Fixing the awful green tint

[necKros]

Looks good but next time you think about typing the phrase "my knowledge of colorimetry and color science" you should have more than a few pictures of grey clouds to back it up.

This is not a job interview. Totally uncalled.

One question though: Could it not be that this hue was choosen on purpose?- You know to make the image colder.

That I can answer for you: it's totally intentional. The've been using fake colored lights since FO3. Moreover, there's some additional postprocessing going on in Skyirim giving the resulting "washed out" feel. Beth answer would be that it's for creating more athmosphere or immersion. That works only partially: Pseudocolor effects are used in movies and videogames to further enhace the athmosphere in some scenes, commonly with the "greenshift" that in one way or another is present in many films. On the other hand, when immersion is concerned, pseudocolor can play for you negative effects, since, for some people, immersion means that you must be able to believe what you are playing like it was happening in real life. Pseudocolor, of course, doesn't happen in real life, and that's why it's important to correct those 'athmospheric' fx.

Edited November 22, 2011 by necKros

[nandchan]

Color tints have mixed effects. Their main effect, which is the reason why they're used in movies so much, is that they create (and enforce) a certain atmosphere. They can be used to underline a movie's setting, in order to dictate the mood in which the movie should be perceived.

 

The downside, however, is that by enforcing a certain atmosphere, they also inevitably limit said atmosphere. In movies, this can be easily changed by coloring different scenes differently.

 

The problem is, in my opinion, that Skyrim forces the same blue/green tint onto the entire game. This not only makes the entire experience have the same emotional breadth, but it's also uncalled for because intentionally limiting a game with such a vast amount of detail, possibilities, content, scenarios and stories will only hinder one's ability to perceive each situation appropriately.

 

A visual experience which is more neutrally centered and has a greater range of focus will create a more enjoyable, immersive and pleasant experience for many, which is why having the ability attain it is only beneficial.

[nandchan]

Ported the script to tapioks' “Skyrim Enhanced Shaders” mod, which uses Boris Vorontsov's ENBSeries internally, and change the script slightly. The two combined make for a great effect.

 

1. Before / After
   
2. Before / After
   
3. Before / After
   
4. Before / After
   

Edited December 4, 2011 by nandchan

[Vrugdush]

I applaud your efforts nandchan. Coming from a heavily modded Oblivion, I was quite disappointed with Skyrim's use of colour. This will certainly make the game more enjoyable for me.

 

I initially tried to use the FXAA Post-Process Injector to combat the tint, but I could never find a setting that I was happy with, and I seemed to spend more time adjusting the colours than playing the game. Then along came "Skyrim Enhanced Shaders", and its palette shifting capabilites, which although maybe not perfect, at least gave the game a much more pleasant and varied look. Your script seems to take things even further in the right direction.

 

It's nice to see that you've chosen to integrate your mod with existing ones, rather than making it completely separate. Now we can have both nice colours and the other fun effects from ENB/SES. Thank you!

Edited December 4, 2011 by Vrugdush

[throttlekitty]

Very cool, I can't wait to see what you come up with!

[Arkune]

Nice.

I hope it will be compatible with the ENB Series graphics mod for Skyrim once released.

[rpawn]

Would it not be more effective to modify Skyrim's in-build post processing, instead of adding another post processing step?

 

 

Skyrim's in-build post processing is accessible via the console commands

 

php : print current post processing settings

 

shp : set HDR processing parameters (eye adjustment, bloom)

scp : set cinematic processing parameters (saturation, brightness, contrast)

stp : set tint processing parameters (R, G, B, mix value)

 

 

From my limited investigations i have gathered Skyrim uses many different post processing settings depending on location, time of day, weather etc.

In most cases a lot of tint is mixed in, which by itself washes out and brightens the image - which is then compensated by increasing contrast and adjusting saturation and brightness (cinematic processing).

 

One consequence of the usually strongly increased contrast is that in many cases dark shadows are under-exposed so that they are 'blacked out' (similar to but opposite of white-out highlights in case of over-exposure).

No amount of post-post processing (FXAA injector) can bring back the detail in those shadows; black is black, the detail is gone. The detail in those shadows can be brought back however by reducing contrast (and adjusting saturation and brightness accordingly) in Skyrim's own post-processing.

 

Those blacked out shadows are my main gripe with Skyrim's lighting, but of course "stp" can be used to adjust the green/blue tinting.

 

The problem is that the post processing parameters are reset to predefined values on every scene change (change of location, change of time-of-day, change of weather), so that probably the only proper way to fix the lighting will be to use the construction set to modify all the various post processing settings that Skyrim uses in different scenes.

[nandchan]

@rpawn: It's certainly an interesting idea, but I think we might have to wait until the CK on this one. I also do not have any experience modding the game itself, but I know a bit of HLSL so I can work with post process shaders.

 

If you don't like the increased saturation and blackened out shadows, then don't use this effect with the Skyrim Enhanced Shaders mod. That's what causes the crushed blacks, my mod only affects the chromaticity and never the saturation, value or contrast. I personally think the crushing of blacks is a positive effect, since I find nights in Skyrim are too bright - it makes torches and so on useless.

 

Once I'm satisfied with the result I'll release two versions: One compatible with FXAA Injector and the other compatible with Skyrim Enhanced Shaders.

 

I've also discussed plans with tapioks who wishes to merge the effect into his other shaders (the ones written by Boris Vorontsov eg. his high quality sharpener (which I personally find disgusting) and so on).

 

Lastly, I'm going to (if I get permission) merge this script into the FXAA shaders, and then merge the result of that into Skyrim Enhanced Shaders, so you can use this, FXAA presets *and* ENBSeries as you see fit within a single mod/dll.

 

Ps. Since this mod does not affect the ingame lighting, but rather applies a general shift to every scene, it results in not losing the mood for a particular scene. Very green tinted scenes will *still* be very green tinted with this, but “neutral” scenes will be more neutral tinted, and red/blue tinted scenes will be slightly red/blue tinted instead of neutral. It just evens things out more, without destroying the mood completely.

Edited December 4, 2011 by nandchan

[RejectedCamel]

@rpawn: It's certainly an interesting idea, but I think we might have to wait until the CK on this one. I also do not have any experience modding the game itself, but I know a bit of HLSL so I can work with post process shaders.

 

If you don't like the increased saturation and blackened out shadows, then don't use this effect with the Skyrim Enhanced Shaders mod. That's what causes the crushed blacks, my mod only affects the chromaticity and never the saturation, value or contrast. I personally think the crushing of blacks is a positive effect, since I find nights in Skyrim are too bright - it makes torches and so on useless.

 

Once I'm satisfied with the result I'll release two versions: One compatible with FXAA Injector and the other compatible with Skyrim Enhanced Shaders.

 

I've also discussed plans with tapioks who wishes to merge the effect into his other shaders (the ones written by Boris Vorontsov eg. his high quality sharpener (which I personally find disgusting) and so on).

 

Lastly, I'm going to (if I get permission) merge this script into the FXAA shaders, and then merge the result of that into Skyrim Enhanced Shaders, so you can use this, FXAA presets *and* ENBSeries as you see fit within a single mod/dll.

 

Ps. Since this mod does not affect the ingame lighting, but rather applies a general shift to every scene, it results in not losing the mood for a particular scene. Very green tinted scenes will *still* be very green tinted with this, but “neutral” scenes will be more neutral tinted, and red/blue tinted scenes will be slightly red/blue tinted instead of neutral. It just evens things out more, without destroying the mood completely.

Forgive me whilst I pick my jaw up off the floor... http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/psyduck.gif

[nandchan]

This effect has been included with versions 1.7 and 1.9 of Skyrim Enhanced Shaders. To use it, after installation, copy the “effect.txt” out of “Optional Effects\7 - Natural Colors” into the main Skyrim directory, overwriting the existing effect.txt.

 

Do note that this comes with the HDR effect, which is not part of my effect. If you wish to use it without the HDR, stay tuned for the FXAA version.