Enhanced Lighting for ENB, updated 25 November-14

[mindflux]

Not sure what's going on with RLO there, probably an attempt to imitate light coming in from the large window up to the right, but ELE looks very nice - albeit perhaps a bit too dark for it being daytime (?), in all probability there should be slightly more bounced light. By the way, damn I hate all those funky colored lights of the vanilla game, yuck!

[--JawZ--]

I only used the major city interior exterior esp along with my ELE files as I mentioned and the only conflict is the assigned imagespaces and lightingtemplates as I have completely new imagespaces and lightingtemplates to avoid conflicts with player home mods and stuff like that which changes the vanilla imagespaces and also I placed them more appropriately so it will be easy to customize ELE to a ENB Preset that needs a few tweaks here and there. Anyway no conflicts with RLO besides the Cell Menu changes so that is a "conscious" choice from RLO, the light bulb is by the middle pillar above the desk I jumped on it and there it was right in the face, literally. And that is most likely the cause for it yes.

Thanks, I'm still working on the Directional Ambient coloring but as this is meant for ENB use I take in consideration the use of Night and Day settings in the equations. ELE for non ENB use will be easy and fast to create once I have the base layout done. That's why I throw out all of the lights and use my new created lights instead, they will also be easy and fast to configure for a specific ENB Preset.

Example type of my imagespaces, lightingtemplates and light bulbs

JZWhiterunInt - Stuff that is only placed in Whiterun interiors.
JZWhiterunDun - Stuff that is only placed in Whiterun dungeons.
For DLC I add either DG, DB or HF after JZ so it will be sure to not conflict with my skyrim stuff.

With vanilla lights there was also the problem with scattered around light bulbs, a torch or dwemer typical light was placed at a candlestick and similar things like that


Here is the base preset I'm doing for ELE.

Day 12:34 PM


Night 12:34 AM


It's easier to brighten a scene and have it looking good but it's harder to darken it without making it look washed out or with pitch black areas, that's how I feel it is and that's why I try balance a between dark and bright lighting to have it in the middle one might say.

Also I have not added the per location edits yet to any Skyrim interior. I will use roommarkers to assign different lightingtemplates for example that room will have a slightly brighter ambient color than the "map room" on the second floor or the dungeon part below the "dining room" just across the room.

I'm also looking into having truly adaptive interiors not just have the light bulbs with an emittance applied to it, for ENB use it's simple just activate the Skylighting in the cell and turn down the directlighting for interiors but it's a bit harder for non ENB use but I think I know of a way to do it.

[--JawZ--]

I have posted comparison picture of RLO and ELE during the clear days so I thought I would add a comparison for Foggy weather during the day.

ELE SkyrimFog - c821e


RLO SkyrimFog - c821e


The settings was set at vanilla except for SSAO, IBL, SSS and GradientIntensity. the same values was used for both pictures of course.

[--JawZ--]

SkyrimClearRE - 10a237

Vanilla Sunset


ELE Sunset


What do you guys think? Did I stray too far from the vanilla look or is it just in need of some fine tuning?

I have only adjusted the distant and volumetric Fog, Clouds, Sky and Directional Ambient + Sunlight in these shots so still much left to do with this weather.

[Aiyen]

Would properly not hurt to increase the red ambient a bit.

There is essentially nothing of that long red sunset feel left other then a tiny bit in the clouds.

Other then that it looks nice.
Gonna try to use your settings with my preset later today and see how it looks

[DigitalPrinceX]

Ya a little more red would be nice.

[--JawZ--]

Ok I did a bit of research and gathered a pile of reference shots on "Red skies" and this is my take on how it should look like based from that.

Only the sky colors have been changed here!


It wasn't easy to get a good red color while keeping it at 215 or below as the max assigned value to RGB.


EDIT:

And here I have changed the Directional Ambient color + Sunlight, sunlight needs to be slightly less red now that I have lowered the overall ambient color luminance.



EDIT 2:

Here you can see the different time periods, 12 PM, 6:30 PM, 12 AM and 7:30 AM. Sunset is the one closest to completion as I have covered more areas of that.

Midday


Sunset


Midnight


Sunrise



Any thoughts on any of the timeperiods? The sky colors determines the rest of the scene so if that looks wrong and needs more of any specific color I will need to makes changes to almost everything to illustrate the effect the sky should have on the ground and fog and what not.

[far327]

Hey --JawZ--

I've been testing out ELE and I must say I really like the overall effect so far! The spell and effects .esp is amazing!
I couldn't help but notice much more vibrant coloring with the rest of the .esp files activated. It's not a bad thing by any means, just takes a little adjusting with my config is all. In the end I like the ability to work from a colorful pallete instead of a gray pallete like Vanilla.

My main concern with Vanilla weather lighting and the difference in brighting for some clear weather types. some clear weather types are much much brighter than others.

Does your weather adjustments compensate for these extreme lighting changes?

Then again, it could be a tweaked fog .esp I started using. But I'm pretty sure its a Vanilla thing to begin with.

EDIT - actually I just read the full description of the weather.esp. So, pretty sure this must be my tweaked fog.esp that is causing the current brightness levels to go too bright at times.

Really loving this mod --JawZ-- I appreciate your dedication to this project and all your hard work!
You should consider accepting PayPal donations. You task on this is considerable.

I would be the first to donate.

[--JawZ--]

Hi there far327,

Glad you got around to testing it out finally Thanks I was pretty amazed that no one else has done this type of lighting editing in the past except for RLO but they made things worse in my opinion by making them shadow lights which would mean that there only could be 2 interior cell placed shadow lights if one would use the Illuminated Spell lights esp file.

I'm still trying to achieve a more natural coloring without making it feel oversaturated. I have also as I have mentioned before neutralized the imagespace for every weather I have so far covered, which is really noticeable during the nights and Fog, Rain and Snow as it didn't make sense to me to have those desaturated. It's no desaturation going on in real life during fog or rainy weathers so why have it in a game

I'm focusing on having the same intensity for the different time periods and I'm also still experimenting on how to better achieve that, ALPHA version you know. Also to see how different approaches behaves with ENB and which one is the best.

This is how it will be in the end for the different types of weather;

Clear weathers - Will be the brightest of the weather types
Cloudy weathers - Will be a bit less bright than the clear not that noticeable change but enough to make a slight difference.
Fog weathers - Will be a bit darker than the Cloudy weathers while having the ambient lighting be more intense than in other weathers. There will be shadows but less defined once compared to Clear and Cloudy.
Rain weathers - Will almost be the same as Fog weathers slightly darker.
Snowy weathers - Have both Clear, Cloudy and Stormy weathers so they will be about the same as those weathers but not so it will overexpose the snow texture without ENB or using a vanilla ENB preset.
Special weather types such as Sovngarde, War and other special weathers - They will have the vanilla look just in an improved state that will not alter the atmosphere or feel of them. I think this would be the best way to configure them as they are not meant to be realistic or natural looking in any way and is to be thought of as cinematic, that's what I will do and if someone want's to have it in another way they will have to do it themselves.

This is overall brightness of how the different weathers will be in the end, not for any specific part of a weather type.

If you use any other .esp file that changes the weather then check to see if it covers the same weathers as it will overwrite any of my changes depending on the load order of course.

And you can see the currently covered weathers through the link "Weather type ID list" in the initial post I made.

[far327]

The layout for development sounds great! I like the choice for lighting in your list there. And I totally agree about the saturation levels of various weather. It bothered me sometimes that rainy / snowy weather would desaturate things so much. I guess there would be some minor light reflections happening with snow at times which could slightly alter saturation. But it's so minor that it's not even worth messing with.

I totally agree about RLO. I get frustrated with how the shadows flicker from too many shadow based light sources, or whatever you wanna call it.
You have definitely leveled things nicely so far! I think I will ditch my tweaked fog.esp and start fresh only with your alpha .esp files and tweak my config around it.

Looking forward to sharing some final screenshots soon.