Kathonica Posted August 9, 2017 Posted August 9, 2017 I really like what Kwanon ENB does with skin, character lighting, and character shadows. It's the best I've played with thus far for that side of things; right up there with Snapdragon Prime and, oddly, Snowfall - but only so far as making characters look incredible both at rest and in motion goes. The environments and weathers themselves are, alas, a bit bright and dull! For *that* side of things, I've really taken to Antique Dragon. The characters aren't as well-lit, shaded, or... well, they just don't seem to look as good when I'm using it. The environment lighting is gorgeous, though - and the unique weathers for unique areas is a fantastic touch that I wind up missing when I'm not using it. What I'm looking for, then, are ENBs that combine those two strengths - something that really spices up the surroundings as Antique does; while still highlighting the characters well as Kwanon does. I'm not sure it's possible to have the best of both - but a middle-ground between the two might work. It might be possible to adjust the settings in Antique to get the effects from Kwanon that I want; but I wouldn't even know where to start! ENBs I've tried thus far: Kwanon ENB Snapdragon Prime Snowfall Weathers Antique Dragon Aeon ENB anko/unko ENB Chromogenic ENB Evoke ENB K ENB Konan ENB Lucien NLVA Opethfeldt Rampage ENB Rudy ENB Suki ENB Suki SKGE Tetra NLVA TKRE .. and others I've likely forgotten.
27X Posted August 9, 2017 Posted August 9, 2017 So basically you're saying that you love the K family (SnapDragon, Rampage, K/Kounter/Kine, TKRE) but want more semi translucent skin. Also i have no idea what the fuck character shadows and character lighting is in a global lighting framework but I'm guessing what you mean is the contrast level on non-environmental objects between light sources and the objects in question (characters) The four (five) things that control skin are 1. Tonemapping: this controls the vibrancy level and ambient lighting on skin, when I say ambient lighting I mean the literal light values the skin gives off, NOT the way light bounces off it onto something else. 2. Subsurface scattering: The amount of translucency skin possesses. This is faked in ENB by interpolation of an sk map and the diffuse and regulated by the amount of light hitting the model controlling how much and how strong the showing of the sk map is. 3. Specularity: Literally using an alpha channel to control how shiny the skin is, and then boosting or lowering that by white values and indirect reflectivity handled through the ambient occlusion/Screen Space Indirect Lighting code. 4. The diffuse and normal quality. People tend to ignore the fuck out of this because they're ignorant or dumb or both, but Skyrim shading and shadow quality are directly modified by the normal map of the mesh. The entire point of using the kind of normal maps Beth used was to directly affect shadows without needing further code to bog down hamster wheeled consoles. (funny how that didn't work out at all, but that's another story) The closer and finer the normal map is to both the diffuse and the actual mesh itself, the better and finer shadows will be, should you have your prefs.ini properly set up for whatever it is you want in the first place. In regards to this, there is basically good character shadows at close range OR ok shadows at any range, and there is no middle ground despite what anyone claims. That's the way the engine works, and it's the same for SSE which just happens to have better granularity during the shadow generation pipeline and double the output resolution, which is why it's kind of funny to see people say OMG SO MUCH BETTER IN SSE, when those same setting are still in play, just boosted and with AO support, a very hacky and inefficient version of AO no less. 5. Noise. This one shouldn't be a factor, but it is. Most of the ENB's you mentioned there use noise to make "details" in screenshots or use a heavily pixelated skin (SG, Real, Pure/Demoniac) with high tonemapping to make "radiant" skin that still has "details" despite the fact it literally glows. I guess that's great for anime style screenshots or whatever but it looks like complete ass in actual motion and actually causes immense eyestrain and fatigue, and the higher the contrast of your monitor the worse it becomes. (That's also a physiological fact, not an opinion) But since it's your eyes and monitor is whatever you want. The biggest offender here by far is Suki which basically has a screen setup that looks like last time I checked the denizens of tamriel don't have millions of gnats inside the humor of their eyes. The tonemapping controls are found in either enbeffect.fx/txt/ini or effect.fx/txt/ini and will vary wildly depending on how the much the author has deviated from Boris' original setup. Changing this manually will require algebraic skills, period. If you can't do algebra, good luck getting this to work right by simply futzing around with the numbers, cause the only guys who bothered explaining what they did for their setups are Tapioks and Kyo; folks like kingeric and prod80 assume that if you're digging in this file and changing shit you know what you're doing and can actually math Most enbs have further tonemapping color controls in the ->ambient<- section, this is located in different places in almost every enb, and most don't have in-menu access to ambient light color control outside of the effect.fx except for SnapDragon, so you're going to have to manually search. The specularity and subsurface controls are found in [object] and you'll either have to disable weather files affecting this or change EACH weather file in enb series to what you want it to be, each and every one listed in enbseries. These controls do exactly what they say they do. How much of each in term of strength and the how much that strength is multiplied by according to the time of day or location the object is in. As for normals, if you're not using haley or halo, good luck with that. Also the smaller and more compressed the normal is, the shittier any shading or shadowing applied to that mesh will look, and again that's a function of the engine itself. If you need noise to show character detail in lit areas, your lighting model is bad or your normals are bad, it's really that simple.
Kathonica Posted August 9, 2017 Author Posted August 9, 2017 So basically you're saying that you love the K family (SnapDragon, Rampage, K/Kounter/Kine, TKRE) but want more semi translucent skin. Also i have no idea what the fuck character shadows and character lighting is in a global lighting framework but I'm guessing what you mean is the contrast level on non-environmental objects between light sources and the objects in question (characters) The four (five) things that control skin are 1. Tonemapping: this controls the vibrancy level and ambient lighting on skin, when I say ambient lighting I mean the literal light values the skin gives off, NOT the way light bounces off it onto something else. 2. Subsurface scattering: The amount of translucency skin possesses. This is faked in ENB by interpolation of an sk map and the diffuse and regulated by the amount of light hitting the model controlling how much and how strong the showing of the sk map is. 3. Specularity, literally using an alpha channel to control how shiny the skin is, and then boosting or lowering that by white values and indirect reflectively handled through the ambient occlusion/Screen Space Indirect Lighting code. 4. The diffuse and normal quality. People tend to ignore the fuck out of this because they're ignorant or dumb or both, but Skyrim shading and shadow quality are directly modified by the normal map of the mesh. The entire point using the kind of normal maps Beth used was to directly affect shadows without needing further code to bog down hamster wheeled consoles. (funny how that didn't work out at all, but that's another story) The closer and finer the normal map is to both the diffuse and the actual mesh itself, the better and finer shadows will be, should you have your prefs.ini properly set up for whatever it is you want in the first place. In regards to this, there is basically good character shadows at close range OR ok shadows at any range, and there is no middle ground despite what anyone claims. That's the way the engine works, and it's the same for SSE which just happens to have better granularity during the shadow generation pipeline and double the output resolution, which is why it's kind of funny to see people say OMG SO MUCH BETTER IN SSE, when those same setting are still in play, just boosted and with AO support, a very hacky and inefficient version of AO no less. 5. Noise. This one shouldn't be a factor, but it is. Most of the ENB's you mentioned there use noise to make "details" in screenshots or use a heavily pixelated skin (SG, Real, Pure/Demoniac) with high tonemapping to make "radiant" skin that still has "details" despite the fact it literally glows. I guess that's great for anime style screenshots or whatever but it looks like complete ass in actual motion and actually causes immense eyestrain and fatigue, and the higher the contrast of your monitor the worse it becomes. (That's also a physiological fact, not an opinion) But since it's your eyes and monitor is whatever you want. The biggest offender here by far is Suki which basically has a screen setup that looks like last time I checked the denizens of tamriel don't have millions of gnats inside the humor of their eyes. The tonemapping controls are found in either enbeffect.fx/txt/ini or effect.fx/txt/ini and will vary wildly depending on how the much the author has deviated from Boris' original setup. Changing this manually will require algebraic skills, period. If you can't do algebra, good luck getting this to work right by simply futzing around with the numbers, cause the only guys who bothered explaining what they did for their setups are Tapioks and Kyo; folks like kingeric and prod80 assume that if you're digging in this file and changing shit you know what you're doing and can actually math Most enbs have further tonemapping color controls in the ->ambient<- section, this is located in different places in almost every enb, and most don't have allow access to ambient light color control outside of the effect.fx except for SnapDragon, so you're going to have to manually search. The specularity and subsurface controls are found in [object] and you'll either have to disable weather files affecting this or change EACH weather file in enb series to what you want it to be, each and every one listed in enbseries. These controls do exactly what they say they do. How much of each in term of strength and the how much that strength is multiplied by according to the time of day or location the object is in. As for normals, if you're not using haley or halo, good luck with that. Also the smaller and more compressed the normal is, the shittier any shading or shadowing applied to that mesh will look, and again that's a function of the engine itself. If you need noise to show character detail in lit areas, your lighting model is bad or your normals are bad, it's really that simple. That is exactly the kind of wall-of-information response I was hoping for; thank you! Based on all of that, it sounds like tonemapping may well be the missing link between the two. And, potentially, Noise. I've noticed several ENBs almost.. super-sharpen the skin to the point that it looks blemished over every inch, and I wonder now if that's an overcompensation for certain normals that I don't use.
Corsayr Posted August 9, 2017 Posted August 9, 2017 I really like what Kwanon ENB does with skin, character lighting, and character shadows. It's the best I've played with thus far for that side of things; right up there with Snapdragon Prime and, oddly, Snowfall - but only so far as making characters look incredible both at rest and in motion goes. The environments and weathers themselves are, alas, a bit bright and dull! For *that* side of things, I've really taken to Antique Dragon. The characters aren't as well-lit, shaded, or... well, they just don't seem to look as good when I'm using it. The environment lighting is gorgeous, though - and the unique weathers for unique areas is a fantastic touch that I wind up missing when I'm not using it. What I'm looking for, then, are ENBs that combine those two strengths - something that really spices up the surroundings as Antique does; while still highlighting the characters well as Kwanon does. I'm not sure it's possible to have the best of both - but a middle-ground between the two might work. It might be possible to adjust the settings in Antique to get the effects from Kwanon that I want; but I wouldn't even know where to start! ENBs I've tried thus far: Kwanon ENB Snapdragon Prime Snowfall Weathers Antique Dragon Aeon ENB anko/unko ENB Chromogenic ENB Evoke ENB K ENB Konan ENB Lucien NLVA Opethfeldt Rampage ENB Rudy ENB Suki ENB Suki SKGE Tetra NLVA TKRE .. and others I've likely forgotten. I recently started using Elder Blood Redux which I am pretty happy with. the Opulence version is pretty hard on your machine. I had to step back to 2k from 4k to run it on ultra settings and maintain 50-60 frames. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61968/? There is a standard version available which is easier on your machine. (if needed, you didn't mention your specs so I don't know what is or isn't realistic) But I am running the opulence version at 2k with max settings AMD Vishra 8 core 4.0 Ghz 32g RAM 980 GTX eVga card Windows 10 Insider Preview build 16251.rs3_ Release 170721-2122 (with the DX9 memory fix giving me 20389 VRAM)
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