Best of ENB_Visual Comparison

[Spiffyman]

I think many of the screens of akimbo are far to saturated for my taste (though many others are really good looking). I thought the Wilds looked nice, but after looking at the player submitted screens, it is also far too saturated for me...

[undead8]

What do you think of Countervibe and Project ENB?

[GraPhiXJuNkiE]

SkyRealism Cinematic! Although, I still haven't tried the Vanilla version yet. I like Project ENB, but I HATE bloom. So after disabling bloom in Project ENB it's pretty saturated color wise. If SkyRealism Cinematic had nights and dungeons (not the interiors of  ProENB. Just a tad too dark..) I would be totally happy!!

[rpsgc]

What about Climates of Tamriel's own ENB mod?

[Besidilo]

What about Climates of Tamriel's own ENB mod?

Haven't tried it, but I doubt it does a better job then custom ENB configs. The author focused on developing CoT and the ENB was probably a quick revamp of the default ENB for compatibility.

[rpsgc]

I'm not an expert but I gave it a quick try and it was... almost indistinguishable from vanilla Skyrim. Even DoF is disabled by default.

[TechAngel85]

I decided to take this and set up a scoring system because I wanted to know if I was using the best ENB (i'm using Project ENB) just based off of visuals. I used vanilla as my neutral and based my scoring of the screenshots as follows:

 

1 - Terrible/WTF are they thinking?

2 - Prefer Vanilla over this shot

3 - About the same as Vanilla or only slightly better

4 - Clearly better than Vanilla but not perfect

5 - Perfect! Perfect lighting, perfect colors, where can I get me some of that greatness!?

 

Also, if I thought a shot was perfect but... (insert something I'd change here) ... Then it was automatic 4. I should note that this is clearly my personal tastes though I tried to be as objective as possible. I attempted to score each ENB in regards to the levels each one used individually; taking into account the lighting, glow effects, saturation, hues and the overall "natural vs fake" feel for immersion sake for each ENB.

 

In my scoring the clear winning was:

The Wilds, with an average score of 3.91. The overall lighting both indoors and outdoors was excellent with the glows being just slightly too bright. The woods looked very rich. However, some colors close to flames were a little over saturated. (edit: after looking at the shots on Nexus, it's not just a little over saturated...it's too saturated. This score would probably be lower with other shot options) If RCRN Classic was include it most likely would be the clear winner with at least a solid 4.00.

 

The clear loser was:

TKF Cinematic, with an average score of 1.08. (I think this person is a color nazi) This mod makes Skyrim look as though you're walking around in the vail and not in the real world. It has a gloomy, blue hue and the people look as though they are the walking dead. However, the lighting for the effect was good.

 

Top 3:

The Wilds, 3.91

Countervibe ENB, 3.65

Imvisio Cinematics, 3.65

 

Bottom 3:

TV ENB, 1.58

Winterfell V3, 1.33

TKF Cinematics, 1.08

 

Here are my full results plus some other info about each ENB. Ties are listed alphabetically remember, scores are overall averages:

 

 

• The Wilds, 3.91 / 783 endorse / 38,355 downloads / CoT compatible / 0.119 required (after reviewing on Nexus the saturation might be too high for my personal preferance)
• Countervibe ENB, 3.65 (could not find on nexus)
• Imvisio Cinematics, 3.65 / 121 endorse / 4,064 downloads / CoT support unknown / EnbSeries Unknown (author doesn't have much on his page. Just says to view the readme. Lazy in my opinion.)
• Project ENB, 3.56 / 625 endorse / 28,315 downloads / CoT compatible / 0.119 required' 0.113 available
• Quietcool ENB, 3.50 / 179 endorse / 9,233 downloads / CoT compatible / 0.119 required; 0.113 available (note that I amended the score when I seen the shot on nexus. The provided shots didn't do this ENB justice)
• Melted Dreams, 3.47 (could not find on Nexus)
• True Vision ENB 3.47 / 377 endorse / 20,028 / CoT compatible / 0.119 required; 0.113 available
• Akibo Undone, 3.43 / 99 endorse / 2,811 / CoT support unknown / 0.113 required
• RCRN Legacy, 3.25 / 2,618 endorse / 131,543 / CoT incompatible (I wish the other versions of RCRN were included)
• Ahaphiel's ENB Goddess, 3.21 / 263 endorse / 12,407 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.119 or 0.113 required
• Akibo Unred ENB, 3.21
• Midhrastic 2.7RC, 3.19 / 155 endorse / 5,132 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.113 required
• Seasons of Skyrim, 3.19 / 336 endorse / 13,426 downloads / CoT compatible / 0.119 required (idk if it was the mod but trees where missing in some shots, but looking on Nexus this should probably be ranked a tad higher)
• Cinematically Realistic ENB, 3.08  / 29 endorse / 1,737 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.122 required
• Vanilla Skyrim, 3.00 (anything below here, personally, I'd stick to no ENB overall)
• Beautiful Skyrim, 2.83 / 37 endorse / 3,707 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.113 required
• Vibrant ENB, 2.76 (could not find on Nexus)
• DS3 ENB, 2.66 (could not find on Nexus)
• SESFX 1.1, 2.66 (could not find on Nexus)
• Synergy 0.1D, 2.60 (could not find on Nexus)
• ENB Pixar, 2.37 (could not find on Nexus)
• EnbNextGeneration, 2.33 / 96 endorse / 11,102 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.114 required
• Opethfeldt ENB Main, 2.33
• Fimbulvinter ENB, 2.25 / 304 endorse / 6,729 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.113 required
• Opethfeldt Alternative, 2.25 / 166 endorse / 10,598 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.117 required
• Winterheart Atmospheric ENB, 2.25 / 150 endorse / 2,231 downloads / CoT incompatible / 0.119 required; 0.113 available (winterheart 2 stats provided. Author said original winterheart is obsolete)
• Kalicola ENB, 2.00 (could not find on Nexus)
• Opethfeldt Fantasy, 1.83
• Opethfeldt Desaturated, 1.75
• ENBPM 4.0, 1.66 / 355 endorse / 20,350 downloads / CoT aupport unknown / 0.113 required (the shots on the nexus page are a lot better than the provided shots so this is most likely scored lower than it should be)
• TV ENB, 1.58 / 219 endorse / 14,321 downloads / CoT incompatible / 0.119 required; 0.113 available
• Winterfell V3, 1.33 / 39 endorse / 1,363 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.113 required (this would be the perfect ENB for Gothic lovers)
• TKF Cinematics, 1.08 / 9 endorse / 811 downloads / CoT support unknown / 0.114 required (this was consistently horrible though it does seem to be compatible with low-end systems)

 

 

Something interesting that I noticed when gathering the info from Nexus is that the higher endorsed and more downloaded ENBs are always CoT compatible and well documented with the exception of RCRN which is the highest endorsed by a VERY large margin!

 

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.

[ivactheseeker]

How about this one?

 

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27010

 

[z929669]

I am finding SkyRealism - ENB Evolved to be the best I have experienced. It works nicely with RLwC as well. I am using custom INI and FX modules based on the Cinematic version. Good performance, too with ENBSeries 0.122.

[TechAngel85]

How about this one?

 

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27010

I you haven't noticed I'm very much about natural lighting. The glows from fires and candles, the light shining through windows, areas that should be dark need to be dark and the outdoor lighting from the sun should be natural too. This ENB, from what I can tell from the shots on Nexus, has it's lighting too bright. The outdoor scenes look too bright and bleached out.

I am finding SkyRealism - ENB Evolved to be the best I have experienced. It works nicely with RLwC as well. I am using custom INI and FX modules based on the Cinematic version. Good performance, too with ENBSeries 0.122.

My one complaint about most cinematics that I have seen is that in the majority of shots it looks as thought they've opened up photoshop, apply the "more blur" filter, saved the shot and posted it. In other others most of the shots look like you're running about in a haze. The shots blow is an example of what I'm talking about. This may be due to DOF, idk; I haven't used a cinematic to find out. Other than that the interior lighting is quite good and natural feeling and the colors are good without being over saturated.

 

 

 

I'm using Project ENB and am fairly happy with it. (Note that I'm using the old version because of the STEP guide saying 0.119 isn't performance optimized yet.) My only complaint is that the colors are a little too saturated/vibrant. It feels like a cinematic without that haze. I'm running just about all of STEP here:

 

 

(yes, I'm running practically no AA due to performance; i average just about 32FPS)

 

My Rig:

Asus G7 Laptop

Intel i7 @ 2GHz

GeForce GTX 460M, 1GB vram

8GB system ram

[JudgmentJay]

Cypress ENB's .123 preview has me excited: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/167176

[thalastwon]

I've found RCRN 3.6 with RCReN ENB is the combination I can't stay away from. I feel that Project ENB brings a fuzzy brightness to it that pulls me way too far out of the game. Before I was just using Skyrealism with CoT, but ever since RCRN used to be a part of STEP, I haven't been able to stay away from it for very long. That and RCReN doesn't use Dof, which is nice for me, because most ENB DoFs give me a headache.

[JudgmentJay]

I'm pretty excited to try the new version of Cypress ENB after seeing the .123 wrapper preview.

[TechAngel85]

I've found RCRN 3.6 with RCReN ENB is the combination I can't stay away from. I feel that Project ENB brings a fuzzy brightness to it that pulls me way too far out of the game. Before I was just using Skyrealism with CoT' date=' but ever since RCRN used to be a part of STEP, I haven't been able to stay away from it for very long. That and RCReN doesn't use Dof, which is nice for me, because most ENB DoFs give me a headache.[/quote']

RCRN Classic is still my top pick too. I've found that it provides the most balanced lighting. The only reason I'm not using it is because it's not supported by STEP anymore. I'm planning on working around this by skipping the mods that aren't RCRN compatible such as CoT.

I'm pretty excited to try the new version of Cypress ENB after seeing the .123 wrapper preview.

Cypress as is, the days are too bright for me again, tho the interior lighting is awesomely perfect (according to shots). Add in 0.123 and the days look much better as they're not as bright and more natural, the interiors aren't as good but they're still better than a lot of other ENBs and then there are the nights. The nights are too bright for my tastes. Even if it was a full moon, the lighting is too bright for a natural night.

[rpsgc]

RCReN is TheCompiler's mod. It's RCRN with SkyRealism ENB and some tweaks to bring it in line with STEP. It was updated to RCRN's latest version.

 

 

So it's not entirely unsupported ;)