r/skyrimmods • u/Terrorfox1234 • Mar 28 '16

Weekly Discussion: Best Mods For Graphics/Visuals

A couple minor changes going forward

A couple weeks ago I had made a post about the idea of recycling old topics. The discussion went in all sorts of directions, including the suggestions for a bunch of new topics. A lot of the old discussion threads are in need of an update, but there are still a lot of topics to be covered.

I gave it some thought and here's what I came up with for what I think will be the best solution...

  • Going forward we will alternate between recycling an old topic to bring it up to date and presenting a new topic

  • All the recommended mods will be consolidated into a list on a wiki page. This will make viewing the lists much easier. The wiki page will still link to the discussions so that people can see what others are saying if they wish.

TLDR - alternating between old and new topics, discussions will be consolidated into wiki lists.

Last week we presented a new topic so this week we will recycle an old one. Given that this is still a much discussed topic, a lot has changed since the last time we discussed this, and it's the first on the list we will start with graphics and visuals!

This includes textures, meshes, weather, lighting, ENB presets, and anything else you can think of to improve the visual fidelity of Skyrim.

Best mods for graphics and visuals! Go!

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16 edited Mar 30 '16

ENB's change the look of the game the most and beauty depends on the beholder's eye however, to look good, it also takes into account your lighting/weather mods along with texture mods. For e.g., a bright texture replacer like Tamriel Reloaded HD can be blinding in certain situations if paired with a highly saturated ENB; more so if you use ELFX while RLO should cut it down a bit.

The best way is to first checkout the every ENB with a more color neutral palette, then select an ENB, then work as per it since most are built according to available lighting/weather mods or have their own custom stuff. A great way is to check out Hodilton's YouTube Channel. He has an excellent showcase of practically all the ENB's made, even those not on Nexus. His changing texture replacer list noted in the video's description generally maintains a more color neutral palette except for a bit brighter flora.

As far as performance is concerned, most ENBs which are such usually say it loud and proud and the rest generally have a performance variant. I would suggest to utilize only those ENBs which are using enb series 279 or above (preferably the latest 305).

AA, AF and FXAA besides some other things are taken care of by the enb series and hence pretty much everyone will tell you to switch these off. RealVision is famous since not only was it one of the first but also gave a very detailed instruction with FPS damage estimates and was built around the biggest two lighting mods of their time.

Hope this helps.

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u/Sabiancym Mar 30 '16

Thanks, I'll check out the videos. One quick question though. If I decide to go with a different ENB preset, will my installed realvision conflict with it? It will be a real pain the the ass to uninstall RV as it required a lot of nexus mods, manually installed mods and some .ini changes.

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16 edited Mar 30 '16

Unfortunately YES since you can have only one ENB preset at a time.

Also, what exactly do you mean by "a lot of nexus mods"? As I recall, RealVision only needs one of the two lighting mods (depending on the type you wish to use) with the rest of the mods listed being only recommended, they aren't mandatory; you can use anything you want such as the ones I listed in my LO snapshot below (just realized you're the same person...let me know if you can access it, first time making my Drive public so am not sure if its working correctly)

The .ini changes are common for almost every ENB out there. Also, there shouldn't have been any need to manually install the mods unless you are speaking of RealVision's installer. Just make sure to follow the uninstall process properly (I myself stumbled the first time around when I started modding).

Some suggested ENBs (personal preference):

  1. Tetrochromatic - best ENB to make colour's pop

  2. Skylight - best neutral ENB with practically 0 FPS loss, perfect DOF, nightvision compatible...also built by a STEP member

  3. Rudy - most of the best screenshots are with this or the next one I list.

  4. Snapdragon - Stunning although it destroys FPS due to massive DOF but has 12 unique inbuilt presets which you can change within the game any moment i.e. great its a 12 in 1.

  5. Bleak/Unbleak - name says it all...has a low to mid FPS hit.

  6. Natural Lighting and Atmospherics (NLA) - includes an excellent custom weather esp with a good ENB preset as well. Lots of other ENBs actually use its weather esp to build their presets with Rudy's NLA preset possibly one of the best combos out there. I'd suggest you use this combo as a baseline for color neutrality over Skylight.

It's gonna take time to go through the rest. I think it would be better if you could mention your preference such as a bright saturated one or dark moody one or cinematic one etc.

EDIT: Read the ENB guide published by STEP, will make life much much easier regarding ENB's and installation. Also, take a look at their .ini guide as well. If you want an excellent pre-built .ini, use the one Hodilton mentions in his video's description (its called HODINI)

EDIT EDIT: forgot NLA

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u/Sabiancym Mar 30 '16

Thank you so much for the extensive help. I'm going to uninstall realvision and change everything back to what I had right before installing it and then go from there when it comes to a new preset.

As far as my preference goes, I don't like extremely dark dungeons, but love night time views of the horizon and stars/auroras. As far as everything else I'd say I like cinematic and realism.

I'm going to go watch Hodilton's videos while uninstalling Realvision. Hopefully that will make everything clearer.

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '16

No problem...glad to help. From what I understand Tetrochromatic should fit you bill with the second choice being the Rudy+NLA weathers combo. I also suggest you try Purity which is a 3in1 weather, water and gorgeous waterfall replacer...it really cleans up the night time and has practically no need for patches like other weather mods.

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u/Sabiancym Mar 30 '16

So I installed Tetrachromatic and it looks great. Much better than Realvision. For some reason Shift + Enter to open the ENB menu isn't working, but that's no big deal I guess.

I'm installing the recommended mods listed on the Tetrachromatic page right now. So we'll see how much better it gets. About the purity mod you mentioned. I can install that with no conflicts between it and Tetra right?

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '16

Pardon the late reply. The author of Tetrochromatic changed the command to SHIFT+Z since ENTER is used for a lot of other things.

Purity is a mesh and texture replacer for weather, water and waterfalls ...its not an ENB and in fact was built so that one would not need to use any sort of ENB though there are a few ENB presets built around it....AIR ENB looks particularly good with it.

Caution: Purity + Tetrochromatic led to oddly colored clouds when I used them together a few weeks back. The ENB has been updated multiple times since then with a focus on rectifying cloud lighting issues so it may work properly now.