STEP 2.10.0 - Dodgy shadows cast by horncandles in interiors

[gammasfor]

Hi all,

 

So I followed the STEP guide for STEP:Extended to the letter (aside from adding Dynavision on top but that has no effect on my issue) as close as I possibly could but seem to be having some issues with interior lighting. As you can see here, the horncandle chandelier in the middle seems to cast a giant shadow of itself across the entire room which seems incredibly unrealistic and (given it's a moving shadow) is very distracting.

 

After some investigation, I worked out that the Relighting Skyrim mod is causing the issue as disabling it causes the scene to be more reasonable like this. I was wondering what I could be doing wrong that would be leading to the mod messing up like this?

 

This is my modlist

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 7600K

 

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

 

RAM: 16GB

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT: Made a slight correction to the mod list, forgot to run LOOT after temporarily turning Relighting Skyrim off for demo purposes and then turning it back on.

[gammasfor]

Further investigation reveals this is more of an issue in some places than others. Like the horn candle chandelier in the whiterun Inn is fine, but the subject of the images I posted (black briar meadery) has the weird shadows from every chandelier.

[TechAngel85]

This isn't an issue, it's how the mod works. It removes most of the interior "fake" lighting. Most of the ambient lighting in the game is way far off from what would be considered natural and "realistic". ELE and RS aim to fix this by providing more natural ambient lighting combined with light that is emanating from a source. Combining ELE and RS fixes pretty much all of these issues. No longer will caves with no light source magically be lit enough to see in the dark! Granted the mod touches nearly every light and space in the game so such a large scale mod will likely not be completely polished in all areas. This is true for all the lighting mods. Some people don't like that much realism in the game, but these mods' positives usually outweigh their negatives for most.

[gammasfor]

Hi TechAngel85, thanks for responding!

 

Whilst I appreciate what you are saying (and I actually do enjoy what the mods do in the places that work, which is why I don't want to have to end up disabling it), a chandelier wouldn't cast a shadow of itself that overpowers the entire room, though I can understand the mod author is limited by the Skyrim engine (as the shadow makes it look like the actual light source is in the middle of the chandelier rather than in the ring outside of it). What's odd though is that you then have other buildings where the same style of chandelier is casting its shadow only on the ceiling (as in vanilla).

 

Another example of shadow oddities caused by the mod is in the Grey-mane's manor where you see the fireplace casting blocky shadows which I can only assume is the game trying to cast shadows of the actual logs in the fireplace (which actually makes no sense).

 

Like normally I wouldn't care about things that ought to be considered just minor and nitpicky, but it's much harder to ignore them when they make themselves so prominent on the scene.

 

If it's working as designed then fair enough, but I assumed it was messed up on my side as these oddities seem like something that would have been more frequently noticed. 

[TechAngel85]

Whilst I appreciate what you are saying (and I actually do enjoy what the mods do in the places that work, which is why I don't want to have to end up disabling it), a chandelier wouldn't cast a shadow of itself that overpowers the entire room, though I can understand the mod author is limited by the Skyrim engine (as the shadow makes it look like the actual light source is in the middle of the chandelier rather than in the ring outside of it). What's odd though is that you then have other buildings where the same style of chandelier is casting its shadow only on the ceiling (as in vanilla).

Yep, that's exactly the reason it casts the shadow as it does. The lightbulb has been moved to be in the middle of the chandelier rather than below it as it is in vanilla. In nearly all cases, this is how the mod will move these lights and in most cases it looks natural because the candles are above the fixture, meaning some light from the fixture would be cast on the ground.

 

Then, you are limited with what you can do with lights in the game. They, themselves, are not built to be very realistic. ELFX gets around some of this by using more lights than normal design would allow...this is why they have to edit meshes to prevent mesh flickering, whereas, RS works within the limits of the engine....because changing meshes creates a compatibility nightmare with some mods.

 

Another example of shadow oddities caused by the mod is in the Grey-mane's manor where you see the fireplace casting blocky shadows which I can only assume is the game trying to cast shadows of the actual logs in the fireplace (which actually makes no sense).

Yeah, that lightbulb is likely a bit too low in this case. These are things to report to the author, JawZ. Else, you can make a simple patch which changes the Z values for these lightbulbs, which will lower or raise the lights. That's going to be your only options besides removing the mod.

 

JawZ was working on a remastered version of RS with a team (myself included), but I haven't heard from him in quite a long time. I'm not sure that project will ever be completed as it was a very large undertaking. However, minor things like these just need to be reported as they are a really quick fix.

[gammasfor]

Okay as per your suggestion I've filed a bug report on the Nexus page. For anyone interested in dealing with this, this is my workaround (I don't profess to have the same attention to detail that these guys have, but the values I give are just enough to move the shadows enough that their flaws don't become distractingly obvious):

 

1. Open TES5Edit
2. Open RelightingSkyrim_Legendary.esp
3. Under RelightingSkyrim_Legendary.esp go to Cell > Block 8 > Sub-Block 4 > 00016BDC (RiftenBlackBriarMeadery)
4. For 0008C46A (RiftenLight01Shad), scroll down to DATA - Position/Rotation. Edit (confirm warning) Position.Z to be 540.000000
5. For 0008C46C (RiftenLight01Shad), scroll down to DATA - Position/Rotation. Edit (confirm warning) Position.Z to be 340.000000
6. For 0008C47D (RiftenLight01Shad), scroll down to DATA - Position/Rotation. Edit (confirm warning) Position.Z to be 340.000000
7. Go to Cell > Block 0 > Sub-Block 7 > 000165B2 (WhiterunHouseGrayMane)
8. For 000CB51D (WRFireLightShadow01), scroll down to DATA - Position/Rotation. Edit (confirm warning) Position.Z to be 128.000000 (essentially putting it back to its vanilla height)
9. close and save