With All These Mods Skyrim Still Looks Cartoonish At Night - Should It?

[mooit]

Hello,

 

 

These are the MODS I am using and in their load order; (I am using 'enbseries_skyrimse_v0396')

00. Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch

1. Skyrim Realistic Overhaul
2. Noble Skyrim - FULL PACK_2K & NSM SMIM Patch
3. Skyrim 3D Landscapes & Skyrim 3D Landscapes Groundcovers
4. Skyrim 3D Rocks
5. Red Rocks 4k
6. Enhanced Textures Detail (UV Tweaks)
7. Realistic Water 2
8. Fluffy Snow
9. Just Ice
10. Enhanced Vanilla Trees SE
11. Veydosebrom
12. HD Photorealistic Ivy

13. Enhanced Textures Detail (UV Tweaks) - Compatibility Patch
14. Static Mesh Improvement Mod
15. Ruins Clutter Improved - Falmer Temple Chandelier, Ratway Wood Fix, Ruins Linen Normal Map Fix
16. High Poly Project
17. SkyrimSE Re-Engaged ENB

18. Obsidian Weathers
19. Enhanced Lights and FX Mod
20. Skyrim Textures Redone- Enhanced Night Sky

21. Skyrim Particle Patch for ENB-SSE

22. Skyrim HighPoly Fern_Meshes-SSE
23. Footprints
24. Motion Sickness

 

I've attached some screen shots of how it looks at night, and to say the least, I'm really shocked at how crappy it looks.

 

You'll see these several things:

 

1. The brown grass in the fields looks cartoon like, no depth/dimension to make it look more realistic.

2. The trees on the mountain show as beige and green colors, I'm like, why aren't these all green... hmm

3. Trees look flat in the distance, no depth/dimension 3d like realistic look to them.

4. Mountains don't look as realistic.

5. Trees in the closer distance are dark, without much definition.

 

WHY does the night landscape with all these mods look so bad?

 

In the day time Skyrim looks pretty nice and realistic, but at night it's a really big change and I was hoping with these mods the night would also look nice and realistic.

 

With these mods installed is there anything I can do to bring out a more realistic night, or do I need another mod for this?

 

 

THANKS for any help...

 

P.S. I wonder if IMAGINATOR could make the night colors contrasts better

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4577/

 

Or if Realistic Lighting Overhaul SSE could be the way to go?

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/844

 

If I use Realistic Lighting Overhaul SSE, would I remove Enhanced Lights and FX Mod, or any others it would conflict with? It's my understand that ELFX is for interiors and RLO for exteriors?

[nightscrawl]

I can't answer your landscape question. However, I'll point out that lighting mods like ELFX and RLO primarily handle lighting in indoor situations: inside buildings, dungeons, etc. Weather mods are what affect the appearance of lighting and such outside, which includes nighttime.

 

You might also think about playing with your ENB settings, or just trying a different ENB altogether.

[anjenthedog]

I'm not here to run defense, but I will say that programming a game to faithfully project a 100% accurate nighttime landscape WHILE providing interactive abilities to continue playing said game is a bit different than providing daytime lighting... on a monitor designed primarily for projecting light, not "dark".

 

There's (what appears to be) a little known mod here called Imaginator, which allows a degree of control over saturation, brightness, contrast, etc etc.

 

You might consider installing it so that you can tweak the primary settings (contrast, brightness, saturation etc) to your liking. It's highly unlikely that any mod author is going to get it 100.0% ideal for every set of eyes and monitor.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4577

 

I use it to overcome the over-darkening (IMO) of the environment by one of the mods I have installed. I like what it does overall, but I hate how it (the enb/lighting environmental mod) makes everything so dark. So I changed the equation by using imaginator.

 

FTR, imaginator is recommended to be placed last in the load order so that it filters everything that comes before it (what most around here would call "overwrites"). I suppose someone could get even creative in where it sits in the load order, but whatever...

 

PS> there's another option too I guess... although I haven't used it yet

Dynamic Display Settings

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11085

 

 

Oh, btw, there's also another one called "CLARALUX SSE - Controllable Lights Everywhere" you might look up.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2371/?

[mooit]

I went with Darker Nights, looks really nice, a lot more realistic at night...

 

Thanks for the input guys!

 

P.S. After posting this Darker Nights isn't working in the latest updated mods I have.

 

@anjenthedog thanks for those recommendations, I'll give them a try!