thesapien Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 If you're like me and loath the vanilla shadows because they look like a throw back to old school 8 bit pixels, I just discovered an extremely simple solution. Go to your user folder for Skyrim under mydocs/mygames/skyrim. Open SkyrimPrefs. Find under [Display] the line iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3and change that number to something much higher. Mine was set at 3 when I first saw it and before experimenting. My sweet spot seems to be around 20-40. So now mine looks like this: [Display]iBlurDeferredShadowMask=20 You can even go well over 40 to get soft shadows around curved objects at extreme angles, which helps tremendously if you stay home a lot in the Breezehome, however; when you leave your house you won't get shadows from individual leaves on plants anymore if you go too high. Still, I'm sure everyone will have their own personal preferences on this one. Apparently, this wonderfully included single line of code does an awesome job on smoothing shadows, but someone at Beth just put in some wrong numbers, I guess, like way too low to even make use of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lastito Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 thanks for the info gonna try and see the difference thoughmy skyrim has a funny shadow, when I in a dungeon, the shadow looks smoothbut when I back to my house at Breezehome, It's pixelated :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 Some people prefer blocky shadows. The only problem is you don't get much shadow detail in small things. Look at this, for example:http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=34569 It kills my framerate to use shadows like that at a distance, so I hide the pop-in with SSAO through and ENB mod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billyro Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 I read somewhere that the deferred shadow mask ranges from 1-7, but no... it is wrong. I have mine at 5 I think (I used to have it about 20) because the shadows became too soft that small objects wouldn't give shadows. Still, it is probably worth putting this up here. Oh yeah, does anyone know if setting it high kills fps? I think I gained a few frames after changing the mask from 15 to 5, but I don't know if it just my computer on that day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 I've tried setting it up to 32, and although it made shadows fairly smooth it only dropped me a couple fps. It takes away as much detail as it adds in smoothness, so you won't lose much either way. It's mostly personal preference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anya29 Posted January 29, 2012 Share Posted January 29, 2012 I recently added the torch produces shadows mod and this one was recommended on the description - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=283 I am using the middle option of medium shadow draw distance and medium sharpness and it's working very well. I'm not running Ultra settings just high to keep fps up with HD textures and FXAA and I no longer have jagged shadow lines. http://thumbsnap.com/s/r7XtQhaS.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesapien Posted January 29, 2012 Author Share Posted January 29, 2012 Funny how after figuring something out, now I see that others had already figured it out too. I'll now have fun tweaking some of the other values, but one thing I really like about just this one value is that it doesn't seem to slow performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesapien Posted January 29, 2012 Author Share Posted January 29, 2012 I've tried setting it up to 32, and although it made shadows fairly smooth it only dropped me a couple fps. It takes away as much detail as it adds in smoothness, so you won't lose much either way. It's mostly personal preference. Me too. 30 was actually my very first try after just adding a zero to my default number of 3. After experimenting, I'm right back to 30. I've put it as high as 100 still without noticing any drop in performance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesapien Posted January 29, 2012 Author Share Posted January 29, 2012 I read somewhere that the deferred shadow mask ranges from 1-7, but no... it is wrong. I have mine at 5 I think (I used to have it about 20) because the shadows became too soft that small objects wouldn't give shadows. Still, it is probably worth putting this up here. Oh yeah, does anyone know if setting it high kills fps? I think I gained a few frames after changing the mask from 15 to 5, but I don't know if it just my computer on that day. What objects are that small where 20 doesn't catch them? Maybe this is a relative value linked to screen resolution. I play on a 2560x1600 native monitor set to 1280x800 so that I can use things like ambient occlusion and depth of field both on high quality while everything still runs smooth like butter. Adjusting the shadow blur to 20-100 doesn't seem to drop frames for me. At 30, I can still make out shadows of branches and leaves on plants drawn to the ground during a sunset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts