��NLVA ReadMe



Natural Lighting Vivid Atmospherics (NLVA) is a fusion of arguably the two most gorgeous lighting and weather mods to ever be released; Natural Lighting & Atmospherics (NLA), and Vivid Weathers (VW). Although there have been many extraordinary weather mods, not one employs fog and rain effects as well as VW; nor has anyone else produced sunsets and sunrises as breathtaking as those found in Manga's and Kesta's masterpiece. In regards to NLA, for nearly two years now, no ENB author has yet to apply lighting and coloring effects as realistically as Confidence Man. As stated by Tapioks, the author of the first ENB preset to ever be released on Skyrim Nexus, "Natural Lighting and Atmospherics (NLA) is by far the most realistic lighting / weather mod available for Skyrim, rendering the most natural (and least video-game feeling) image possible. Confidence Man's employment of ENB effects and his sense of accurate color representation is unsurpassed."�



The primary objective of NLVA was to preserve the lighting and coloring of NLA, while incorporating all the beautiful effects and atmospherics skillfully created by VW authors, Manga and Kesta. Although NLVA was born from NLA and VW, it has grown into a highly realistic, deeply vivid, feature rich, distillation of the best of both mods.









Performance - NLVA is a lightweight ENB with up to a 30% increase in performance from NLA while preserving visual fidelity

Compatibility - NLVA is recommended to be used with Frostfall, Wet & Cold, Audio Overhaul for Skyrim, and any lighting mod of your choice.

Incorporation of the most gorgeous and varied weathers from VW s 500, distilled into Vanilla weather subrecords, and blended with NLA lighting

Incorporation and blending of our favorite cloud textures from VW and Gamwich Ethereal Clouds

Significant increase in sunset/sunrise color variety

Realistic temperature based atmospheric light scattering

- Pink-shifted lighting for icy winter sunsets

- Red-shifted lighting for warm or dusty sunsets

Gradated sunset horizons by proximal sunlight coloration

Black night skies to emphasize the bright cosmos and the black void of space

Dark yet navigable nights, with lighting levels based on cloud coverage and auroras

Immersive afterglow� allows for prolonged sunsets and daylight hours

Emphasis of rich blue skies with white and fluffy clouds in suitable locations

Balanced shadows to retain high contrast, yet with improved clarity of detail within

New particle snow adapted from Mindflux Snow - 3D snowflakes

Whiteout blizzards optimized for performance via incorporation and blending of Vivid Weather particle snow, Vanilla storm snow, and fog effects. Snow storms are intense and feel life threatening.

Significant fog variety, with density adjustments to naturally blend volumetric fog effects

Optional Dark Fantasy or Heavenly Weather Systems plugins.

Realtime frosting in select weathers as an optional plugin (release date end of May or September 2016)









Installation:





To install this mod, follow the installation procedure; ensure you have appropriately configured your Skyrim and enblocal ini settings; and calibrate your monitor.





1. Remove any traces of ENB from your game folder EXCEPT your enblocal.ini file.� It is highly recommended to use an ENB manager such as  ENB FXAA SweetFX Manager and Remover http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/7804/?



2. Download the  ENB Files and copy the contents into the Skyrim directory, where TESV.exe is located.



3. Download and install Vivid Weathers. It is recommended to install the 2k cloud and fog textures (note that NLVA already contains the 1k fog textures, which will overwrite the 2k fog textures you are installing). Do not select any patches.



4. Deactivate or delete the "Vivid Weathers.esp" file



5. Download  Natural Lighting Vivid Weathers and any other optional plugins and install manually or via a mod manager of your choice (Mod Organizer users will not be required to change ini settings, as the required settings are included via an MO ini tweak)



6. Download any optional components from the download section which include:

Dark fantasy weather systems: significantly increases the frequency of fog, rain, and storm weathers.

Heavenly Weather systems: significantly increases the frequency of sunny weathers and auroras, as well as moderately increasing the likelihood of foggy and stormy weathers.

Vivid Weather MCM: allows control of night and interior brightness



7. Load Order - NLVA and optional plugins (.esp files) should be placed after any mod that contains region or weather records (i.e Audio Overhaul for Skyrim) - verify with Tes5Edit. Alternatively, allow LOOT to sort your load order and hope for the best.



8. Proceed to requirements.





Requirements:



(A) Vivid Weathers. NLVA uses VW textures and meshes, however, you must deactivate or delete any Vivid Weather .esp files, including VW patches, as they will crash your game.



(B) The latest ENB binary. You only need two files, enbhost.exe and d3d9.dll, contained in the wrapper folder. You can download it from here http://enbdev.com/mod_tesskyrim_v0305.htm - scroll to the bottom of that page and click the downward arrow next to  download







INI Settings:



Mod Organizer users may skip this step, as the settings are included via an MO ini tweak.

All other users (ie. Nexus Mod Manager), please proceed to the endnotes section for the proper ini settings.t



If you already have an enblocal file you should use that. It is recommended to use only Edge Detection Anti Aliasing. Advanced users may find they finally have enough FPS to employ Super Sampling Anti Aliasing. If you do not have an Enblocal.ini, the game will automatically generate one. To do this, start Skyrim then exit at the main menu loading screen. Check your game folder and it will be in there. Set it up according to your system using this guide http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI





Compatibility:





This mod is compatible with all lighting overhauls, unless they modify weathers. It s also highly recommended to use this mod with Frostfall and Wet & Cold to increase immersion as weathers are more intense than Vanilla Skyrim.



NLVA is not compatible with other weather mods. Remember, NLVA requires Vivid Weathers to be installed for its textures and meshes, however, you must deactivate or delete any Vivid Weather .esp files, including VW patches, as they will crash your game.



See endnotes for Incompatible Mod Listu and Compatible Mod Listv







Calibration:





Although NLVA preserves NLA lighting, we still recommend that you calibrate your monitor to ensure you are seeing NLVA as intended. Before you begin, we recommend that you reset your monitor to its default settings, and then calibrate your monitor using the following site - http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php



Black level is especially important, however, we understand that everyone's monitor is different, and that we all have individual preferences in regards to brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. If after calibration, you find that the lighting is not to your taste, you can adjust brightness, saturation, contrast, and gamma for interiors, days, and nights via the ENB Graphical User Interface (GUI). While in game, press Shift+Enter to open the ENB GUI and open the EnbEffect.fx settings of the shaders window to customize NLVA to your liking. Once adjusted to your liking, press "Save Configureation." I personally play with with decreased monitor brightness, decreased interior and night gamma, and increased day gamma. This is my preference though, and I only share to illustrate the importance of customization.







Credits:



We would like to sincerely thank-



Mangaclub and Keska for granting permission to rework their masterpiece,

as well as answering any questions we had. Please remember to endorse Vivid Weathers if you enjoy NLVA http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73937/?



Confidence Man for creating Natural Lighting and Atmospherics

and allowing modders to freely use his work as a resource

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50065/?



Gamwich for allowing us to incorporate his incredible textures from Ethereal clouds. Please remember to endorse Ethereal Clouds if you enjoy NLVA.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50065/?



Mindflux for his particle snow and allowing modders to freely use his work as a resource



Boris Vorontsov for developing ENB http://enbdev.com/index_en.html



Reddit users Nonstickypants and Arcline111 for screenshots and extensive testing.



Credits to Bethesda for the game and tools





Permisions:



Please do not use this work in your own mod without permission from the author; charge for this mod, except for donations through Nexus; share or re-upload this mod anywhere else without permission from the author; share this mod on steam or anywhere else except the Nexus; use this mod in your video without crediting the author with a link back to the mod on this Nexus page.



ENB designers: you are more than welcome to create new presets based on our work provided you give credit and reference this page. If you have any questions at all, please ask.







FAQ:



It s not working, help?

Proceed to the troubleshooting section below.



How do I uninstall this mod?

Deactivate the mod and remove all ENB files.[sup]3[/sup]



My Vivid Weathers MCM has weird characters?

Disable the original Vivid Weather.esp



Do I need the original Vivid Weathers or Natural Lighting and Atmospherics files?

NLVA already contains the data from NLA so you do not require NLA. However you do require the original Vivid Weathers mod. You also need to disable/delete/deactivate the original Vivid Weathers.esp or your game will crash.



I don't see any enblocal.ini file in the download?

This is intentional as the enblocal.ini file is particular to your system and needs to be set up by yourself. If you do not have one, the game will automatically generate one after starting. You can then exit the game and you will find it in your main game folder. Edit it accordingly then re-start your game. For a detailed guide on how to set it up go here http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI



Do I need to start a new game?

No.











If the ENB isn t working triple check everything below.

Do not skim whilst checking and take your time and make 100% sure that...





You have uninstalled all old enb files.

You have copied all the new ENB files to the correct location.

You have set up your enblocal.ini correctly (if you have one).

You have adjusted the SkyrimPrefs.ini settings and not made any spelling mistakes.

You have disabled the original VividWeathers.esp.

The Vivid Weathers meshes, textures and scripts are only being overwritten by NLVA.

You have run LOOT and the NLVA.esp is not being overwritten (check in TES5EDIT).

You have downloaded and placed correctly the enbhelper.dll.

You have downloaded and placed correctly the ENB binary files.

You have downloaded and installed the Mindflux particle patch.

You have disabled any incompatible mods.











Endnotes:





1.link to reference - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61206/?



2. Afterglow occurs long before or long after sunrises and sunsets due to the reflection of sunlight off high altitude snowfields or atmospheric particulates of ice, snow, and dust.



3. Remove the remaining enb files. They include files whose name begins with enb , effect.txt, enhanced ENB*, sweetFX, SMAA*, and reshade files and the enbseries folder.



4. Ini Settings

Adjust your SkyrimPrefs.ini via your modmanager. If you are doing it manually make sure you adjust your SkyrimPrefs.ini contained in your documents folder. There is another SkyrimPrefs.ini in your game folder which you should not adjust.

If any of the values are not present, you should add them in manually.







SkyrimPrefs.ini

[Imagespace]

bDoDepthOfField=1



[Display]

fGamma=1.0000

bTransparencyMultisampling=0

iMultiSample=0

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

bDrawLandShadows=1

bShadowsOnGrass=1

bFloatPointRenderTarget=1

bDeferredShadows=1

iMaxAnisotropy=1



It is also essential you disable Anisotropic Filtering and AntiAliasing in the Skyrim Launcher





5. Incompatible mods



Climates Of Tamriel

Expanded Snow Systems

ELE weathers

ELFX weathers

ENB s of any sort

Hialgo

Imaginator

Mindflux Snow

Natural Lighting and Atmospherics

Pure Weathers

Purity

RCRN

Real Shelter (partially compatible)

Realistic Lighting Overhaul weathers

Realistic Skyrim Snowflakes

Revamped Exterior Fog

Sounds of Skyrim (partially compatible to check)

Snowflake texture replacers

Sunglare texture replacers

Supreme and Volumetric Fog

Supreme Storms

Truestorms

Ultra realistic World Lighting

Vivid Clouds and Fog





6. Compatible mods





Frostfall

Wet and Cold

Minty s Lightning

Wonders of Weather

Ultra HD Transparent Snowflakes

Night vision (partially compatible)