Amazing Screenshot Thread

Nice shots wolfgrim, I must not be picking the right mods mine never look as good as yours.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Nice shot wolfgrim, I must not be picking the right mods mine never look as good as yours.

I believe he runs a custom ENB.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Nice shots wolfgrim, I must not be picking the right mods mine never look as good as yours.

As Azarhal mentioned I use an ENB for my game although it is the same one I manage (Grim and Somber Presets) on Nexus that anyone can download. I also use some others - True Vision by Bronze and Ruby ENB being two I like.

Mods - well world building can be a time consuming process. A little like writing a book as you need to make a deep investment and testing and mixing things to get a look you like but once done it tends to provide a good foundation. I use mainly 1k and 2K mods for most things except characters, armor/clothing, and weapons - those are all 4K since I like to do close ups.

My shots, by the way, are never edited and all in-game. I mainly just use FOV, TFC, and DOF to manage them.

If you want to see some true art, and you enjoy looking at gorgeous women, check out the work by my friend Bits. He has some of the most amazing shots and they are also all in-game (no editing with photoshop or the like). But he spends a lot of time tweaking each shot with ENB settings to get just the right look. He also has true artistic talent I think.

You can find their small gallery here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/134564502@N07/

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
As Azarhal mentioned I use an ENB for my game although it is the same one I manage (Grim and Somber Presets) on Nexus that anyone can download. I also use some others - True Vision by Bronze and Ruby ENB being two I like.

Mods - well world building can be a time consuming process. A little like writing a book as you need to make a deep investment and testing and mixing things to get a look you like but once done it tends to provide a good foundation. I use mainly 1k and 2K mods for most things except characters, armor/clothing, and weapons - those are all 4K since I like to do close ups.

My shots, by the way, are never edited and all in-game. I mainly just use FOV, TFC, and DOF to manage them.

If you want to see some true art, and you enjoy looking at gorgeous women, check out the work by my friend Bits. He has some of the most amazing shots and they are also all in-game (no editing with photoshop or the like). But he spends a lot of time tweaking each shot with ENB settings to get just the right look. He also has true artistic talent I think.

You can find their small gallery here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/134564502@N07/

Thanks for the info wolfgrim, after seeing the pcgamers mod list and now these shots I've decided to go ahead and start another go. I had a 150 mod playthrough a couple years ago probably but never found an enb that looked just right. I think I settled on real vision after trying a few, cant really remember. I'll give yours a try this time though.

Well if you have questions let me know. Just keep in mind I am using a variety of ENB's in the shots I post here - ones besides my own I mean. Mine tend t be of the dark, vintage, fantasy sort so not focused on realism or anything. Well you have seen the shots and I can link albums as I keep them all organized on Flickr if you want.

For Grim and Somber I tend to prefer Vaermina and Jyggalag. Most users seem to prefer Hircine then those two. Azura and Malacath are other popular ones. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

For other ENBs I like True Vision, Insomnia ENB, Nice ENB, Ruby ENB and a few others. I can't use SweetFX with Windows 10 and Nvidia myself (they don't work for whatever reason on my PC) so had to give up some of my favorites that use SweetFX and ENB.

There are a lot of mods to shift through now as well

Like sakishop, I just couldn't resit re-installing. My modded Skyrim re-install is almost done. This can take so much time to do with all the mods and stuff. I was fighting ENB last night until I gave up and looked for a preset I liked that didn't look pitch black in interiors.

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
Well if you have questions let me know. Just keep in mind I am using a variety of ENB's in the shots I post here - ones besides my own I mean. Mine tend t be of the dark, vintage, fantasy sort so not focused on realism or anything. Well you have seen the shots and I can link albums as I keep them all organized on Flickr if you want.

For Grim and Somber I tend to prefer Vaermina and Jyggalag. Most users seem to prefer Hircine then those two. Azura and Malacath are other popular ones. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

For other ENBs I like True Vision, Insomnia ENB, Nice ENB, Ruby ENB and a few others. I can't use SweetFX with Windows 10 and Nvidia myself (they don't work for whatever reason on my PC) so had to give up some of my favorites that use SweetFX and ENB.

There are a lot of mods to shift through now as well

Thanks wolfgrim, it will probably be a week or 2 before I can start due to work but in the meantime I'll be looking at the various mods which in itself could take a very long time.

skyui, immersive monsters, weapons and armor are a must. Then I like to add textures and whatnot to get it looking as good as possible.

Do you mess with the ini. I have in the past but it doesn't seem to be worth it. Other than ugrids but I've never had much luck upping that on a highly modded game despite having a very powerful PC.

If you're going to mess with uGrids, be sure to use SKSE and adjust your memory allocation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37xAMUQc1oY

Originally Posted by sakichop
Thanks wolfgrim, it will probably be a week or 2 before I can start due to work but in the meantime I'll be looking at the various mods which in itself could take a very long time.

skyui, immersive monsters, weapons and armor are a must. Then I like to add textures and whatnot to get it looking as good as possible.

Do you mess with the ini. I have in the past but it doesn't seem to be worth it. Other than ugrids but I've never had much luck upping that on a highly modded game despite having a very powerful PC.

Those are all great mods and a good start. I don't mess much with INI. Boris, who is very familiar with the engine for someone outside of Beth, has always recommended strongly against it. All I edit on ENB requirements, and things to enable some things (like water) that are off by default.

I sometimes will use ugrids 7 or 9 for landscape shots but not in my actual play games. I use a mod that lets you safely change it on the fly as a precaution as well.

Ok, few questions before I start looking for mods.

- Is the nexus still the best place for mods vs steam?
- Is NMM still the preferred mod software, I saw mod organizer as well. Is it better?
- Drithius all ready mentioned SKSE but it wyre bash still needed?
- Any recommended mods? I'll be install the one I mentioned above, falskar, and unofficial patches for sure the rest is up in the air.

Thx. In advance.

• There's a few mods on Steam you can't get on the Nexus. But the Nexus is still far and away superior in quality, quantity, and feedback.
• NMM is easier to use. MO has more possible customization but you need to read up on how to set it up or you will simply be yet another dumb mod user pestering mod authors with "your mod doesn't work" posts.
• WyreFlash is a very useful tool for merging small mods into your Bash patch, as well as intelligently importing facets of one mod (NPC faces, for example) into said patch. Again, there's a learning curve involved.
• I can't stand Skyrim, so no real recommendations on that front, but if I had to pick a couple, they would be Open Cities and Requiem.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Ok, few questions before I start looking for mods.

- Is the nexus still the best place for mods vs steam?

Nexus by far. Steam is a pain to search through. I suggest installing SKSE through Steam though, search for it on Steam like it was a game, it's not in the workshop.

Originally Posted by sakichop
- Is NMM still the preferred mod software, I saw mod organizer as well. Is it better?

Mod Organizer has a learning curve, but it doesn't "pollute" your Skyrim install so if you screw up you don't have to re-install and it's very handy for having multiple mod profiles. I prefer Mod Organizer now and you can use it to download from Nexus like NMM and it support .fomod.

Originally Posted by sakichop
- Drithius all ready mentioned SKSE but it wyre bash still needed?

Yep, to merge leveled list and some other stuff if you have a lot of mods. You could also use it to install mod instead of NMM and Mod Organizer.

Originally Posted by sakichop
- Any recommended mods? I'll be install the one I mentioned above, falskar, and unofficial patches for sure the rest is up in the air.

If you play with the mouse and keyboard: Better Dialog Controls and Better MessageBox Controls

For revamped vanilla textures of weapons and armors, look at Book of Silence and other stuff labelled aMidianBorn on Nexus.

The rest really depends on your taste and what your PC can handle.

Think they answered the questions and I find this all very personal. Hell I have seen some fierce flame wars over which is better NMM or MO - like ones that would put the republican/democrat debates to shame.

Personally I like NMM but I prefer simple things and NMM now has profiles built into it should you want different configurations. Plus I am old fashioned and don't mind some manual work so I feel more "hands on" although not to the point I do it all manually

They both have pros and cons though and I think MO is very popular and loved by many even I stick with NMM myself.

I don't like wading through Steam workshop. I have two mods from there I think. I like more direct control over my modding and Steam doesn't give that. Nexus seems to have the best selection and better quality.

I use SKSE and would not play without it (even though I was against using it for the longest time but caved and now I am glad I did - it really adds a lot of nice features for mods - user and author alike).

I do not use bash, loot, wyre, bash patches, or any of those things. Again I like things very simple. I use NMM and manual stuff - most manual just means I make a custom "mod" from mixed things and zip it up and then load it with NMM. I seldom touch actual files in the Data folder unless short term testing of something simple.

For mods - ah how can you suggest those? Like trying to suggest a good RPG game to play Or what clothes to wear. But I will suggest some anyhow

My personal favorite mod that I can't play without, ever, is head tracking. For me that is the number one most important mod out of the 356 I like in Grim's game (although I trimmed that down to about 279 on the new PC). The level of immersion of seeing your character's head track other things in the game is priceless to me. Without it they are just zombies that react to nothing. The original headtracking mod also controls facial expressions make a character track other things and react with expressions. Just adds so much life.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23600/?

People rant about it but in 3 years I have never had a single serious problem with it. It can stop working sometimes but its been fairly easy to reset. A lot does depend on what you have for mods though as it often turns out those with issues have heavy script mods affecting AI behavior. Regardless I can't live without it. There are some newer versions as well you might want to check out. I did but they simply were not as natural as the original.

Beyond that some mods I love:

- SkyUI
- Bellyahces Animal and Creature pack
- Almost anything made by Cabal (aka AmidianBorn), especially book of silence, their armors, weapons, farms, imperial forts, whiterun, caves, and landscapes. I think because he does high quality work while keeping a lore friendly look.
- Skyrim Bridges
- Real Roads for Skyrim
- Weather Road Signs (man is this one awesome)
- Common clothes by Franklin Zunge. Great work (not super HR so won't hurt FPS much) that is super lore friendly. Also like how it has the option to randomly assign clothes to all NPC's in a lore friendly way. So much more immersion to see people change their clothes.
- Immersive Fallen Trees Mod
- Unbelievable grass 2
- Wonders of Weather
- Vivid Landscapers (if not using Cabal or mix and match)
- Frostfall, Campfire, and Wet and Cold for more immersion.
- Many things by Pfuscher (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49661/?) if your machine can handle it that is.
- Little things by Ramoccoid http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65959/?
- 4K quality snow by Yuril
- Immersive weapons and armor
- auto unequip ammo (removes arrows from back when you remove bow)
- Immersive Patrols
- Lawrens RNG Guards

Better stop there …

I skipped all the male mods but if you want any suggestions I know the best textures, beards, brows, etc. There is a 5 o'clock shadow mod I like that has your male character grow a beard you have to shave. Just fun immersion (similar to what they did with Geralt in W3 I think).

I also won't play without ENB - too spoiled with its visual enhancements and I am pretty comfortable with using them since I manage a half dozen of them on Nexus.

Thanks for the excellent info and suggestions guys, now to wade through a sea of mods.

A new favorite shot of my main character Grim - all in-game - just used a pose, changed FOV to 30, and adjust DOF for a semi-closeup.



For something different an underwater shot (all the nex shots taken with Ruby ENB):









Little wonder I enjoy this game so much - with a simple change in ENB you have a totally new look. Not to mention mods keep coming out. I often don't even know what a town might look like till I get there - or what NPC's might be hanging out.

Started a new story about the Silver Hand, which are enemies of Grim, and the main antagonists will be Lady Eira the Merciful - Commander of the Silver Hand Reborn, and Tork Wolfbane of the Silver Hand Wolfbanes and Eira's personal body guard. Wolfbanes are a bit like Paladins only their powers are focused against werebeasts.



Eira preparing to fight a werewolf



Eira and Tork





Tork Wolfbane







Some Randoms







Not the best shot but I like it. Grim is in his werewolf form and the little guy is his half-brother Wolfgar.

Ah, once again wonderful pictures!
Eira looks like someone who shouldn't be messed with. And she does look a little bit like my sister-in-law … just the hair color isn't quite right.

Originally Posted by Jaz
Ah, once again wonderful pictures!
Eira looks like someone who shouldn't be messed with. And she does look a little bit like my sister-in-law … just the hair color isn't quite right.

Thanks :-)

I wanted a silver themed character to represent the SH look. So a silver-gray hair color with dashes of white and black. She is very powerful as I plan on her being a recurring character in the stories.

Aye I still play Skyrim as well

Everytime I see those screenshots, I feel like I'm watching a movie scenes