Skyrim - Editorial @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[Couchpotato]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a guest article with infomation about modding Skyrim.

An occupational risk of Christmas is that the great mead (Jaffa Cakes) hall of my in-laws’ living room will inspire me to reinstall Skyrim, post a few fancy screenshots, and sure enough get a few emails asking for some mythical mod guide. Then comes the abuse: “He doesn’t want anyone to have his secret sauce!” Or: “His Skyrim doesn’t look like that – *snort* – those are Photoshopped.” Only they don’t capitalise Photoshop because they didn’t have to sit through that publishing meeting, lucky old them.

They’re almost right about one thing: my Skyrim doesn’t look like that. Likewise, when someone asks me what English weather is like, I don’t answer: ‘It’s like that evening drive between Dorset and Wiltshire when a torrential downpour gave way to just the best sunshine that lit up the faces of distant historic buildings and cast painterly shadows across dale and field.’ What I tell them is that, nine times out of ten, ‘it’s shit.’

What posters of modded Skyrim shots fail to mention is that their game only looks like that 1 per cent of the time, from 0.01 per cent of the vantage points on the map. The numbers are only slightly better for any videogame screenshot worth a damn. Whether you’re an industry screenshot artist or a Steam Community superstar or whatever, what you’re doing is marketing. Selling. Lying by omission.

What the posters also don’t mention is that the mountainous challenge of taking those shots is precisely why many people play Skyrim now more than ever. Alduin is dead but the quest for ultimate graphics goes on… and on. The fallacy of asking ‘how to make Skyrim look like that’ is that you simply don’t know what Skyrim might look like whenever you fire it up. That’s the point.

More information.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Don't think I have seen so many ignorant and totally clueless comments on an article in a long time. Course the irony of it is many of them sound like me and my own attitude towards modding in general, as well as ENBS, which I thought would destroy the purity of the "vanilla" game. So glad I got over that assumption and realized mods, and ENBS, can do whatever you want them to - improve, change, or enhance vanilla.

And sorry, but this, "What posters of modded Skyrim shots fail to mention is that their game only looks like that 1 per cent of the time, from 0.01 per cent of the vantage points on the map. " is totally and completely inaccurate, not just by me but many people I know and discuss the game with. Yes many of the portraits you see posted are using all types of special lighting (none of which I use myself) and most people post their best shots.

But I know what my game looks like - and it looks like many of my screenshots. Sometimes the game looks a lot better as it is dynamic - wind, fog, rain, animations ... none of that is captured.

Just exploring I take tons of shots cause my game does look that good, almost all the time, and it is very stable. Course I put a great deal of effort and care into my game as well. Anyhow don't mean to rant but this blogger really didn't know what they were talking about in that particular part of the article at all.

 

[Couchpotato]

Well it's Rock, Paper, Shotgun so I expect articles like this.

I don't agree with some of what he wrote either, but I can agree that some of these mods are a pain to get working right. I use over 100 of them, and it took a while to make them all work.

Anyone that tells you modding is simple, and you will have no problems is lying. I lost track of how many times I had to reinstall the game, or find a incompatible mod. Most of my problems have come from different ENB files.

I'm not kidding they have one to fit every taste, and some well lets just say they are very demanding. Some of the so called performance ones even cause frame rate slow downs.

The only thing that makes them playable for me is the new tool called ENBoost. It helps to maintain memory usage, and prevent crashes. Make sure to use it.

 

[rjshae]

Thanks for posting the article.

 

[Couchpotato]

Thanks for posting the article.

Thank you for the compliment. Sunday is always the worst day to find quality news.

 

[rjshae]

I can't really judge whether that's an accurate article or not, but at least its interesting in certain respects.

 

[greywolf00]

Well, my Skyrim looks nothing like the screenshots I've seen but I also know nothing about properly tweaking ENB. I tried KENB but the distance blur is just intolerable to me, the game looks a million times better to me running other mods but still nothing like wolfgrimdark's impressive shots.

 

[Couchpotato]

I finally settled for one with minimal features combined with SweetFX. My game never comes close to wolfgrimdark's shots either. I don't think it ever will without upgrading my system. Unfortunately I don't have the budget right now to do so.

 

[SonOfCapiz]

I'm a mod using addict but graphic mods are not high on my priority list. Gameplay tweaks will always be the first thing I put in. When I first played Skyrim I had to stop in no time until I found a mod that "fixed" the invisible extended range that melee weapons have. I always play a lightly armored 2HW fighter that relies on evasion for defense and getting hit by enemies whose weapons/fists/claws looked like they were still at least half a body length away from actually hitting my character was no fun.

I've seen people say that modding ruins the original vision of the creators but if Bethesda's vision is poorly balanced skills and click to win combat, some ruination is badly needed.

 

[zahratustra]

And sorry, but this, "What posters of modded Skyrim shots fail to mention is that their game only looks like that 1 per cent of the time, from 0.01 per cent of the vantage points on the map. " is totally and completely inaccurate, not just by me but many people I know and discuss the game with. Yes many of the portraits you see posted are using all types of special lighting (none of which I use myself) and most people post their best shots.

Yes, in threads dedicated to screenshots the more dedicated folk (like my wife for example) use poses and special lights mods, than spend ages setting the scene just right and than process their screenshots in Photoshop. Which, of course, means that it's no longer a Skyrim's screenshot but hey, whatever floats your boat…

I've seen people say that modding ruins the original vision of the creators but if Bethesda's vision is poorly balanced skills and click to win combat, some ruination is badly needed.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Yes, in threads dedicated to screenshots the more dedicated folk (like my wife for example) use poses and special lights mods, than spend ages setting the scene just right and than process their screenshots in Photoshop. Which, of course, means that it's no longer a Skyrim's screenshot but hey, whatever floats your boat…

Which actually irritates me to no end. What is the point of photo-shoping them? To me the the entire challenge is taking screenshots, in-game only. Anyone (relatively) can "paint" something. I hate when people do that as it totally destroys the point of taking screenshots, to me at least, and makes people think that is what everyone then does. EDIT: Oh some people do it for artistic purposes but those shots are obviously photoshopped and the people who do them state that, they don't lie or pretend otherwise.

Other than resizing an image to the size needed to upload on Nexus I have never photoshopped and never would. I also don't use special light mods. I don't use pin-up poser either - just asking for trouble with many of the complicated mods.

I do, however, use the console commands liberally when doing story telling screenshots, and will use some simple mods that help with props. Still 100% in game though.

Many of my shots, however, are just landscapes, stills, or just captures of my characters doing things. Camera freeze commands is the best tool.

Anyhow I have had a few people come over to see me play (obviously can't do that here lol) and the game can look that good - it means having a powerful* computer that you know how to tweak, it means investing time in learning about ENBs and how they work, and it means a lot of time hunting down the best textures and mods.

*EDIT: I should ammend this. Having a powerful computer makes it a whole lot easier as you have more brute force. However I mod and help out on many ENB pages on Nexus and I see amazing, beautiful, and NATURAL shots with lower-end rigs. But those folks have to pay strict attention to every fps point, optimize textures, etc. I have seen some great stuff on even laptops and older machines. I am just lucky that I have more raw power to toss around - but even then there is the simple CPU/GPU bottleneck and 3.1 GB wall, so I also have to be careful.

I have been moderating a few mods and and ENBS for a while now and I know most of the questions and issues and the most common one is people simply don't take the time to learn and they use script heavy mods that ruin their games. EDIT: Most often because they don't use common sense and try to mash together many script mods that conflict with each other and/or they constantly add/remove them. I consider a mod like an old-fashioned marriage - I use it (after lots of testing on a test save) and it gets saved ... then we are in it for the long haul.

Of course most of the script heavy ones tend to be those that change game play. I was always pretty happy with overall game play. I have some nice immersion related ones but most of my stuff is more texture based.

Anyhow just because some twits have to photoshop doesn't mean everyone does. But meh people will think what they will think. At least I can enjoy playing a damn fine looking game.

EDIT: Quick examples:

This shot below needed nothing more then a second to center the camera - the scene it self is entirely in-game. No lighting, no poses, just game play - entirely mods and ENB. Headtracking mod, handsdown the only required mod on my list, makes your character follow what is going on all the time - turns his head to track people. Adds so much to immersion.

This one - all I did was freeze the camera when the fight ended, rotated a little and hit print screen.

This one I did use a console command - they were looking at each other (my character and his animal companion) so I moved him a little closer then used a crouch and warm hands animation and just froze it as he was getting down.

There is no photoshop, no special light mods (aka facelight), it is just playing the game. Centering camera, zooming in and out, doing some basic poses … those aren't even things that change the look of the game as far as lighting, texture, contrast, etc. Screenshots have pros/cons. They let you have a lot more control for a better placed image but they also can't capture the "living breathing" world while you play either.

I have few action shots though - as I enjoy focusing on playing not freezing the camera every second, although sometimes I will do that for a story or if I see a perfect photo-opt moment. Plus I have 1060+ hours played, not like my first time through. In general I do two times of shooting. Random fly by that is mainly just taking a some shots while I play with minimal breaking away from the game - mainly camera freezing and positioning - or story telling when I am playing the game explicitly to tell a story and hence all my images are set up - but again all in-game and not photoshopped. Those people give the real screen archers bad names.

 

[Crilloan]

..
lots of nice pictures
..

What kind of system do you run it on?
and do you have a textfile with all mods to share

made me want to continue my game.

C

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Hi - This is my mod list oas of Nov 2013. Has changed a little (mainly textures, one of the safe things to play around with) but overall is stable: http://home.comcast.net/~thunor/images/hosted/config/mods.html

I do have a high end rig and I know that makes it far easier for me to have a nice looking game and take good screenshots without any real prep work. However I have a bunch of friends on Flickr who have lower end rigs whose shots often blow me away, although I suspect they put more work into it. I suppose I am a bit more of an exception being such an avid player still.

Intel Core i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3201 Mhz, 6 Core(s) // GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB // Win7 64 and 16GB Ram

 

[Crilloan]

@wolf

Thx, I recognized several mods. Some new to me though.

the different ENB is what I have had trouble with (that and the fact that my skyrim installation have slowly mutated beyond my grasp..)

C

 

[Terry]

Thanks Wolf for sharing those shots - Wow - I just got Skyrim this Christmas Steam sale so looking forward to playing around in it. I just need to figure out how the whole mod thing works.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Thanks Wolf for sharing those shots - Wow - I just got Skyrim this Christmas Steam sale so looking forward to playing around in it. I just need to figure out how the whole mod thing works.

Well as many here will tell you ... it can be very overwhelming and complex ... and easy to get carried away and then BAM things blow up So my only advice is go slow, try to avoid heavy scripting mods if possible (or just pick one or two favorites), test on a copy of a game before letting it get into your main save, and go with some of the big and popular ones that have little history of issues.

Course also don't avoid the small gems as they are often some of the best ones as well - I got a couple of very small ones buried in the thousands that are out there and they are among my favorites.

 

[vurt]

Stupid article except for some of the console commands that i didnt know of. Taking a screenshot is no different than taking a photograph, people tend to like beautiful things, therefore screens and photos are usually nice looking. Kind of simple to understand for most people i would think.

Also, he doesnt even mention Wrye Bash, which is the most essential program for making mods work with any of the Bethesda RPG's (FO, TES), you're really missing out and are probably having a buggy game if you're using a ton of mods but havent made a bashed patch..

 

[Zloth]

Decent article, though I don't know what he's talking about wrt the game not looking like that but 1% of the time.

I played around with ENBs a bit but never really found one I liked much (other than the one that alters shaders to make 3D Vision work). I just use the Imaginator to crank up the colors.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Making good screenshots is like taking good photos in RL, in my opinion.

 

[vurt]

I played around with ENBs a bit but never really found one I liked much (other than the one that alters shaders to make 3D Vision work). I just use the Imaginator to crank up the colors.

ENB is far more than colors though.. the shadows are really nice with ENB (shadows on grass for example):

but yes most ENB's sucks, far too oversaturated and if not they often have other problems.. I'm using quietcool which i think looks quite natural.