Ambient Occlusion and ENB

[tomomi1922]

I never read this from any ENB download pages, but ... are we supposed to leave Skyrim's base Ambient Occlusion on or off when we are using ENB with its own SSAO feature?

It has to do with whether ENB turns off in-game AO and renders its own SSAO/IL version, or ENB will render SSAO on top of whatever the game has?  I guess my biggest concern is my SSAO never looks great, nothing like what most Followers', NPC Overhaul, Skins' mods screenshots show.  

[khumak]

In my experience you want SSAO turned off in the launcher but on in ENB.  Shadows on skin look pretty bad if it's turned on in the launcher.  Also if you're using SSS, make sure to download the latest ENB binaries, it's been updated like 4 or 5 times already without the version number changing for various tweaks and bug fixes.

[tomomi1922]

On 5/26/2018 at 8:38 PM, khumak said:

In my experience you want SSAO turned off in the launcher but on in ENB.  Shadows on skin look pretty bad if it's turned on in the launcher.  Also if you're using SSS, make sure to download the latest ENB binaries, it's been updated like 4 or 5 times already without the version number changing for various tweaks and bug fixes.

Hah, it looks like already did turn it off a while ago.  Shadow on skin still looks pretty bad, at least nothing like what we see in a lot of screenshots, especially of follower mods.  

Yep I have the latest binaries.  I am using PRT ENB right now, able to tweak SSS down to around 0.5 to avoid glowing orange skin (like a hot rot).  Anything you can suggest to make actors look good?  My biggest complaint in sunny day, the top down sun light creates some very scary shadow shading on the face.  I have been trying to tweak SSAO/SIL but perhaps still not able to get to a happy medium.  Partly I am unclear on the difference between SSAO Amount and Intensity, or if there is anything else I overlooked.

[khumak]

I am using Skyrim Re-Engaged ENB using the Vivid Weather ultimate quality preset.  I'm using Vitruvius for my male skin textures and Demoniac -> SG -> sweaty -> SSS disabled for my skin textures and skin looks good to me, including shadows.  If you use a texture that has SSS enabled you get a bronze line that follows the shadows up close, but it's not needed for the ENB effect anyway.

 

I use ELFX as my lighting mod without the enhancer or hardcore module.  This is with SSAO disabled in the launcher.  I also followed the author's suggestions for video driver tweaks specific to Skyrim for things like AA, ambient occulsion, etc.  I normally also use ELE to tweak the image spaces to get my hostile interiors darker while leaving my friendly interiors brighter but it requires a ton of patching that I just haven't felt like doing lately so I just set interior darkness to 2 in the ENB (darkest setting) for now.

 

The only visual glitches I still run across are what I think is a bug in the vanilla game regarding the transition from LOD textures to close up textures.  Occasionally right at the point they normally transition I'll get some flickering, most noticeably for walls.  Rarely up close textures will use the low res lod instead of the close up textures, generally fixed just by doing anything that involves a loading screen.

[tomomi1922]

I just got rid of my long time friend ELFX (been with me forever, including in FO4).  I am upset how ELFX made the yarl's banquet room in Riften completely lit up llike day light.  Impossible to fix because it would ruin other interriors.  Therefore I switched to ELE + Relighting.  Just to try things out. 

How do you use ELE to separate hostile + friendly interior?  And how do you deal with ELE + Relighting making certain light sources super bright (totally over exposed) in city?  They got a lot of complaints on their pages too.  I group them both together because they come from the same author. Without explicitly stating, the author obviously hope we use both mods together for best effect.  I like it, except for the horrendously bright lights. 

I am aware of the LOD glitch too.  I build my own LODs with SSELOGGen and those downloadable billboards, looking ok to me, haven't checked closely enough.  But it doesn't seem to jump at me yet. 

You need to look into the latest ENB binaries .343  It lets you adjust SSS (under 2 sections, Object and Sub-Surface Scattering)  so you can fine tune SSS the way you like. 

[khumak]

ELE uses different image spaces for different types of interiors.  If you look at each cell it touches in SSEEDIT, you'll see most of the friendly areas are set to something like ELE_Bright while the dungeons are set to something like ELE_Dark.  So you'll have significantly more ambient light in a shop or an inn than you do in a dungeon.  The effect is similar to being able to set hostile interiors to dark in your enb while setting friendly interiors to normal or light.

 

The problem is it conflicts with mods like Realistic Water Two or any other mod that touches the same cell.  So you have to either let ELE win all those conflicts or manually combine each cell which can get tedious (patching for both ELE and RWT is a huge pain).  Add in Music/Sound mods and it's even more of a patching nightmare.  Also conflicts with every mod that adds an item to any cell, etc.  Mator Smash is the only tool I've found that even comes close to merging those types of changes properly (it gets most of them close but still misses a bunch of them).

 

Edit:  And now I'm back to using ELFX + ELE again.  It just looks too good not to do the patches...  With ELE I set my interior brightness to 0.5 in ENB since ELE tends to make interiors darker than vanilla in general.  You do still run into some areas that just don't have proper lighting that will seem too dark.  For instance The Riverwood trader has a fireplace and a candle or 2 but no windows and no other lights so it's nearly as dark as a dungeon.  I guess Lucan likes it dark.

[tomomi1922]

On 5/31/2018 at 6:23 PM, khumak said:

Edit:  And now I'm back to using ELFX + ELE again.  It just looks too good not to do the patches...  With ELE I set my interior brightness to 0.5 in ENB since ELE tends to make interiors darker than vanilla in general.  You do still run into some areas that just don't have proper lighting that will seem too dark.  For instance The Riverwood trader has a fireplace and a candle or 2 but no windows and no other lights so it's nearly as dark as a dungeon.  I guess Lucan likes it dark.

1

What are the exact options you used for ELFX + ELE?  I know they are not supposed to be compatible.  So we must creatively install only certain things.  Or you let certain .esp conflict with each other?

[khumak]

2 hours ago, tomomi1922 said:

What are the exact options you used for ELFX + ELE?  I know they are not supposed to be compatible.  So we must creatively install only certain things.  Or you let certain .esp conflict with each other?

Just install the main module only for ELFX, no enhancer, no hardcore, no weather.  Then install ELE and have it load after ELFX.  You want the imagespace changes that ELE makes to win.  The more annoying issue as far as the patches go is merging records for ELE + RWT + any sound mods you might be using.

[tomomi1922]

I am sporting ELFX and ELE right now.  I can tell Riften looks better.  But I also noticed several braziers do not emit lights in Whiterun.  I am not so sure which mod is to blame (or it has been the same way since).  Like the braziers just at Whiterun entrance, only the one by the blacksmith shop emits light, the other side's brazier has no light (fire is there, but coming close, my character is still dark).  The brazier further into Whiterun does the same thing.  Annoying.

Since we are on topic of SSAO, what are your SSAO SSIL settings?  I am trying to find a setting for SSAO so my characters have soft shadows wrapping around like this. 


This is from Amelia Rose follower
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/15188?

But my SSAO setting looks like this.  This is Recorder follower btw.  The face shadow seems to be patchy, and in this case, shows distinct areas almost as if the face is not smoothly round.  Not circular round, but you get the idea.

[khumak]

I just left mine at the settings used in the ultimate quality preset for my ENB.  I have it turned off in the launcher and these are the ENB settings (I use Re-Engaged).

 

[SSAO_SSIL]
UseIndirectLighting=true
UseComplexAmbientOcclusion=true
EnableComplexFilter=true
EnableDenoiser=true
FilterBluriness=0
ResolutionScale=0.707
SourceTexturesScale=0.707
SamplingQuality=0
SamplingRange=0.25
AOIntensity=0.7
AOIntensityInterior=0.5
AOAmount=0.8
AOAmountInterior=0.55
ILAmount=1.5
ILAmountInterior=1.5
AOMixingType=0
AOMixingTypeInterior=0