Dubhorizon's custom ENB

[dubhorizon]

Arathorn asked what I do for my screenshots. They are only ENB screens in-game so I thought I'd share my enb settings with you guys.

It's a high performance ENB (highest I've seen so far). Works perfectly on GTX750ti 2gb which is a very basic card that barely runs Far Cry 4 on low settings.

It's a modified version of Naturalistic ENB. Install it from www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57301/? make sure you edit the local inis to match your pc specs

In order to get the lighting to look like my screenshots you'll need ELFX (no enhancer) from www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27043/? and ELE for ENB from www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59733/? if you use SMIM you will definately need an FPS fix for interior chandeliers www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60603/? Last but definately not least you'll need Lens for ENB www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60689/? which gives lights a much warmer reflection and lens flare effects.

When you're done installing those, you'll need the following custom enb series setting file that makes it compatible with the above lighting mods by tweaking fire color, overall saturation and subsurface scattering for perfect skintone: www.mediafire.com/download/rnr0qk9iwaecgi6/enbseries_for_ELFX_ELE_Naturalistic.rar

Sun sprite from www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29001/?

Depth of Field is the Auto Focus DOF with slightly increased Blur curves and reduced tilt shift.

Extra Notes on Performance:
It has a lot of active effects without any cost of performance. Mainly due to the fact that it has no Anisotropic filtering at all. Most performance ENB's turn off SSAO, but keep Anisotropic filtering to at least 8. Turns out that, at least on my mediocre card, AF is the worst. So even though Naturalistic ENB has no SSAO or AF, it has so many other enabled effects, like shadow quality, water fixes, effects file handling post process effects, etc. That the game retains a very beautiful balance between fantasy and realism.

[ginger78348]

Hey, I'm the author of Naturalistic ENB, do you mind if I ask what tweaks you've made?

[jet4571]

I don't use ENB's because all of them have a soft focus filter going and DOF. If I want everything to be soft focused I can take off the glasses I wear to correct that from happening. as for DOF I really do not like it and shut it off in games. I find it very distracting for screenshots as well. If it's a macro shot of a flower DOF is inevitable but someone wearing armor 5 feet from the camera it is unnatural looking. Lens flare? My eyes are not camera lenses and even wearing prescription glass I never see them... J.J. Abrams can stick his lens flare love up his left nostril until it comes out his... NM Then so many ENB's oversaturate everything, Skyrim desturates with the environment settings so I don't need ENB to saturate. the only thing I would use ENB for is the shadows. Have an ENB that just fixes shadows and I am interested if it can make everything crisper and sharper with shadows then more interested.

Note to mod authors who use ENB and are not making an ENB preset, do not have ENB running when you take your screenshots of your armor, house, or texture, it may look fantastic to you and those that like the look it doesn't show what you made correct to those who do not use an ENB. If your DOF blurs the boots of the armor then I cannot see those boots clearly and might not like them once I do see them, or I might not like them and not use the mod because I couldn't see them. I have skipped hundreds of texture mods because of ENB. Just stop using ENB when making screenshots of your mod, use ENB for the image gallery FFS!

[dubhorizon]

Ok I remade the ENB, including everything Jet hates I love those effects, feels like I'm playing my own movie. anyway. Ginger, the preset is ready.

Naturalistic ENB performance. 60% realism 40% fantasy. SMAA shaders and customized auto- focus DOF.

Requires: Latest Binaries (d3d9.dll and enbhost from wrapper folder)
               ELFX with Enhancer
               Realistic Water two and Realistic Water two ENB textures

Compatible with: Lanterns of Skyrim (use MCM menu to remove them from villages, ELFX already does it)
Incompatible with: Any weather overhaul. I especially dislike COT due to it's misty weathers destroying my graphics card.

Link:
www.mediafire.com/download/2a72ll443lgd89e/Naturalistic_Performance.rar

Screenshots, keep in mind these are 800x450 jpeg. They look blurry, while in-game they aren't at all. 1920x1080 looks much better and clearer:

SPOILER: Click to show

[dubhorizon]

Another, hopefully last update on the preset. Increased Lumasharpen clamp - how do i describe it - improves the lines and enhances the parallax effect. Reduced interior window lighting to have a bit more consistency. Some other minor tweaks on sun, overall brightness, etc.

Link: www.mediafire.com/download/2bck35aqq22q153/New_Naturalistic_ENB_Bleak_Performance.rar

Previews:

SPOILER: Click to show

By the way. This Enb preset has only shadows and dof enabled from the fps heavy effects. On my GTX750ti oc which is the cheapest and most average 2gb card possible, it is really light.

For a GTX750ti OC or higher use 1k (1024x) textures, parallax or not. 2048 shadows and you'll be fine fps wise.

[Deleted]

Oh I have been meaning to try this out. I was planning to remove skyrim from my ssd by stopped myself before I completed the whole process.

Any other graphical mods you suggest using with your enb?

[dubhorizon]

The "must" is ELFX with Enhancer and Realistic Water two with Realistic Water two ENB textures. I suppose any other lighting mod like ELE or Relighting Skyrim should work, but it won't give dungeons the intended dark feel. Static Mesh Improvement mod works great as well and for a more serious "Game of thrones" like Skyrim you couldn't go wrong with Amidianborn textures (especially the armors and content add-on).

I do not use weather overhaul mods for two reasons. First is the mist weather that destroy my graphics card and second is that I love real shelter and so far only vanilla weathers work well with a couple tweaks.

[dubhorizon]

Some before/after screens that I love doing

SPOILER: Click to show

[dubhorizon]

Found a flaw on the preset. Interior darkness is too dark with ELFX in a way that causes some weird whitening of what should be extremely dark objects. Means that you can till find your way even in pitch black. I know it can be fixed by lowering overall contrast. Also there's an error with the enb which causes some values to not be tweakable.

So instead of customizing Ginger's preset, I downloaded the default ENB from the ENb dev page and starting it from the ground up. With different DOF this time, for bokeh goodness!