Changing ENB files - few questions

[Windmaker13]

I'm fighting ( I guess it's a best word to describe my status) with those files and I don't know why, when I opened both ini files from Enchanced Shaders mod and base file from ENB and combined them with WinMerge program to set everything... I screwed everything :) Colors, It looks like v0.123 file is different in structure and even if I set everything to be exactly like in one from SES it messes everything. Not only I loose 20 FPS but also general quality become poor. In general I wasn't able to get darker interiors effect as I wanted - they become darker when I followed LargeStyle suggestions, but I think there is something else that adds darkness to interiors.

 

I think I have to try something different.

 

Can You tell me which of ENB mods I should consider as one with the best effects but still with good quality and somehow realism? As a base I would say SEGV was interesting, but it's colors were too candy-looking for me, I can switch off DOF in it, so it helps a little, but in general it doesn't give me ideal result. Also it had some additional files which I have never seen in other similar mods, so I guess it added something more than just config.

 

Well, we will see, I'll try to look deeper in other files.

[LargeStyle]

..when I opened both ini files from Enchanced Shaders mod..

This I don't understand and there's only 1 ENB .ini file which you should be adjusting - the enbseries.ini. The only other ENB .ini file I can think of is the Injector.ini which normally doesn't need touching at all.

 

It looks like v0.123 file is different in structure and even if I set everything to be exactly like in one from SES it messes everything

I've not tried 0.123 yet, but not only can the .ini and .fx files be different, but the .dll file will definitely be different. This is why I said that sometimes file swapping works, and other times it'll not be so good. It depends on how ENB versions vary, like 0.112 and 0.113 are nearly identical and files can be easily swapped around, but 0.115 was very much different. Again, this is where good ENB tweaking knowledge comes into play, unless you find a pre-existing preset that's good enough.

 

..Not only I loose 20 FPS..

This is obviously another factor to consider.If you use files which use similar code, or more the point similar complexity of code compared to that of the original ENBseries, then performance should be pretty good. However, over time other modders have added / adapted code within the enbeffect.fx and enbeffectprepass.fx files which although they add cool new features and settings to adjust, they also reduce performance due to the extra processing requirements. On the rare occasion I use an ENB. it's a personally made one based on 0.113 ENB, with no extra effects, files etc, and is therefore rather good for performance.

 

In general I wasn't able to get darker interiors effect as I wanted - they become darker when I followed LargeStyle suggestions, but I think there is something else that adds darkness to interiors

Maybe ENB 0.123 works differently to previous version, especially if it has its own interior lighting settings. Another factor I'm not aware of regarding your setup is if you're using vanilla lighting, or a lighting / weather mod such as Realistic Lighting or Climates of Tamriel - these mods typically reduce interior light (by reduction of indirect / ambient lighting values). You can also obtain mods which just reduce interior lighting values, such as No Tint and Desaturation.

 

There is one extremely important factor that I've recently discovered which may change your mind regarding interior (and general) lighting settings, which is monitor calibration. I have spent literally all year working on a non-ENB weather and lighting mod for Skyrim, and I've just found out that my monitor was considerably out of calibration. My brightness and contrast was not far off, but the gamma was way out. Now I've calibrated my monitor properly Skyrim looks loads better (and my mod looks loads worse)! Nights and interiors look nice and dark now, like the should be. So I'd strongly recommend looking into monitor calibration (software) before you do ANY further Skyrim tweaking!

 

Can You tell me which of ENB mods I should consider as one with the best effects but still with good quality and somehow realism?

Best effects-wise, nowadays they're all equipped with the same features. I'd just recommend searching Nexus for the most downloaded and / or endorsed ENB presets. IMHO, there's not one ENB preset that I like enough to use, and absolutely none of them look realistic, let alone "photo-realistic". ENB is just extra pre and post processing, and quite simply it can't polish a turd to make it look good / real by itself - it needs the main in-game lighting basis sorted first, for which again IMHO there isn't such a mod that achieves this. Even with my mod which started to be about realism just started looking boring and dull, so I've ended up giving it a more fantasy / Skyrimmy (?) feel..

 

Also it had some additional files which I have never seen in other similar mods, so I guess it added something more than just config

ENB supports optional files such as customized colour pallettes (colour correction). These files can normally be left out if you want.

[LargeStyle]

Right, just for experimental purposes I've made an ENB preset from scratch for you. It uses standard ENB v0.123 files, and I've just spent the last hour tweaking it to what I think your taste is. No garish colours, realistic-ish lighting, dark nights (and I do mean dark), and dark interiors, pretty much no DOF etc

 

It's not actually that bad for a 1 hour mod if I do say so myself. I've noticed though that the day / night detector level needs adjusting because it transitions into evening from daytime quicker than normal and rainy and stormy weathers are way too dark during the day, but it's a start. And FYI: it's based on standard Skyrim - no other lighting mods used.

 

Have a go and see what you think....

 

ENB 0.123 by Large Style

[Windmaker13]

This I don't understand and there's only 1 ENB .ini file which you should be adjusting - the enbseries.ini. The only other ENB .ini file I can think of is the Injector.ini which normally doesn't need touching at all.

 

I mean I took 2 enbseries.ini files - one new v.0.123 and one from ENB series mods I'm looking at and I ported values from older file to this original v.0.123 file - as most of old ENB files were made on v0.119 or something. :)

 

With calibration, I'm fine with my monitor, but thanks for advice :)

 

 

Well other mods, I used Realistic Lightning mod, but now I switched to Climates of Tamriel instead and see how this one looks. And try other ENB mods with it.

 

Thanks for tips and help :) Working on ENB files alone wasn't successful for me before :D

 

EDIT

Right, just for experimental purposes I've made an ENB preset from scratch for you.

 

Thanks LargeStyle! I'll check it! :)

Edited December 8, 2012 by Windmaker13

[LargeStyle]

This is a better version of my tweaked settings:

 

ENB 0.123 by Large Style v2

 

I've removed the weird blur when close to an object / person. I've fixed the day / night detector settings so there's a much better transition between day to sunset to night. This has also allowed me to fix the daytime fog settings too.

 

I'll stick on COT now and hope for the best.

[velouriam]

I myself am using v123. I started with enhanced shaders 119 preview, and simply switched the 119 dll to 123. And I made a lot of modifications, including making both nights and interiors darker and tweaking Boris's new reflections feature. If you want darker nights and or interiors you mostly have to mess with the direct lighting and ambient lighting settings. Don't forget that depending on the preset you are using, it's possible that some modifications are needing to take place in the enbeffect.fx file.

 

Enhanced shaders enb has a great pdf guide that comes with it that really explains almost all of the settings and fields. It's really well done and a great place to start to learn about enb. Also, remember that you can tweak these files while in-game. Just alt-tab, tweak and save, then go back to game.

[LargeStyle]

I've had a quick play with COT and as you've probably found out, my previous file isn't suitable for COT. The sky was too dark, wrong saturations, the sun was overpowered, the environment was accurately lit to COT visual style, the night (point lighting was wrong) and other stuff. I've tweaked the enbseries.ini throughout and made good progress with adapting it to COT...

 

ENB 0.123 for COT by Large Style

 

I myself am using v123. I started with enhanced shaders 119 preview, and simply switched the 119 dll to 123. And I made a lot of modifications, including making both nights and interiors darker and tweaking Boris's new reflections feature. If you want darker nights and or interiors you mostly have to mess with the direct lighting and ambient lighting settings. Don't forget that depending on the preset you are using, it's possible that some modifications are needing to take place in the enbeffect.fx file

Yeah, I quickly tweaked the hell out of the enbeffect.fx to get the contrast and tonemapping to work in accordance with the enbseries.ini (I changed the post-processing type to version 2 as it's better than version 3). In the enbseries.ini itself I've quickly changed:

 

- Adaption: reduced the amount of adaption as was causing inconsistencies between ground and sky

- Detector: altered the detector curve so that it blended day to night more accurately and generally allowed the correct detection of light levels in conjunction with day and night settings.

- Bloom: reduced it a tad as threshold level was wrong

- Direct and Indirect lighting: all settings and lighting curves adjusted to suit non-ENB lighting settings, plus tweaked a little to look a bit more interesting.

- Sky: also changed intensities and curves to suit base sky settings, plus tweaked for more effect.

- Interiors: Direct lighting increased and indirect lighting set to half for more interesting image.

- Colour Power: set to 1.0 at very start so base settings are correct.

Fire / Lights: reduced settings as standard ENB values were extremely high.

Volumetric Fog: Increased to match COT once detector had been corrected.

 

...and this seems to be ok.

 

Now I know that you've mentioned you're running COT, have you tried the "approved" COT ENBs on the mod description page?

 

Getting late here, will check back tomorrow.

 

EDIT: Forgot to state, COT installed using Default mod settings / options.

Edited December 8, 2012 by LargeStyle

[Windmaker13]

I'm just after first tests.

 

The result is quite interesting. Your version makes interiors look much nicer then on base files - still there is needed some small adjustment but I will try to rework it by myself. I have to say that night looks the best. This deep darkness with COT settings makes them great.

 

There is still some issue with COT, but I guess it's something with mod itself, not ENB as I found outside much too green/blue - if I switch ENB off it looks even worse :D

 

I would just like to change sources of light at night to give them small boost - to make them a little bit more shinning and bright - if it won't screw general darkness which is great. Now torches and lamps gives not enough light for such nice dark nights :)

 

 

Enhanced shaders enb has a great pdf guide that comes with it that really explains almost all of the settings and fields.

 

Yes, I found it today while I was looking at it's files. It's very helpful, mostly because it has some screenshots to compare effects.

 

Now I know that you've mentioned you're running COT, have you tried the "approved" COT ENBs on the mod description page?

 

Yes, I tried them but It was wired. I'm not sure if I installed those files properly as my game looked terrible with them - it looked like "technical image while making movies - before post-production" - if You know what I mean. It was much too sharp, green/grey etc. I don't know if this was something what left from first installment of Cinematic variant or not. I didn't have time to check it better.

 

While I was testing different ENB mods I checked Cinematic one by HeliosDoubleSix. It looked very nice in interiors but outside it wasn't my taste :) Well there is a lot of fun with those mods to get them working as user want :)

 

In general I have to think once again which mod to use - COT or RL as well, I'm not sure if COT design is the one I prefer. I guess there are no other popular mods like those two?

[velouriam]

The big payoff with CoT is that is includes many more weather types. For example, there are only two vanilla snow weathers. So anytime you are in a region that has a chance of snow, only two snow types are available. Whereas with CoT there are 8 snow types to choose from. That means you can get a greater variation of snow weathers. (snow type is just an example. It's this way across all types)

 

Anyways, just throwing out the advantages of CoT. But if you don't like it's lighting system then maybe the added weather types won't matter to you.

 

Also, if you are wanting to make your interiors look awesome, I recommend this: Enhanced Lights and fx

By far the coolest lighting with interiors in my opinion and compatible with both CoT and RL

[LargeStyle]

I would just like to change sources of light at night to give them small boost - to make them a little bit more shinning and bright - if it won't screw general darkness which is great.

If not aware, that's controlled in the enbseries.ini file using the line: PointLightingIntensityNight=0.6. I set it to 0.6 as when I did the COT test and I was approaching Whiterun at night, all I could see were several bright orange glows, so I turned it down. Obviously increase this setting for more prominent lighting.

 

In general I have to think once again which mod to use - COT or RL as well, I'm not sure if COT design is the one I prefer. I guess there are no other popular mods like those two?

There are 2 other lighting / weather mods that I'm aware of...

 

Realistic Colours and Real Nights which I believe uses a FXAA type injector to assist with its settings, and...

 

ULTRA REALISTIC WORLD LIGHTING which is a lighting overhaul mod that aims to make Skyrim more "vibrant".

 

With all due respect to the mod authors and their hard work, I don't really like these or any other weather lighting mod as to me they don't light the world "correctly" (natural light and shadows techniques, colours, intensities etc). My lighting and weather mod overhaul has been in the works since February and I'm hoping to release it very soon (sometime this month) and I've spent literally months sussing out how Bethesdas lighting engine works and I've completely rewritten the whole flippin thing from scratch.

 

Only problem I found with trying to get a realistic Skyrim look was when you light the world realistically then the game looked a bit rubbish because lets face it, Skyrim isn't really using a cutting edge game engine. That's why when I removed Bethesdas code of extreme screen manipulation through internal brightness, contrast, exposure, colour correction, bloom, and distance fogging and set these values to realistic levels, then the environments looked very very basic and plain, seemingly hence why Bethesda chose to bling it all up. Even with my own mod which intended to have realistic settings looked to dull and uninteresting that I've blinged my mod up a bit just to make it look more interesting!