SKYRIMLE Ultimate Lighting Overhaul

[statmonster]

What intrigues me about it is that even though my GPU can handle the ENB I'm afraid that when the demand for CPU resources competes with scripts etc. it leads to instability and occasional crashes. So anything that can less that load ought to, at least in theory (as I understand it), lead to a more stable Skyrim.

[TechAngel85]

I like that you guys mentioned color correction because that is the main reason I used SkyRealism ENB - Cinematic. I liked the coloring better that vanilla because they were more alive without the heavy saturation that a lot of ENBs add. (even your preset here for SweetFX is too saturated for my personal tastes, VoidNull) In ENBs I disabled all the fancy features like AO and Bloom; however, even running the ENBs with most of the features disabled the performance hit was just too much. I was tired of being forced to play at 1366x768 just to maintain playable framerates. Since I've abandoned SkyRealism (which I highly recommend for anyone wanting to use ENB), I can now play Skyrim with a full STEP installation at the max resolution on my laptop (1600x900). So much better!

 

Reading this gives me hope that SweetFX could possible be made to mimic the color correction that the Cinematic preset of SkyRealism provided for me without the heavy performance loss. If I had more time, I would most definitely play around with it until I could mimic it.

[Aiyen]

Yep, it is just a preset for SweetFX and I have never alluded to it being anything more. However, SweetFX is not emblazoned into the public mind like ENB is and simply calling it "Blah SweetFX profile" would have been a great way to have it go completely ignored.

Hehe yeah I cant blame ya for picking a name that provides better marketing! ;) 

 

The only artistry is that ULO uses a lot of tricks to fake other lighting effects in order to keep absolutely rock bottom performance usage over even other pure SweetFX profiles, let alone the average ENB profile. It does not change the shadows, it does not actually change the in game lighting, it doesnt use real HDR or even ambient occlusion... but it fakes those things at about 80% quality and 7x the performance of ENB.

Your profile is pure SweetFX. So if you get better performance in yours then it is simply because you have not cranked up the computationally heavy settings as much as the next one. And again it makes no sense to compare to ENB since ENB does different things. At least you do not claim that it makes real HDR which is impossible for Skyrim since it can only do LDR on a game engine level. But I like the "HDR" option in SweetFX as well, I like how it subtlety saturates where required. 

 

That being said I understand what you are trying to do, and it is nice. Would not mind more SweetFX profiles to pop up! As long as they do not market themselves as being able to do the same as ENB at lower performance cost, which is just a misunderstanding of what happens at best, a lie at worst. 

 

I am especially intrigued by your gaussian blur, will have to look more at that when I get the time! I also use SweetFX in other games since it does provide a nice way to boost the contrast and saturation up to a level I like, and the performance hit is minimal. Keep up the good work! 

What intrigues me about it is that even though my GPU can handle the ENB I'm afraid that when the demand for CPU resources competes with scripts etc. it leads to instability and occasional crashes. So anything that can less that load ought to, at least in theory (as I understand it), lead to a more stable Skyrim.

ENB is mostly GPU heavy, not CPU heavy. The lighting and shadows etc are done by CPU, however AO is as far as I know processed by the GPU as well since it is effectively a texture that is placed on top of the scene. But other then that then yeah you could properly get a bit more stability out of it by reducing stuff. I am unsure about how much of SweetFX is actually done by the CPU since I am not that much into the technical details of the shaders yet. 

Reading this gives me hope that SweetFX could possible be made to mimic the color correction that the Cinematic preset of SkyRealism provided for me without the heavy performance loss. If I had more time, I would most definitely play around with it until I could mimic it. 

Would properly be a bit tricky since SweetFX does not add an option to go in and alter specific lighting values like ENB does. The strength in ENB is that it takes the values directly from the game and alters them. SweetFX only reads the output and then changes the entire scene at once. It can effectively only see the color values in the final rendered image after adaptation, bloom etc etc. 

[TechAngel85]

Reading this gives me hope that SweetFX could possible be made to mimic the color correction that the Cinematic preset of SkyRealism provided for me without the heavy performance loss. If I had more time, I would most definitely play around with it until I could mimic it. 

Would properly be a bit tricky since SweetFX does not add an option to go in and alter specific lighting values like ENB does. The strength in ENB is that it takes the values directly from the game and alters them. SweetFX only reads the output and then changes the entire scene at once. It can effectively only see the color values in the final rendered image after adaptation, bloom etc etc. 

 

:( In that case, the closest I could come in mimicking is to change the vanilla colors via INI before SweetFX sees them and alters them. With the combination, it might be possible to come close, but next exact.

[VoidNull]

I wouldn't mind seeing if I can emulate some of the more popular ENB profiles so people have more of a choice in presets to use. 

 

What are some good ones?

[TechAngel85]

SkyRealism has several presets. Cinematic is the most popular.

Sharpshooter is still a bit popular.

TheWilds was very popular but it was hidden a while ago for an unknown reason to me.

Skyrim Enhanced Shaders FX is fairly popular.

RealVision is popular amongst higher end users.

[VoidNull]

So two pieces of news!

 

1: I spent a few hours today making some tweaks to correct the issue of too much contrast in some interioers that were caused by the swap to CoT.

 

2: ULO was featured in the Skyrim Mod Spotlight!

 

 

[video=youtube]

 

And thank you so very much again for your helpful suggestions! I will take a look at those ENB profiles and see if I do a decent enough job of recreating their aesthetic!

[statmonster]

Very nice. His video showed much richer colors for ULO than vanilla.

[kuroyume87]

To say the truth, the colors on the video sometimes look even TOO much saturated. But I think it's precisely what VoidNull has been working during the last ours, after tweaking his mod to better pairing with CoT. Hopefully in a few days I'll be able to test this all myself, can't wait...

[VoidNull]

So some big news.

 

Just uploaded Version 1.2.0 with support for RLO, Vanilla and fixed the over-saturation from campfires issue.

 

We also made hot file and people are voting ULO for file of the month!

 

:D

[TechAngel85]

Nice work and congrats!

[VoidNull]

1.2.1 Uploaded along with Grim (Less saturated) and Insane settings.

[statmonster]

Do you ahve any plans to do a version compatible with ELFX? (Or is there already one?)

[Valamyr]

So I'm thinking about maybe trying this over a ENB for my new install. I have a 1440p monitor now and I want to play native, so I need to be conservative to preserve a decent framerate.

 

I'm afraid it might be too dark, though? Unlike most, while I love prettier colors and better overall lighting, I very much hate dark ENBs that force you to use lightsources all the time. Would you say you strive to keep the game playable without light sources in the dark, or you're more into 'realism'?

[kuroyume87]

(Voidnull, please correct me if I'm wrong)

 

@Statmonster Not only Elfx and Ulo are compatible, the latter has been specifically tweaked with Elfx in mind. They pair together perfectly.

 

@Valamyr As far as I know, Ulo won't take or add anything to visibility at night or in dark places. That will depend on the other mods you'll decide to pair Ulo with (for instance, Climates of Tamriel has different presets for darker or brighter nights)