Enhanced Lighting for ENB, updated 25 November-14

[Aiyen]

So my colors, Brightness, Gamma and Contrast on my monitor shows the images as best as I can tell and it is darker in the pictures than what it is in-game because of image compression and some way it does not capture the exact scene luminance for some reason. I've tried Fraps, ENB and windows own picture capturing tool and they all suffered the same thing.

I so agree with you there JawZ. It is mighty annoying! Even the .bmp files tend to look just slightly off. However in my messing around with blender atm, then I also noticed that its PP effects also tend to cause the saved renderings to look different then what they do in the program preview. Mainly it is a a slight change in gamma value that somehow sneaks in.
If you do find a solution to that I would be really interested!

[--JawZ--]

Fequois:

No problem I get along just fine by myself

Just press the F12 key and you will have a it looking like you were not using a ENB. Well none of my modules are finished yet so there might be inconsistencies visual wise, should not have any affect on the gameplay or stability of the game however. Ok good to hear that then

I'll make sure to let you know of an easy way to brighten all of the interior cells with ease and without destroying the looks in the next release of ELE.


Aiyen:

Here's a thought of why it does that, don't know if it's true but.

They are taken in different color spaces perhaps? I have no idea if it is so but that would explain the reason for it.

[Fequois]

I switched to ELE this morning. Will have to make an ENB config for it tonight, but man... it's a relief to remove the CoT files, lol.

Very keen to see what the next update brings.

[--JawZ--]

Fequois:

You didn't experience any troubles when removing CoT from your game? I have had users inform me that it caused some problems with their save games when they uninstalled it, but it might have been in combination of other mods being uninstalled as well as I never got that confirmed by them.

I will try to have a new test weather esp ready soon but my Skyrim in general has been weird, again. Some of the files were corrupted during some day between friday (last time I touched Skyrim) and today, the Creation Kit couldn't load the LOD's properly from the BSA files which in the end resulted in a total re-install as nothing else worked. I'm lucky to be on a 100 MBit line or otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with this game anymore!

[evok99]

E ENB Final does not list ELE anywhere as a requirement or recommendation for installation.

[--JawZ--]

He moved on.

[Fequois]

Nope, no problems. I've been switching between CoT and ELE for a couple of weeks. The only problem is Skyrim being Skyrim. Sometimes I have to start a new campaign before loading my savegames, but that's always been the case. Oh, and the game engine's memory-limit CTDs of course.

Oh and I know the pain. If I didn't have a 100 Mbit connection I wouldn't bother with Skyrim either. Without the occasional "error check" with Steam the game doesn't work.

Was tinkering with ENB based on your mixed effects file last night for an hour or so. I've never done this before, so I'm still getting used to the variables and their effects, but I think it's coming along pretty nicely. I'll take a screenshot or two if I ever get it to look decent enough.

Edit: Oh, and E ENB, I think the guy appreciates the hugely exaggerated effects of ELnFX. His later updates have departed from a somewhat realistic look to complete fantasy, so I suppose it fits his style better.

[--JawZ--]

Good to hear then and yeah Skyrim will be Skyrim.

That's one of the reasons I hate that Bethesda decided to go with a "3rd party tool" to be able to run the game, was a lot smoother back in the days with only multiplayer games that was connected to Steam, more or less.

Well the best way to get acquainted with the different values are to set the values very high one at a time to see what it does and what it affects. I usually go with values from 1 to 10 even -10, though some commands/settings will not work at such high values it gives you an idea of what exactly it does and how much it affects the scene from it's original state.

If you are wondering of anything that resides in any of the files I have uploaded feel free to ask, though it would be more suited to ask such questions in either my Resources thread Nexus mod thread or via PM

Yeah I know Ewi65 liked the look of ELE when none of my interior imagespace changes was applied to the game through incorrect load order. But he did help me out with how I could achieve a better all around look with his input on my initial settings. I never thought his style was aimed for realism or natural looks it always seemed cinematic or fantasy to me, good looking fantasy/cinematic though.

[Fequois]

I like Steam as a way to organise and download games, but I agree, the DRM is frustrating. Having to go through a third-party is bad, almost enough to make me want to crack my bought copy.

Aye, good idea. Thanks for the tip. I was starting to work on the contrast a bit, but it's a bit difficult to balance saturation and shadows. There is a tendency for too much contrast, which I think could be partly because ELE (I think) already compensates (which is not a bad thing!). Once I'm done with this it's time for bloom. Will be interesting to see what I can do with it to avoid washing out bright colours.

It's actually quite fun!

My goal is to make a natural-looking config to go alongside ELE (and, at the moment, Relighting Skyrim). No oversaturated colours, no black shadows and no #fff waterfalls. Should I succeed I will have to replay Skyrim once again, lol.

Again, thanks for your work with this. It really is a healthy addition to the base game. ^_^

[--JawZ--]

ELE no matter what module you are running has a contrast setting at 1.0 in the imagespaces so it does not add any more contrast to the scene it is neutral. as with Brightness, Saturation and the rest of the imagespace settings. Some variation on the White and Brightness values but that's it.

Contrast in the one I usually tweak the last after I have set up the general scene luminance/brightness and specific saturation then I start working on contrast and "contrasty" settings to add some "popping" colors to the scene. And balance the dark and bright areas out a bit better.

Well then my next ELE release will possibly make it even easier for you as I will add a preset along with the files, nothing that is fine-tuned but more of a good set of basic settings to improve ELE looks for a more natural/"realistic" look.