Creating a ENB start to finish?

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Joined: 26 Aug 2013, 15:04

Creating a ENB start to finish?

So after lurking forever and gazing for countless hours at the absurd level of screen archery I have decided to configure my own enb and I had a few questions.

1. Wrapper or Injector? I did a search on this and couldn't find anything conclusive. Why choose one over the other? Does one simply certain aspects of enb configuration?

Out of all the enb presets I have used (which have been a proverbial crap load) only 2 have been injector based. The only conclusion I could draw is people not wanting to start the injector prior to playing.

2. The enbseries.ini itself has become fairly easy to understand thanks to a few guides (jawz and chan). However I haven't found anything to really demystify bloom.fx, effect.fx and effectprepass.fx . General inspections of these files lead to some very basic understand of what they contain. Now perhaps the scope of those files is beyond simple enb configuration (I would have said before investigating these files probably aren't touched but in each config I have inspected these files had variations) - (note when I say variations I'am not referring to any programming language as my knowledge of such is non-existent at best.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I will more than likely post more questions in this thread in the future.

That said if anyone has any questions regarding enb configuration please ask Im not here to bogart a thread and more than likely your question will be information others (including me) need.

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Joined: 27 Nov 2012, 00:21

Re: Creating a ENB start to finish?

I'm not highly knowledgeable about ENBSeries yet, but I think I have sufficient understanding in order to help you.

1. You generally want to use the wrapper first and see if it works for you. The injector is usually the second option if the wrapper doesn't work. Here's a brief description of the injector.

2a. The enbeffect.fx file is explained by --JawZ-- in his Guide to ENBSeries - Part 2. I consider it the foundation, or overall look, of your preset and it's further tweaked by the enbseries.ini. There are many custom variations of the enbeffect.fx that add new controls, new Post Processing modes, Day/Night separation, etc. If you're looking for any of these, I recommend --JawZ--'s [http://www.enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/v ... f=6&t=1503]ENB Resources for Skyrim[/url].

2b. The bloom.fx contains the ENBSeries bloom code, which is toggled/configured in the enbseries.ini. Matso's bloom is a popular option if you don't want to use the standard bloom code. Custom bloom is also integrated in certain enbeffect.fx files (HD6 crisp/alternate bloom, etc.). These are generally dependent on your installed bloom.fx, though.

2c. The enbprepass.fx file contains the depth of field code, which is toggled/configured in the enbseries.ini. Custom enbprepass.fx files are available (bokeh, tilt shift DoF) if you don't want to use the standard DoF code. A popular choice is Matso's bokeh.

All of these explanations and more can be found here on the forums. I highly recommend using Google and typing "site:enbdev.com" without quotation marks in the search bar. Type the keywords you want to search for after "site:enbdev.com" (ex. site:enbdev.com bloom). You'll find that there's a lot of information to take in concerning ENBSeries. :lol:

Here are some brainstorming ideas that might be helpful for achieving the look you want:

What am I interested in visually? What are my inspirations?
Do I want a life-like, cinematic/film, CGI, fantasy, or vanilla look? Perhaps none of these in particular.
Is this more for gameplay or for screenarchery? Perhaps both.
Do I have a sufficiently powerful PC and high-res textures or am I limited in terms of image quality?
Do my installed mods benefit or hinder the look I'm going for?
Last edited by BSnake on 03 Sep 2013, 16:15, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Creating a ENB start to finish?

Thnx BSnake,

I have spent many hours searching via google and found some useful and helpful things but most of what I located wasn't more than a very very brief discription. Example when looking for how to add letterbox to a enb I found 3 methods describe but no explanation of what difference the 3 methods entailed. The end result is the same black bars on top and bottom but why 3 different methods...

Perhaps I am simply to curious for my own good. Like I said I am certain some of my questions fall outside the scope of just normal enb configuration. Jaws guide did a great job of explaining colors, mix effect etc. You may think you have rehashed quite of few things but have answered quite of bit of perhaps old information that's simply taken for granted. (until jawz pointed me to the bokeh dof file I thought everyones dof file was simply the one used in the normal enb package)

Like I said I use google but sometimes for whatever reason it misses the mark. (for example anthemios name doesn't come up despite being mentioned in the gallery thread and Ive noticed this with other things also like when I searched for mindflux's grass mod.)

PS - part of the reason for asking so many seemingly redundant questions is that my end result in my eyes is never close to the calibur of those I find here. The injector wrapper question seems a tad silly in retrospect but I was currently using TV ENB ( which is only the second enb i've used using an injector and couldnt figure out why and if I could get rid of it... the injector not the enb itself).

PPS - Also disregard the comment regarding the 3 different methods of letterbox one of your comments helped me figure that out.

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Re: Creating a ENB start to finish?

No problem at all. :) I think that things like letterbox, vignette, etc. are implemented differently since they're custom effects that are added to the default enbeffect.fx. Users will always have different ways of approaching effects, so different code will undoubtedly surface. Something as simple as letterboxes should have the same result, so I normally don't worry about the method used, especially since I'm not a programmer. ;) I'm usually just concerned about the editable parameters for effects.

Curiousity isn't a bad thing at all concerning ENBSeries. It's quite daunting since there's no central hub of information. Don't hesitate to ask questions when you need to, considering how many versions of ENBSeries there are and how much outdated information there is.

Concerning Google searches, I agree that it can be inaccurate at times. Sometimes you have to backtrack a thread if you're able to find a hint of your query. I was able to find mindflux's grass mod by searching "site:enbdev.com mindflux grass mod" without quotation marks. The second result provides a link to the mod. Concise keywords are always the way to go.
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