problems with flickering shadows; can't find a fix that works

[ruvuk]

Hi everybody.

 

I'm having problems with what I think is called "z fighting." I don't know if z fighting includes the little flickering fingers of shadow that sometimes outline parts of my guy or not, but I've got those flickering shadows and they're getting old.

 

I've tried several mods that fixed multiple lighting problems in Skyrim. They all helped, but none of them was really getting me past the problem with the shadows. Each of the mods I tried also turned out to do something that bugged me so much that I had to quit using it. (For example, a mod for natural-source lighting was GREAT, but it made most of the water bodies go nuts, and there's a lot of water in Skyrim! <lol> Hated to d/c that one.)

 

I don't know if it's related, but I also never use hoods because I get daylight under them about 80% of the time when I'm outdoors--it's usually flickering light, too. The hoods are OK inside, but outside they're a mess. It bugs me a lot--we've got some neat hoods in the game. <lol>

 

I know there are more mods to help with problems like this, but, now that I'm serious about trying to fix this in my game, I can't seem to find the ones that looked so good earlier. (I wish I'd saved the bookmarks, but my Skyrim bookmarks are . . . well, unlike any other set of bookmarks I've ever had! <lol>)

 

Any and all suggestions would appreciated for sure.

 

Thanks.

 

[Not sure it matters, but I only have about 30 mods added to the game. Mostly things like armor mods and better-quality textures for trees and rocks and such.]

 

 

[LamboMan]

Correct me if i'm wrong but Z-fighting is an issue related to the flickering of textures/decals on mountains and bodies in the distance and not to shadows. So i doubt you have the z-fighting problem.

 

My best fix for flickering shadows is this>>

Put the following in skyrimprefs.ini in you my documents/my games/skyrim folder

 

under [Display] section add/edit

 

fShadowBiasScale=1.0000

bDeferredShadows=0

 

 

and if you're talking about a kind of soft shadow/glow around your character then change

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=2 or 1

Edited June 13, 2013 by LamboMan

[ruvuk]

@LamboMan: Just changed the 1st 2 values you suggested in my game's SkyrimPrefs.ini file. I'll post here again after I see how it goes. I don't think I have the "glow" or soft shadow you're talking about, but I'll test the 3rd setting change you suggested, too.

 

As for the z-fighting . . . I've actually worked with that some when doing mods for another game, and I'm very familiar with it. But I've learned not to assume that I always know what I'm doing with this stuff. :o) I've never had any problems with the z-fighting that is sometimes described as occuring in the skyrim mountains. But z-fighting can easily occur in Skyrim. I recently started on a little house for my guy, and a lot of the pieces are odds and ends that I've found. I wasn't thinking about the z-fighting when I was framing the door, and I positioned 2 pieces of timber in such a way that they were sharing a surface. When I checked on the house in the game, sure enough, I had unmistakeable z-fighting.

 

The "flickering shadows" that are bothering me now are very different. They look like fingers of shadow (sometimes finger of daylight) jumping around the edges of my avatar. I see a lot of it when I try using any kind of hood. I also see a lot of it when I'm in some of the Dwemer rooms with their harsh, flickering lights.

 

THANK YOU very much for the info. I'll post again as soon as I see how things go. :o)

[LamboMan]

No prob man, glad if i could help! Why don't you put up a screenshot of the problem, it would make things clearer.

[ruvuk]

@Lambo: Sorry to be so slow posting again, but sometimes it takes me several days to try out all the options and see what's happening. Never enough time for all the skyrim mods. :-) Anyway, I found out that what I was calling flickering, finger-like shadows were something called shadow striping. Seems that this striping is not uncommon in the game and can be fixed using the Creation Kit. You find the light source that's causing the striping and then adjust the Depth Bias of the the light source until it's gone. The lighting tutorial for the CK explains this a little.

 

I'd been seeing a lot of the shadow striping because it was showing up in the 2 player home mods I'd tried. Since I was in and out of the house frequently, I'd gotten the mistaken idea that I had a system-wide problem. But it was just the light sources needing some adjustment.

 

Lighting can be a lot of fun, and it seems like you can do anything with it . . . but it's really hard sometimes, too. <lol> Getting the depth bias adjusted just right was a pain in the neck with one of the light sources. But, otoh, I'm so new at some of this stuff that maybe it'll get a lot easier pretty soon. :o)

[LamboMan]

Wow man, i didn't know you could change the depth bias for each light source in the CK! I was just using the settings that i posted above as a small fix. Anyway, glad you could solve the problem you were having!

[ruvuk]

Well . . . ahem . . . in my little house, i now have zero problems with flickering shadows . . . but I got tired of fooling with the lights and decided to use one of Bethesda's most excellent tricks: I don't use shadow lighting for the big lights. I have some small lights that cast shadows, and I've arranged things so that there are some darker areas. Surprisingly, this actually works well to give a sense of a shadowed space. . . . That said, I'd love to really know how to minimize some of the shadow "noise" problems, esp. when using more than one light in an area. . . . I've been noticing lately that I sometimes get the dumb shadow fingers on my guy when I'm outside in the daylight. The problem results from shadows that have diagonal edges shaped like a serrated knife--it's basically the same sort of thing you get with an image editor when you forget to anti-alias the edges of a selection. I can't figure out why the shadow edging is so crude in the game; the solid surfaces are far, far higher resolution. Anyway, those jagged shadow edges showing on a character who is constantly moving a little (which is realistic) wind up making a visual mess. I'm hoping that a new computer will allow me to play the game at higher settings for the graphics. :o)

[LamboMan]

I'm just curious cos I've never heard of the problem being so bad before, but what resolution are your shadows set at? 1K, 2K, 4K? And didn't setting the fShadowBiasScale=1.0000 solve anything?

 

And could you please put up the link to the CK lighting tutorial that you mentioned earlier? Thanks.

[ruvuk]

@LamboMan:

 

Happy to post the link to the Creation Kit Lighting tutorial:

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Lights_and_FX

 

And here's the listing of all of the CK tutorials:

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Tutorials

 

Also, . . . there are a LOT of other "homemade" tutorials out there, some of which are really excellent. I find them all over the place when looking for something on a particular topic. A boatload of them are found in YouTube.

 

As for the fShadowBiasScale setting, . . . no and maybe. No, the setting didn't leave me thinking, "Great! Another annoying problem fixed." BUT at that time I was trying out 2 little player home mods that I later realized had serious shadow problems of their own. I will try your numbers again, just in case. :o)

 

As for the resolution setting of my shadows, . . . offhand, I have no idea where I'd find that info. Is it in the .ini file? Or maybe it's one of the settings we can access via [esc] when playing? Let me know, OK?

[LamboMan]

Hey man, thanks for the links, pretty interesting stuff.

Now that I've looked at those pages, I think I've finally come to understand the problem you've been encountering. And I think it can be fixed by increasing the shadow resolution to 4K or 4096.

 

So here's how to change/find your shadow settings. Go to Users/<yourname>/My Documents/My Games/Skyrim and open up SkyrimPrefs.ini (it's a configurations settings text file).

In it you should find the following under the [Display] section:

 

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048 (or 1024 or 4096)

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=2048 (or 1024 or 4096)

iShadowMapResolution=2048 (or 1024 or 4096)

 

then open up Skryim.ini and change under [Display]

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048 to whatever number you put in your skyrimprefs.ini.

 

So just change the number from whatever you have to 4096. (I've added those extra numbers in brackets ahead of 2048 just to show the other numbers that could be in that place, don't put that stuff in your SkyrimPrefsini file) There is a significant fps drop for people with older cards such as mine (Nvidia GeForce GTS 450) but if you have something equal to or better than a 500 series or 600 series card, then it shouldn't matter.

 

If you've got a powerful card you can even change the following setting to a higher number

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=2 (i suggest using max 3)

This will blur all shadows a little and greatly reduce shadow striping effects. In conjunction with 4K shadows it gets rid of them completely in all areas where the Depth Bias of lights are wrong.

 

So try out these settings and tell me if there's any improvement. And could you put up your system specs please?

 

PS: I'm a bit surprised that you may be unaware of ini tweaks such as the above since, to my knowledge, that's the first thing people tend to do when modding skyrim. Anyway, here are some links to help with ini tweaking >>

 

http://itcprosolutions.com/skyrimguides/tweak_guide.htm

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/articles/1153//?

http://www.gamefront.com/how-to-improve-skyrim-with-ini-file-tweaks/

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide#14

http://skyrimforums.org/threads/mouse-camera-fixes.10188/

 

And here are my ini files for reference:

 

SkyrimPrefs.ini

 

 

[General]
fBrightLightColorB=1.0000
fBrightLightColorG=1.0000
fBrightLightColorR=1.0000
iStoryManagerLoggingEvent=-1
bEnableStoryManagerLogging=0
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1
bUseThreadedBlood=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1
bUseThreadedTextures=1
bUseThreadedMeshes=1
bUseThreadedLOD=1
bUseThreadedAI=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1

[imagespace]
bDoDepthOfField=1
iRadialBlurLevel=2

[Display]
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=2
fInteriorShadowDistance=4000.0000
fShadowDistance=4000.0000
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=2048
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048
iShadowSplitCount=2
iMaxAnisotropy=8
fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=4600.0000
fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=3600.0000
fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=10000000.0000
fGamma=1.0000
fDecalLOD2=1500.0000
fDecalLOD1=1000.0000
fSpecularLODStartFade=2000.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=1000.0000
fLightLODStartFade=4000.0000
iTexMipMapMinimum=0
iTexMipMapSkip=0
iWaterMultiSamples=0
iMultiSample=0
iShadowMode=4
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
bFull Screen=1
iSize H=1024
iSize W=1280
fMeshLODFadePercentDefault=1.2000
fMeshLODFadeBoundDefault=256.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=4096.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=5688.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000
iScreenShotIndex=6
bShadowMaskZPrepass=0
bMainZPrepass=0
iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=25
iMaxDecalsPerFrame=100
bFloatPointRenderTarget=1
sD3DDevice="NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450"
bFXAAEnabled=0
iShadowMapResolution=2048
fShadowBiasScale=1.0000
iShadowMaskQuarter=4
iAdapter=0
iPresentInterval=0
iShadowFilter=2
bShadowsOnGrass=1
bTransparencyMultisampling=0
bDeferredShadows=0
bDrawShadows=1

[Grass]
b30GrassVS=0
bAllowLoadGrass=0
bAllowCreateGrass=1
fGrassStartFadeDistance=12000.0000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=12000.0000
fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=1000.0000

[MAIN]
bGamepadEnable=0
bCrosshairEnabled=1
fHUDOpacity=1.0000
bSaveOnPause=1
bSaveOnTravel=1
bSaveOnWait=1
bSaveOnRest=1
fSkyCellRefFadeDistance=150000.0000
[GamePlay]
bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1
bShowQuestMarkers=1
iDifficulty=2

[interface]
bDialogueSubtitles=1
bGeneralSubtitles=1
fMouseCursorSpeed=1.6000
bShowCompass=1

[Controls]
fGamepadHeadingSensitivity=1.0000
fMouseHeadingSensitivity=0.0902
fMouseHeadingXScale = 0.09020
fMouseHeadingYScale = 0.09020
bAlwaysRunByDefault=1
bInvertYValues=0
bGamePadRumble=0
bMouseAcceleration=0
bUseKinect=0

[Particles]
iMaxDesired=350
[saveGame]
fAutosaveEveryXMins=15.0000
[AudioMenu]
fAudioMasterVolume=1.0000
fVal7=1.0000
uID7=0
fVal6=1.0000
uID6=0
fVal5=1.0000
uID5=0
fVal4=1.0000
uID4=0
fVal3=1.0000
uID3=94881
fVal2=1.0000
uID2=466532
fVal1=0.8000
uID1=554685
fVal0=0.8000
uID0=1007612

[Clouds]
fCloudLevel2Distance=262144.0000
fCloudLevel1Distance=32768.0000
fCloudLevel0Distance=16384.0000
fCloudNearFadeDistance=9000.0000

[TerrainManager]
fTreeLoadDistance=75000.0000
fBlockMaximumDistance=250000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=70000.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=35000.0000
fSplitDistanceMult=1.5000
bShowLODInEditor=0

[NavMesh]
fObstacleAlpha=0.5000
fCoverSideHighAlpha=0.8000
fCoverSideLowAlpha=0.6500
fEdgeFullAlpha=1.0000
fEdgeHighAlpha=0.7500
fEdgeLowAlpha=0.5000
fTriangleFullAlpha=0.7000
fTriangleHighAlpha=0.3500
fTriangleLowAlpha=0.2000
fLedgeBoxHalfHeight=25.0000
fEdgeDistFromVert=10.0000
fEdgeThickness=10.0000
fPointSize=2.5000
bUseThreadedMeshes=1

[Trees]
bRenderSkinnedTrees=1
uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=25
bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1
bShadowMaskZPrePass=1

[Decals]
uMaxDecals=1000
bDecals=1
bSkinnedDecals=1
uMaxSkinDecals=100
uMaxSkinDecalsPerActor=60
bDecalsOnSkinnedGeometry=1
bDecalMultithreaded=1

[LOD]
fLODFadeOutMultObjects=15.0000
fLODFadeOutMultItems=15.0000
fLODFadeOutMultActors=15.0000
fLODFadeOutMultSkyCell=1.0000

[Launcher]
bEnableFileSelection=1
bShowAllResolutions=1
uLastAspectRatio=2

[blurShaderHDR]
bDoHighDynamicRange=1

[blurShader]
bUseBlurShader=0

[Water]
iWaterReflectHeight=512
iWaterReflectWidth=512
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=1
bUseWaterReflections=1
bUseWaterDepth=1
bReflectExplosions=1
iWaterBlurAmount=4
bAutoWaterSilhouetteReflections=0
bForceHighDetailReflections=1
[backgroundLoad]
bBackgroundLoadLipFiles=1
bLoadBackgroundFaceGen=1
bUseMultiThreadedFaceGen=1
bBackgroundCellLoads=1
bLoadHelmetsInBackground=1
bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1

 

 

Skyrim.ini

 

 

[General]
sLanguage=ENGLISH
sIntroSequence=
uGridsToLoad=5
uExterior Cell Buffer=32
uInterior Cell Buffer=16
iPreloadSizeLimit=209715200
fMasterFilePreLoadMB=128.0000
fdefaultfov=77
fDefault1stPersonFOV=77
fDefaultWorldFOV=77
fFlickeringLightDistance=8192
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1
bMultiThreadMovement=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1

[Display]
fShadowLODMaxStartFade=1000.0
fSpecularLODMaxStartFade=2000.0
fLightLODMaxStartFade=4000.0
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048
bAllowScreenshot=1
fDecalLifetime=512.0000
fSunShadowUpdateTime=0.25
fSunUpdateThreshold=1.00
[Audio]
fMusicDuckingSeconds=6.0
fMusicUnDuckingSeconds=8.0
fMenuModeFadeOutTime=3.0
fMenuModeFadeInTime=1.0

[Grass]
bAllowCreateGrass=1
bAllowLoadGrass=0
iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=6
iMinGrassSize=100
[GeneralWarnings]
SGeneralMasterMismatchWarning=One or more plugins could not find the correct versions of the master files they depend on. Errors may occur during load or game play. Check the "Warnings.txt" file for more information.

[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa

[Combat]
fMagnetismStrafeHeadingMult=0.0
fMagnetismLookingMult=0.0
f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.7
f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.7
f1PBoltTiltUpAngle=0.7
f3PBoltTiltUpAngle=0.7

[Papyrus]
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000
bEnableLogging=1
bEnableTrace=1
bLoadDebugInformation=1
fUpdateBudgetMS=800
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=800
iMinMemoryPageSize=128
iMaxMemoryPageSize=512
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=2457600

[Water]
bReflectLODObjects=1
bReflectLODLand=1
bReflectSky=1
bReflectLODTrees=1
bReflectExplosions=1

[interface]
fSafeZoneX=20
fSafeZoneY=20
fSafeZoneXWide=20
fSafeZoneYWide=20

[Trees]
bForceFullDetail=0
bEnableTreeAnimations=1

[Controls]
bMouseAcceleration=0

[HAVOK]
iNumThreads=5

[Actor]
fVisibleNavmeshMoveDist=12288.0000

[backgroundLoad]
bBackgroundLoadLipFiles=1
bLoadBackgroundFaceGen=1
bUseMultiThreadedFaceGen=1
bBackgroundCellLoads=1
bLoadHelmetsInBackground=1
bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1
bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1

[Animation]
bMultiThreadBoneUpdate=1

[Decals]
bDecalMultithreaded=1

[Camera]
fOverShoulderCombatAddY=0.0000
fOverShoulderCombatPosZ=12.0000
fOverShoulderCombatPosX=30.2000
fOverShoulderPosZ=12.0000
fOverShoulderPosX=30.2000
fActorFadeOutLimit=-100
f1st3rdSwitchDelay=0.0000
fChaseCameraSpeed=9.0000
fMouseWheelZoomIncrement=0.2000
fMouseWheelZoomSpeed=2000.0000

 

 

 

And always make a backup of your ini files before editing them, it's easier to go on changes back that way. Happy modding! :smile:

Edited July 2, 2013 by LamboMan