So... I've been thinking (Oh no!) :)
Are there any lighting mods that just seem to go really well with Skywind? Maybe somewhere on the nexus there is one that makes everything look really brown and dirty that would suit Skywind, just a thought - we could recommend it to our audience :) Or maybe we could create our own, which is probably better because it gives more room for development.
Yea, something like that is planned, but alas, our light sources, are actually light sources them self. That is bad, because we cannot edit them individually. How to explain this, umm in Skyrim, a lantern doesn't have light it self, but it actually has an invisible light bulb above it that contains the lighting effect. We would need someone to add a light bulb above every single candle, lantern, etc. Which can either be done manually or via a TESedit script.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVfkKISOPqA
This guy has a really nice guide on lighting, if you watch it, you'll know what the hell I'm talking about.
But yeah, if we have light bulbs, we can do some crazy some shit with our lighting.
Yeah I understand, a "light source" object, aka the lightbulb would need to be added to every object which would logically give off light, and all ghost lights which seem to come from nowhere would need to be manually removed.
I always thought this was the best lighting mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/30450/ It has realistic lighting effects that coming from "moving" light sources like fire, and light sources like equipped magic.
Are you going to do it all yourselves? Or are you going to incorporate stuff from mods (with permission of course)?
Probably vanilla lighting, not to sure yet. Also remember that lighting is like 50% of what makes the game look good. Bad lighting can make nice pretty graphics look like complete utter shit.
Well the problem with a lot of mods is that we can't really incorporate them as they only affect Skyrim, Skywind is a whole new world (A WHOLE NEW WOOOOOORLD, had to)
So some mods have to be recreated and made into a Skywind equivalent.
I'm not 100% up with the play, but basically our level editors and that can include anybody who want to give it a crack, will alter lighting as they are editing an area for additional environmental things, like clutter and rocks.
Sure some techniques and some processing can be used from mods, but as SheepDogWoof say its a WHOLE NEW WOOOOORLD, so everything has to be done manually.
Eloth is tweaking constantly his personal enb I think. I don't know if he planned to release it.
I agree with you all really. I really do like Enhanced lights and effects. Although I have to say that lots of the ENB's make the game look like Battlefield 3 because it gives off a blue tint. Morrowind is more brown or yellow, don't you guys think? We could always let the users have a selection of 5 or so lighting configurations, in the installer maybe.
Thanks guys, I appreciate the comments :) Can't wait to start working more on the project!
I am personally not a fan of ENB's, so I wouldn't use it. They just seem to go too far for me. But of course, I am not everyone, and not everyone is me xD
SheepDog, yes through looking at the before and afters I really like Enhanced nights and FX, no we just need something to change the general tone of the light.
I agree, and the watermark breaks the emersion. I prefer proper lighting mods that use an .esp
Mhm, you can make the game look great without making everything extremely bright and flashy with an ENB. I just think that, its just so much more flashy than even real life, that it ruins my immersion more than just an injector which makes the colours pop a little more xD
We will try and get the lighting right/better with techniques used say for the Realistic Lighting Overhaul mod. But this will be over time, considering its over a year now for Skyrim and after many iterations still don't have a finalized version.
I don't use an ENB either, I think we can get things right with a vanilla version of the game.
I wrote script to separate light source meshes into a mesh and a light bulb some time ago and gave it to Eloth. Don't know what he is doing with it.
Hmm, I don't think he mentioned anything on other threads but we'll see what happens.
Im waiting for eloth's light conversion.
The script was used, and some lighting was missed, but pretty much 98% of the lights now have little light bulbs. I suppose we can open up a spread sheet and make a Skywind lighting thread soon.
I've thought about lighting
I've thought about lighting mods, and I was thinking that we should re-create this mod:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27043
Enhanced Lights and FX. It wouldn't really be a case of modifying the original lights to achieve the same goal, just use the same idea as this mod from the beginning.
Make sure there are no "ghost" light sources, as in, light sources that don't actually come from ANYWHERE, every candle should have a light source, every crack in a cave ceiling or roof, etc.
No ghost lights, and every object which should cast light in real life, should have a light source. That mod is a MUST have for me, the change is dramatic, even though at a glance it might seem like such a small thing. I wouldn't play Skyrim again without it.