Trouble with ENB Lighting

[srdit]

Hi everyone!

 

I've been using the Jasmin ENB preset up to now and am absolutely enjoying it. However, since I started progressing from Whiterun to other areas, I started noticing something strange in diffusely lit areas. The light, the shadows... nothing seems to match. The whole scene looks somehow too bright and evenly lit everywhere, kind of like when you leave "default lighting" on in Autocad or Cinema 4D when rendering a scene, if you know what I mean. And this is with ambient occlusion and SSIL on! It's kind of hard to describe, it looks very cartoonishly naive, characters look as if they are 2d images carved out from another scene and put on a differently lit stage. In the sunlight and in interiors it seems fine.

 

Now here's what's specially perplexing me: when I turn the ENB off by Shift + F12, I've noticed that the Vanilla version has become way too dark and really unappealing. I cannot tell however whether this is supposed to be so, since I haven't been playing without the ENB for quite some time. But since I'm playing over Steam, the F12 additionaly creates a screenshot. When I take a series of screenshots to compare the ENB and the Vanilla version, and look at the screenshots, there is always one shot that doesn't look either like Vanilla processing in game or like the ENB that i see - but actually seems right!

It's as if there is some additional processing being done that adds (far too much) ambient lighting with ENB - either only in clouded scenes, or always, but the pointed and direct lighting seems to overpower that (?) - but not the one that you can tweak in the enbseries.ini file. Has anyone ever exerienced anything similar?

I'd gladly attach a couple of images - I hope it's alright to attach one in each post, since the limit is only 250k. The first one is with ENB.

[srdit]

This is practically what gives when i press Shift + F12.

 

 

 

And this is the mysterious third version that I (sadly) never experienced on my screen but seems rendered right. You can see the warm glow of the torchlight on the coloumns, the occlusive deep soft shadows everywhere - a strange thing is also that the clouds are now black and the white under them are actually mountains - in each of such "series" of screenshots it happens to be so. True, it is perhaps somewhat too dark, but it does match a heavily clouded rainy day.

[jasmerd]

I have noticed that when I run boss that it sorts my claralux 2.0a improperly. The esm is sorted over the top of the climates of tamerial, that causes a ctd ofcourse, and then the climates of tamriel esp's are sorted below the claralux esp. So I manually put the claralux esm below the climates of tamriel esm, then I put the claralux.esp mod below all other potentinal light sources. Now I see shooting stars, now I see brighter lights with the more brighter lites optional claralux.esp. same with the minty lightening mod, supreme storms cot, all those esps loaded over the top of claralux's esp, and below the climates of tamriel esps.  I don't know if you are having those type of issues or not because I don't know your load order or mod list, but I have seen similar issues as you.

 

the other thing in this image are enhanced villages. Also - to get rid of your screen shot everytime issue on F12, go into steam library, properties for skyrim and change your hot key if you don't like taking a screen shot everytime to something you don't use often - for me, example I set mine to scroll lock

 

note: my enb is a modified version of "the wilds" that i have downloaded off of the nexus

good luck!

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2013 by jasmerd

[srdit]

Thanks for the reply!

 

Well after fine tuning the enbseries.ini (for days...) I think I've finally managed to get the light the way I like it to be in all three settings - daylight, indoors and nighttime; the key was to lower the Ambient Light Intensity / Curve as far as possible without making everything too dark, and also for overcast days, whereas that one is still quite dark, but the shadows seem to match now - the ao works well now as can be seen under the wood board flooring, in the corners under the roof, the characters torso towards the armpits etc. however what definitely bugs me is why there is always additionally a shadow from a direct light source. I don't quite understand how the ENB manages weather - it is visible that, when overcast, the shadows are by far not that hard, however, trees, npcs, my character, they all throw a visible shadow from the sun - which of course also happens in reality, its just that it is so soft that it is practically not perceived. How does Skyrim or in this case the ENB Preset actually manage these things, that is, which settings does the ENB take for overcast weather? I assume from changing the parameters, that "direct light" manages the Sun, just as when the sky is clear. But it's funny, because, when overcast, everything seems to match, it's just it's as if additionally there is a huge flashlight from above. Or does one always additionally need a weather mod?