TES Skyrim SE 0.406

[ENBSeries]

The Elder Scrolls Skyrim SE (SSE)

Increased quality of the sun rays. Fixed subsurface scattering of characters when in cloud shadows. Increased maximal amount of cloud shadows to tweak effect without touching opacity of real clouds.

[phoenixfabricio]

Boris,

Is there a way to eliminate or reduce the "yellow circle" around the Sun ? Its too strong, even in low values: https://i.imgur.com/PAi6kPP.png

Another question: Is the rays suposed to be too warmer than the Sun color itself ? In the previous update I noticed it become orange and tweaked the sun color. Now it seems that the orange color is stronger than before.

[ENBSeries]

Yellow circle is the area where color clipping occurs in tonemap where hdr value transformed to ldr. Use different tonemap operator or make specific code which mute too intense colors. If you want to check this, in the enbeffect.fx find color=TextureColor.Sample(Sampler0, IN.txcoord0.xy); and after it add line color.xyz*=tempF1.x; then you can use 1 together with pageup/pagedown to modify temporary variable and see it's just intensity.
I don't know about color, just draw sun to texture as source of the rays and blur it by different directions. Probably blending of rays to scene give different colors.

[Pfuscher]

This sounds great, can't wait to get a look at it ingame tomorrow.
Thank you Boris.

[Kitsune]

Thanks a lot for the update Boris, skin looks much better with cloud shadows now! The only remaining problems are meshes with emission and point lights. Not sure if you can fix that tho, I ran into the exact same problems while experimenting with the albedo texture to reconstruct direct lighting some time ago.

[ENBSeries]

Nope, those things i can't fix.

[ENBSeries]

Version updated, download again
Added DisableWrongSkyMath parameter to [SKY] category, same as old Skyrim mod have.

[Guzio]

The cloud shadows problem. Orange direct lighting at sunset with shadows amount 1.0



Seems like the direct lighting is filtered (maybe by a clouds color) and becomes green.

No cloud shadows:

[Dragens]

Hey Boris, thank you for the update very nice.

I just noticed something. I don't know if thats tied to the new update or was present before but the sun rays pop in pretty hard when looking around. I cannot record. my fraps only gives me a black video so I will post you a link to two screenshots.

https://imgur.com/a/SqsPF4d

I hope that makes sense somehow.

edit: I managed to get a video working. This shows of the problem I mentioned and maybe the redish tone too that was spoken of before. My sun is mostly yellow but the rays turn red at their "end"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1di24nRmLfs

[fadingsignal]

Fixed subsurface scattering of characters when in cloud shadows.

Thanks for the update, Boris! I hope you don't take any of these little nitpicks as negative criticism of your work at all. You are amazing, and the fact we have your continued enhancements is a gift!

I grabbed 0.406 and I think the character's skin looks better. But I believe what makes clouds shadows look strange is how they apply to the environment mapping shader (and possibly specular?), which is especially noticeable on objects that utilize it to look metallic (i.e. armors/weapons.)

Anything metal typically uses dark diffuse maps with environment maps applied to produce the metallic look. When cloud shadows are being applied, even with modest values, the environment map fades out sharply and almost completely goes away. So metallic objects that rely on it for reflections turn dark and dull very easily.



Another more extreme example is with my cube map test globe. This is a test object I made to view cube maps in-game. It has a black diffuse texture so the full environment maps show through. With a cloud shadow value of just 1.5 as shown here, it becomes a black ball with no specular or environment reflections.



One would expect metal objects to still reflect while in the shade, which is why it just looks "strange" (here's an IRL example.)

Here's another comparison showing standing in a cloud shadow vs. standing in the shade (i.e. under a roof.) In the shade there are still visible reflections/shine so metallic objects still look a bit metallic. I have no idea if the environment map shader is done in a different pass, or if you can even isolate it or objects that are using it, but if it could look closer to how it is when you stand in the shade it would improve its look dramatically.

If this is something beyond your control, don't worry about it You're already too good to us! I think the way it applies to landscape/objects/etc. looks good.