Tips on making your Skyrim beautiful

[TheeFenway]

Heeey there everyone,

 

Over the years I've definitely messed around with mods of all kinds, from simple things to more advanced things, but now I'm really wanting to make my Skyrim look fantastic.

 

Of course, I've tried and done my own things to try and achieve this, from different ENBs, shaders, ultra HQ textures, and all that. But in the end, I feel like it all doesn't quite come together like I'm imagining it will.

 

So I'm here to ask everyone for some tips on ENBs, shaders, body mods ( :wink: ), HQ textures, or anything that you use to make your Skyrim look beautiful. I'm not asking for someone to make me a custom list of mods or anything like that, but if you have a certain mod that you think makes your game look wonderful, I'd love to hear about it. Or even if you have your own setup that you like, I'd love to know what you have.

 

Thank you everyone in advance for all your help and support.

 

Also, if this isn't the right section or something like that, let me know and I can work on getting it moved and whatnot.

 

 

Here are my computer specs if needed.

Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3
Gigabyte Z77-HD3 Motherboard
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (EVGA)

Thanks again!

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

From other thread:

 

Stuff like 32xp skeletons and body mods are pretty basic and can be altered at any moment. I would leave those, if that's what you like. To be honest I wouldn't do full STEP. Just go through with installing mandatory mods from the list (SKSE, Crash Fixes, SkyUI, FINIS, USLEEP, etc). Once you're done with the basics grab those for graphics improvement:

 

ENB recommendation:

 

Rudy ENB

It's very fps friendly for the amount of eyecandy it provides. It comes in 4 versions for 4 different lightning overhauls. I just have tried the new preset adapted for Vivid Weathers-NLVW and I'm in love. Hand placed fogs around mountains, real snowflakes and pinkish sunrises. It adds a lot to immersion. Plus I was able to squize few more high res textures thanks to improved performance. Before that I used Rudy ENB NLA 2.0 with ELFX and it was my top pick from all the presets on nexus. Only Kountervibe Enb was as good, but it ate fps like crazy.

(If you pick NLVW version, you will have to first install Vivid Weathers and Natural Lighting Vivid Atmospherics ENB)

(Grab required ENBseries v0.308 files from the bottom of THIS page. Enbhost.exe and d3d9.dll can be found in Wrapper folder inside of the v0.308.zip.)

 

 

 

Quick texture and mesh fix:

SMIM

NobleSkyrimMod HD-2K by Shutt3r

Authentic Whiterun / Solitude / Windhelm by Laast ~ (textures are 1k, but a lot more immersive and they blending well together)

Vivid Landscapes - All in One by Hein84

Skyrim HD - Terrain Parallax Tribute by Hein84 ~ (1k, the quality loss is minimal - set in enblocal.ini fixterrainparalax=true for full effect)

Gamwich mods ~ (he made a huge pack of clothes retextures, grab at least that one)

aMidianBornBookOfSilence ~ (high quality armor, weapon and creature textures)

SFO - No Grass file

Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin by Preeum ~ (grab 512k texture pack, you won't see the difference unless you put your face in the grass - this is the most realistic looking grass on nexus, the textures/meshes are more luminous and thanks to that they look less fake)

HalkHogan Realistic HD mods ~ (new detailed meshes and textures for clutter, overwrite other mods with this one)

Realistic Water Two

 

 

Sound:

Audio Overhaul for Skyrim 2 ~ (Other audio mods have issues and I wouldn't recommend them. This one changes how the sound is processed and adds a lot of immersive background sound. NPC voices and sound effects will be much more realistic. AoS 2 is compatible with Natural Lighting Vivid Atmospherics, just install optional patch. I have mixed together with it few compatible music mods that have provided AoS 2 patches.)

 

 

 

Combat and Movement:

Wildcat ~ (If you preffer your enemies more defensive install Combat Evolved on top of this one)

Archery Gameplay Overhaul by DServant

Attack Commitment No turning during attacks

Combat Behavior Improved by Moljka

TK Dodge by tktk

Ultimate Dragons by tktk

Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed by brump

Duke Patricks - Skyrim Friction Fix II

Better Jumping by meh321

Follow Me and Swim After Me by Tonycubed2 - Sands of Time Team

 

Animations:

Magiska - Spell Casting Animations by Feuertin

or YY Anim Replacer - Mystic Knight by yukl

Realistic Animation Project - Movement by FeuerTin

Realistic Animation Project - Idles by FeuerTin

 

Immersion:

iNeed - Food Water and Sleep by isoku

Immersive Horses by sevencardz

Better Stealing by meh321

Uninterrupted Invisibility by meh321

Campfire - Complete Camping System by Chesko

Relationship Dialogue Overhaul - RDO ~ (REQUIRES USLEEP)

Immersive Speechcraft by SirSalami

PC Head Tracking and Voice Type by HHaleyy

Face to face conversation by towawot

Skyrim - Enhanced Camera by LogicDragon ~ (Required by many animation and combat mods)

 

Voiced Followers:

INIGO ~ (My fav npc so far. He has over 5.000 voiced dialogue lines and unique framework that makes him more aware of surroundings -can comment on your actions, quests, ect)

Vilja in Skyrim by Emma Amgepo Lycanthrops ~ (Has some custom lines for dialogue with INIGO.)

Arissa - The Wandering Rogue by Chesko and Nikkita

Interesting NPCs by Kris Takahashi ~ (Also adds quests and background npcs.)

 

 

 

 

 

From my experience it's not about picking the highest resolution, but textures that blend together as a set. Some objects need bigger textures or better UV mapping (oversized mountain pieces in Markarth City for example). What I try to avoid is textures with "pixel specks" and very flat normal maps on objects that are suppose to have varied surface.

 

A good example would be Vivid Landscapes - Rocking Mountains. It includes in the set ground texture (small stones) that is applied around rocks and mountains. Thanks to that texture transition is not so jarring. The problem I had with it was the level of pixel noise. What I did was > grab 4k file from the page, load diffuse .dds in Gimp, apply lower contrast+lighness and then use blurr filter. After that I have scale it down to 2k.

 

USLEEP and SMIM takes care of good chunk of meshes with misaligned textures. It's a must have.

Try Unofficial Riverwood Interior Cell Fix. It's a fairly new mod, highly satisfying for OCD people xD

 

 

For towns I use some of the textures from the Authentic Witerun/Windhelm (even when those are 1k), since they work so nicely together.

 

Browse Langney Texture Pack (InfranView with .dds plugin will do the trick). She made really nice stone textures. I'm using her Riften ratway stonework. Solitude blue house planks are aslo top-notch.

 

Joy of Ships deserves notable mention. It covers both ships and small shacks.

 

I would have recommend few files from Renthals AIO flora pack, if not for the fact he deleted it... Grab his 3D Fence while it lasts. He might give you link to his old work, if you ask nicely

 

Skyrim Landscape Overhaul - Stone Walls + New texture gets rid of unimmersive flat walls.

 

 

Ground textures need special attention. Most of the packs avaible on nexus don't take into account that you need individual sets (per area) that blend together. Otherwise you get ugly lines in transition spots. The other issue is that no amount of normal parallax can hide how flat the ground is, if the normal map is not bumpy enough. Textures mods for ENB Terrain Parallax have more definition. Check Hein84 and aMIdianBorn page.

 

 

Using dark tree textures and lods works well with short shadows distance. Use ugrid7 or/and dyndolod to avoid unimmersive lod popup. Pair it together with good ENB DoF and you're good to go.

If you like green tree trunks check TreesHD or Upgrade and fix for TreesHD in case you use SFO trees.

Big trees makes a huge difference, providing more shadows and hiding distant land. Grab optional files from SFO page (Tundra bent pines, Juniper replacer). If you use custom trees, you will want Bigger Trees. Skysight works with vanilla meshes.

 

 

NPCs:

Ordinary Women

Males of Skyrim

Bijin NPCs/Wifes/Warmaidens

 

You can copy female textures from Bijin mods and past it under textures/actors/character/female. I found this giving the best effect while not using too much vram. Try it with UUNP or UNPB/7b body.

There is aslo huge ALL-IN-ONE HDT pack with huge amount of textures and body shapes on LL site, but it contains some additional body parts that you might not want.

 

 

The look of the skin can be manipulated with Enb settings. Try playing with subsurfacescattering in first panel and specular amount in weather window. It will depend a lot on the _s.dds and _sk.dds skin textures you have installed. I recommend sweaty body _s.dds for realism.

[TheeFenway]

From other thread:...

 

 

(I won't quote all of what you said cause it's a lot of information :p)

 

Thank you very much for this wonderful reply, it definitely helps out a lot and I think I can really get a good set of mods from it and work with them like you said.