Some answers / mini faq: - Quirky omnidirectional shadows from the Pip-Boy are coming from the game engine itself. Bethesda seems to have fixed the issue by... removing shadows. So, unless there are hidden new datas to set (and I have tested a lot of them), there is no way to fix that by a simple flag atm. If you dont want to see glitchy Pip-Boy shadows, you can just use the esp that only activates spotlight shadows for the headlamps (Those shadows are great ^^) .
- I don't plan to add shadows flag to all lights in the game. This would be unsafe and dangerous for performances. This is the kind of things that need to be adressed case by case in the world editor just to be sure that everything is playable.
Important: Fallout4 update broke the standard way to activate esp based mods. Here are some link to find a way to fix the issue:
I wont because I am the first user of my mod, and I want it to be safe and playable, and I dont want to use all my free time to set stuff that could hurt the game^^ However, if I find some useful/logical lights to flag I will probably add them in a separate esp.
The thing is, a creation engine has some limitation, especially in casting shadows. For example in Skyrim engine can normaly handle only with 4 (four) shadow casting light sources at the same time. May be F4 version of creation engine can handle more sources at a time, and may be not. Anyway, if McGuffin makes all lights as shadow casting it definitely will cause glitches.
often when you try mods that "activate" features bethesda turned off you will see that there are problems and that they had a good design reason to disable them a few examples I found while testing mods yesterday : - shadows that look like an evil ghost behind the objects instead of a real cast shadow - heavier rain ? won't look good because our brain is waiting for more than water falling and having a slightly wet world with a storm of rain just looks odd and irrealistic, so they made a "light" rain that is "believable" - blood splatter ? the engine has a bug making some of them look like squares, they never fixed it since oblivion so you can't really use enhanced blood textures for now you need to fix that old bug 1st and need the modding tools for that
Finishing note for the "new people" in the modding world, in oblivion to completely remove fake lights and have real light sources lanterns, torches etc...they had to edit every single "block" of the world, I don't think anyone did that in Skyrim that's a LOT of work to do (you may think that skyrim had awesome mods but Oblivion had better ones and more complex too), it also had a negative effect for me in that it completely destroys the "atmosphere" the graphic designer intended, to bring it back you would have to remake the entire game world and the fps cost will be huge.
Hey Just wanna say this mod is great, shadows on my pipboy and other lights adds a great feel to the game now.
though I have a question, might only be possible with the creation kit but I noticed the Combat helmet has a flashlight though it doesn't actually work, anyway of fixing/making this happen?
Dude just make it optional with all light sources casting shadows, please dont care about our performannce, those who wants real lighting to cast shadow in every possible case are already have rigs that can handle it.
We dont want to waint until someone else will figure out how to do that, you can do it fast and easy.
It kinda feels frustrating when a lot of light sources never cast shadows. And most of them disabled just in favor for Xbox one and PS4 performance without taking PC as special case.
Maybe one day he can make a in game menu with script to uncheck what castes shadows,that way people with good rig can turn all on while others like me only want pipboy shadows on only.
i just want to add in my experience with the CK in that shadow lights look and operate differently and changing every light to shadow, even if possible, would mess up all of the games lighting. Shadow lights are only intended to be a major visual effect in each area, not provide the core/ambient lighting. Placing just 2 within visual range causes overlaps and bugs, and they have no distance falloff so this issue is going to exist everywhere.
making the changes to just the settlement light sources could be possible, but it would still likely bug out more than half of the time for players (but at least they would have full control to remove those lights). Also as said, you would definitely not be able to put more than 10 in visual distance, so if you have high ambitions for settlements, accept this won't work.
Ivlatty: Fallout 4 has made the jump to Deffered lighting, so many of the bugs associated with shadow casting in skyrim are no longer relevant. That said, yes adding shadows to all lights would, if nothing else, make the game run like garbage.
In the official forums there stating using esp before the official tools are out can most likely curropt the game saves.
unfortunately I will have to to stop using this and play a new game just in case.
I hope when the official tools are out you will update this. http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1548366-fyi-to-potential-mod-users-tesvsnip-mods-on-the-nexus/
Oh, well, those guys are making big generalizations, and assume that nobody knows what he is doing (which is wrong ^^). Anyway, it has always been your call to use mods or not, the risk is implicit whenever you use one, even after the release of proper tools.
Well for Skyrim, there is a mod called More Dynamic Shadows and Stripping Fixed, which makes many light sources cast shadow except a few lights and exterior lights. The game ran smoothly even with the mod.
Fallout 4 may be more demanding than Skyrim and unoptimized for now, but I think many players love more dynamic shadows in game. It looks really weird when there is no shadow cast especially in Vault 111 as there are only a few shadow casting lights.
Perhaps when the creation kit comes out we will be able to, instead of using shadow caster lights, use the volumetric lighting source used by the sun. This would then remove the odd shadows but would have to figure out how to add it as a new light source and disable the godrays specifically for the newly created source.
Could you add shadows to spotlights because that those light är not casting shadows break immersion or could you make so that npcs power armors lights cast shadows?
Actually the skyrim engine could only handle one shadow caster on a surface and an undefined number within a cell. If two shadow casters touched one surface bad things happened to put it in laymen terms. In the fallout 4 reveal Tod howard specifically said the number of possible shadow casters have increased "dramatically" in the new engine. I only know this because of extensive use of the skyrim CK so i know its not a big thing to most people but it was actually the root cause of many graphical issues in skyrim.
could not have more than 4 shadow casters to a cell in skyrim if I remember correctly.....and by cell I don't mean an area that requires load screen change. it's each area as defined in the CK. Now, I know what Bethdesda is saying about how limitations have been lifted to a degree on stuff like this but I'm not holding my breath that a lot of issues from skyrim and other games have magically disappeared.
shadow flags to every light in game aint just gonna loose you 20 fps, I was playing with 70-80 fps and when i activated shadows on every light ingame i went down to 6-8 fps, it can be cool to have shadows on all lights but for it to look natural and good it has to be tweaked massively and thats alot of work.
@mcguffin I was wondering if you could make a version that has pipboy cast shadows but you don't cast a shadow just for the pipboy, if you could my problem would be solved as I still want my pipboy to cast shadows on characters and objects but doesn't look all glitchy on the right side and still got some light over there.
@mcguffin Sounds like he's requesting a mod that just disables the pipboy omnidirectional lamp and acts as it's own spotlight similar to power armor instead of an omnidirectional emitter. I've never modded a Bethesda game so I'm not sure on the ease of just adding a new invisible object attached to the pipboy that just emits a really wide spotlight (even 90deg would be fine). Sounds like the idea would be more fitted to it's own standalone mod release at that point tho. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's an idea none the less.
Adding a new attach point to pipboy will have the same effect than the already existing one, because the pipboys follows the arm movements since it's itself attached to the arm of the character^^
Gets a solid endorse from me. It is a little buggy at times (like when pointing up at ceilings or when there is a wireframe trash can nearby), but I'd say 80% of the time it just makes the pipboy lighting look awesome. Thanks for this mod.
In no way do I blame you, you did wonderful work here, but MAN do I wish this worked flawlessly. It SEEMS like such an oversight on Bethesda's part to not have the main light source cast shadows. It adds SO much depth and a creepy factor to the game so it just makes me sad that this doesn't work perfectly (again, not YOUR fault). Thanks for your hard work!
I'm not sure whats wrong, but my pipboy shadows doesn't seem to be working.
It worked fine when I last played the game around 6 months ago, but now that the DLCs are out, I decided to give the game another whirl.
First, I uninstalled and removed all my mods, obviously. I then installed new ones with Nexus Mod Manager, including PipBoy Shadows (with the pipboy module). For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be working at all, the pipboy "flashlight" still casts light everywhere and goes through the body like it wasn't even there. It doesn't seem to cast shadows from objects really, either. I've tried installing, reinstalling and whatnot. Only other mods that could (IMO) be affecting this are More Shadows and PipBoy Flashlight. I've tried each of these mods individually and combinations of them with no luck. Any idea what could be wrong?
It's not about rigs "handling" it but your game handling it. There's an obvious reason for the Bethesda team disabling all lights casting shadows so if the Mod Author does not want to enable it, then either respect it or learn how to enable it yourself. Plain and simple.
Downloaded this through Vortex. It seems to cause Textures to completely vanish when enabled. Even without the Pipboy light on. Image below shows the issue
It's not directly caused by the mod, rather an issue with the base game some mods can trigger, or can even happen by itself. Add this without quotations to the display section of your Fallout4.ini. It's usually found in (insert your computers user profile e.g. "bob - personal")>documents>my games>Fallout4
I'm using the headlamp only version, and it works apart from one annoying issue. The shadows are only cast like 60% of the time, which is fixed by toggling the lamp off, then back on. Strange and a little annoying. Not using any other mods aside from the unofficial patch.
In third person, the light source is right side behind my character and casts the body shadow to my left front. After I switch into first person and back, then it is placed correctly. This is really a bit annoying... (But after this it is perfect though :P) Can you solve this somehow or is something wron on my end?
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- Quirky omnidirectional shadows from the Pip-Boy are coming from the game engine itself. Bethesda seems to have fixed the issue by... removing shadows. So, unless there are hidden new datas to set (and I have tested a lot of them), there is no way to fix that by a simple flag atm. If you dont want to see glitchy Pip-Boy shadows, you can just use the esp that only activates spotlight shadows for the headlamps (Those shadows are great ^^) .
- I don't plan to add shadows flag to all lights in the game.
This would be unsafe and dangerous for performances. This is the kind of things that need to be adressed case by case in the world editor just to be sure that everything is playable.
Important:
Fallout4 update broke the standard way to activate esp based mods.
Here are some link to find a way to fix the issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otcvcMYYsww&ab_channel=Gopher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNx6f5v9TxM
http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3514990-updated-launcher-will-disable-mods-on-launch-find-a-fix-here/
I am playing this game "min 70 max 160 fps if vsync disabled" at ultra except god rays, shadow "distance 9000" 1680x1050 i'm ready for loose 20fps.
However, if I find some useful/logical lights to flag I will probably add them in a separate esp.
- shadows that look like an evil ghost behind the objects instead of a real cast shadow
- heavier rain ? won't look good because our brain is waiting for more than water falling and having a slightly wet world with a storm of rain just looks odd and irrealistic, so they made a "light" rain that is "believable"
- blood splatter ? the engine has a bug making some of them look like squares, they never fixed it since oblivion so you can't really use enhanced blood textures for now you need to fix that old bug 1st and need the modding tools for that
Finishing note for the "new people" in the modding world, in oblivion to completely remove fake lights and have real light sources lanterns, torches etc...they had to edit every single "block" of the world, I don't think anyone did that in Skyrim that's a LOT of work to do (you may think that skyrim had awesome mods but Oblivion had better ones and more complex too), it also had a negative effect for me in that it completely destroys the "atmosphere" the graphic designer intended, to bring it back you would have to remake the entire game world and the fps cost will be huge.
though I have a question, might only be possible with the creation kit but I noticed the Combat helmet has a flashlight though it doesn't actually work, anyway of fixing/making this happen?
We dont want to waint until someone else will figure out how to do that, you can do it fast and easy.
It kinda feels frustrating when a lot of light sources never cast shadows. And most of them disabled just in favor for Xbox one and PS4 performance without taking PC as special case.
making the changes to just the settlement light sources could be possible, but it would still likely bug out more than half of the time for players (but at least they would have full control to remove those lights). Also as said, you would definitely not be able to put more than 10 in visual distance, so if you have high ambitions for settlements, accept this won't work.
unfortunately I will have to to stop using this and play a new game just in case.
I hope when the official tools are out you will update this.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1548366-fyi-to-potential-mod-users-tesvsnip-mods-on-the-nexus/
Anyway, it has always been your call to use mods or not, the risk is implicit whenever you use one, even after the release of proper tools.
Fallout 4 may be more demanding than Skyrim and unoptimized for now, but I think many players love more dynamic shadows in game. It looks really weird when there is no shadow cast especially in Vault 111 as there are only a few shadow casting lights.
Anyway, this mod is a nice add to the game :)
This would then remove the odd shadows but would have to figure out how to add it as a new light source and disable the godrays specifically for the newly created source.
not going to lie, not being mean, but your going to have to step up your game
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1707/?
Until that mod has a less confusing fomod installer, I'll stick with this.
Do you realize how ungrateful you sound? He provided a functionality-adding mod at no cost to all of us. He doesn't have to do anything.
Sounds like he's requesting a mod that just disables the pipboy omnidirectional lamp and acts as it's own spotlight similar to power armor instead of an omnidirectional emitter. I've never modded a Bethesda game so I'm not sure on the ease of just adding a new invisible object attached to the pipboy that just emits a really wide spotlight (even 90deg would be fine). Sounds like the idea would be more fitted to it's own standalone mod release at that point tho. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's an idea none the less.
Mod authors do things for free and a lot of the time the demands made actually ruin their own enjoyment of the game. I for one know this first hand.
People need to learn to be polite first and foremost and stop demanding more features etc.
This seems to be a growing trend on this site on multiple mods and sadly also out in the real world.
Just remember - the World doesn't owe you anything - and neither does this mod author.
Have a good day and Merry Xmas to all of you.
Cheers,
Tony
PS: sorry for my bad english
Endorsed, by the way
I'm not sure whats wrong, but my pipboy shadows doesn't seem to be working.
It worked fine when I last played the game around 6 months ago, but now that the DLCs are out, I decided to give the game another whirl.
First, I uninstalled and removed all my mods, obviously. I then installed new ones with Nexus Mod Manager, including PipBoy Shadows (with the pipboy module). For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be working at all, the pipboy "flashlight" still casts light everywhere and goes through the body like it wasn't even there. It doesn't seem to cast shadows from objects really, either.
I've tried installing, reinstalling and whatnot.
Only other mods that could (IMO) be affecting this are More Shadows and PipBoy Flashlight. I've tried each of these mods individually and combinations of them with no luck.
Any idea what could be wrong?
"bUseCombinedObjects=1
bUsePreCulledObjects=1"
These instructions terrible man, failed...
Can you solve this somehow or is something wron on my end?