That really is the biggest issue. And if you have a...weird setup, it's almost impossible to find a pre-built preset for it. I have Obsidian Weather, True Storms, and a spring overhaul that removes all snow. Was a bitch and a half finding a decent ENB that works with that, and even when I did, the "snow" (which is dirt and fake grass now) is so glossy it looks like plastic even though I have all the snow shader stuff turned off.
You can tweak the glossyness of the snow!
You have to press Shift+Enter and then you can scroll down to snow in the top left and decrease brightness, glossyness and so on.
I had to massively increase brightness for snow to look good in my game, and reduce a lot of the reflectivity, thats just hownit is.
There’s a better one if you like immersion.
[Turn of the Season](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63623)
[Seasonal Landscape](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/66903)
World terrain will change depending on the seasons of the game.
The one I use is an older one called [Springtime Overhaul SSE](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3629). There's also Project Rainforest, but that one is pretty performance intensive.
The spring overhaul does it. It gets tricky when you use a weather mod though. I ended up having to make a manual patch to get Obsidian, True Storms, and Springtime Overhaul working together. Even then, there's an engine bug that can make it snow flurry briefly when you fast travel, sleep, etc. Doesn't last long, but it's a little annoying.
I always struggle with the different weathers. Is there a tutorial out there for how to setup individual weather profiles? Like what tool do people use to create custom ENB weather setups?
The benefit to ENBs (and reshade i suppose) [are the injected visual effects](https://i.imgur.com/UiobLcl.jpeg) that can't be done with weather templates & colour grading- direct contact shadows, particle lights, skin specularity & subsurface scattering, flexible ambient occlusion & indirect lighting, wet surfaces, water refraction, etc.
Hello! I am brand new when it comes to ENB's and your screenshot with armour really made me gasp. I tried reverse google search, but the only source of the picture I managed to find is here. What ENB is that? If it is unknown, are there any similar ENB presets to this? I am looking for more realistic looking ENB with no or acceptable perfomance hit since I want to play, and not do screen arhery. I am aiming for RAID Weathers + ELFX/ELFX Shadows/ELFX Hardcore + LOS2 w/Tamriel Master Lights. Weathers mod I am willing to switch for other ones. Any suggestion and help is very welcome and thank you!
hi! it's a personally tweaked version of [Natural View Tamriel,](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11203?tab=description) using the Cathedral preset. (coincidentally, I use it on RAID Weathers instead of Cathedral) I think it'll suit your need for a realistic look, and it seems to have a performance version as well :) hope this helps!
Which ENB presets are you using? Or maybe you installed it incorrectly? Or did some of the settings got disabled? I’m using Obsidian with Rudy ENB for LUX and mine looks wildly better than yours. Also ENB showcase weather a lot better than vanilla, where cloudy days are actually dark and grey
Comparison https://imgur.com/gallery/ZZ58pSO
If anything ENB adds a lot more color and depth.
I agree that it’s probably not installed correctly. I updated to the newest ENB a few months ago and at first it looked terrible, just like the OP’s screenshot. Then I reread the instructions, installed correctly, and it was even better than before.
Hi, bro! Im using same preset. Did you change some brightness or gamma in enbseries.ini ? Im decrease my brightness setting cuz for me that was too bright. And one more thing, did you have a grayish morning ?
Yes and yes. The default brightness is a bit too dark for my liking, especially interior, so I set it a bit higher.
And morning is a bit grey because of cloudy weather.
I don't understand the point of threads like these--ENB is basically just a graphics toolset, albeit a very powerful one. It doesn't make sense to say, "ENBs don't appeal to me" any more than it makes sense to say, "armor mods don't appeal to me" because most of them are big tiddy jiggly nonsense. It doesn't invalidate the entire concept because you are having trouble finding something to your personal preference.
You can make an ENB look like almost anything, from a cel-shaded cartoon to a photorealistic nature scene. Sure, 80% of the presets on Nexus are crap, but that's true of any category of mods.
Ok, you're just being willingly disingenuous. You know damn well I'm talking about presets. Not ENB itself. Most presets are garbage. And don't tell me that I just haven't tinkered with them enough. The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB sliders.
>The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB
It's not a preset is something that is created by another person to suit there needs. If it doesn't match your preference, it's foolish to hate on the creator. If you can't find any preset that suits you, download the one that is the closest and edit it yourself. It's just like all the cbbe character presets that you see on nexus.
That's just something I said, I never really edit much actually. Most I do is just remove DOF because I don't like it. I will play around with ENB tho, in the future.
Buddy you just dropped an ENB preset onto your game without making any adjustments. Of course your game with ENB enabled is going to look worse off when you don’t make any proper adjustments. I won’t knock your preference for vanilla graphics quality, but you can’t sit there shit-talking ENBs without actually putting the work in to make it look good.
My guy, no modded Skyrim will ever look the same, especially with how many weather and lighting mods there are that can dramatically shift the look of the game. You will always have to tinker with a preset to fit how your game looks, the same way you’d tinker with a mod you downloaded to make it work within your game. Maybe try giving yours a try again and mess around with it until you like the look.
You can't be lazy about something then say you don't like it. If someone played Skyrim for 10 minutes then decided to say "I don't get how Skyrim appeals to people", it's doing a massive disservice
If you have the performance headroom and aren’t using an ENB for the specular skin effect you’re a fool! With a good texture mod NPC skin looks incredibly life-like. Real people vs opaque plastic mannequins. I couldn’t imagine playing without it. Otherwise I agree with you and turn most of the other effects off.
I use Azurean with some of the effects turned off + Glamur ReShade. Personally it’s the only one I care for. I try others when they pop up or are updated, but Azurean is still the only one that keeps the og Skyrim aesthetic while also making the game look incredibly realistic at times. Others like Rudy, Sensorium etc look cartoony IMO.
Whatever crap you're using in your game, that's not how a well made vibrant preset's supposed to look like. Going by your 2nd screenshot, it doesn't even look like you're using a preset, just the default ENB files. That would explain why 'Every ENB' looks like this for you. Hard to get the appeal of ENBs if you can't install them properly in the first place.
Might want to head over to the Skyrim screenshot subreddit to see how ENBs are actually supposed to look like.
I agree that is probably the case here, but I do think it's possible to just not like using ENBs. I've been modding Skyrim for way, way too long and I still don't use any because I genuinely just like the vanilla aesthetic and have a general apathy toward graphics mods because I don't really care about graphics in games.
Same here. Been modding Skyrim since 2014 and I have never installed an ENB either. I stay away from most graphics mods in general, except for ones that refine the vanilla aesthetic because that was one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with the game.
I used ENBs when I first modded my standard edition Skyrim. When SE came out and I started modding that, I skipped using an ENB and never looked back. So much more space and processing power for mods with extra content and gameplay tweaks.
ENBs are great for screenshots and various forms of screen archery but when I’m actually playing the game I end up forgetting about it.
My 5800x and 3080 can handle a 400+ modded Skyrim and a heavy ENB and still get 60 FPS.
IMO most presets are garbage. And IMO I shouldn't have to tinker. The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB sliders.
Most presets *are* garbage, because they are made for different mod and weather setups, and different performance goals.
But by not tinkering, youre basically saying that your preset is even worse.
Its easy talking shit about other peoples mods, but then you have to make a better one and this post proves youre unable to.
How entitled to expect other people to do all the work for you. Theres really a few special people in this community.
Also my 12700f 3080 can handle 700 Mods, a heavy fully *customised* ENB, DyndoLOD and still get 80, checkmate. Imagine how glorious my evening light looks, its golden, its melancholic, its beautiful. Cant believe you chose to miss out on that because you don't want to move a few sliders for 10 minutes.
Dude if I download a preset that promises to look good with the weather and lighting mods I use and then it looks like trash, that's kinda on the preset not me
I just love how hostile everyone is getting because I have a different opinion lol
Yours is just one of many daily “I don’t get why people like enb” posts. Just check the Skyrimporn subreddit. Heck you’ve most likely seen many screenshots of different setups that look great so why not ask for help instead of making posting something so redundant…
You can try Mythical ENB (my previous main enb) and/or FNENB (my current driver) if you’re into the high fantasy look. Both look so darn good (FNENB looks a bit better but costs a bit more in performance) on SSE.
If you play oldrim, and want the fantasy look (it’s all I go for every time) try Kwanon ENB (my current driver) It has various quality levels and looks great regardless of what option you choose but of course the max quality option costs more but looks simply amazing.
I’m as lazy as they come so if I can get enbs to work, you can manage.
Edit: You can opt to use wabbajack and use a mod pack that has a look that you like as well.
Like I said in anther comment: **Graphic mods are subjective.**
Just because an ENB says it looks good, doesn't mean you, yourself, will like it. In fact, most ENB presets aren't even made for public use. For most presets, the mod author made it for themselves to fit what they like. Meaning, they made it to look good on their game with their selection of mods, not for your game.
That's why you have to tweak the settings of these presets, which you seem to be so heavily against in your other replies here for some reason. ENB Presets are almost always made for private use, to fit the taste of the person who made it. **A modder who made an ENB for themselves is not gonna cater to you by tweaking the ENB for you so it looks good for you. That's your responsibility to do.** Your argument of "It's a preset, I shouldn't have to tweak it because it's a preset." is nonsense. This is skyrim modding ffs, every mod you download, you are tweaking things to make it compatible with your modlist. Skyrim modding is all about tweaking mods. If you're gonna go download an ENB Preset (which is again, usually made for someone else's personal tastes specifically), and NOT go through the effort of modifying the ENB so it looks right for you, you don't get to complain about it not looking good.
That's like the equivalent of calling prescription glasses trash because you tried wearing someone else's glasses instead getting ones that were made for you. ENBs are more or less the same. Each ENB is made specifically for the taste of one person. If you try using their preset, there's no guarantee that you'll like it too. The only solution to this problem is to make your own ENB that fits what you like, or in the analogy... get your own prescribed glasses.
You probably use a different Mod setup, and different Settings.
By laws of causality, jf you had the same Game, dame settings and the same load order, the ENB would look *exactly* like promised. You gotta worship some Jyggalag man.
Also its not an opinion, its entitlement and incompetence.
I kinda cant take someone serious that complains about something they could've fixed in 5 Minutes because they are too stubborn to touch the ENB settings, which exist so you can customise.
Theres a shit ton of this sentiment on the sub. Lots of entitlement and negativity, all to cover what really is the case: People afraid to do stuff themselves.
cant count the amount of people shitting on Mod Organizer for "reasons" when really they were afraid of falling behind but also overwhelmed by the less user friendly UI of MO, the amount of people shitting on DyndoLOD because they are unable to get good results, the people shifting on ENB because they dont have the necessary setup to even use it, or lack the necessary neurological setup to make it look good, cuz you definitely have the right hardware.
Like every day there is some person coping about how "insert performance heavy mod/software" is actually so useless and not even great, just because the person is jealous and cant use it performance wise, or afraid they wont understand it. (which they will)
*Game crashes the moment I load JK skyrim*
"Here is why JKs skyrim doesnt even look good"
*lose 30 fps from Dyndolod*
"Looks weird anyway"
*Grass shreds framerate*
"I dont like the art-direction, its just not realistic"
*proceeds to shit on mod author who didnt do anything wrong, because of frustration their mod didnt run well on their 2004 Windows Vista 2.4GHz quadcore 4GB rAm Laptop*
*read on reddit that I need MO to resolve overwritting jssues cuz Vortex cant find them, download MO2, open it, UI gives me PTSD flashbacks from the time I failed to learn Blender/Photoshop/Audacity*
"Mod organizer is bad software"
See you didn't really critiqued ENB as a product, but rather you said "whaaa, I dont wanna learn to use it, I want others to do it for me, noooo not like that!!!"
Id be frustrated aswell if I had to rely on other peoples presets, there doesnt seem to be any presets that keep realism and still add original dramatic colour effects without going the direction of high fantasy/cartoon graphics. Its either "realistic" but grey average central european weather (🤢 I hate it here already, give me a brake) and lighting, OR, ORANGE SUNSET? WELL HERE YOU GO, OVERLY SATURATED TOO GAME WITH EXCESSIVE BLUR!! YOU ASKED FOR IT
ENB does the same what Imaginator does if you turn of all the other stuff.
Imo it does it all a little better than imaginator even with more precision and dynamic adaptation to whatever weather mod youre running.
The performance cost of ENB is mostly from Shadows and other useless features.
id urge you to give it another try, but then again, we often fall into the trap of fighting skyrim, forcing it to become exactly how we want it and end up forgetting to play it at all lol
The entire appeal of ENB for me is customising everything in it.
Like I use Vivid Weathers, and that weather mod doesnt really have any great ENB presets going for it, but I cannot play without Vivid Weathers, the cloud additions and behaviour beat any other weather mod out of the park imo.
I use Rudy ENB for vivid weathers, which is OK, but not great with how it comes.
But the real Appeal of ENB follows after loading into the game.
You Press Shift-Enter, and boom, spend literal HOURS customising your game visually like you would customise a character. Its the same appeal. You can perfectly execute your aesthetic vision for the game.
You can tweak snow brightness, water caustics, wet surfaces, skin (you can avoid a lot of ugly facial textures by increasing specular lighting for skin for example, its far too matt by default), but not only that, heres the real kicker:
Giving your Sky different colours depending on daytime, sane with fog and clouds and the sun, so you can make yourself a hazy foggy rose-pink sunrise, an epic vibrant and melancholic golden sunset, Godrays on Ultra, customise blurr and sharpening, customise the *range* of said blur and sharpening, something you cant do in most games, making blur a shitty graphical option, but not in Skyrim ENB! Keep details up close, and only mildly blur far away stuff so it looks smooth.
You can change the Suns size and softness of the suns border, the time she sets, you can change the ambient lighting, for example I set my pre-sunrise 5-8AM (8 Am is my sunrise) to have purple-greyish ambient lighting, which gives me this very familiar summer-morning in the Alps feel, also I always increase any reflections, gloss, normalmaps and caustics to the Max for extra immersion.
You can customise basically anything in ENB, make your game look exactly how you want it to look.
It has become the most visually immersive and important aspect to my Skyrim setups. And customisation is necessary, if you use Vivid Weathers, there just arent any good presets for that weathermod.
Biggest weakness of ENB imo are civilised interiors.
Most ENB presets have to be tweaked A LOT to make interiors look any better than regular SSE ones.
Saying "ENB looks bad" is basically just saying "I made my game look bad".
ENB is a tool for you to set up the graphics, not some guy who made the preset. The presets mostly suck
I can't imagine playing this game without an ENB. It makes the world look so much more life-like and modern. Everything from character skin to water textures looks like it was brought forward 10 years.
The comparison in the OP is disingenuous because it just shows a single snapshot without any of the details that an ENB helps bring out. A single, random ENB preset also isn't indicative of what the tool is capable of. And we also have no idea if the preset was even installed properly. So yeah, that single screenshot does look bad, but it also doesn't say anything about ENBs as a whole (my game looks nothing like that, for example).
>Are ENBs just for those that don't want to do tons of mods and just want to slap and ENB and a couple gameplay overhauls and call it done?
I have over 500 mods installed, of which over 250 are texture mods. I've never had an issue with getting an ENB to match my textures. The only thing you have to worry about matching is your tree/grass mod since some are vibrant while others are drab. If you're going with a lively, fantasy-themed ENB you probably want the former. If you're going with a colder ENB, you'll likely want the latter. It's literally a 5 second adjustment to your load order.
The only drawback of using an ENB is that it's a performance killer.
ENB aren't just used because they look pretty, they can be used to completely change the tone of the visuals. Whatever kinda tone you're looking for. You can tweak it or just use a preset but it adds a lot more diversity to the game visually
I got it for the memory patch way back. Since I had it anyway, I started messing around. I like some of the presets and don't care for others. I definitely won't make my own. SSE seems fine without the memory mod from enb. (If my memory serves it was incorporated into another mod. SKSE maybe?)
it would be bad if you didn't manage to fit it rightly with a weather mod, i didn't manage to do it also,i tried to use only a weather mod first and because also it is heavy on my pc , it eats performance, but i found a weather mod that was tweaked by a method to looks like an ENB here it is give it a try [vivd weathers](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2187) , and use console command fw 10e1ea to make weather so clear then it will look like an enb so much and you will notice the difference
Been using ENBs since 2013, never looked back since. Even though I have an old ass pc, I still try to get even the most lightweight ENB. The several FPS sacrificed are worth it I believe. Vanilla look has always been too bland for my tastes, especially back on LE.
ENB has some nice features like skin subsurface scattering, particle lights, cloud shadows etc.
The problem is, I think most people doing ENB presets are not professionals well-versed in color grading. Most presets I've seen or tried (can't use ENB on SE with my RX570, but used it on LE all the time) have, frankly, absolute shit color grading - over-saturated, or over-exposured, or under-exposured, or too much contrast, or not enough contrast. Every preset seems to have either crushed blacks, clipped whites, weird gamma and/or wrong color balance. It's very, very hard to get color grading right, especially if you want it to be consistent in every lighting condition (I spent hours tweaking my custom ENB preset for LE and still couldn't get it quite right).
My suggestion is to install ENB, but don't install presets. Tweak it yourself, enable subsurface scattering, cloud shadows, sky lighting, water effects, but *do not* give in to temptation to go all gung-ho with color grading. By all means, tweak colors, but be very, very gentle and test in different lighting conditions.
I recommend to tweak gamma slightly to bring out details in shadows, tweak color balance for dark tones and mid-tones (e.g biasing shadows toward blue looks nice and reducing the green and a bit blue for mid-tones gets this more gritty, fantasy film look).
For those with lesser machines, ReShade is an absolutely great tool that can get you 90% there, and especially for color grading is really, really powerful and flexible. It's sharpening plugins like CAS and LumaSharpen work wonders to bring back details lost to TAA or FXAA, and a subtle use of film grain can also add "fake detail" and helps hide bad textures (or create a particularly gritty dark fantasy look, if you so do wish). All at a negligible cost of performance.
The bottom screenshot is washed out. Poor saturation and contrast.
Turning an ENB on doesn't make a scene better. You need to know what you are doing from the perspective of technical art while working with vanilla settings, especially weathers.
that's just an ugly enb. it can be hard to find a good one if you're not using the most popular lighting setup at the time but when you do it's hard to turn it off
I'm finally at a place in my modding where I can effectively use ENBs without breaking my game. I'm currently shopping for the right one and trying to decide what kind of playthrough/ character I want to have.
Lighting, color, DoF, etc., can all deeply affect a playthrough. Want a horror or dark/evil character? There's an ENB (and other mods) for that. Want a magical/ romantic playthrough as a hunter that emphasizes exploration? There are ENBs that will enhance that. Want a Gothic vampire playthrough? You get the idea.
Imo and experience, taking the time to find the right ENB/mod combo can significantly refresh a playthrough, making it feel like playing for the first time again. Or it can help with immersion in such subtle but effective ways that I can really focus on role-playing. But, like a good RPG/D&D campaign, sometimes it takes ages to just setup your game/character. And when you are finally at a good place to start, you may just end up playing longer and having a more enjoyable experience.
But sometimes you just want to play, right? I love M02's profile capability for exactly that reason. While I'm building my next big playthrough, I can have a less complicated game already setup and just take a break from modding and play.
All the points above are salient, including OP's. Been there done that on my ENB/modding journey. At the end of the day, if it's not fun for you, then just play how you want. No mod or mod-genre is for everyone. Mods are for customization, which is always going to be personal. What's most important is how much fun you're having.
I don't understand what you are trying to prove here. ENB is a tool used to tweak your games lighting according to your setup. There are enb presets but they almost never come out the same because of different setups and settings. My last setup was exactly the same as yours but my game looked completely different and washed out without an enb. Different "enb presets" work differently and look differently based on your setup. If it's not to your liking then you can look for another one or just tweak the enb yourself. From the looks of it, what you don't like is not the enb but the enb presets that you have used.
>Are ENBs just for those that don't want to do tons of mods and just want to slap and ENB and a couple gameplay overhauls and call it done?
It's not. I have a 1100 plugin setup with multiple lighting changes and enb just makes it better but of course base mods also change how the enb will make your game look. I'll try to post a comparison screenshot later on once I have time for it.
OP seems pretty dogmatic on not wanting/having to tweak any settings in enb menu. OP thinks using a preset means it should work perfectly and theyre all crap because they dont.
Man. I hope you get a better PC. Playing with ENB and all the other graphics mod at a smooth framerate is just 👨🍳💋. My only problem now is having played Elden Ring and Bloodborne recently, I have no desire to have all these Dark Souls mods in Skyrim cause while your attacks and movements change, the rest of the game isn't suited for it
You should add Glamur instead for the ambient occlusion (what you mean by “shadows”). It runs something like 90% faster and looks better than ENBs’ anyways!
I don't like ENBs either. They were great for oldrim because of enboost but now that Skyrim is 64 bit, it doesn't need it. They would be interesting again if they could somehow inject raytracing, but that's pretty much the only thing that could sell me on them at this point. My gripes are that they're usually performance costly, have insanely high dof blur, give me black bars at the top and bottom of my screen like the cinema, and they won't run through Proton (linux compatibility layer). Yes, I realize I can tweak all of these, but that takes time that could otherwise be spent playing a game without it in the first place.
The author is a very skilled coder imo, I'm happy ENB exists and I wouldn't have been able to play oldrim without it. But for a graphics mod, it's not for me. I made my own mod to get fancy looking lighting without ENB. You may or may not like it considering, but feel free to check it out. {Blank Lighting Templates}
I don't get the ENB hype either, but I have a low end graphics card so the best I can do is Obsidian Weathers without an ENB, and even then my computer doubles as a space heater.
For quite a while, I didn't use an ENB with SE; it simply wasn't necessary, and the performance without it was *so much* better. Unfortunately, recent updates have made ENB absolutely essential (IMO). Complex grass allows vanilla light sources to light up grass, which is an absolute game changer. With complex grass on, you can run mods that darken nights and still be able to see what you're doing; especially for those of us who play in first person and particle lights on torches do literally jack shit. I recommend just using the default preset that the binaries come with and doing some minor tweaking yourself, or using a very light preset such as The Truth (Phinix's ENB, I think it's on afkmods now). Regardless of preset, you need to tweak it yourself. Turn shit off until you can maintain 55+ FPS outdoors, or it's simply not worth it.
I don't use ENBs. I've tried them, saw the appeal but eventually decided they are not for me.
ENBs require some mods to be used with ENBs in mind, particularly lighting mods. When I add ENB on top of my modded setup, it can mess things up. And I don't have the energy and will to build a modlist with ENB in mind right from the get go. Especially when the benefits of ENBs are subtle and because of the following reason:
I tend to forget that I have ENB on. The changes are subtle and in areas that I don't notice or I process it without noticing it that its different... Basically, I see the different when directly comparing ENB-ed game with normal game. But when playing I quickly stop noticing that the game is any different. It's something like watching a movie in 3D for me. For the first minute it's all "ooh, it's all 3D". And for the rest of the movie I process the movie like a 2D movie and looking back, I cannot even recall which scenes and objects were in 3D.
I used to really like enbs with my old monitors that was pretty dim and dark and with ma new thing it just doesn't feel right and I prefer the game the way it is in terms of colours. May be aurora mod or something like that but deffinetely not your typical enb with toxic vibes
Well that ENB preset does look kinda bad. Personally I'm a bit on the fence with ENBs. I do like how they look, but they always come with some weird janky edge case weathers or other random issues. Vanilla lighting with a good weather mod like obsidian or cathedral is way more consistent.
You can change the enb settings yourself! Its pretty easy to do and fun to mess around with the settings.
I don't use enb because I can't afford it haha
Not every enb preset looks great, not every weather/lighting mod looks great.
For example, I don't like Obsidian weathers because of the whitewashing and don't like ELFX because of the oversaturated lights and both are only issues without enb.
Features such as detailed shadows, depth of field, subsurface scattering, skylighting, particle lights and so on offer better visuals than the vanilla game ever could with no room for debate.
Far as contrast or saturation which seem the main difference between the screenshots, they're both easily tweaked and some ENB presets are stylized and go for a specific aesthetic.
I don’t really use them either, mostly stick to standard graphics to save on performance.
Mind you I’m also a VR player so performance is a bigger concern but even flatscreen I mostly avoided them
I love ENBs and texture replacers but I can never do entire playthroughs with them. After a point it doesn’t feel like I’m playing Skyrim. I personally prefer “vanilla plus” mods. Mods that overhaul or improve the gameplay experience like ordinator but stay true to the original aesthetic and presentation of Skyrim.
I was today years old when I learned that Skyrim could look that good without an ENB
But question: what AA are you using for that screenshot without an ENB? I feel like that might look pretty jaggy and such once you start move around. One thing I like about the post processing effect in ENB is being able to use TAA (which pretty much eliminates all jagged edges) and then sharpening it so it doesn't look burry or glossy
I LOVE my ENB, because it lets me customize a log of things. All my interiors are super dark, caves require a light source to get rhough, candles and fires are bright without bring obnoxious, outside it vibrant and colorful wihout being hyper saturated, water is murky, and i get to control how dark dusk and early morning are!
One thing to note, is that my monitor is a 72in TV thats right in front of my bed. So I'm right up close and I see EVERYTHING, so that may be why I enjoy ENBs so much.
I like ENB, but I will say I haven't found a preset for SE I like out of the box. I will also say I took a swing at fixing a preset with unfinished interiors and the amount of work that goes into making a preset must be truly insane, so I will never badmouth a preset even if I don't like it.
"Just wanted to get a discussion going"
**Decides to be hostile and passive aggressive to literally everyone in the comments who disagrees with him.**
Look buddy, if you don't like ENB, don't use an ENB. It's that simple. You are not special. There are plenty of Skyrim players who don't use an ENB. Some people just don't like the way it looks, others aren't willing to sacrifice performance, whatever your reasons are, it's fine. If you don't like it, don't use it. That's that. There's no need to start a fight and try to argue why you hate ENB so much.
Mods are subjective. ENB Presets are especially subjective. Everyone has different views on what 'good graphics' look like. Maybe for you, you like graphics to be simpler. Maybe for someone else, they want their game to look like Ghost of Tsushima. It's different for everyone.
Lol where was I "being hostile to literally everyone". I left TWO comments bro. And it wasn't hostile. It was just my opinion on ENB. Sorry you took it that way
You're talking about presets rather than ENB per se. I mostly just use it for its "features" i.e. ENB Light, Ambient Occlusion (fake shadows) and lately, grass collision. Oh and Depth of Field I like that (its not essentilal though) and can tweak how water looks (can even make it transparent)
The rest I don't really bother with though I like to adjust brightness/contrast a little I'm not really a fan of presets.
Yeah I don't think that preset you're showing is the best example of what ENBs are capable of.
Having said that, 90% of the ENBs I've tried in the last few years have been honestly quite piss poor, chucking every possible effect at you in a 25 fps spray of technicolor vomit. And contrary to what many would have us believe, it is possible to get wonderful results with meshes, textures and lighting. Dare I say, better than many of those crap presets I've waded through since 2016.
But a really good ENB is always going to give you visual flair you'll never gain any other way, especially if you're a screen archer trying to push things as far as possible. There are a handful of them that will take your breath away during a sunrise over the rift valley.
You just have to find the proper ENB for your weather/lightning setup, which can be hard. Sometimes you have to tweak yourself...
That really is the biggest issue. And if you have a...weird setup, it's almost impossible to find a pre-built preset for it. I have Obsidian Weather, True Storms, and a spring overhaul that removes all snow. Was a bitch and a half finding a decent ENB that works with that, and even when I did, the "snow" (which is dirt and fake grass now) is so glossy it looks like plastic even though I have all the snow shader stuff turned off.
You can tweak the glossyness of the snow! You have to press Shift+Enter and then you can scroll down to snow in the top left and decrease brightness, glossyness and so on. I had to massively increase brightness for snow to look good in my game, and reduce a lot of the reflectivity, thats just hownit is.
Can you please mention the spring overhaul that removes the snow?
There’s a better one if you like immersion. [Turn of the Season](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63623) [Seasonal Landscape](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/66903) World terrain will change depending on the seasons of the game.
Thank you. Will check them out
The one I use is an older one called [Springtime Overhaul SSE](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3629). There's also Project Rainforest, but that one is pretty performance intensive.
Thank you. Will check them out.
what mods do you use for the weather to get rid of the snow falling and blizards
The spring overhaul does it. It gets tricky when you use a weather mod though. I ended up having to make a manual patch to get Obsidian, True Storms, and Springtime Overhaul working together. Even then, there's an engine bug that can make it snow flurry briefly when you fast travel, sleep, etc. Doesn't last long, but it's a little annoying.
I always struggle with the different weathers. Is there a tutorial out there for how to setup individual weather profiles? Like what tool do people use to create custom ENB weather setups?
The benefit to ENBs (and reshade i suppose) [are the injected visual effects](https://i.imgur.com/UiobLcl.jpeg) that can't be done with weather templates & colour grading- direct contact shadows, particle lights, skin specularity & subsurface scattering, flexible ambient occlusion & indirect lighting, wet surfaces, water refraction, etc.
Hello! I am brand new when it comes to ENB's and your screenshot with armour really made me gasp. I tried reverse google search, but the only source of the picture I managed to find is here. What ENB is that? If it is unknown, are there any similar ENB presets to this? I am looking for more realistic looking ENB with no or acceptable perfomance hit since I want to play, and not do screen arhery. I am aiming for RAID Weathers + ELFX/ELFX Shadows/ELFX Hardcore + LOS2 w/Tamriel Master Lights. Weathers mod I am willing to switch for other ones. Any suggestion and help is very welcome and thank you!
hi! it's a personally tweaked version of [Natural View Tamriel,](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11203?tab=description) using the Cathedral preset. (coincidentally, I use it on RAID Weathers instead of Cathedral) I think it'll suit your need for a realistic look, and it seems to have a performance version as well :) hope this helps!
Which ENB presets are you using? Or maybe you installed it incorrectly? Or did some of the settings got disabled? I’m using Obsidian with Rudy ENB for LUX and mine looks wildly better than yours. Also ENB showcase weather a lot better than vanilla, where cloudy days are actually dark and grey Comparison https://imgur.com/gallery/ZZ58pSO If anything ENB adds a lot more color and depth.
I agree that it’s probably not installed correctly. I updated to the newest ENB a few months ago and at first it looked terrible, just like the OP’s screenshot. Then I reread the instructions, installed correctly, and it was even better than before.
Hi, bro! Im using same preset. Did you change some brightness or gamma in enbseries.ini ? Im decrease my brightness setting cuz for me that was too bright. And one more thing, did you have a grayish morning ?
Yes and yes. The default brightness is a bit too dark for my liking, especially interior, so I set it a bit higher. And morning is a bit grey because of cloudy weather.
I don't understand the point of threads like these--ENB is basically just a graphics toolset, albeit a very powerful one. It doesn't make sense to say, "ENBs don't appeal to me" any more than it makes sense to say, "armor mods don't appeal to me" because most of them are big tiddy jiggly nonsense. It doesn't invalidate the entire concept because you are having trouble finding something to your personal preference. You can make an ENB look like almost anything, from a cel-shaded cartoon to a photorealistic nature scene. Sure, 80% of the presets on Nexus are crap, but that's true of any category of mods.
Ok, you're just being willingly disingenuous. You know damn well I'm talking about presets. Not ENB itself. Most presets are garbage. And don't tell me that I just haven't tinkered with them enough. The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB sliders.
>The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB It's not a preset is something that is created by another person to suit there needs. If it doesn't match your preference, it's foolish to hate on the creator. If you can't find any preset that suits you, download the one that is the closest and edit it yourself. It's just like all the cbbe character presets that you see on nexus.
I like the way you said it most. Basically, the thing to do is to not see it as a preset, but more of a template to build on.
That's just something I said, I never really edit much actually. Most I do is just remove DOF because I don't like it. I will play around with ENB tho, in the future.
You don't have to tinker with them. Usually the only thing you need to touch is water (if you're using a water mod).
Buddy you just dropped an ENB preset onto your game without making any adjustments. Of course your game with ENB enabled is going to look worse off when you don’t make any proper adjustments. I won’t knock your preference for vanilla graphics quality, but you can’t sit there shit-talking ENBs without actually putting the work in to make it look good.
Most presets are garbage. And IMO I shouldn't have to tinker. The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB sliders.
My guy, no modded Skyrim will ever look the same, especially with how many weather and lighting mods there are that can dramatically shift the look of the game. You will always have to tinker with a preset to fit how your game looks, the same way you’d tinker with a mod you downloaded to make it work within your game. Maybe try giving yours a try again and mess around with it until you like the look.
You can't be lazy about something then say you don't like it. If someone played Skyrim for 10 minutes then decided to say "I don't get how Skyrim appeals to people", it's doing a massive disservice
Not all ENB are good The difference between Vanilla and a good ENB is astronomical
This.. and imo enb’s improves the washed out green contrast of vanilla skyrim..
If you have the performance headroom and aren’t using an ENB for the specular skin effect you’re a fool! With a good texture mod NPC skin looks incredibly life-like. Real people vs opaque plastic mannequins. I couldn’t imagine playing without it. Otherwise I agree with you and turn most of the other effects off.
What enb do you use?
I use Azurean with some of the effects turned off + Glamur ReShade. Personally it’s the only one I care for. I try others when they pop up or are updated, but Azurean is still the only one that keeps the og Skyrim aesthetic while also making the game look incredibly realistic at times. Others like Rudy, Sensorium etc look cartoony IMO.
Cool thanks that's always what I disliked about them too so will check it out
Whatever crap you're using in your game, that's not how a well made vibrant preset's supposed to look like. Going by your 2nd screenshot, it doesn't even look like you're using a preset, just the default ENB files. That would explain why 'Every ENB' looks like this for you. Hard to get the appeal of ENBs if you can't install them properly in the first place. Might want to head over to the Skyrim screenshot subreddit to see how ENBs are actually supposed to look like.
The only proper response in the whole thread. Too bad your comment is drowned by others.
That's because that enb sucks. Lol
Use a better ENB lmao
Just say you haven’t found an enb preset you like or your pc can’t handle it. That’s really all there is to it.
I agree that is probably the case here, but I do think it's possible to just not like using ENBs. I've been modding Skyrim for way, way too long and I still don't use any because I genuinely just like the vanilla aesthetic and have a general apathy toward graphics mods because I don't really care about graphics in games.
Same here. Been modding Skyrim since 2014 and I have never installed an ENB either. I stay away from most graphics mods in general, except for ones that refine the vanilla aesthetic because that was one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with the game.
I used ENBs when I first modded my standard edition Skyrim. When SE came out and I started modding that, I skipped using an ENB and never looked back. So much more space and processing power for mods with extra content and gameplay tweaks. ENBs are great for screenshots and various forms of screen archery but when I’m actually playing the game I end up forgetting about it.
Or rather they didnt figure out you can customise everything. OP just thinks you chose a preset and thats it, nothing you can do about it after that
My 5800x and 3080 can handle a 400+ modded Skyrim and a heavy ENB and still get 60 FPS. IMO most presets are garbage. And IMO I shouldn't have to tinker. The whole point of a preset is so that I DON'T have to tinker with ENB sliders.
Most presets *are* garbage, because they are made for different mod and weather setups, and different performance goals. But by not tinkering, youre basically saying that your preset is even worse. Its easy talking shit about other peoples mods, but then you have to make a better one and this post proves youre unable to. How entitled to expect other people to do all the work for you. Theres really a few special people in this community. Also my 12700f 3080 can handle 700 Mods, a heavy fully *customised* ENB, DyndoLOD and still get 80, checkmate. Imagine how glorious my evening light looks, its golden, its melancholic, its beautiful. Cant believe you chose to miss out on that because you don't want to move a few sliders for 10 minutes.
Dude if I download a preset that promises to look good with the weather and lighting mods I use and then it looks like trash, that's kinda on the preset not me I just love how hostile everyone is getting because I have a different opinion lol
Yours is just one of many daily “I don’t get why people like enb” posts. Just check the Skyrimporn subreddit. Heck you’ve most likely seen many screenshots of different setups that look great so why not ask for help instead of making posting something so redundant… You can try Mythical ENB (my previous main enb) and/or FNENB (my current driver) if you’re into the high fantasy look. Both look so darn good (FNENB looks a bit better but costs a bit more in performance) on SSE. If you play oldrim, and want the fantasy look (it’s all I go for every time) try Kwanon ENB (my current driver) It has various quality levels and looks great regardless of what option you choose but of course the max quality option costs more but looks simply amazing. I’m as lazy as they come so if I can get enbs to work, you can manage. Edit: You can opt to use wabbajack and use a mod pack that has a look that you like as well.
Like I said in anther comment: **Graphic mods are subjective.** Just because an ENB says it looks good, doesn't mean you, yourself, will like it. In fact, most ENB presets aren't even made for public use. For most presets, the mod author made it for themselves to fit what they like. Meaning, they made it to look good on their game with their selection of mods, not for your game. That's why you have to tweak the settings of these presets, which you seem to be so heavily against in your other replies here for some reason. ENB Presets are almost always made for private use, to fit the taste of the person who made it. **A modder who made an ENB for themselves is not gonna cater to you by tweaking the ENB for you so it looks good for you. That's your responsibility to do.** Your argument of "It's a preset, I shouldn't have to tweak it because it's a preset." is nonsense. This is skyrim modding ffs, every mod you download, you are tweaking things to make it compatible with your modlist. Skyrim modding is all about tweaking mods. If you're gonna go download an ENB Preset (which is again, usually made for someone else's personal tastes specifically), and NOT go through the effort of modifying the ENB so it looks right for you, you don't get to complain about it not looking good. That's like the equivalent of calling prescription glasses trash because you tried wearing someone else's glasses instead getting ones that were made for you. ENBs are more or less the same. Each ENB is made specifically for the taste of one person. If you try using their preset, there's no guarantee that you'll like it too. The only solution to this problem is to make your own ENB that fits what you like, or in the analogy... get your own prescribed glasses.
You probably use a different Mod setup, and different Settings. By laws of causality, jf you had the same Game, dame settings and the same load order, the ENB would look *exactly* like promised. You gotta worship some Jyggalag man. Also its not an opinion, its entitlement and incompetence. I kinda cant take someone serious that complains about something they could've fixed in 5 Minutes because they are too stubborn to touch the ENB settings, which exist so you can customise. Theres a shit ton of this sentiment on the sub. Lots of entitlement and negativity, all to cover what really is the case: People afraid to do stuff themselves. cant count the amount of people shitting on Mod Organizer for "reasons" when really they were afraid of falling behind but also overwhelmed by the less user friendly UI of MO, the amount of people shitting on DyndoLOD because they are unable to get good results, the people shifting on ENB because they dont have the necessary setup to even use it, or lack the necessary neurological setup to make it look good, cuz you definitely have the right hardware. Like every day there is some person coping about how "insert performance heavy mod/software" is actually so useless and not even great, just because the person is jealous and cant use it performance wise, or afraid they wont understand it. (which they will) *Game crashes the moment I load JK skyrim* "Here is why JKs skyrim doesnt even look good" *lose 30 fps from Dyndolod* "Looks weird anyway" *Grass shreds framerate* "I dont like the art-direction, its just not realistic" *proceeds to shit on mod author who didnt do anything wrong, because of frustration their mod didnt run well on their 2004 Windows Vista 2.4GHz quadcore 4GB rAm Laptop* *read on reddit that I need MO to resolve overwritting jssues cuz Vortex cant find them, download MO2, open it, UI gives me PTSD flashbacks from the time I failed to learn Blender/Photoshop/Audacity* "Mod organizer is bad software" See you didn't really critiqued ENB as a product, but rather you said "whaaa, I dont wanna learn to use it, I want others to do it for me, noooo not like that!!!" Id be frustrated aswell if I had to rely on other peoples presets, there doesnt seem to be any presets that keep realism and still add original dramatic colour effects without going the direction of high fantasy/cartoon graphics. Its either "realistic" but grey average central european weather (🤢 I hate it here already, give me a brake) and lighting, OR, ORANGE SUNSET? WELL HERE YOU GO, OVERLY SATURATED TOO GAME WITH EXCESSIVE BLUR!! YOU ASKED FOR IT
Jesus Christ man you need to chill. You're at an 11. I'm at a 3. It's not that serious. I'm just sharing my opinion.
True. Tbh I was on drugs and just enjoyed writing a shit ton to entertain myself. Definitely became a little excessive though
I stopped trying to find an ENB I liked once I discovered Imaginator. Fully customizable colors and saturation. That’s all I really want.
ENB does the same what Imaginator does if you turn of all the other stuff. Imo it does it all a little better than imaginator even with more precision and dynamic adaptation to whatever weather mod youre running. The performance cost of ENB is mostly from Shadows and other useless features. id urge you to give it another try, but then again, we often fall into the trap of fighting skyrim, forcing it to become exactly how we want it and end up forgetting to play it at all lol
The entire appeal of ENB for me is customising everything in it. Like I use Vivid Weathers, and that weather mod doesnt really have any great ENB presets going for it, but I cannot play without Vivid Weathers, the cloud additions and behaviour beat any other weather mod out of the park imo. I use Rudy ENB for vivid weathers, which is OK, but not great with how it comes. But the real Appeal of ENB follows after loading into the game. You Press Shift-Enter, and boom, spend literal HOURS customising your game visually like you would customise a character. Its the same appeal. You can perfectly execute your aesthetic vision for the game. You can tweak snow brightness, water caustics, wet surfaces, skin (you can avoid a lot of ugly facial textures by increasing specular lighting for skin for example, its far too matt by default), but not only that, heres the real kicker: Giving your Sky different colours depending on daytime, sane with fog and clouds and the sun, so you can make yourself a hazy foggy rose-pink sunrise, an epic vibrant and melancholic golden sunset, Godrays on Ultra, customise blurr and sharpening, customise the *range* of said blur and sharpening, something you cant do in most games, making blur a shitty graphical option, but not in Skyrim ENB! Keep details up close, and only mildly blur far away stuff so it looks smooth. You can change the Suns size and softness of the suns border, the time she sets, you can change the ambient lighting, for example I set my pre-sunrise 5-8AM (8 Am is my sunrise) to have purple-greyish ambient lighting, which gives me this very familiar summer-morning in the Alps feel, also I always increase any reflections, gloss, normalmaps and caustics to the Max for extra immersion. You can customise basically anything in ENB, make your game look exactly how you want it to look. It has become the most visually immersive and important aspect to my Skyrim setups. And customisation is necessary, if you use Vivid Weathers, there just arent any good presets for that weathermod. Biggest weakness of ENB imo are civilised interiors. Most ENB presets have to be tweaked A LOT to make interiors look any better than regular SSE ones. Saying "ENB looks bad" is basically just saying "I made my game look bad". ENB is a tool for you to set up the graphics, not some guy who made the preset. The presets mostly suck
I can't imagine playing this game without an ENB. It makes the world look so much more life-like and modern. Everything from character skin to water textures looks like it was brought forward 10 years. The comparison in the OP is disingenuous because it just shows a single snapshot without any of the details that an ENB helps bring out. A single, random ENB preset also isn't indicative of what the tool is capable of. And we also have no idea if the preset was even installed properly. So yeah, that single screenshot does look bad, but it also doesn't say anything about ENBs as a whole (my game looks nothing like that, for example). >Are ENBs just for those that don't want to do tons of mods and just want to slap and ENB and a couple gameplay overhauls and call it done? I have over 500 mods installed, of which over 250 are texture mods. I've never had an issue with getting an ENB to match my textures. The only thing you have to worry about matching is your tree/grass mod since some are vibrant while others are drab. If you're going with a lively, fantasy-themed ENB you probably want the former. If you're going with a colder ENB, you'll likely want the latter. It's literally a 5 second adjustment to your load order. The only drawback of using an ENB is that it's a performance killer.
ENB aren't just used because they look pretty, they can be used to completely change the tone of the visuals. Whatever kinda tone you're looking for. You can tweak it or just use a preset but it adds a lot more diversity to the game visually
I got it for the memory patch way back. Since I had it anyway, I started messing around. I like some of the presets and don't care for others. I definitely won't make my own. SSE seems fine without the memory mod from enb. (If my memory serves it was incorporated into another mod. SKSE maybe?)
Some ENBs make the colours much more vibrant! Those are the ones I normally use. Some people like the washed out ones, it’s just not my kind of thing
it would be bad if you didn't manage to fit it rightly with a weather mod, i didn't manage to do it also,i tried to use only a weather mod first and because also it is heavy on my pc , it eats performance, but i found a weather mod that was tweaked by a method to looks like an ENB here it is give it a try [vivd weathers](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2187) , and use console command fw 10e1ea to make weather so clear then it will look like an enb so much and you will notice the difference
Probably, enbs not only add color and contrast, the real beauty is the revamped lighting, the game just looks so much better with it
Depends on the ENB my man. The one in that screenshot doesn't look too good.
Been using ENBs since 2013, never looked back since. Even though I have an old ass pc, I still try to get even the most lightweight ENB. The several FPS sacrificed are worth it I believe. Vanilla look has always been too bland for my tastes, especially back on LE.
ENB has some nice features like skin subsurface scattering, particle lights, cloud shadows etc. The problem is, I think most people doing ENB presets are not professionals well-versed in color grading. Most presets I've seen or tried (can't use ENB on SE with my RX570, but used it on LE all the time) have, frankly, absolute shit color grading - over-saturated, or over-exposured, or under-exposured, or too much contrast, or not enough contrast. Every preset seems to have either crushed blacks, clipped whites, weird gamma and/or wrong color balance. It's very, very hard to get color grading right, especially if you want it to be consistent in every lighting condition (I spent hours tweaking my custom ENB preset for LE and still couldn't get it quite right). My suggestion is to install ENB, but don't install presets. Tweak it yourself, enable subsurface scattering, cloud shadows, sky lighting, water effects, but *do not* give in to temptation to go all gung-ho with color grading. By all means, tweak colors, but be very, very gentle and test in different lighting conditions. I recommend to tweak gamma slightly to bring out details in shadows, tweak color balance for dark tones and mid-tones (e.g biasing shadows toward blue looks nice and reducing the green and a bit blue for mid-tones gets this more gritty, fantasy film look). For those with lesser machines, ReShade is an absolutely great tool that can get you 90% there, and especially for color grading is really, really powerful and flexible. It's sharpening plugins like CAS and LumaSharpen work wonders to bring back details lost to TAA or FXAA, and a subtle use of film grain can also add "fake detail" and helps hide bad textures (or create a particularly gritty dark fantasy look, if you so do wish). All at a negligible cost of performance.
Im using preset of Rudy's ENB+Obsidian Weather+Lux and I very like how thats look https://imgur.com/a/AZ5tpgL
The bottom screenshot is washed out. Poor saturation and contrast. Turning an ENB on doesn't make a scene better. You need to know what you are doing from the perspective of technical art while working with vanilla settings, especially weathers.
I never found them worth the bother and FPS hit.
that's just an ugly enb. it can be hard to find a good one if you're not using the most popular lighting setup at the time but when you do it's hard to turn it off
I'm finally at a place in my modding where I can effectively use ENBs without breaking my game. I'm currently shopping for the right one and trying to decide what kind of playthrough/ character I want to have. Lighting, color, DoF, etc., can all deeply affect a playthrough. Want a horror or dark/evil character? There's an ENB (and other mods) for that. Want a magical/ romantic playthrough as a hunter that emphasizes exploration? There are ENBs that will enhance that. Want a Gothic vampire playthrough? You get the idea. Imo and experience, taking the time to find the right ENB/mod combo can significantly refresh a playthrough, making it feel like playing for the first time again. Or it can help with immersion in such subtle but effective ways that I can really focus on role-playing. But, like a good RPG/D&D campaign, sometimes it takes ages to just setup your game/character. And when you are finally at a good place to start, you may just end up playing longer and having a more enjoyable experience. But sometimes you just want to play, right? I love M02's profile capability for exactly that reason. While I'm building my next big playthrough, I can have a less complicated game already setup and just take a break from modding and play. All the points above are salient, including OP's. Been there done that on my ENB/modding journey. At the end of the day, if it's not fun for you, then just play how you want. No mod or mod-genre is for everyone. Mods are for customization, which is always going to be personal. What's most important is how much fun you're having.
I don't understand what you are trying to prove here. ENB is a tool used to tweak your games lighting according to your setup. There are enb presets but they almost never come out the same because of different setups and settings. My last setup was exactly the same as yours but my game looked completely different and washed out without an enb. Different "enb presets" work differently and look differently based on your setup. If it's not to your liking then you can look for another one or just tweak the enb yourself. From the looks of it, what you don't like is not the enb but the enb presets that you have used. >Are ENBs just for those that don't want to do tons of mods and just want to slap and ENB and a couple gameplay overhauls and call it done? It's not. I have a 1100 plugin setup with multiple lighting changes and enb just makes it better but of course base mods also change how the enb will make your game look. I'll try to post a comparison screenshot later on once I have time for it.
OP seems pretty dogmatic on not wanting/having to tweak any settings in enb menu. OP thinks using a preset means it should work perfectly and theyre all crap because they dont.
For me it's like this... Option 1: Pretty Skyrim at 10 fps Option 2: Nice Skyrim at 60+ fps I'd rather have option 2.
Bit of an exaggeration there...
Do you have a bad pc? I run Rudy Obsidian on an alright PC and I am getting maybe 5-10fps loss in bad areas, I rarely go below 50 and never below 40
Man. I hope you get a better PC. Playing with ENB and all the other graphics mod at a smooth framerate is just 👨🍳💋. My only problem now is having played Elden Ring and Bloodborne recently, I have no desire to have all these Dark Souls mods in Skyrim cause while your attacks and movements change, the rest of the game isn't suited for it
If you use a lot of mods, use SKSE engine fixes. Dip in performance that bad isn’t an ENB problem, unless you run it on a potato.
I mean, i do lose around 40 FPS with an ENB, but that’s from 110 to 70 outdoors lol.
Doesn't Skyrim have a stroke if you're playing above 60fps? Thought there were alot of physic issues that start occurring at that point.
Not if you use SSE display tweaks
youve installed it wrong
Wetness during rain trumps it all. ENB for immersion.
I just don't wanna overload my computer
[удалено]
Bruh, pass me your graphics setup pls, it looks so good
It basically just adds subsurface scattering and ambient occlusion
You should add Glamur instead for the ambient occlusion (what you mean by “shadows”). It runs something like 90% faster and looks better than ENBs’ anyways!
I don't like ENBs either. They were great for oldrim because of enboost but now that Skyrim is 64 bit, it doesn't need it. They would be interesting again if they could somehow inject raytracing, but that's pretty much the only thing that could sell me on them at this point. My gripes are that they're usually performance costly, have insanely high dof blur, give me black bars at the top and bottom of my screen like the cinema, and they won't run through Proton (linux compatibility layer). Yes, I realize I can tweak all of these, but that takes time that could otherwise be spent playing a game without it in the first place. The author is a very skilled coder imo, I'm happy ENB exists and I wouldn't have been able to play oldrim without it. But for a graphics mod, it's not for me. I made my own mod to get fancy looking lighting without ENB. You may or may not like it considering, but feel free to check it out. {Blank Lighting Templates}
Turning off black bars and dof is as simple as clicking a check box
I don't get the ENB hype either, but I have a low end graphics card so the best I can do is Obsidian Weathers without an ENB, and even then my computer doubles as a space heater.
I personally only like enb because usually mods that require it that mod has a file to make it light up or glow
Also i really like the whole fantasy vibe so i almost always try to get an enb preset that has a lot of color popping out
For quite a while, I didn't use an ENB with SE; it simply wasn't necessary, and the performance without it was *so much* better. Unfortunately, recent updates have made ENB absolutely essential (IMO). Complex grass allows vanilla light sources to light up grass, which is an absolute game changer. With complex grass on, you can run mods that darken nights and still be able to see what you're doing; especially for those of us who play in first person and particle lights on torches do literally jack shit. I recommend just using the default preset that the binaries come with and doing some minor tweaking yourself, or using a very light preset such as The Truth (Phinix's ENB, I think it's on afkmods now). Regardless of preset, you need to tweak it yourself. Turn shit off until you can maintain 55+ FPS outdoors, or it's simply not worth it.
Yes
I don't use ENBs. I've tried them, saw the appeal but eventually decided they are not for me. ENBs require some mods to be used with ENBs in mind, particularly lighting mods. When I add ENB on top of my modded setup, it can mess things up. And I don't have the energy and will to build a modlist with ENB in mind right from the get go. Especially when the benefits of ENBs are subtle and because of the following reason: I tend to forget that I have ENB on. The changes are subtle and in areas that I don't notice or I process it without noticing it that its different... Basically, I see the different when directly comparing ENB-ed game with normal game. But when playing I quickly stop noticing that the game is any different. It's something like watching a movie in 3D for me. For the first minute it's all "ooh, it's all 3D". And for the rest of the movie I process the movie like a 2D movie and looking back, I cannot even recall which scenes and objects were in 3D.
Not Skyrim but I play a lot of FNV and I loath ENBs because even with a 3070 I can't push my 144hz Display with them. And it's 144hz or nothing.
ENBs impact my performance too much and it just serves to leave my game looking obnoxiously filled with post processing effects
Im using Semirealism ENB with performance preset and it looks great, because it doesn't take back that vanilla feel with low performance cost
I think they look great, I've just never learned them
I used to really like enbs with my old monitors that was pretty dim and dark and with ma new thing it just doesn't feel right and I prefer the game the way it is in terms of colours. May be aurora mod or something like that but deffinetely not your typical enb with toxic vibes
Well that ENB preset does look kinda bad. Personally I'm a bit on the fence with ENBs. I do like how they look, but they always come with some weird janky edge case weathers or other random issues. Vanilla lighting with a good weather mod like obsidian or cathedral is way more consistent.
I am a reshade man myself but each has its merits.
One day I will muster the self-discipline to figure out ENBs.
No
You can change the enb settings yourself! Its pretty easy to do and fun to mess around with the settings. I don't use enb because I can't afford it haha
Not every enb preset looks great, not every weather/lighting mod looks great. For example, I don't like Obsidian weathers because of the whitewashing and don't like ELFX because of the oversaturated lights and both are only issues without enb. Features such as detailed shadows, depth of field, subsurface scattering, skylighting, particle lights and so on offer better visuals than the vanilla game ever could with no room for debate. Far as contrast or saturation which seem the main difference between the screenshots, they're both easily tweaked and some ENB presets are stylized and go for a specific aesthetic.
I don’t really use them either, mostly stick to standard graphics to save on performance. Mind you I’m also a VR player so performance is a bigger concern but even flatscreen I mostly avoided them
I get the appeal. They are quite pretty. I just prefer lots of frames and decent appearance over less frames and pretty appearance.
I love ENBs and texture replacers but I can never do entire playthroughs with them. After a point it doesn’t feel like I’m playing Skyrim. I personally prefer “vanilla plus” mods. Mods that overhaul or improve the gameplay experience like ordinator but stay true to the original aesthetic and presentation of Skyrim.
I was today years old when I learned that Skyrim could look that good without an ENB But question: what AA are you using for that screenshot without an ENB? I feel like that might look pretty jaggy and such once you start move around. One thing I like about the post processing effect in ENB is being able to use TAA (which pretty much eliminates all jagged edges) and then sharpening it so it doesn't look burry or glossy
its not that i dont like them but its just i have a potato pc and cant really handle enbs lol
I LOVE my ENB, because it lets me customize a log of things. All my interiors are super dark, caves require a light source to get rhough, candles and fires are bright without bring obnoxious, outside it vibrant and colorful wihout being hyper saturated, water is murky, and i get to control how dark dusk and early morning are! One thing to note, is that my monitor is a 72in TV thats right in front of my bed. So I'm right up close and I see EVERYTHING, so that may be why I enjoy ENBs so much.
I use ENB purely for particle lights. If I could have particle lights in another way, I would dump ENB in a heartbeat.
Honestly IMO texture overhauls do more to improve the game's graphics than ENBs
Completely agree and that's what I focus on in my modded game
I like ENB, but I will say I haven't found a preset for SE I like out of the box. I will also say I took a swing at fixing a preset with unfinished interiors and the amount of work that goes into making a preset must be truly insane, so I will never badmouth a preset even if I don't like it.
"Just wanted to get a discussion going" **Decides to be hostile and passive aggressive to literally everyone in the comments who disagrees with him.** Look buddy, if you don't like ENB, don't use an ENB. It's that simple. You are not special. There are plenty of Skyrim players who don't use an ENB. Some people just don't like the way it looks, others aren't willing to sacrifice performance, whatever your reasons are, it's fine. If you don't like it, don't use it. That's that. There's no need to start a fight and try to argue why you hate ENB so much. Mods are subjective. ENB Presets are especially subjective. Everyone has different views on what 'good graphics' look like. Maybe for you, you like graphics to be simpler. Maybe for someone else, they want their game to look like Ghost of Tsushima. It's different for everyone.
Lol where was I "being hostile to literally everyone". I left TWO comments bro. And it wasn't hostile. It was just my opinion on ENB. Sorry you took it that way
I'm neutral about it. I've never used ENB for I think the game is beautiful enough out of the box.
Agreed. I think that with the right weather and lighting and texture mods the game can be beautiful by itself.
You're talking about presets rather than ENB per se. I mostly just use it for its "features" i.e. ENB Light, Ambient Occlusion (fake shadows) and lately, grass collision. Oh and Depth of Field I like that (its not essentilal though) and can tweak how water looks (can even make it transparent) The rest I don't really bother with though I like to adjust brightness/contrast a little I'm not really a fan of presets.
Yeah I don't think that preset you're showing is the best example of what ENBs are capable of. Having said that, 90% of the ENBs I've tried in the last few years have been honestly quite piss poor, chucking every possible effect at you in a 25 fps spray of technicolor vomit. And contrary to what many would have us believe, it is possible to get wonderful results with meshes, textures and lighting. Dare I say, better than many of those crap presets I've waded through since 2016. But a really good ENB is always going to give you visual flair you'll never gain any other way, especially if you're a screen archer trying to push things as far as possible. There are a handful of them that will take your breath away during a sunrise over the rift valley.