I am too dumb to reproduce those follower screenshots. I really need helps this time.

[licardrt]

I've found myself into those unrealistically looking followers, Adernia, Andrea, Bora, Diana, Elisabeth, Emma, Frigga, Yeori, to name a few. I'm a weirdo, I know.

 

I've been trying for more than a few weeks up to this point to reproduce at least one of those screenshot, but ended up succeeding in total oblivion. I've tried dozens of textures, shapes, makeups, overlays and ENBs. I launched my game, and nothing ever looks even close. It feels like I'm constantly running into a wall, I'm really at my wits' end this time.

 

Follower authors never share their setups for the screenshots. Maybe they are not intended to be replicated. I'm already so very grateful for their publishing the mods, so I totally respect their decisions. Yet... my GOD how I want so desperately to see the followers even once like those screenshots in my own game.

 

Enough of my silly ramblings.

 

I was fancying converting those faces into character presets when I was setting out, but ultimately I've given up on that now. I figured if the end goal is not to convert the screenshot into a character preset and the published files of the followers are accurate, I just have to put my efforts on matching the exact lighting used in those screenshots.

 

With this in mind, I'm determined to recurrent Yeori (yes, this exact shot from LE nexus).

 

I did my homework. The origin of the follower is a face preset published on Naver: CME 10 (it seems to be down a couple of days ago). With a detailed list of textures, I was managed to confirm the accuracy (presume the post speaks truly) of the files.

 

After another endless amount of time checking different combinations of lighting mods and ENBs, I'm getting ever close to my target.

 

LE: LE snapdragon

 

SE: SE silenthorizons with lut kitsune cut, SE silenthorizons with lut winter

 

To my observation, the shot in LE has a close to 100% match on the mouth and eyes. The shots in SE, well, they're quite a bit closer from what I had when I started, but still miles away from the original. My ultimate goal is to replicate the looks in SE, let's just say the mouth and eyes are the unfathomable technical gaps between LE ENB and SE ENB.

 

With that out of the way, let's focus on the problems of the pink color and the color distribution. I'm going to try my best to describe them but you can probably only get what I mean by comparing the original shots and my SE shots back and forth. You see, the areas on the side of the cheeks have better pink color in the original shots than that of my shots. It is real pink color in the originals, but in my shots it is closer to red/dark red. On the other hand, the transition from the pink color on the cheeks into the brighter middle nose area feels more natural in the original shots. To my limited knowledge, basically I have incorrect saturation and contraction.

 

The said problems are less severe with Emma:

 

SE: SE emma darkside, SE emma lightside

 

Apart from the eyes being still quite far away, by cranking up the brightness, the result comes even closer. Though with the brightness you lose details, and the 'distribution' problem is still there. The transition in my shots is simply more abrupt, unpleasantly abrupt.

 

Me, sitting in front of my pc with despair yet another day into the midnight knowing I have to go to work the next day morning. I swear I've used every one of my brain cells to try to make it right. I brought LE exclusively for this purpose (yes, I get into Skyrim from SE).

 

I've done a mass amount of tweaking on those ENB parameters like saturation, contraction, SSS, color grading, LUT, HDR. Manipulating these parameters, however, sometimes I got even farther from the target. At this point, I really dunno what to do. I had a dive into CG and game engine a couple of years back, but I'm a galaxy far away from competence.

 

Thus as a last resort, I came back to loverslab, the most knowledgeable and friendly forum on this planet. You fine gentlemen and men of culture, please, give this poor fellow a hand. If it is too much of a hassle to sort the whole thing out, just point me a general direction of where I should go next, what to tweak for a potentially better result, or tell me what I did wrong. I will appreciate it wholeheartedly!

 

P.S. The LE Yeori shot looks unnatural because I was lagging in LE. I couldn't really find a perfect angle. Just focus on the colors.