Skyrim Graphics Modding

[stevosn95]

  On 11/14/2011 at 9:35 AM, cduron said:

I changed my ini file exactly like you posted (and extended the render distance of grass), but the in door shadows are still wrong. Shadows on the faces of npcs and on furniture are just wrong and the shadows on walls are very pixelated. This only happens when i'm in small houses where the light sources are close to the npcs/furniture.

 

Is there any way you can think of something that might fix this? I can post a screenshot of some weird looking shadows if that helps.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Did you change anything in the Skyrim launcher for gaphic settings after setting the INI file? Because if you did you may want to recheck you INI and make sure shadowdistance didnt jump back up to 8000. At 8000 the shadows are blocky, flicker, and render badly on faces.

Edited November 14, 2011 by stevosn95

[Tuco404]

  On 11/13/2011 at 4:06 PM, redtails said:

>Asrock P55 Extreme

 

Seriously?

 

You spent THAT much money on a computer and you chose asrock? Have you ever even heard of the word "bottleneck" and what it implies in the world of computing?

 

Just came in to join everyone at loling at redtails. I'll even bite and ask you to cough up some benchmarks that show competing P55 motherboards that benchmark significantly better than ASRock's P55 Extreme.

 

 

On the topic of INI: I've been dicking around with them and haven't managed to get them to load high quality (Or even medium quality...) geography / textures at a distance. The best I could get (Mostly using http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=131 but also some ini tweaks) is http://i42.tinypic.com/3vd6c.png Notice the distant blocks and low rez textures.

 

If anyone has any ideas let me know. I've scoured the internet and changed a bunch of values in the ini to no avail.

[lebike]

fShadowDistance= From 8000.0000 to 2500.0000 and fInteriorShadowDistance= 3000.0000 to 2500.0000

 

Fantastico that´s what I´m looking for. No more blocky ugly shadows.

 

thx

[cheyane]

Those shots are beautiful.Don't think my computer can handle it besides my monitor can only do 1600x1200.

[1337alpha]

  On 11/12/2011 at 5:58 PM, stevosn95 said:

Using all of these settings and mods could bring your PC to its knees. You have been warned.

 

Mods Used:

 

Nvidia SSAO profile with extra 16x AF filtering (High Quality)

Alpha resampled/filtered textures

High Res Armor textures

Enhanced Blood Textures

Antialiasing and Sharpening

Detailed Faces

No more blocky noses or chins

 

 

Could someone tell me where i can find the High Res Armor texture mod + Alpha resampled/filtered textures?!

That would be awesome ;) TY

[bestmaxx]

Have you looked at the ambient occlusion settings? Only applies to Nvidia users. This is probably the most looked over highest improvement adjustment. Only problem is you have to have a serious system to render the extra details. (Fortunately there are 3 settings of detail)

*For reference I have a GTX 580 and running everything on ultra I had to choose the middle setting.

I am pulling this from another forum, but here is what I followed:

 

 

"The game does support ambient occlusion, too, which helps with visual quality a bunch.

 

Copied from my post on another forum:

 

the game does support Ambient Occlusion on nVidia cards. This improves depth of the image CONSIDERABLY by adding shading to corners of objects, however it's somewhat tricky to enable. First, you need to create a profile for Skyrim in your nVidia control panel. Just do this the usual way - point it at the tesv.exe file, if you don't already have a 'Skyrim' profile listed (I think the latest beta adds one). You don't actually need to change anything, here, just make sure you have a profile for Skyrim.

 

Next, you need to download and run nVidia Inspector (it's available at Guru3d's site, among other places)...basically, a GPU-Z like app specific to nVidia cards.

 

Once run, click the configuration icon (the screwdriver and wrench icon) to the right of the 'driver version' field. This brings up a new window with a lot of options. In the top of this window is a drop-down box. You'll note that it's set to the 'Global' stuff by default. Click the drop-down, and find the Skyrim option. (Depending on your driver version or how you added the profile, this may show up as 'Skyrim', 'tesv.exe', or 'Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim') Select it.

 

With the Skyrim option selected, there are three fields you need to change:

Ambient Occlusion Compatibility (in the top section) - default "0x0000000", change to "0x00000003 (Fallout 3)"

Ambient Occlusion setting (fourth section down) - default "Off", change to "High Quality" (or whatever you want)

Ambient Occlusion usage (same section as last) - default "Disabled", change to "Enabled"

 

...click 'Apply changes' in the top, and you are good to go! (This sounds more complicated than it is - the tool has a very user-friendly GUI, all these options are drop-down menu choices, so you aren't actually typing anything in, and the visual improvement is BIG)"

 

 

***I would also like to add that this doesn't even take 5 minutes to do including the download and it is completely irreversible

Edited November 16, 2011 by bestmaxx

[urbex]

  On 11/13/2011 at 4:06 PM, redtails said:

>Asrock P55 Extreme

 

Seriously?

 

You spent THAT much money on a computer and you chose asrock? Have you ever even heard of the word "bottleneck" and what it implies in the world of computing? The slowest part will ultimately determine the speed of the overall system. By utilizing an asrock mainboard, you will not be able to use the full speed of your GPU, ram, SSD nor CPU. Additionally, you will probably not be able to successfully overclock your system, while the i7 has enormous OC potential

 

That computer is such a waste of good money

 

On topic: very delicious screenshots

Take your pseudo-intellectual false information back to /g/.

[voidtec]

Hello,

I'd appreciate your help with the shadow issue. I managed to set everything to look smooth but as soon as I get inside any house or other interior place npc and object shadows look completely shredded.

 

Outside:

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/2607/screenshot0m.th.jpg

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7662/screenshot2rs.th.jpg

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/1958/screenshot1frn.th.jpg

 

Inside:

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/4365/screenshot3rq.th.jpg

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/4050/screenshot5ij.th.jpg

 

My .ini file looks like this:

 

[Display]

iTexMipMapSkip=0

bFXAAEnabled=1

fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=1e+007

fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=1e+007

fSpecularLODStartFade=2000

fLightLODStartFade=3500

fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=1e+007

iShadowMapResolution=4096

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=4096

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=4096

fShadowBiasScale=0.15

iShadowMaskQuarter=4

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3

fShadowDistance=8000

iMaxDecalsPerFrame=100

iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=25

iAdapter=0

iSize W=1440

iSize H=900

iMultiSample=8

iMaxAnisotropy=16

iPresentInterval=1

bFull Screen=1

sD3DDevice="ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series"

fInteriorShadowDistance=2500.0000

bFloatPointRenderTarget=1

fGamma=1.0000

iShadowFilter=4

fDecalLOD2=1500.0000

fDecalLOD1=1000.0000

fShadowLODStartFade=1000.0000

iTexMipMapMinimum=0

bTransparencyMultisampling=0

iWaterMultiSamples=4

iShadowMode=3

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

bDrawLandShadows=1

bDrawShadows=1

fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=4600.0000

fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=3600.0000

fMeshLODFadePercentDefault=1.2000

fMeshLODFadeBoundDefault=256.0000

fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=2048.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=2844.0000

iScreenShotIndex=6

bShadowMaskZPrepass=0

bMainZPrepass=0

[imagespace]

iRadialBlurLevel=2

bDoDepthOfField=1

iPresentInterval=0

[Singulair7y]

I just thought i would post some screenshots as a comparison between tweaked and untweaked shadows.The game actually looks best with standard shadows set to ultra when you change the ini and shorten the shadow distance it looks good close up but much worse in the distance and its not just the shadows it changes the tree lod is shortened aswell and you get noticeable pop in the only thing you should change in the ini is bTreesReceiveShadows=1 and bDrawLandShadows=1 this enables extra shadows like on foliage.These screens show the difference look closely and you will notice the modified screens also have less foliage on the trees.The modified screens have fshadowdistance=2500 and normals are at the standard 8000 you be the judge.

 

normal shadows1 http://www.imageuploads.net/ims/pic.php?u=42125SlZGQ&i=199364

modified shadows1 http://www.imageuploads.net/ims/pic.php?u=42125SlZGQ&i=199365

normal shadows2 http://www.imageuploads.net/ims/pic.php?u=42125SlZGQ&i=199366

modified shadows2 http://www.imageuploads.net/ims/pic.php?u=42125SlZGQ&i=199367

[chrismgtis]

  On 11/13/2011 at 4:06 PM, redtails said:

>Asrock P55 Extreme

 

Seriously?

 

You spent THAT much money on a computer and you chose asrock? Have you ever even heard of the word "bottleneck" and what it implies in the world of computing? The slowest part will ultimately determine the speed of the overall system. By utilizing an asrock mainboard, you will not be able to use the full speed of your GPU, ram, SSD nor CPU. Additionally, you will probably not be able to successfully overclock your system, while the i7 has enormous OC potential

 

That computer is such a waste of good money

 

On topic: very delicious screenshots

 

Don't give the guy crap when you don't know what you're talking about. Buying an ASRock absolutely does not create a bottleneck. The chosen components (RAM, CPU, video card, etc) do. The MB has almost nothing to do with it other than the components that it supports. And most people don't overclock (nor do they need to). For them overclocking is NOT a factor in choosing a MB.

Edited November 19, 2011 by chrismgtis