LargeStyle Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 I've decided to make this thread for my weather and lighting mod. I've not done this to "show off" / gloat about things, it's just that this mod is dominating my life at the moment and I quite frankly could do with a little encouragement once in a while as I'm currently going through a phase where I'm not really enjoying the modding process as much as I would like to - it's all work, work, work. In case you haven't heard me prattle on about my work before, I'm attempting to rewrite the weather and lighting for Skyrim using only the internal in-game engine - so no ENB, SweetFX, FXAA Injector etc. As well as raising awareness of my project, another purpose of this thread is to simply present ongoing work in progress (WIP) updates - hopefully this'll keep me motivated and will keep all of you informed with matters (if anyone's bothered). I'll probably have to restrict myself to relying on images more than video as not only is doing this quicker for me (more time then spent on modding) but my computer's not really good enough for worthy YouTube submissions. Obviously if anyone wants to chime in with a comment or suggestion once in a while, I'd love some feedback. Although I'm pretty set in my approach to this mod (artistically speaking) I'm always open to suggestions as I hope to make something that others will enjoy as well. For now, here's my current status with my project: I'm heavily concentrating on thoroughly understanding Creation Kit elements that control weather and lighting in Skyrim. I'm also researching how real-world lighting works (so I can translate this into the game) and also looking into how game developers tools and techniques are used. I've spent about half an hour within the CryEngine 3 SDK software and can already state the obvious that Bethesdas Gamebryo engine is comparatively well out of date. From my initial inspection of CryEngine 3, not only does it seem to have the equivalent of ENBseries built-in, but there's even more to it than that such as atmospheric controls that react to each scene and calculate light and shadow on a very complicated basis. In Gamebryo, all I can really do is recolour things and set intensities / multipliers. I have my work cut out here. Just to clarify, I'm not trying to make an ultra-realistic visual experience or any other particular experience at that. I'm simply doing whatever I fancy. Besides, I hate the use of "Real", "Realistic", or best yet "Photo Realistic" - thie latter in particular just aint gonna happen in Skyrim or any other game for a while yet. Anyways, from now on I'll post either very brief updates with the mod, or wave the white flag and call it a day - time will tell. Here's the results of todays experiments where I've simply tried to understand Skyrims indirect / ambient light settings (which is based over a six co-ordinate configuration) in order to recreate "natural" lighting. http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/1339/r79.jpg http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/4295/hu96.jpg http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/245/p4d4.jpg http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/4927/zwdd.jpg http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2684/oq66.jpg http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9471/xvz0.jpg http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/6808/6rds.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prod80 Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 Goody, more lighting, I love lighting =)Got a bit tired of CoT, and there's not much else besides it which delivers a complete package... I'd welcome a change!Goodluck... lemme know if at one point you need beta testers, I'd be happy to give it a go :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nudedragon Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 I'd be encouraging, but look at my title :wink: It'd be interesting to see a module for natural disasters. Obviously meteor showers, volcanoes, etc would be too hard on the engine and unrealistic. Thunderstorms with lightning, quakes, storms with actual wind, that sort of thing would be very cool. If you ever get the time :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morrovvind Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Hahaha wow, is this real life? #TeamReal The picture of the glaciers and the picture of the mountains with the sun are real photographs. My advice is, go with your heart and what you want to be in your game. People might even try to discourage you like saying "well I use such and such weather and lighting,there's no point to have this mod." I hope you don't let that get to you. You're awesome, your mod is awesome and you should be proud of yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kraeten Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Really great screen caps! It's impressive to say the least how photo realistic you can make the game look without resorting to using an ENB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LargeStyle Posted June 21, 2013 Author Share Posted June 21, 2013 Thanks chaps for your comments. @ prod80 - haven't decided yet if I'll arrange a closed beta or open one yet - but either way I'm happy for other to test it out once it's in a playable form. @ Nudedragon - I intend to either incorporate other mods into my mod if I receive permissions to do so, and I always feel that if there's other good mods already out there then it'll be pointless to attempt my own version. @ Morrovvind - thanks again for the support - but the images aren't real photos :biggrin: As I said before, I'll do whatever I fancy with this mod. It's easy to ignore others that may be ignorant - it's doing the mod itself is the challenging part! @ Kraeten - thanks also for the kind words. Unplanned mod update: This afternoon I've had a stab at completely remaking a sunny sunrise based from a photo I nabbed from the google machine. Frustratingly when sunrises are at their most prominent point, the sun itself is barely over the horizon. As a consequence to this it is impossible for me to emulate the reference picture I was working from - once Skyrims sun has risen to the point in the picture the game has already started to blend daytime lighting values into the mix. I've also found that there are no truely realistic sunglare mods out there so I've started to make my own (not used in the pictures). Either way, below are images of: todays experiment, the source image from the net, and what Skyrim looks like in the strongest sunrise moment (taken 30 in-game minutes before the first picture)... http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/9085/44hg.jpg http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/4995/qz9l.jpg http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/5809/08nl.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morrovvind Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 I simply can't get enough of the far objects taking on the color of the atmosphere feature! That with the horizon fix should get everything looking much better. Great work! Very nice sunrise, I'm wondering if there's more depth to the colors planned, like when you see a sunset in real life with purple and pinkish clouds with orange sky, or sometimes a banana creme color sky with greyish blue clouds. Im also wondering what you have planned for majestic cloudscapes, if that will be included. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LargeStyle Posted June 22, 2013 Author Share Posted June 22, 2013 Don't know about "colour depth" yet - the settings used in the last post looked far to much of an orange-fest when playing in game. I'll continue to look at real life sunrise and sunset images and see what I can do. As for clouds - I'm rubbish at dealing with them. I've just wasted half a day getting nowhere with cloud texture research, cloud generation software, and even trying to implement Climates of Tamriel clouds into my mod (purely for experimental reasons) and I can't get it looking good at all. It's days like this when I can't be bothered with it all... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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