ENB....wtf is it?

[Se7enupMustang]

Ok I'll start off by saying I do use mods and I have slowly been using more and more complicated ones as I learn more about not messing up my game, I take things slow though so bear with me on that.

 

 

Anyways,

 

Can someone please explain in English what ENB is (aside from the obvious "it makes everything look awesome" description), how it works, how to install it, what it conflicts with (mods) etc. Please keep in mind that I don't make mods, or do any sort of programming or anything related to it so please refrain from using acronyms and jargon associated with making mods or doing complicated things with game/system files and the like.

 

 

 

 

Thanks much.

Mustang

 

 

also I attached a random thing just cause

[ilikecheese1337]

ENB is a mod for Skyrim developed by somebody outside of Nexus, and is downloaded from here:

 

http://enbdev.com/mod_tesskyrim_v0119.htm

 

The ENBs you see on Nexus are configurations of that mod by other people. ENBs don't conflict, generally, with other mods, though they can produce weird effects when used with lighting mods. You install it by downloading it via the small arrow next to the version title on the page and extracting it with Winrar or 7zip to your Skyrim folder (NOT Data folder like other mods - the path is usually: Program Files or sometimes Program Files (x86) > Steam > steamapps > common > Skyrim). You install ENB configurations by extracting them to the same folder and overwriting when prompted.

 

Personally, I very much dislike ENBs. They never look like screenshots, have horrible performance impacts, and don't work well with mods like Realistic Lighting. I use IMAGINATOR instead, which is customisable from ingame and doesn't have performance impact, but isn't as versatile or powerful. To each, their own.

Edited January 25, 2013 by ilikecheese1337

[LargeStyle]

In simply terms, ENB add pre and post processing graphical effects. I don't know exactly how it does it and I doubt many people do either such is the work of Boris' mod.

 

ENBs main file is a .dll file - either a d3d9.dll or enbseries.dll file and is what applies the effects to the game. However ENB needs a few other files, mainly either .fx or .ini files.

 

.fx files contain HLSL code and some adjustable variables so that ENB can be customised. Simply open a .fx file with any text editor and generally speaking you'll see two sections: the top section are the variables and the lower section is the actual code which is not to be adjusted. The enbeffect.fx file typically contains variables for contrast, tone mapping, saturation, and tone mapping saturation compensation. These control the main "base engine" for the screen settings. enbeffectprepass.fx file contains code and variables for more controls such as Depth of Field.

 

.ini files are initiation files - the only .ini file of concern here is the ENBseries.ini file. This file is basically a categorised list of controls for ENB - you can enable and disable certain effects of ENB within this file, but much more importantly you can adjust the lighting / shadowing strengths just by changing some multiplier values. The best thing to do here is simply open the enbseries.ini file (again with any text editor) and see which values are adjustable).

 

There are two ways in which ENB can be installed into Skyrim. Both version require the files to be placed directly into Skyrims main directory (where the games .exe files are) - and because of this Nexus Mod Manager can't install ENB mods as NMM only installs files into Skyrims Data folder and subfolders. The two versions of ENB are the wrapper version and the injector version. If you metaphor Skyrim into say a tomato (?!!) then the ENB wrapper would literally wrap around the outside of Skyrim / the tomato in order to change the game, whereas the injector literally injects the information directly into Skyrim / the tomato. Dodgy metaphor over. Both otherwise work in the same way, perform pretty much the same, and produce the exact same visuals.

 

As for compatibility, you could break this down to two different levels - technical compatibility and visual compatibility. Technically speaking the main issue here is the d3d9.dll file that the wrapper version of ENB uses. A small few other mods also use a (different) d3d9.dll file such as HiAlgoBoost, FXAA Injector, Realistic Colour Realistic Nights (RCRN), SweetFX, SMAA Injector. There are 2 things you can do to improve compatibility if you want to use ENB with another d3d9.dll based mod - 1) ENB supports proxy libraries, which means you can load one other d3d9.dll file, but this needs to be manually setup within the enbseries.ini file by enabling the proxy library, renaming the non-ENB d3d9.dll to something more distinguishable, and telling the enbseries.ini that the newly renamed .dll file is effectively the second d3d9.dll file, or method 2) use the injector version of ENB which instead of using a d3d9.dll file it has an enbseries.dll file instead which does the exact same thing as the injector versions .dll file. Just note that if you run the injector version of ENB you need to simply run the ENBInjector.exe file before you start Skyrim otherwise ENB won't work.

 

The other type of compatibility is perhaps harder to "make compatible" - visuals. Through the use and modification of the variables within the 3 main ENBseries files there are an outstandingly large amount of ways in which Skyrim can be made to look. It might sound a little exaggerated but trust me, there are loooaaads of possibilities here. Then throw in different non-ENB lighting mods into the mix such as Realistic Lighting or Climates of Tamriel then things get crazy. Some people release ENB presets (their adjusted .fx and .ini files) onto Nexus for specific lighting mods or even for Skyrims default lighting system, but it's normally the case that the ENB author will state on their mod page which lighting mod / general setup their ENB preset is designed for. Of course you can mix and match whichever setups you want which then cause all the different aesthetics you see in other peoples screenshots.

 

The only other thing to note about ENB is that it potentially has quite a big hit on your game performance / frames per second. ENB is heavily GPU orientated and it'll may even make your GPU run hotter (and louder) to cope with the extra workload. Don't worry though, as long as you have setup your pc up well and initially monitor your temperatures then all should be ok. I have an ageing GTX 260 (along with a non-overclocked quad-core CPU running at 2.4GHz) and without ENB I can get fps' of 25 to say 55, whereas if / when I run ENB it'll go down to about 15 to 35 fps. I've ran a GTX 470 in my system before and it worked much better (faster) but it wasn't on for long as the fan was working extremely fast and loud and it wasn't my GPU. If you have a GTX 5xx series (or evquivalent) GPU then you should be absolutely fine, and if you have the 6xx series (or evquivalent) GPU then it should be running lovely (probably / possibly 1080p 60 fps).

[Se7enupMustang]

Thank you for the clear and concise way you both have explained ENB, I knew there would be a performance hit using ENB which is the primary reason I haven't committed to trying it, I've seen a number of people complaining about it on several ENB mod pages here on the nexus. Like ilikecheese1337 I use the IMAGINATOR mod as well as DYNAVISION, Skyrim HD 2k textures, and Enhanced Lights and FX but I can't get Skyrim to look the way I want. I want vibrant colors without being fake and I just cant get it right, I can get close with the Imaginator mod but then I have issues at night where the sky is bright enough to outline mountains and trees and I can see perfectly to the horizon but if I fix the brightness at night then during the daytime everything is too dark. Its very immersion breaking to have to stick with either or and I got tired of spending 5 minutes changing the settings whenever it becomes day or night. I want rich colors that are like this SEG ENB Just without too much of a fps hit, right now I have a sweet spot where I average 30-48fps and I don't want to lose that. On the topic of hardware I'm playing on a laptop, an Alienware M14x - i7 2630QM, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GT 555M 3GB.

 

Currently my settings are

1600x900

AAx4

AFx4

Textures/Shadow/Decal quality high

Radial Blur medium

No FXAA

No water reflections

Object/Actor/Item fade 10

Grass 5

Spec Fade 12

Light Fade 25

Distant Obj. Detail Medium

Distant Obj. Fade on

 

I've decided against using ENB, maybe I will when I get my desktop built but I wont use it on my laptop, Can you recommend anything that can get me at least close to what I'm trying to get?

[Alpr]

I don't have the strongest PC (mines about 3 years old) but I can run on ultra with Skyrim HD 2k textures just fine. I found this ENB setting and I find it pretty good. I haven't noticed much performance drop at all. I was experiencing heavy CTD/Freezing but after installing Skyrim Performance PLUS and downgrading from Skyrim HD 2k Textures FULL to the "Lite" version, I've had overwhelming success with very few CTD/Freezes now, enough to where I am satisfied since before, I had constant freezing whenever I was in the open world. (Well, this was before I cleaned it up and then installed the ENB)

[LargeStyle]

Can you recommend anything that can get me at least close to what I'm trying to get?

 

I'm not really familiar with imaginator so I couldn't comment there. I don't really know what to suggest. Perhaps try something like SweetFX - it has quite a customisable setup with several options to play with.

 

Other than that, ENBs probably are the easiest way forward. I love the visuals from some ENBs but as my computer isn't great I wanted an alternative hence why I decided to completely rewrite the internal lighting and weather system! But I wouldn't recommend doing this, is more stress than it's worth :biggrin:

[Se7enupMustang]

Can you recommend anything that can get me at least close to what I'm trying to get?

 

I'm not really familiar with imaginator so I couldn't comment there. I don't really know what to suggest. Perhaps try something like SweetFX - it has quite a customisable setup with several options to play with.

 

Other than that, ENBs probably are the easiest way forward. I love the visuals from some ENBs but as my computer isn't great I wanted an alternative hence why I decided to completely rewrite the internal lighting and weather system! But I wouldn't recommend doing this, is more stress than it's worth :biggrin:

 

 

I wouldn't even know where or how to begin to do that, I took a look at the SweetFX page and I'll give it a try later. First I'm going to mess around with what I have, I've switched from Enhanced Lights and FX mod to the Realistic Lighting overhaul mod and I'm to see if I can get closer to how I want Skyrim to look. Imaginator is really nice though, no editing files or anything just an in game spell to summom a guy that you talk to to change the settings, There are some pretty cool presets but its all customizable and there's no fps hit at all that I could detect. my performance is exactly the same according to the Skyrim Performance Monitor.