Skyrim lighting/shadows glitch, textures gradually change colour when

[deabten10]

This is a really difficult glitch to explain. It is extremely annoying and I find skyrim not even playable anymore. I got skyrim for pc about 3 months ago, and this glitch has been here since the recent patch that came out [ to my knowledge ]. When it is sunny in skyrim, its much easier to notice. When I walk towards certain textures , usually of rocks, walls, plants, and sometimes the ground, they seem to change colour gradually. It's like the textures are peeling off into a brighter shade of the colour I initially see. It usually happens when i'm about 5 feet away from the texture, where the colour gradually changes. The initial colour I see from 5 feet away, looks very glitchy and dark, and black lines can be seen on them. But when i go closer to the texture, the true texture emerges. I have literally tried everything , from changing the ini file, to messing with the Catalyst control center options. I have a lot of mods installed, but I recently shut them all off in NMM, and this problem still happens. I have a feeling its the patch that is doing this, but maybe you can enlighten me on how I can fix this annoying glitch. Here are my specs:

MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

AMD FX-6100 Six-Core Processor

DDR3 8gb RAM

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard

AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series

 

I'd appreciate any tips ;)

ps. adding a screenshot wouldnt really give you an idea how it looks, because it only happens when my npc is moving

[deabten10]

Heres a reference to whats happening in my skyrim:

 

[fms1]

I saw the shadow thing earlier while looking up a graphic square pixelation issue with the CCC 12.2 and 12.3 drivers, some people with Skyrim 1.5 and 1.5.26 had the shadow thing in your video. Currently I use CCC 12.2 with the driver rolled back, and Skyrim 1.4.21 on a HD 6870 (I didn't have the shadow thing).

[deabten10]

I saw the shadow thing earlier while looking up a graphic square pixelation issue with the CCC 12.2 and 12.3 drivers, some people with Skyrim 1.5 and 1.5.26 had the shadow thing in your video. Currently I use CCC 12.2 with the driver rolled back, and Skyrim 1.4.21 on a HD 6870 (I didn't have the shadow thing).

 

where could I download the 12.2 CCC, and I need the 1.526 patch inorder to run some mods i have, so thats not an option.

[fms1]

Since my last post on this thread I uninstalled 12.2 and all my Catalyst application profiles and installed 12.1, I've read that the Cap that goes with 12.2\ 12.3 is what causes this. Someone posted they run 1.5.26 with CCC 12.3 and uninstalled Cap for 12.3 resolved this for them. There's also a quick fix\ temp. workaround somewhere here in the forums with a link to Skyrim Nexus for DL

[restje]

This has been bugging me for a while as well, and i'm on an Nvidia card, so i dont think the issue is isolated with ATI.

The only way i've come across to fix this is by changing the value of fShadowDistance in Skyrimprefs.ini to 20000.0000 , this doesn't seem to have any sort of big impact on performance but it fixed the issue right away for me.

It seems to be a sort of cut-off point for shadows, my old setting was a mere 2500.0000, so the cut-off point was extremely close & i constantly noticed it everywhere, increasing it from 2500 to 20000 seemed to be the only way to get rid of this from my personal experience, i've tampered with every other setting & nothing seemed to do the trick.

[NomadicAI7]

I have the same problem!!! And I'm using the latest AMD 12.4 WQHL drivers. They fixed the pixellation issue but not this shadow stripe issue

 

The striped shadow boundary is clearly visible:

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2909-18-21-16.jpg

It's also covering beyond

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2905-53-29-08.jpg

 

I'll just report the INI tweaks that I've tried. These were found around the Nexus forums and the web. All of these help, but have cons to their pros. So I haven't really found an ideal solution yet.

 

ShadowDistance Tweak ==================================

 

fShadowDistance=20000.0000

 

PRO: Gets rid of this striped shadow line

CON: Shadows become extremely blurry and stretched out because the shadow map is effectively stretched out

 

fShadowBiasScale Tweak ===================================

 

fShadowBiasScale=1

 

PRO: Gets rid of this striped shadow line

CON: Doesn't go far enough

 

fShadowBiasScale=4

PRO: Gets rid of this striped shadow line

CON: Shadows are waaay too elongated

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask Tweak =============================

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32 (conservative 6)

 

PRO: Gets rid of this striped shadow line

CON: Shadows are blurry and lose sharpness

 

 

Also, this is really weird. Mage Tower home (custom modded home):

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2905-54-13-58.jpg

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2905-54-20-34.jpg

Prolly something wrong with the lighting depth bias or something.

Edited April 29, 2012 by NomadicAI7

[NomadicAI7]

Only SUITABLE workaround I've found so far ======================

Check this link: http://www.mmo-champ...n-Games-(skyrim)

 

Basically,

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32 (conservative 6 or 3)

+

iShadowMapResolution=8192 (conservative 4096 or 2048)

 

There's still a shadow boundary, but it's faint and not striped

 

 

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2909-54-16-93.jpg

My INI settings

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6

iShadowMapResolution=1024

 

Also, it fixes the Mage Tower ugliness. So it's not the mod author's fault. I thought that the mod author might have screwed up the light objects, but nvmd.

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2910-01-49-13.jpg

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/TESV2012-04-2910-01-25-69.jpg

 

STILL, if anybody has any better INI tweaks and fixes, I'm all ears.

 

Ideally, I'd rather not resort to iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6 but instead to iBlurDeferredShadowMask=0

However, that's exactly when the problem appears, when iBlurDeferredShadowMask=0 :verymad:

Edited April 29, 2012 by NomadicAI7

[nisen]

Nomadic, your link was incomplete, assume you meant this thread

 

theres also other shadow tweaks and mods if you search skyrim-nexusmods with the terms shadow fix and improved shadows

[NomadicAI7]

Nomadic, your link was incomplete, assume you meant this thread

 

theres also other shadow tweaks and mods if you search skyrim-nexusmods with the terms shadow fix and improved shadows

 

Hiya nisen! Thank you very much for responding!

 

I followed your suggestion and searched the Nexus mods more thoroughly and found these two very helpful mods

 

1) More Dynamic Shadows and Striping Fixed

 

Wow, this mod really does make a difference in all VANILLA interior and exterior areas. Absolute must have until Bethesda corrects this lighting and shadow issue themselves.

 

MDS OFF (Breezehome)

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/DMSoff1.jpg

 

MDS ON (Breezehome)

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/DMSon1.jpg

 

So for me, this one's a real keeper. I know there's a Shadow Striping Fix mod but it only fixes Breezehome and not all the interior and exterior cells that this mod fixes. Perhaps, in the future, I'll keep an eye on that other mod as well, just to compare between the two.

 

2) Improved New Skyrim Shadows for Medium-Range PC

 

This one is more of suggested tweak than a mod. While there were other nice tweaks I got from this mod, the main one that really fixed up a huge issue for me was TURNING OFF Land Shadows.

 

Land Shadows ON settings ==========================================================

bDrawLandShadows=1

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=0

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/Blurred0LandShadows1.jpg

The land shadow line is clearly visible. So that striped mess is actually Land Shadows

 

Land Shadows OFF settings =========================================================

bDrawLandShadows=1

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=0

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/Blurred0LandShadows0.jpg

YAY the striped ugly land shadows are gone!

 

 

So now, I'm running mod #1) MDS always with the following INI settings to handle shadows best for my low-end rig

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=5

fInteriorShadowDistance=4200.0000

fShadowDistance=2000.0000

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=1024

fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000

iShadowMode=4

bTreesReceiveShadows=0

bDrawLandShadows=0

bShadowMaskZPrepass=1

iShadowMapResolution=1024

fShadowBiasScale=0.500

iShadowMaskQuarter=3

iShadowFilter=3

 

Ok, the only thing that was unresolved was the Mage Tower, but that is a custom, new cell. I will let the author of that mod know about puuloo's work with MDS

 

Best wishes, everyone! I hope this helped somebody out there!

Edited May 3, 2012 by NomadicAI7