Could someone recommend some graphics mods for my next skyrim playthro

[BrentYTube]

The title says all but I have a few requirements:

 

• I want the fixes that SMIM provides
• Make the water and lighting better(darker nights and dungeons)

 

My System Specs

• Cpu - AMD Athlon X4 750K
• 8gb of Ram
• 128 GB SSD
• MSI GTX 660 2gb
• Windows 8.1

 

Thanks in advance

 

EDIT: I would like at a min of 35 fps and a average of 40 or above

Edited January 26, 2014 by BrentYTube

[ArtMurder]

A lot of people swear by ENBs, because they do make the game look fantastic... when they work right. I personally don't like them very much, because they are glitchy and hit your FPS hard, so I'll suggest alternatives that aren't glitchy and don't hit your FPS! It's based of using SweetFX instead of an ENB. I get an average of about 50~55 FPS with these mods, including using high def texture mods, like 2k Textures lite and book of silence. ^_^

 

I suggest Ultimate Lighting Overhaul as your SweetFX mod it is very realistic in it's design.

 

To get a very ENB like look with a SweetFX mod is possible, but a little hard.

 

Download Climates of Tamriel and Enhanced Lights and FX - These two together alter the lighting of the world to be super realistic and breath takingly well designed. Also, try Realistic Nights! This fixes the effect caused by CoT, where light sources barely give off any light at all, at least to some degree.

 

Dynavision gives the DoF of ENB, I suggest setting it to "static" as this serves to blur our just very distant things, and doesn't have the nasty "snap" visuals of most DoF you find in ENBs.

 

Also, I have a preset for ULO, that makes nights a bit darker, that is designed around these mods. I am actually mostly just linking you this for the screenshots, as it shows all these mentioned mods in action.

ULO - Dramatic Cinematic

 

Realistic Water Two is my personal favorite choice for water mods, I suggest you give it a shot! it is very realistic and pretty looking.

 

And one last thing, if your shadows bug you, then look into this mod. It's actually an edit to your ini file, not a mod, but it's not to challenging. Improved Skyrim Shadows has many options from low end to high end.

 

also, if the nights still don't look right, simply open up "Sweetfx_settings.txt" and look for a section that looks like this;

/*-----------------------------------------------------------.

/ Lift Gamma Gain settings /

'-----------------------------------------------------------*/

#define RGB_Lift float3(0.995, 0.995, 0.995) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust shadows for Red, Green and Blue

#define RGB_Gamma float3(0.975, 0.975, 0.980) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust midtones for Red, Green and Blue

#define RGB_Gain float3(1.000, 1.000, 1.000) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust highlights for Red, Green and Blue

 

Edit the text in red to edit the lights and shadows.

The top line (Lift) is shadows, the bottom line (Gain) is lights, and the center line (Gamma) is neutrally lit areas, or midtones. It's best to keep each set of numbers in a line the same, or very close to one another, or you could end up making everything look really funny colors. This comes from mine, and my blue is slightly offset because I use a mod that replaces my sun with a blue sun. ALSO, don't change the numbers insane amounts. Stick to 0.01~0.005 intervals, if you go up to say, 0.5 changes you can really make your game look freaky and weird.

[BrentYTube]

A lot of people swear by ENBs, because they do make the game look fantastic... when they work right. I personally don't like them very much, because they are glitchy and hit your FPS hard, so I'll suggest alternatives that aren't glitchy and don't hit your FPS! It's based of using SweetFX instead of an ENB. I get an average of about 50~55 FPS with these mods, including using high def texture mods, like 2k Textures lite and book of silence. ^_^

 

I suggest Ultimate Lighting Overhaul as your SweetFX mod it is very realistic in it's design.

 

To get a very ENB like look with a SweetFX mod is possible, but a little hard.

 

Download Climates of Tamriel and Enhanced Lights and FX - These two together alter the lighting of the world to be super realistic and breath takingly well designed. Also, try Realistic Nights! This fixes the effect caused by CoT, where light sources barely give off any light at all, at least to some degree.

 

Dynavision gives the DoF of ENB, I suggest setting it to "static" as this serves to blur our just very distant things, and doesn't have the nasty "snap" visuals of most DoF you find in ENBs.

 

Also, I have a preset for ULO, that makes nights a bit darker, that is designed around these mods. I am actually mostly just linking you this for the screenshots, as it shows all these mentioned mods in action.

ULO - Dramatic Cinematic

 

Realistic Water Two is my personal favorite choice for water mods, I suggest you give it a shot! it is very realistic and pretty looking.

 

And one last thing, if your shadows bug you, then look into this mod. It's actually an edit to your ini file, not a mod, but it's not to challenging. Improved Skyrim Shadows has many options from low end to high end.

 

also, if the nights still don't look right, simply open up "Sweetfx_settings.txt" and look for a section that looks like this;

/*-----------------------------------------------------------.

/ Lift Gamma Gain settings /

'-----------------------------------------------------------*/

#define RGB_Lift float3(0.995, 0.995, 0.995) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust shadows for Red, Green and Blue

#define RGB_Gamma float3(0.975, 0.975, 0.980) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust midtones for Red, Green and Blue

#define RGB_Gain float3(1.000, 1.000, 1.000) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust highlights for Red, Green and Blue

 

Edit the text in red to edit the lights and shadows.

The top line (Lift) is shadows, the bottom line (Gain) is lights, and the center line (Gamma) is neutrally lit areas, or midtones. It's best to keep each set of numbers in a line the same, or very close to one another, or you could end up making everything look really funny colors. This comes from mine, and my blue is slightly offset because I use a mod that replaces my sun with a blue sun. ALSO, don't change the numbers insane amounts. Stick to 0.01~0.005 intervals, if you go up to say, 0.5 changes you can really make your game look freaky and weird.

Thanks I will try these and just making sure all of these are compatible?

[ArtMurder]

 

A lot of people swear by ENBs, because they do make the game look fantastic... when they work right. I personally don't like them very much, because they are glitchy and hit your FPS hard, so I'll suggest alternatives that aren't glitchy and don't hit your FPS! It's based of using SweetFX instead of an ENB. I get an average of about 50~55 FPS with these mods, including using high def texture mods, like 2k Textures lite and book of silence. ^_^

 

I suggest Ultimate Lighting Overhaul as your SweetFX mod it is very realistic in it's design.

 

To get a very ENB like look with a SweetFX mod is possible, but a little hard.

 

Download Climates of Tamriel and Enhanced Lights and FX - These two together alter the lighting of the world to be super realistic and breath takingly well designed. Also, try Realistic Nights! This fixes the effect caused by CoT, where light sources barely give off any light at all, at least to some degree.

 

Dynavision gives the DoF of ENB, I suggest setting it to "static" as this serves to blur our just very distant things, and doesn't have the nasty "snap" visuals of most DoF you find in ENBs.

 

Also, I have a preset for ULO, that makes nights a bit darker, that is designed around these mods. I am actually mostly just linking you this for the screenshots, as it shows all these mentioned mods in action.

ULO - Dramatic Cinematic

 

Realistic Water Two is my personal favorite choice for water mods, I suggest you give it a shot! it is very realistic and pretty looking.

 

And one last thing, if your shadows bug you, then look into this mod. It's actually an edit to your ini file, not a mod, but it's not to challenging. Improved Skyrim Shadows has many options from low end to high end.

 

also, if the nights still don't look right, simply open up "Sweetfx_settings.txt" and look for a section that looks like this;

/*-----------------------------------------------------------.

/ Lift Gamma Gain settings /

'-----------------------------------------------------------*/

#define RGB_Lift float3(0.995, 0.995, 0.995) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust shadows for Red, Green and Blue

#define RGB_Gamma float3(0.975, 0.975, 0.980) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust midtones for Red, Green and Blue

#define RGB_Gain float3(1.000, 1.000, 1.000) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust highlights for Red, Green and Blue

 

Edit the text in red to edit the lights and shadows.

The top line (Lift) is shadows, the bottom line (Gain) is lights, and the center line (Gamma) is neutrally lit areas, or midtones. It's best to keep each set of numbers in a line the same, or very close to one another, or you could end up making everything look really funny colors. This comes from mine, and my blue is slightly offset because I use a mod that replaces my sun with a blue sun. ALSO, don't change the numbers insane amounts. Stick to 0.01~0.005 intervals, if you go up to say, 0.5 changes you can really make your game look freaky and weird.

Thanks I will try these and just making sure all of these are compatible?

 

Yes, this is based on my current graphics set up, and I currently use all these mods together. ^_^ I think some of them MAY require patches, CoT, but I'm not sure.

[Noppius]

I have a question.

I'm very interested in your setup and am already using a few of the mods you suggested. But can you incorporate ENBoost with this setup?

 

From what i understand off it, ENBoost is there to help Skyrim handle all your mods as they keep adding to the workload of the engine. So if i use more mods, then ENBoost is there to help out and prevent your system from crashing down.

If i'm wrong, our if you have a solution, i'm very interested :blush:

[ArtMurder]

Yes, you can, I use it with ENBoost! ^_^ It's somewhat simple, and just requires a bit of renaming and ini editing.

 

1) Change the d3d9.dll included with whatever SweetFX mod you are using to SweetFX_d3d9.dll. Do NOT change the name of the dll included with ENBoost! (do this BEFORE installing ENBoost)

2) Install ENBoost exactly how it describes on it's mod page, downloading the d3d9.dll from that one site it links to, then open the enblocal.ini included with ENBoost and change the Proxy section so that it looks like this; (don't change anything else outside of the proxy settings)

 

[PROXY]

EnableProxyLibrary=true

InitProxyFunctions=true

ProxyLibrary=SweetFX_d3d9.dll

 

// And that's it!!

Edited January 27, 2014 by ArtMurder