Which ENB are you using and why?

[EssArrBee]

Karma whoring your screens Bro? What you think I wouldn't see that? I see everything...

What?

 Aiyen : Removed due to request, and not really relevant for the thread! Lets get this back on topic! 

 

 

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I'd really rather you not post a link to that on here. Can you please remove it.

[Aiyen]

Was also wondering .... what ? Does this even matter in any way? I could care less about what goes on over at reddit.

 

Also what is wrong with the link... I am confused ?

 

 

Edit: Removed the link due to request... as stated. And now let us get back on track! Pretty pictures and stuff! :D

[DoYouEvenModBro]

:-) I have a lot of pretty pictures. I wanna see other people's!

[Garfink]

@Aiyen

 

With "performance" I meant that the author's default vision and its relative ENB settings don't use the more fps intensive settings of ENB and hence by default it has more "performance" than say Somber on its "high" settings. And yes, even with a high-end graphics card there is still a difference between "performance" enb settings & "ultra" enb settings when it comes to general performance. (on Somber Ultra settings, the game is almost unplayable and very choppy even on a uber computer) Its all relative really. So as long as the author of the comment tells us what ballpark hardware he is running, I think the information is still useful to those that isn't running the same hardware.

 

@DoYouEvenModBro

 

To truly calibrate your monitor, you'll need an external piece of hardware and a stable lighting environment. No piece of software or manual color/brightness adjustment can do it properly! You can spend an immense amount of money to properly calibrate your monitor! For gaming, don't worry about it, just adjust it to how you like it and call it a day.

[gurugeorge]

First post! Ever since I first tried it last time round with Skyrim, I fell in love with Bronze 316's True Vision ENB (Realistic), which is currently built around ENB 0.221, and works with 0.236. I've tried them all and I keep returning to this one. Even the same author's Project ENB I don't find quite as good (although it may be better with CoT, which it's supposed to be designed specifically for). It also builds in SweetFX's SMAA and LumaSharpen, which gives, as the author says, a very realistic and sharp feel. It's apparently partly based on Opethfeldt's ENB, which is one of the first ones I'd thought was good prior to coming across True Vision.

 

What I like about True Vision is that it strikes, for me, the perfect balance between gritty realism and fantasy otherworldliness. Most other ENBs fall firmly to one side or another, but this one seems to get the balance just right.

 

I'd say it makes a perfect match to STEP Core or STEP Enhanced (which is what I'm using at the moment). Things get tricky when you start to introduce weather or lighting mods, so I think if one were using the Weather and Lighting Pack on the wiki, for example, it might be better to go with Project ENB or the recommendations there.

 

But for an ENB that works out of the box with STEP Core and Enhanced, to just enrich and enhance the vanilla experience and make it pop out in 3-d, without too much exaggeration in any particular area, I don't think True Vision can be beat.

 

The one downside of it is that it requires Brightness to be turned all the way down, and that's only possible to do in-game in fullscreen mode, so it doesn't play very conveniently with borderless window mods, so far as I can tell (it really doesn't look right with brightness up, and AFAIK brightness is left to the desktop settings when you're in windowed mode, which makes it a bit faffy to use).

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Yea, Project ENB is supposed to be used with Climates of Tamriel. TrueVision is the non-CoT version of Project ENB :-P.

[phazer11]

Just realized I never really stated which ENB I used before though the post made it obvious.

I use Aiyen's ENB. Why?

Well several reasons. It's the only ENB I've tried that made the game feel right if you catch my meaning. Even in the version he has uploaded on the nexus currently (I believe he's abouto take it out of closed beta don't quote me on that). The colours just looked like the vanilla game should have been the way they were with Aiyen's ENB the whole time. I must say I've had a little more time to test out his latest version and it and CoT are just awesome (even though I don't have the latest patches and all he's made). It's awesome. I hope he updates the release on the Nexus soon as it's quite nice looking.

 

Another reason I like his ENB is Aiyen is such a perfectionist he learned how to make some textures (or modify and mix and match) to make the ambiance of his ENB all the better.

[rootsrat]

I also use Aiyen's Skylight ENB (the new, not released - yet- version). I'm lucky enough to be a tester for it :) so it's pretty much suited to my needs, as he implements most of my suggestions, based on constructive criticism and both positive and negative feedback, haha!

 

On a more serious note though, Aiyen created this ENB for ELFX/CoT combo, which I use, he also provides specific ESP file and some texture corrections to fit with the ENB. It's very performance friendly, and yet it looks amazing. It makes the exteriors environments look harsh and cold, as northern land should be. It also provides cozy interiors for houses, inns etc., and at the same time caves, forts and this kind of interiors are unforgiving, dark and mysterious.

 

It's absolutely brilliant piece of work, and I prefer it much more to Unreal Cinema and RealVision - the two most popular ENBs amongst STEP community.

[TehKaoZ]

I use Winterheart II - Atmospheric ENB by WoodManGamer

I followed Boris' guide to make it usable with new enb binaries and took some settings from other enb's for settings that didn't exist in the time-frame Winterheart was made. I also added a little bit of sweetfx vibrancy to to give it a tad bit saturation.

 

I eventually settled on this enb for several reasons. For several months I had been trying to find and tweak certain enb's to my liking however, my system is very limited. Geforge GTX 560 Ti with 1 gig VRAM. I still wanted to be able to use some nice textures but generally anything over 2k starts to kill my system, on top of that I can't activate half the effects of enb without massive performance hit. Over the months I have experimented using both RLO+ and Phinix's Natural enb. Both of these gave me good performance. RLO+ however while nice, looked horrible with certain weathers. PENB looked pretty good as well but I had to disable everything except detailed shadows and bloom so I felt I wasn't getting much of the intended look.

 

Finally, with realistic enb's I found that since I could not use super high res textures, getting a "real" look with enb's sometimes made these textures stand too much out. On a whim I decided to try and use Winterheart because it reminded me of a gritty 300 + sin city kind of look. It isn't realistic, it's artistic.

So the biggest reason I use it is first and foremost performance. Secondly because since it has such a stylized artistic look, it makes bad textures blend in much better, it isn't trying to be realistic. Finally, it looks freaking amazing and gives a real gritty feeling to the game.

 

Other aspects of this enb I like are: I don't need ELFX enhancer or anything that used widespread cell-edits because dungeons are dark as hell, and nights as well. It comes with it's own weathers module (which I was hesitant at first of, because that means I had to drop CoT), and that means all weathers are balanced perfectly.

I do use it with ELFX base and DLC modules though and it works pretty well I think.

 

The only disadvantages to using this enb are: it's old, I don't have the patience to tweak it using some of the newer enb features like sunrise, sunset settings so I just disabled those features. It has to be upgraded using a guide to get features like enboost. It's stylized so it may not be for everyone, but I love it. Thirdly, their is no Dragonborn DLC weather module so when I go to Solstheim I will have to look at how the weathers look and see if I can find a way to make it look ok.

 

Some of my Screenshots

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/357787/?

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/357784/?

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/357779/?

[Quahogs]

@ rootsrat. I'm drooling over your description. I have the CoT ELFX combo and I'm running Unreal and I just CAN'T get interiors right and nights even at CoT 8 just don't look right. Dawnstar's quicksilver mine looks perfect but Helgen's Keep at warm is too bright and cold a filmy black (Helgens's keep considered an interior or dungeon?) So you're saying it's not released and I can't get my hands on it ? :-(

[TechAngel85]

When I was using ENB's I did a huge test of about 20 ENBs to find the best fit for myself and STEP. Realism and vanilla styles being maintained were the top two criteria. My top pick ended up being SkyRealism - Cinematic. Second place went to TrueVision. These both simply enhanced the colors and ambiance of the vanilla game without changing it too much towards a specific artistic style.

 

I am looking forward to seeing Aiyen's work...considering all the hype around it.

[rootsrat]

I'll post some screenshots, if Aiyen's ok with it. I'll let him comment on the ETA for Skylight as well :)

 

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[Glanzer]

I've used Project ENB almost exclusively. But I use it with CoT, RLO, and CoT Weather Patch (Night Level 2). With those combinations they give me pretty much what I want:

 

Pretty dark outside nights, without making PointLighting (e.g. torches, lamps) too dim.

Dark interiors (for shops/inns) during the night and noticeably MUCH lighter interiors during the day.

Really pitch dark dungeons apart from lighted areas. I use Project ENB's "Further Dark Dungeons.esp" to achieve this. I use Wearable Lanterns to crawl dungeons.

Nice clear days with lots of sharpness.

 

I tried RealVision but the interiors were way too bright (for me). And there was little or no difference between day and night lightness in shops/inns. Not realistic to me.

 

I've had to tweak a few of the Project ENB settings to give me what I want. These are from memory:

 

[ENVIRONMENT]

AmbientLightingIntensityDay: I reduced this a bit (from 1.06 to 0.76?) to make the shadows deeper and darker during the day.

AmbientLightingIntensityInteriorDay: Boosted this a bit.

AmbientLightingIntensityInteriorNight: Reduced this a bit.

[WINDOWLIGHT ?]

DirectLightingIntensityInteriorDay: Changed from 2.0 to 2.6 I think.

DirectLightingIntensityInteriorNight: Changed from 1.6 to 1.0 I think.

 

After making those changes it is AWESOME to see the interior changes. When I go to bed at night (I use RnD so I have to sleep) it is so dark inside that only the candlelight gives me light. The windows are completely dark and the corners are completely dark. When I wake up in the morning the windows are really bright and the room is well lit with ambient light just like IRL. Also, when you're inside Dragonsreach (the keep in Whiterun) at night and you set timescale to something like 800, it is AWESOME to watch the room slowly turn from really dark to really bright as the sun comes up.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I've been waiting for months for a Project ENB update. I'm beginning to think the author has abandoned it.