combinations of 1 and 2 handed). Also have several item belts that incremently allow more potions to be carried. like 3, 5, 7, 9. Give these different belts a ranking system (like apprentice belt, traveller belt, adventurer belt etc.). Maybe make armour (parts) customisable and / or even craftable so the player can go on adventures to collect the required crafting items, and then receive the reward of chosing and making his / her setup to their liking. You could even tie-in a carry system into a totally new and specific skill / perk tree, where you could allow more options of crafting abilities for making better clothing / armour, make items take up less space (double and treble the item slot sizes), able to craft more items earlier than normal, etc. Hell you could even make a new race around item / weapon collectors / traders. A major part of Skyrim is looting other peoples possessions, and this can therefore be played upon by having a collectors / traders race that's more geared towards holding more possessions for either personal benefit or trading purposes (with less focus on such things as combat). Make items visable on the charactor too - not just make it a theoretical thing. This would make it more realistic, and it'll provide a quick and easy visual reference to your inventory. Sure some comprimises may have to be made here for practicalities sake, but the main prinicple still exists. Personally speaking I'm using a mod right now that limits carry weight to initially just 125 - and you'd be surprised how much more organised and aware you are of your inventory, and how it positively affects the gameplay mechanic by having to make appropriate preparations for your missions (you'll visit your home / traders more often to store / sell items, and it'll force you into thinking about item / weapon changes / choices a lot more if you decide to do multiple missions without returning home). I'm too busy with other mods to even think about making a mod like this, but does any of this sound interesting to anyone else? Does anyone want to do the mod????

This is the official ENBseries download page for Skyrim: http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.htm Bear in mind that the "main" ENB file enbseries.dll is not allowed to be directly distributed through Nexus. If you want to try the standard ENBseries just chose a version from the link above, click the download link on the following page (the download link / symbol looks like an arrow pointing down) then copy the downloaded files directly into Skyrims MAIN directory (not \Data directory). There are 2 methods of using ENBseries: 1) Injector version - install the injector version, then before launching Skyrim click and run the injector .exe file. 2) Wrapper version - install the wrapper version, then just launch Skyrim. It doesn't really matter too much which method you use, but I would chose the injector version as it's supposed to be more performance friendly than the wrapper version. If you want to try other peoples ENBseries mod sets (like the plenty different sets here on Nexus) then download their mod set, copy the files into Skyrims main directory. You'll also need to know which ENBseries version the mod author based his / her mod set on, so that you can then download the relevant official ENBseries using the link above to acquire the enbseries.dll file. Put this file into Skyrims main directory and that's it, mod installed.

Don't think it's possible to change just the lens flare effect as I believe the effect is directly within the .dll of the mod. You could just change different .dll files and see how this works?

Update: I've added "Serious HD Retexture Skyrim" to the poll. I won't add anymore unless it's absolutely neccessary so as to not affect previous votes.

@ SireDarko I share and admire your ambition scales and enthusiam, so I'll help out on one matter that I think I can... I believe this can be done by editing textures. If you're not aware, the process to do this would be... - Extract textures.bsa from Skyrim\Data directory to obtain individual texture files (you'll need a .bsa extractor app for this) - Import the required texture (like troll.dds) into an editing app such as Photoshop or Gimp (you'll need a .dds plugin for the program of your choice) - Change texture as desired - Save texture - Either remake the textures.bsa file (using CK's Archive.exe app) with your new texture within it, or manually create the directory path within Skyrim\Data\Textures folder so the file(s) can be loaded "loose". That's a very simple method, and it won't cover everything (as I don't know everything) but it's a start. Adjusting a charactors entire colour scheme such as a troll could be a fair bit of work, but that'll depend on how you want it to look, how much time you're willing to spend on it etc. You could be er...lazy and just apply a full colour correction / adjustment to the entire troll texture but that'll obviously affect everything about it's features - if you just want to adjust say its hair colour then that'll be more effort and time to get it looking right. As for the scale of project topic - I totally understand where you're coming from. I want to change Skyrim completely - new textures, new weather, make vast cities, rescore the soundtrack, write actually interesting missions (not just collection / assissination / very basic puzzle solving stuff) etc. This said I do agree with 2 factors already mentioned - working with a team often causes unreliability and inconsistency with work progress and direction, and to not bite off too much at once (I have 4 major and unfinished mods on the go now, and would like at least one of them completed and released)! Personally speaking though, I won't release anything to the public until it's damn near finished, or fully finished so that people won't complain about unfinshed work, and that it won't negatively affect anyones general gameplay while trying to use your mod. Good luck with it all either way

Hi all, I'm just about to start a retexturing project and I was just wondering which ENVIRONMENTAL texture packs (even if it's Bethesdas own) people use, so I've made this poll !! I am quite frankly not interested in non-evironmental mods such as people-based / armour / clothing etc. type mods. My main point in focus is really to determine the texture resolutions used - as in if people have to use standard texture packs for performance reasons, or if most players' computers can hack running high or very hi res texture packs. I am asking this as my intented texture mod will only replace certain environmental textures, so I want to make a mod that'll have a consistent look with the most popular mod(s), and that will be usable to everyone / most people. I'm not going to use this information to try and better someone elses mod / work, and when I release my mod it will become apparent why I've created this poll. Please note that I haven't made this poll to encourage full-on discussions / arguements over which texture set is "better" - I'm just asking for peoples preferences. I also do not want in any way to have anyones textures mods looked upon in a negative / disrespectful / competitive manner, just to demonstrate total respect for mod authors, and the mod authors' hard work. Poll Guidelines: - The poll is for (generally) FULL environmental texture packs - mods that adjust individual items such as trees, grass etc. have not been included. - I haven't included sky-based texture mods (including day / night sky, sun, sunglare mods) as I'm frankly not interested in this at the moment. - You can only chose 1 option - I have set this up as I feel most people won't combine different environmental texture mods. - I have compiled the options based on the most downloaded full environmental texture mods found on Nexus. If I have missed out a texture mod set, then please let me know and I'll add it to the poll. If I've happened to upset anyone by making this poll I will repeat that this was in no way my intention, and I'll obviously respect any mod authors requests to add / remove mods from the poll. I thank-you all in advance for taking the time out to contribute to this poll - your information will be of great help to me.

Thanks AstralFire - is good to get a response, even if it's the one that I wasn't wanting to hear! I hope Bethesda change this sometime as it'll be an enourmous help. Thanks gain.

Simple question, and as the thread title suggests: Can a mod be editied in Creation Kit and then viewed immediately in Skyrim (while leaving Skyrim running)? I'm adjusting weather / lighting variables, and it's a pain when experimenting with things to edit, then save, then load Skyrim to check it. I used to mod GTA 4 weather / lighting, and with this you could edit, save, alt-tab to game, press F1 to reload settings immediately - this is so much quicker and better than having to load a game from scratch every time just to check things. It made me wonder about this when CK defines mods as "active files" - which albeit probably suggests active for editing, but was hoping that it meant active as in "live" / realtime! I know if you try and save a mod in CK while Skyrim is running it'll throw up an error, but there surely must be a way to edit stuff in realtime? If not, then modding will be a very slow process! Thanks for any advice / responses.

I have found that the weather lighting affects things, as in if the ambient light level (or more the point, shade / colour) was set to a high amount then gaurds wouldn't get out their torches regardless of time of day. Same if you set the ambient to a low value, they'll be walking around with torches in the middle of the day! So go into creation kit, think its under world data section, then weather. Open a weather type, and in first window you'll look at top left and you'll see a RGB colouring section, use the drop-down list and the top one is ambient. Don't know the exact cutoff for lights or no lights, but on a grey-scale its somewhere around 1/4 to a 1/3 (from bottom). Dunno if this affects anything else tho, and dunno if there's a better way, but is all I know.

@ AlphaWolF - nice work! Dunno if you're planning on using that character as being playable, or NPC, but looks sweeet either way! Can't you export the skeleton you used for the anim (as a .NIF) in 3DS using the NifSkope exporter plugin? This plugin will need including to 3DS if not done so already. I don't know what export settings to use though - still trying to suss this out myself. Wouldn't that be a case of selecting a part of the skeleton, say the pelvis, then press either "w" or "e" to either move or rotate the bone section + connected bones. By doing this through mucking around I've made characters move in all kinds of weird ways. From what I've read, 3DS can somehow autofill frames / keys so I guess only a few key frames will be required and then blend them in 3DS (?) Def don't take my word tho - I'm on day 3 of 3DS Max usage! (: Still looking into animation keys myself - I'm still stumped......

@ AlphaWolF - really don't know what's going on with your imports! I have all skeletons, meshes, and animations prepared for use, and so far the only errors I've had is the infrequent animation .KF not being recognised as a proper file format. No corruption or missing information (as yet). All I do is what I gather is the done thing - import specific skeleton.nif for your specific character type, then import specific character meshes as desired, drag-and-drop a specific .DDS also if desired, then import the .KF animation. I've just tried a dog for you - skeleton, mesh and animation seems fine. If you have only certain specific files going wrong, post which ones that don't work for you and I can see if it's a normal error, or perhaps something wrong at your end. If you have any trouble with exporting - I'd follow the guide that Smeden_Nils kindly linked above - is the best thing I've seen so far. Out of curiousity - I presume you have your dragon wings flapping around on your animation - question being, did you have to manually adjust each frame to achieve motion of the wings, or can you just set a start and end point and have 3DS blend the imbetween frames? I'm looking into tweaking vanilla Skyrim anims but I've come across some that are like 500 frames, so not sure I wanna go there! Right now I'm having trouble finding the correct export settings just for a custom edited skeleton.nif - I've managed to use a modded skeleton in-game, I can walk / run backwards and forwards, but as soon as I turn the character to change direction it triggers some kind of unkown error and I get CTD. ): EDIT: Ok, I've just read that 3DS can autofill keys, but my new problem is that when modding vanilla anims I want to find keys for specifc bones so I can delete most keys and rework the anim by tweaking the few remaining keys. I assume there's a key list somewhere, but no idea where the heck it is......

Thanks so much Smeden_Nils! I made a little more progress since my last post, as in successfully converted the .KF, but I now need to look into actual animation editing. Gonna watch Monaco F1 first as gotta get my priorities sorted (: Will def look at the links you've provided - and am well chuffed to see a GUI version of HKXCMD, was much overdue as was getting fed up with all the typing. Thanks again!!

Hmm, exporting an animation as a workable .KF is proving to be a right pain. I followed the guide that AlphaWolF linked, and exported a .KF animation using the EXACT settings that's on that guide. Tried reconverting it back to .HKX format and HKXCMD said "No animations found". So I went back to my test 3DS project (a vanilla animation adjusted slightly for test purposes) and I couldn't even import the test .KF as 3DS said it was an "Improper File Format" !!! Anyone ????!!!??!!?

Thanks all for your replies! @ AlphaWolF - yeah that guide is what I'm working from right now. Using this and a half decent youtube video I can now load skeletons, and import my .kf animations, which actually seems to be working (about f***ing time something went right)! I've checked through a few animations and most work as intended, but some just come up with an error and won't load. I've read that this happens for some unknown reason, and I just hope this won't affect things too much. Just FYI - yeah gonna forget Havok right now. Using my noobie ignorance I will presume I don't need it, and has been said I'll attempt to do a direct export, reconvert file back and hope that it'll work. One thing tho - when I convert back to HKX, do I need to do this twice, like how I got them to .KF in the first place (packed HKX to unpacked HKX to .KF) or can I just go (.KF to whatever HKX that HKXCMD uses) and use this file - assuming I use HKXCMD to reconvert files back again? EDIT: @ AlphaWolF again - I've just loaded a dragon skeleton and a few dragons animations - everything works fine for me. Just done the same for "werewolfbeast" with skeleton and a few different animations - again working fine. Maybe some data became corrupt on extraction and / or conversion process?? When I converted my files I did all the enitre games' animations in one go - and noticed that when the DOS window was flying through the conversions that there were some files that came up in red, which I assume are errors. Other than this, and the odd animation file that won't load, everything else works ok for me. Perhaps redo your files going right back to the original .BSA extraction and hope that'll improve things (?)

Ok, one thing fixed. I was being a complete 'tard with file conversion. If people might've noticed, I was making a typo. Was using "hlxcmd" not "hkxcmd" (I'm using my tv at high res at mo so couldn't see file name clearly, or something) (: Files now converted, but I'm still very stuck with Havok implementation into 3DS Max......

I'm trying and failing to setup 3DS Max and Havoc so I can attempt to mod Skyrim animations. Steps I've taken, and failed results... 1) Extract "animations.bsa" and "textures.bsa" to new individual folders - done successfully. 2) Convert packed HKX files to HML HKX files using "HLXCMD.exe" - FAILED - Have placed "hlxcmd.exe" into root of my new folders - Ran Windows' "cmd.exe" to get to dos prompt and used "cd" command to get to my new folder(s) directory - Typed: hlxcmd convert "my original folder name" "my new folder name" and get the error "hlxcmd.exe is not recognised as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file". I've seen this work on Youtube vids, and there's not much to get wrong here, so I'm confused as hell. 3) Install Havok Content Tools - FAILED - Submitted survey on Havok website - found what I believe to be the Content Tool that is required for Skyrim - Havok Content Tools for Game Artists and Designers (2010.2.0, 64-bit) but the file that gets downloaded seemingly isn't a proper usable file as it has no file extension: HavokPcXsContentTools_2010-2-0_20101115 - so WTF? 4) Install Havok SDK - partial success / fail - Downloaded •Havok Physics and Havok Animation SDKs for Programmers (2010.2.0, VS2008) and the (2010.2.0, VS2005) version. Yes I can extract the .zip into a proper usable folder, but I just don't know what this program does and what I'll need it for. 5) Made 3DS Max 2012 able to read Skyrim .nif files - success. Used a specific Skyrim NifScope 3DS Max plugin installer, so I can at least view .nifs now. Can anyone please help me as I'm beyond frustrated with what should be simple procedures failing on me. Thanks in advance!

I have created this new thread to state how to setup a cinematic aspect ratio while retaining the full use of the Skyrims HUD. I created a thread a few days ago asking how to set this up, no-one answered so I've persisted with it myself and eventually found out how to do this. This guide is only (directly) for nVidia GPU users as I don't have an ATI / AMD GPU. FYI, this original thread can be found here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/673740-widescreen-hud-fix/ Using my method I've regretfully had to apply Skyrim patch 1.3.7.0 in order for the HUD rescaling program to work properly, but it was a means to an end so I applied it. The benefits of running Skyrim in a cinematic aspect ratio (in my opinion) are: 1) A more cinematic experience!!! 2) By following one of my 2 methods below, you can chose to gain either a slight perfomance gain, or have a slight resolution / clarity increase instead. Note: any line that starts with a "-" symbol denotes an actionable process that you will need to do if you want all this to work! Step 1: Preparation: - Patch Skyrim to 1.3.7.0 - Download "Skyrim UltraWide Fix" program (I'm using version 0.91). I beleive this can be located on Widescreen Gaming Forums' website. Step 2: Creating Cinematic Aspect Ratio - Open nVidia Control Panel (NCP) by right clicking mouse on an unused area within Windows' desktop and select "NVIDIA Control Panel" from pop-up menu. - Select "Adjust Desktop Size and Position". In scaling options, set scaling mode to "Fullscreen", set Perform Scaling on "GPU" and tick the box stating "Override the scaling mode set by games and programs" - In Size options, tick "Enable Desktop Resizing", then click the resize option. This should bring up a display which will effectively allow you to change aspect ratio. This resizing display mode should be based around your monitors native resolution setting, but don't worry too much about resolution at the minute, we're just dealing with aspect ratio for now. My native resolution is 1920 x 1080, so in order to achieve the cinematic widescreen aspect ratio I resized this down to 1920 x 874. Note that 874 is 45.52% of 1920. Providing you're running a 16:9 monitor / tv then if you have a different native resolution to myself then just set the vertical resolution (the smaller of the 2 numbers) to 45.52% of your horizontal resolution (the bigger of the 2 numbers). The calculation to determine 45.52% is horizontal resolution DIVIDED by 100, then multiply by 45.52. If you are using a 16:10 (or different) aspect ratio monitor then manually resize the vertical resolution to a setting that suits you, and work out the percentage that this vertical resoltion is based from your horizontal resolution, and use this percentage number instead of 45.52%. - Confirm your new resized desktop resolution. The cinematic aspect ratio has been created. Step 3: Creating the correct resolution: In order to do this all properly, you will now need to create a custom resolution within NCP, but some more maths are required first! As mentioned earlier in the post you can chose from either a slight performance increase (Step 4 below) or alternatively have a slight resolution / clarity increase (Step 5 below). Refer soley to the required Step of your choice below (and ignore the other method). Step 4: Perfomance Increase: If you want a slight performance increase then this is how this works: by having resized the desktop, this has effectively created "dead areas" at the top and bottom of the screen which is not included within the resolution, therefor is not being rendered / processed in any way. You can utilise this fact as your visable /usable screen space can now effectively run at a LOWER resolution to compensate for this dead space - hence why this method should improve performance. To set this method up you will then need to create a custom resolution within NCP using a percentaged screen resolution for your normal gaming resolution. For example: My native monitor resolution: 1920 x 1080 Cinematic aspect ratio resoltion: 1920 x 874 My normal (non-cinematic aspect ratio) gaming resolution: 1280 x 720 (yes this is low, but I'm used to this from my PS3)! My new cinematic aspect ratio resolution: 1280 x 582 (582 being 45.52% of 1280). Demonstration of rendering performance difference: 1280 x 720 = 921,600 total pixel count 1280 x 582 = 744,960 total pixel count. This means that by adding the cinematic aspec ratio (dead area) onto the screen, the game only needs to render 80.83% of the total pixel count - so using a direct calculation that's pretty much a 20% performance gain! - In NCP go to "Change Resolution" option, and in the window click "Customize". Enter your new (cinematic aspect ratio) horizontal and vertical resolutions settings. Note, I also had to change "Timing" mode to automatic for this to work. - Test this custom resolution, and once it's (hopefully) passed the test then apply the resolution. - Now edit SkyrimPrefs.ini file (normally found in My Documents - My Games - Skyrim folder) and input your new cinematic aspect ratio resolution using the lines "iSize W=" and "iSize H=" for repsective width and horizontal resolutions. You will now have Skyrim set to cinematic aspect ratio, but the HUD will probably not work properly as yet, so please refer to Step 6 below for this last fix. Step 5: Resolution / Clarity inrease:: If you want a slight resolution / clarity increase then this is how it works: by having resized the desktop, this has effectively created "dead areas" at the top and bottom of the screen which is not included within the resolution, therefor is not being rendered / processed in any way. You can utilise this fact as your visable /usable screen space can now effectively run at a HIGHER resolution than "normal" to compensate for this dead space as it will run the visable / usable screen space at the same pixel count as a non-cinematic aspect ratio reslution (more pixel to space ratio basically). To set this method up you will then need to create a custom resolution within NCP using a percentaged screen resolution for your normal gaming resolution. For example: My native monitor resolution: 1920 x 1080 Cinematic aspect ratio resoltion: 1920 x 874 My normal (non-cinematic aspect ratio) gaming resolution: 1280 x 720 (yes this is low, but I'm used to this from my PS3)! Extra maths part: 1280 x 720 = 921,600 total pixel count You will now need to do some trial and error with a calculator to find a resolution the has the correct cinematic aspect ratio and that matches the 921,600 total pixel count. For myself, I wasn't too bothered in matching the total pixel count accurately, so I settled on 1400 x 637 as: 1400 x 637 = 891,100 total pixel count (yes I could've squeezed more out of it but again, not bothered)! Note: Using this new cinematic aspect ratio resolution, if I were to restore the 637 vertical resolution back to a non-cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio, the vertical resolution would be 56.25% of the horizontal resolution, so final resolution would be 1400 x 787. Using this information we could compare the effective resolution per screen space ratio increase: 1400 x 787 = 1,101,800 total pixel count. This effectively results in a screen space pixel ratio increase of 16.35% - hence clearer image! This percentage would also be higher again if I bothered being more accurate with matching pixel count, so I'd guess it could achieve an approximate total of 20% pixel ratio increase. - Once you have worked out your custom resolution settings, open NCP and go to "Change Resolution" option, and in the window click "Customize". Enter your new (cinematic aspect ratio) horizontal and vertical resolutions settings. Note, I also had to change "Timing" mode to automatic for this to work. - Test this custom resolution, and once it's (hopefully) passed the test then apply the resolution. - Now edit SkyrimPrefs.ini file (normally found in My Documents - My Games - Skyrim folder) and input your new cinematic aspect ratio resolution using the lines "iSize W=" and "iSize H=" for repsective width and horizontal resolutions.. You will now have Skyrim set to cinematic aspect ratio, but the HUD will probably not work properly as yet, so please refer to Step 6 below for this last fix. Step 6: HUD Fix: In order to fix the HUD display (as in have a full HUD with no missing information) this is my follwing method. - Install the Skyrim UltraWide Fix program (drop the required files into Skyrims MAIN directory, not DATA directory). - Run Skyrim UltraWide Fix - Untick "Auto-Detect Resolution" - Set GUI width to 1000 - Click "Inject Patch" - this will now be waiting for you to launch Skyrim game - Launch Skyrim, but DO NOT adjust either resolution or aspect ratio settings in OPTIONS window (this will reset some settings) and run the game!!!!! You may need to experiment with GUI width settings, but 1000 works perfectly for me. You may also need to tweak adjust FOV settings either within the UltraWide Fix program, or manually within Skyrims console command (load Skyrim, hit the ` key - normally next to the 1 key on left of keyboard - and type FOV x - with x being FOV amount). That should be it!!! You will now have a more cinematic Skyrim experience with either extra performance, or extra resolution gains! You will need to launch and inject UltraWide Fix every single time you launch Skyrim (just by re-pressing the Inject button), and you'll probably need to manually activate and deactivate desktop resizing in NCP before and after running Skyrim, but this all takes a matter of seconds to do and will give you potentially hours of benefit, so I think it's worth doing. There may well be better programs, fixes, and methods in general, but my way is the only method I've tried that actually works for me! If I find improvements with anything then I'll update this thread asap. I know some total purists may agrue that manipulating image space like I have would force a non 1:1 pixel ratio which may impact on clarity, but if you don't want to use or try my methods, then don't! I hope all this effort (and typing) will improve someones Skyrim experience! Good luck and enjoy. EDIT: Forgot to mention, this fix will resolve HUD scaling issues, but seemingly totally borks loading screens. Personally not too bothered about this as I'm more concerned with the game itself!

Hi Rokreon, ENB (or its full proper name ENBseries) is a relatively simple mod which applies a lot of pre and post processing visual effects to the game. In reality it does more than it sounds because ENB also controls light values, as in sunlight strength, shadow strength, direct sky strength to name but a few. The results can often be truely stunning visuals hence why this mod is popular. It is also relatively easy to configue and reconfigure to your personal tastes as ENB can be changed by editing a few files' values. There are also certain ENB files configurations which add extra static Depth of Field (DOF) and dynamic DOF effects, colour correction, "movie" grain filter, vignette effect. If you delve even further into the ENB files there are regular saturation values, tone mapping, and all kinds of other stuff! The mod itself is basically a few files which you place into Skyrims MAIN folder (not Skyrims DATA folder) and that's it. That said, there are 2 ways ENB is applied to Skyrim. The earlier versions of ENB (up to v1.02 I believe) are wrapper versions, and v1.03 onwards are injector based (which simply requires the ENBinjector.exe manually started before launching the game). There is a significant performance hit to Skyrim when running ENB though. For me it approx halves the frame rate. The injector version is supposed to be less taxing on your computer / GPU over the wrapper version, but I've experimented with this and if there's a difference then it's extremely sublte. The general performance impact on Skyrim with ENB get slightly worse the higher the resolution you run the game at too. ENB also has an SSAO option (ambient occlusion) which at low resolutions isn't a major fps hit, but gets significantly worse again the higher the resolution. ENB is argueably the most visually impressive mod out there, but I get the impression a lot of people disregard this mod as their computers can't run it very well, or they're just not willing to comprimise performance in any way. That said, the later versions of ENB (1.05, 1.06, and 1.08) are a lot more performance friendly, but they have a lot of their graphical functions cut out, so I personally didn't have much interest in this. I have just seen a new ENB v0.111 that might also be worth a look, but I have tested it just yet. As for existing / recommended ENB mods... ENBseries official website (download links for Skyrim): http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.htm Superb ENB-RL by Superl3-sung9533 and Alakan: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11318 Sharpshooters Extreme Graphics Vision ENB - good performance by Sharpshooter8: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15105 Confidence-Man ENB by Confidence Man: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5253 ...these are the top 3 ENB set on Nexus based on download amounts. Obviously you can search through them all yourself using Nexus' Files option at the top of the main webpage. Click Files, then search by Categories, then look under Visual and Graphics. I then sort the results by download amounts to find the most popular. The best ENB mod in my opinion is my very own one, but I've not released it yet as I'm experimenting with other Skyrim mods at the moment! Please bear in mind the "main" file that activates ENB - the .DLL file is no longer allowed to be hosted directly on Nexus anymore at the ENB creators (Boris) request. Some ENB mod sets still have this file present, but some you will need to go onto the official ENB website (linked above) and you'll have to find the required .DLL file relative to that particular ENB version the author of the ENB preset has based their mod on. Hope that all helps. As you may've noticed I'm a major ENB enthusiast, and have thoroughly enjoyed ENB seriers in not only Skyrim, but also in my GTA 4 days. Good luck and enjoy it!

Hi all, I'm wanting to run Skyrim in a custom resolution of 1920 x 874 so as to get the cinematic widescreen aspect ratio (as I prefer it over 16:9 ratio of 1920 x 1080) but I lose HUD information at the bottom of the screen. See pics... 1920 x 874: (Rescaled imaged) http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/6832/tesv2012051322051007.jpg 1920 x 1080: (Rescaled Image) http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/7312/tesv2012051322063419.jpg I've tried using "Flawless Widescreen" and "UltraWidescreen" apps, but they didn't work at all for me, and I gather these apps are for mulit-monitor purposes anyway. FYI: I have set my custom resolution via nVidias Desktop Resizing option, and have set this resolution within SkyrimPrefs.ini for it to (partially) work in game. I know the cinematic aspect ration is available through certain ENB settings, but I'm currently not running ENB so that's not an option! So does anyone know a fix for this please? Or perhaps a better way of achieving my goal? I'd just love to have the full experience if possible!

Hi everyone, I'm adjusting Skyrim within the Creation Kit, and I don't know how to assign an Imagespace Modifier to be in use all the time (regardless of weather type, interiors and exterior locations etc). At the moment I can only force an I.M. using Directors Tools, but I just want it to run whenever the game launches. My intention is to use the I.M. to add constant DOF and motion blur effects. I've already used a regular Imagespace assigned to my current weather type to adjust DOF this way, but have found that using an I.M. seems to add better DOF control plus other effects. I've tried assigning my I.M. to first person camera, assuming this is a global way of forcing the effect, but it doesn't seem to work. So does anyone know where I'm going wrong, or can't it be done? Any help much appreciated, so thanks in advance!