Enhanced Lighting for ENB, updated 25 November-14

[Strigvir]

Funny thing, my opinion about fog (both the particle and distance ones) is that it looks like shit, just like vanilla game lighting in general.

[Insomnia]

I dont think the fog is ugly as shit. But it hides something even uglier: the low res distant mountains. God dam its ugly and it takes like 1k textures with more noise to make it look ok.

But you're spot on about the vanilla lighting.

[Tansarville]

Without FOG Z-Depth can't be perceived. There is no such any alternate thing in nature to create same depth/measure distant in 3D platform. If you are gonna adress Depth of Field or something like that don't bother yourself cause it's not same thing. Doesn't matter FOG quality is crap or good in Skyrim, Fog is Fog, it's a unique effect and can't be replaced by any other effect to achieve same result. On the other hand you can always disable it via ENB but if it's not active, we can't enable via ENB anyway. That's why it must be activated in all interior cells and let us control it's amount or to disable/enable it.

[UnmeiX]

@--JawZ--

Haha, after playing around a bit in TES5Edit I learned to respect greatly the work that mod authors do, so permissions are always a must (though I usually do my asking in PMs). XD The ELE-compatible version of WAO is now up for download, and your mod has taken its place as one of the four lighting mods listed in the 'extended install' for WAO (which is basically just a list of a lot of mods that add up to epic when used alongside it). Link to your thread here and credited as author. ^^

As far as worth spending time on.. It's been going this long, it's one of the most-recommended lighting mods for ENB users I've heard about lately, and I had several requests for compatibility in a short time, so I definitely wasn't about to pass it up. =P

[--JawZ--]

Just to give you guys an idea of how I'm thinking about the fog matter.

Using a vanilla state ENB preset, though deactivated by using the hotkeys Shift+F12 keys.
Perhaps I should have had ENB activated and instead run with APPLYGAMECC deactivated to come closer to how ELE colors are, without any weird values applied in the imagespaces.

Glacial Crevice, Vanilla state;

1Glacial_Crevice_Vanilla by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Glacial Crevice, Vanilla state but with deactivated Skyrim Fog and static DoF;

2Glacial_Crevice_NoFog by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Glacial Crevice, ELE v0.0.4;

3Glacial_Crevice_ELE_004 by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr


This interior cell is a very good example of how important fog is to the atmosphere of any given location, to an extent. In some interiors with darker lighting the distant textures can come to have "crushed" blacks, meaning they are totally black (RGB=0, 0, 0) or very very close to it which in terms makes the scene look very unnatural as well as "feeling" small in size.


Whiterun Stables, Vanilla state;

1Whiterun_Stables_Vanilla by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Whiterun Stables, Vanilla state but with deactivated Skyrim Fog;

2Whiterun_Stables_NoFog by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

In this interior however I personally think that fog has no place in it, I have never witnessed fog in such a small interior without it having being influenced by exterior weather, for instance very foggy weather with doors or many cracks in the wall for the fog to sipper through. Or from a fireplace located in a well insulated interior, that without an open window or door, would keep the smoke inside.
Though in the after image the blacks get a bit crushed but that is because of the way Bethesda choose to assign values to the imagespaces for this game. Create shadows by using very intense contrast values, and in my eyes "insane" values.
And then they used fog to alleviate the high contrast values that clamped the visual color range in to a more narrow color range creating black spots instead of smooth transitional shades of darker colors.
But the removal of the fog in this small interior made the scene become more neutral sharp acroos the entire scene, as it should be in my eyes.



And for those of you who would disagree with the way I have and will do the fog, I have reconfigured the ELE imagespaces and Lighting Templates to become more ENB Weather system friendly, and generally more tweak friendly.
In the upcoming version and all future versions the Imagespaces and Lighting templates will be separated by Weather Regions, which will allow for a an easier full out customization of each weather region.

Here is the list of all weather regions along with the weather types;

• WeatherCoast - SkyrimClearCO/_A, SkyrimCloudyCO/_A, SkyrimFogCO, SkyrimOvercastSnow, SkyrimStormSnow
• WeatherFallForest - SkyrimClearFF/_A, SkyrimCloudyFF/_A, SkrimFogFF, SkyrimOvercastRainFF, SkyrimStormRainFF
• WeatherPineForest - SkyrimClear/_A, SkyrimCloudy/_A, SkyrimFog, SkyrimOvercastRain, SkyrimStormRain
• WeatherReach - SkyrimClearRE/_A, SkyrimCloudyRE/_A, SkyrimFogRE, SkyrimOvercastRainRE
• WeatherSnow - SkyrimClearSN/_A, SkyrimCloudySN/_A, SkyrimOvercastSnow, SkyrimStormSnow
• WeatherTundra - SkyrimClearTU/_A, SkyrimCloudyTU/_A, SkyrimOvercastRainTU, SkyrimStormRainTU
• WeatherMarsh - SkyrimClearMA/_A, SkyrimCloudyMA/_A, SkyrimFogMA, SkyrimOvercastRainMA
• WeatherVolcanicTundra - SkyrimClearVT/_A, SkyrimCloudyVT/_A, SkyrimFogVT, SkyrimOvercastRainVT

Then there will be special Lighting templates assigned to unique interior cells, with types like Far, Middle and Close Fog values as well as for special interiors like Arentino's Residence in Windhelm, Sovngarde and similar special interior cells that should and will have similar but, in my eyes, better lighting than what vanilla offers, i.e altered to "ELE standard".

So as an example Whiterun is located in the Tundra region as well as Rorikstead and they will have IS and LT marked as aELE_S_Tundra_Dun for dungeon type cells and aELE_S_Tundra_Int for interior type cells.

aELE - is just to know that these are ELE specific IS or lT related content and the a is for easy ordering.
S - Stands for Skyrim and will only be named so in the original Skyrim. DLC's will have their own abbreviations, DG, HF and DB.
Tundra - Is for the type of region and to know what type of weathers occur around these interior cells.
Dun - Stands for Dungeons, which will be assigned to Mines, Cellars, Tombs, Caves and other interior cells that should be darker than for instance Dragonsreach.
Int - Stands for Interior, which will be assigned to regular interiors such as the houses around the major cities, Farms, Shacks and the likes.



UnmeiX;

Some simple looking looking mod can contain huge amount of changes that users rarely see. Glad you have a more opened mind, or eyes in this case. I will see if I get the time to take WAO for a test run, I'm just really busy at the moment

Great to hear my mod have been given such positive feedback, I hope they aren't "naggin" too much about compatability here and compatability there. Somethings are impossible, sadly.

[Aiyen]

Just to get something clarified.. hopefully you plan on making a separate plugin for interiors and exteriors, and perhaps a merged version. This was for the imagespace part of ELE.

As for compatibility... as it is now it is really simple to just say .. place ELE last! At least for the imagespace/lightning template part of ELE.

I got to admit that on the whole fog thing I am kinda split. The "overlay" type fog is mostly just bad and destroy all sort of depth imo. Especially for interiors. For exteriors then it actually does make sense so I will not touch that.
However for interiors.
Case: You are in a dark cave.. yet the parts that are further away from you are brighter then the stuff up close to you. At least if you use any meaningful amounts of interior fog.

In your shot then the fog only kinda make sense because there is a skylight but in the vast majority of interiors then there are not. And in those cases then the only fog that would make sense would be vol. fog that actually react to the lighting conditions.
Even in your ice shot there you kinda see the horrible limitations of it... the fog does not take the fact that there is a giant opening near the top into account, hence the sense of depth and overall lighting i still really bad.. at least in my eyes! That said then what you have done with it still looks better then vanilla since vanilla is just... bad.

Just a few random thoughts from me!

[--JawZ--]

The above post was just about the ELE-Interior Lighting modules, not the whole suite.

Yeah I can't make changes without suffering from some sort of incompatibility.

I can only work with what Bethesda provided. And as you say the static fog is just a color overlay with adjustable color and it's intensity and "density" which is applied in a circle around the player.
Well I do try to blend the fog as best as I can making it less or more visible based on the layout of the interior cell. The glacial Crevice has a rather long viewing distance in that area and is the only area within that interior cell with that great distance, the rest are narrow paths. I had that in mind and pushed the fog back so it would be plenty visible with the sky roof while being barely visible in the narrow paths.
And that is from the old and current release of the ELE DG - Interior Lighting module. Improvements have been made since then.


As always I'm glad to receive you're "nitpicking"

[Aiyen]

Hehe always happy to nitpick! If you can use it all the better!

After having just spent a few hours fixing up interiors and redoing some things. I did have what you have shown here in mind... and in general my impression just is that the fog never was made for dark dungeons.

The vanilla game is really bright and the transition into a brighter washed out distance makes artistic sense in most locations.

However once you go towards a darker palette then the fog stops making sense since it will always be brighter then what is under it.
I did have some fun adjusting it inside of blackreach.. which is probably one of the largest interior locations in the game. There I use it to make sure that you can just vaguely see the details in the far distance giving the cavern some definition. Since if that place is just pure black then it really just kinda loose something vital from the overall look.

I imagine that adjusting the color of the fog to a more dark blue, dark green would help in many cave/dungeon scenarios since most of those do benefit from having a faint blue/green overlay.. at least I have quite a bit of success making them look better when using faint sepia toning in those colors... especially when applied in the bloom.

To all of this also come the matter of textures. Most vanilla textures tend to be rather bland, and most replacements in higher quality tend to move into different colors overall. Some go towards more green, some towards more red/brown.
With a blue fog overlay then this does not go well. So here it would probably also be a good idea to transition either into a purple fog, or dark teal for better compatibility with the underlying textures.

[narphous]

I got to admit that on the whole fog thing I am kinda split. The "overlay" type fog is mostly just bad and destroy all sort of depth imo. Especially for interiors. For exteriors then it actually does make sense so I will not touch that.
However for interiors.
Case: You are in a dark cave.. yet the parts that are further away from you are brighter then the stuff up close to you. At least if you use any meaningful amounts of interior fog.

I have to disagree with this. It took a lot of playing with multipliers and curves, but now I have a config where the fog does the opposite of what you're saying. Further away is darker and "shrouded", and as you get closer, things become more visible and brighter than they are from a distance. And this is why I ended up going back to Relighting... the ELE that's available just doesn't have enough fog to achieve this effect in the areas where it makes the most sense to have this look. So I would agree with the others that said that fog should be primarily under the control of the ENB config, rather than drastic reductions and/or removal of the fog.

Of course, Jawz isn't going to make everyone happy either way. But since there are already plugins that will remove interior fog, I'd say let people that don't want fog either turn it off in ENB or use one of those plugins, but keep it there for those that make use of it.

[--JawZ--]

I will do it as I have mentioned before, after all it's my mod. But I have, in this new version, made it very simple for any user to specifically alter interior cell lighting. So alterations to fog for instance will just be done in a matter of minutes with knowing that it affects these and those interior cells only. Unlike vanilla setup which had no grouping order whatsoever for the lighting templates and imagespaces.

I've taken a slight pause in order to work on my ELE preset and I was quickly drawn in to coding again. Just some simple stuff here and there, nothing major.

Though one major (for me that is anyway) code addition was cooked up, Local tonemapping operator, Reinhard based.

Some pics of it in it's current state;

Vanilla state;

01_Vanilla_State by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Vanilla state with ENB Postprocessing activated;

02_ENB_PP_Active by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Deactivated Skyrim post-process method;

03_Skyrim_PP_Off by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Increased Exposure value;

04_Over_Exposure by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Local modified Reinhard Tonemapping, White Luminance set to 5.0 with the same exposure setting.

05_Local_Lw5 by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr

Global modified Reinhard Tonemapping, White Luminance set to 5.0 with the same exposure setting.

06_Global_Lw5 by Anders "JawZ" Wedin, on Flickr


Finally I have what I've been wanting to have for some time now, a tonemapping with good contrast ratio ability and that does not desaturate the color shades/tones. Along with simple controls
It might not be perfect, but it works at least as I want it to. Without having to resort to some heavy duty post-processing that takes a toll on the FPS.

I have also made a modified Reinhard with S-Curve function like the Filmic Uncharted2D tonempaaing curve operator has. If there is an interest for that I will upload that as well along with this local operator.

Next on the coding "wish list" - Implement a S-Curve graph, similar to the one that can be found in this shader framework -> The Danger Zone - A Closer Look at Tonemapping


EDIT;

More development pictures can be found at my Flickr page here -> ENBSeries Dev Illustrations Album