ENB for just the basics

[Axeface]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to find up-to-date information about using ENB to only improve shadows, sharpening and antialiasing - just the basics to improve the base visuals and remove ugly self shadowning and striping, and can't find anything that seems to be current.

Can anyone help? Ideally something very performance concious!

[LadyAubrie]

I'm in a bit of a hurry so I may not be able to help with the ENB question right this second, but there's a shadow striping fix mod here:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27418/?

[Axeface]

Thanks for the link, i'de prefer to use enb for it though as that mod won't eliminate the terrible self-shadowing in the game (like the shadows armour casts on the body).

 

I have beewn searching for days and still havent found up-to-date information. There is ENBoost now too, which apparently can be used only the basic graphical effects, but like I said - up-to-date info in laymans terms is so, so hard to find.

To clarify. I would like to use ENB to enhance the look of the game - AA, AF, Vsync, Sharpening and the big one, Shadow improvements.

[bojanni]

With any ENB you can disable the features you don't want. Ingame through pressing shift + enter or by editing the enblocal and enbseries files.

[Axeface]

@bojanni. Thanks, i've been playing with that for days - but its heavily dependant on what mods you have.

For example, today I thought I had found the perfect enb with Vanilla ENB, but it seems that this enb makes shadows pitch black in interiors. I have ELFX and Pure Weather, with or without ELFX interiors (for example, the starting dungeon with Alternative start) has pitch black (total blackness) shadows which causes a huge amount of artifacts (monitors cant handle pitch blackness) and turning up your brightness does nothing but make it worse, because if the engine is rendering a total darkness shadow, turning your brightness up doesnt reveal an object, it reveals a grey block of nothingness and it looks horrid.

 

I have been at this for days and I'm getting so disheartened, I wish so much that I wasnt a perfectionist - It's so frustrating.

 

I have calibrated my monitor, tried dozens of mods and different enbs, tried dozens of different ini settings:-

 

Vanilla and no enb = horrble shadows, regardless of settings (Self shadowing - like the shadow armour casts on the body, no trees etc, they are fine).

Mods with NO enb (ELFX/RCRN) = Excellent image fidelity and depth, really - it looks very good BUT has HORRIBLE shadows (most evident of sunny clear days).

ENB = bugs, artifacts and just bad looking scenes. Looks excellent SOMETIMES, other times/weathers - terrible.

 

Most enb's look good in interiors, but then cause loads of issues outside, or oversaturate, or have terrible contrast (no pure black, no pure white - like you are looking through suinglasses or a sheet of white transparent paper)... any attempt to rectify this terrible contrast (Eg with brightness or monitor brightness/contrast settings) leads to even more issues, and if you fix it like that your screenshots look horrible.

This is why I am desperate to find an ENB that ONLY does the fidelity/improvement modifications.

It's infuriating.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Axeface

[Valkasha]

Did you try:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50065/?

[bojanni]

It can be a infuriating process, getting the game to look the way you want. I am using Rudy ENB the Natural Lighting and Atmospherics version. I also use ELFX. The interiors are not too dark and the exteriors can be darker during rainstorms but it is still very playable. If you find the shadows still are too dark, try changing the ambient lighting curve for the interior and exterior options. You can also set the below two options to true in the enbseries.ini

 

[EFFECT]

UseOriginalPostProcessing=false

UseOriginalObjectsProcessing=false

This will use the vanilla lighting and disables much of the enb functionality, but the shadow-enhancements still work.

[Axeface]

Thanks very much for the replies! It is indeed really frustrating.

I did indeed try natural lighting and atmospherics and I spent around 5 hours last night fiddling with it and checking it in different situations.

The enb looks outstanding much of the time and almost always when there is plenty of light present, but then when things get really dark, or one of the foggy weathers shows up the dithering becomes - for me at least, completely game breaking. It looks like the photoshop 'burn' has been overapplied. It's one of the reasons that I don't like mods that make the game totally dark at night, I dont think LCD monitors can do it, I used to own (many years ago) a CRT - If I was on that thing it wouldnt be a problem, but LCD's/Flat screen just can't do it.

 

I'm not sure if it's my monitor, but with NLaA the dithering issues are really evident at night, for example in this shot that I took last night (I uninstalled pure weather/elfx, this is purely the enb):- Shot - bad dithering in dark areas

 

And, contrastingly, here are a couple of shot where NLaA looks outstanding, and to prove I did really try it properly:- One Two

 

 

 

So all in all, the reason I want an enb that just does shadows/aa/af is because default skyrim never looks wrong, it doesnt look particularly good most of the time, but it's never wrong or buggy. I'll keep at it and maybe install the default enb. I tried setting useoriginalpostprocessing and objectprocessing but with NLaA (with NLaA everything became black even at midday, it uses adaption a lot) and Vanilla Enb that didnt work right.

I'll try Rudy Enb too, the screenshots look nice,

 

Thanks again!

Edited September 13, 2014 by Axeface

[Valkasha]

What exactly do you mean by dithering? Those shadows look good to me..?

Btw have you tried increasing the deferred shadows in skyrimprefs? The higher you put them the better the overall shadow quality.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Valkasha

[Axeface]

Not sure why I use that term, hehe. What I mean by it is when you see 'banding' instead of a smooth gradient. It's hard to see in the screenshot, but when I was playing it was really bad - especially in the sky and on the dark area near the door on the building to the left.

 

Here's another shot, hard to see anything but if you fullscreen it (hopefully) you'll see the banding, on the tree for example and the wooden planks of the building:- shot

I spend so long last night on all this and burnt myself out. Trying all settings, changing brightness, calibrating my monitor. I may just /wrist and be done with it :tongue:

All of this has even made me think about getting an IPS monitor, argh. It's also made me appreciate just how damn good CDprojekt are, they manage to make games that look outstanding ojut of the box, and have some pretty gritty darkness in them.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Axeface