Enhanced Lighting for ENB, updated 25 November-14

[--JawZ--]

wolfgrimdark;

It's something I like seeing as it allows me to see how users have end up utilizing my skyrim content to their own needs and what not.
Without ELE it produced a very Speia look in the ambient regions, but also in (on this screen I'm currently in front of, not my own) ELE looks a tad bit too blue in the ambient region which I'm aware that my previous modules where "suffering" from. In the comparison image not the standalone image showed last though.

The load order looks fine. But if I were to be a bit nitpicky it should actually be like this;
ELE - Spell and Torchlighting.esp
RelightingSkyrim-FULL.esp
ELE Plugin - RS Light Color.esp
ELE-FX Emittance.esp
ELE DB-Interior Lighting.esp
ELE HF-Interior Lighting.esp
ELE DG-Interior Lighitng.esp
ELE-Interior Lighting.esp
ELE-Weathers.esp

The reason behind this;
Skyrim is the main part of the game and with DLC's the main part content + DLC content is loaded which would allow for a DLC mod to alter Skyrim content. My modules do not do that however! but I'm human and human's have the nature of doing mistakes, that's just how it is, so there is a very slight possibility that in some releases I might have accidentally made changes to Skyrim content when it was only meant to alter Dragonborn content for instance.

But as I mentioned my modules only cover their assigned parts and nothing else in their current state. But there is always a chance of forgetfulness.



mindw0rk;

It doesn't. Mist is tied to Fog levels and in ELE, fog levels are much "thinner" than vanilla weathers making the Mist effect less noticeable. However ELE fog have been adjusted so the fog starts from the player and to infinity (almost anyway) instead of starting 1000 to 3000 "clicks" away from the player and to infinity (again, almost)

And using a ENB preset designed for vanilla lighting with a lighting mod will not work out of the box, tweaks are needed.

[wolfgrimdark]

Thanks for the explanation JawZ, I had not thought of it in those terms as I tend to order by oldest to newest content - very good to know.

In regards to ELE - I spent a lot of time with it this weekend, probably 8-10 hours, and some things look very good right out of the box. At first I had hoped for an easy fix lol ... never the case with ENBs it seems

GSE has some bloom and bright light issues that get highlighted more with the weathers in ELE, although the interiors are pretty good overall, so going to have to re-tweak a decent amount of stuff. I should anyhow if only to tone down some issues. A good summer project and perhaps by the time I am done you will have a beta version out

Since I know you like seeing some screenshots the next time I do some testing and tweaking I will try to remember to link them.

[--JawZ--]

I thought I would try out my new flickr account and get more familar with it to see how it all works.

So here is a comparison of Cold Rock pass with only ELE-Interior Lighting in use, except for in the vanilla shot of course.

Vanilla;

1Cold Rock Pass Vanilla by anders.wedin, on Flickr

OLD ELE-Interior Lighting v0.0.4;

3Cold Rock Pass Old ELE-LI by anders.wedin, on Flickr

New ELE-Interior Lighting;

2Cold Rock Pass New ELE-LI by anders.wedin, on Flickr

Fog levels and fog color is still in development stage!


And here is Solitude Blue Palace for a bit of more familiar environment, should be easier to see the overall difference between new and old version.

Vanilla;

1Blue Palace Vanilla by anders.wedin, on Flickr

Old ELE-Interior Lighting;

2Blue Palace Old ELE-IL by anders.wedin, on Flickr

New ELE-Interior Lighting;

3Blue Palace New ELE-IL by anders.wedin, on Flickr

I have not yet configured the imagespaces to their proper levels I only have them at values that does not alter the RGB values currently and in the images with the NEW ELE-IL pictures.

Values currently used for imagespaces;

HDR:
Eye Adapt Speed: 100.0
Eye Adapt Strength: 1.0
Bloom Blur Radius: 0.0
Bloom Threshold: 0.0
Bloom Scale: 0.0
Receive Bloom Threshold: 0.0
White: 1.0
Sunlight Scale: 1.0
Sky Scale: 0.0

Cinematic:
Brightness: 1.000002
Contrast: 1.000001
Saturation: 1.0

Tint:
Tint Amount: 0.0
RGB Tint: 0, 0, 0

Depth of Field
No Sky: unchecked
Strength: 0.0
Blur Radius: 0
Distance: 0.0
Range: 0.0


DoF, Bloom and White values will be tweaked once I finished all Lighting Templates to better cope with vanilla light bulbs. But with any light bulb mod I recommend to turn off APPLYGAMECOLORCORRECTION for interiors.

[Aiyen]

Nice to see you go towards having native less "pure black" areas and more smooth transitions between dark and light. Like it should be! Nobody likes silly dark areas when actually playing the game!

As long as the cinematic and tint values do not go nuts then I fully support and jump up n down. Well technically I only really care about the contrast and tint... since those are the only vital ones for all effects ingame (that I know of).. the rest are close to pointless with a properly setup set of ENB shaders.

But of course they are required for the non ENB users so I entirely understand why you spend time on them!

Looking forward to seeing more progress!

[--JawZ--]

Yeah precisely and if a user want such darkness they just have to darken it through ENB. Limiting the color range in the game is certainly not the optimal approach.
The new math I have for applying RGB values have helped out a great deal, to produce better and smoother transitions between different types of lighting values.
But a automated GUI controlled application for the math would be nice to have though, instead of having to sit with a calculator.


In case you are wondering about the 1.000002 and 1.000001 values they are used for two thing, be able to fetch a unqiue value from certain imagespace to determine
if they are dungeons and the other value is for ENBSeries pre v0.117 when there was no interior exterior seperation, fetching that value allows for such coding so that
users of say ENBSeries v0.108 can have better control of their environment.

Brightness value = Interior/Exterior seperation for ENBSeries pre v0.117
Contrast value = Dungeon seperation for all ENBSeries versions.

One preset I know is using it is Marshmallow - An ENB by blacktarprophecy
I did see some mistakes on my part which I will need to fix though.


Those things won't be altered from their current status as they don't have any place for that in this mod. Better to use 3rd party tools like ENBSeries, SweetFX for color
channel tints and general cinematic changes like Brightness, Contrast and Saturation level adjustments.
And then for none ENB users is where the planned MCM menu comes in handy with overall or specific image appearance changes.

[Aiyen]

Could not agree more!

And yeah I am aware of your tricky little float value thingy there for image space controls. Simple elegant and easy to use if one wants too!

One thing perhaps is the tint color and amount... those I still feel are required to leave to the game... since otherwise you will not have the option to create different settings... especially for interiors since we do not have a weather feature for those.

The only thing I sometimes miss in ELE image spaces is that there was a bit larger variation in the tint colors so specific locations would stand more out from each other... if only ever so slightly!

For exteriors it is still useful but not required since weather system allows for the change.

That said then nice to see you also think of those who keep holding on in the older binary versions (for whatever reason)! Sounds like you got your work cut out for ya!

[--JawZ--]

I was unsure if I had told you about it before or not, but I guess I have done it a few times now huh.

The tints in my own opinion is a "cheap" and fast way of altering colors while doing it in the Lighting Template is more proper/controllable but also slower.
That is being worked on currently. I use an image from an interior or dungeon type cell taken inside of creation kit or in the game in a neutral grey environment
so I only have the textures bringing the perceived color in the scene. I then load the image up in Photoshop grab the the Color Picker tool, and pick a good RGB
value from that picture and use it in my simple but so far successful math equation to produce RGB values for all RGB values located in the Lighting Template or
Weather from just that single RGB value used as Z- Directional Ambient value.

So far no interior cell group have the same RGB values. Similar yes, especially ones that are very similar in terms of their surrounding colors, but there is much more
variations now, subtle but noticeable enough to make an impact. You won't have any troubles with weird colors in some cells while good in others, that I promise.
Then there are the special cells where a non-grouped Lighting Template and/or Imagespace is useful/needed based on how it differed in the vanilla game.

Here is the list I use to group together interior cells, albeit I have modified it slightly and that list will be uploaded along with the new release;
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Locations_(Skyrim)


The only useful old preset in my opnion is v0.108, as it allows for far better performance than the current and most likely future releases of ENBSeries. And I tend to go back to
it now and again just to "re-live the good old days" and too see how much I can affect the game visually compared to the latest version, excluding the heavy duty effects of course.

[--JawZ--]

--STATUS UPDATE--

Progression towards finishing the new ELE-Iinterior Lighitng modules

I thought I would reply with a progression status so you can see the amount of work still needed to be done
before release. Here it is, use the location lists to compare the current covered content against the full list
of locations. Though not all are actually interior cells.

• Skyrim - Dawnstar, Falkreath, Markarth, Morthal, Riften, Solitude, Whiterun, Windhelm, Winterhold, Mines, Orc Strongholds, Shacks, Ships and Tombs have been base covered, still some things to do and still plenty of cells to cover. The list of groupings can be found here.
• Dawnguard - Not yet started. List of groupings can be found here.
• Hearthfire - Not yet started. List of groupings can be found here.
• Dragonborn - Not yet started. List of groupings can be found here.

[evok99]

I thought I would try out my new flickr account and get more familar with it to see how it all works.

So here is a comparison of Cold Rock pass with only ELE-Interior Lighting in use, except for in the vanilla shot of course.

Vanilla;

1Cold Rock Pass Vanilla by anders.wedin, on Flickr


New ELE-Interior Lighting;

2Cold Rock Pass New ELE-LI by anders.wedin, on Flickr

I have to say, this is the first time I prefer Vanilla over ELE. I like the color scheme in Vanilla. It may not be exactly realistic, but when using and ENB preset, I love taking screenshots in ice caves because of how beautiful the white/bluish lighting turns out. I'm afraid that the ELE color scheme which looks grey, will appear very drab. But I'm colorblind, so who knows lol. I'm looking forward to testing it.

[--JawZ--]

ELE on it's own is all about having natural colors with no exeggerations in colors, brightness, contrast or bloom.

Here is an image of that same interior with latest ELE-IL using ENB without vanilla shaders, increased luminance based saturation and added ENB Bloom.
Skyrim bloom have not yet been added and configured otherwise I would have used that.

enb 2014_06_13 15_18_08_36 by anders.wedin, on Flickr