Skyrim Special Edition

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Mabezard

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mabezard

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About this mod

This mod tweaks Realistic Water Two's water appearance settings to blend better with Community Shaders Dynamic Cubemaps or Cubemap reflections

Requirements
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The Problem

With the introduction of dynamic cube map reflections to SkyrimVR, water takes on a HIGHLY reflective appearance, like pools of liquid metal. Community Shaders has introduced shimmering caustic effects below the water which are difficult to see with the somewhat cloudy look of the water.

The Solution

This mod does a couple of things
  • The fresnel factor is set to 2% on ALL water types. (vanilla is too high at 10% probably for aesthetic looks and some mods erroneously set it much higher). A setting of 2% correctly makes the water reflections almost absent when looking straight down and highly reflective the further out into the distance you look. Most materials have a fresnel factor of around 2-5%. This tremendously improves the look of water making it look less like rivers or oceans of mercury!
  • Skyrim's Water uses 3 colors. The first is the color of shallow water as seen from above, and a second color is seen as the water gets deeper.
    Things like mud, minerals, or algae would affect this color in the real world. Vanilla and RW2 settings transition from the shallow color to the
    deep color over short distances, often giving the water a clouded appearance.

    This mod extends the distance before the shallow color transitions to the deep water color by 4x on each water type resulting in clearer waters. Mods like Ilinata or SkyVRann do this.
  • The 3rd color blends with the reflections. I used a copy of the shallow water color and blended it with the Cubemap reflections by about 1/3. This helps to reduce the metallic look of overpowered reflections in the distance some and add a bit more color to the waters.
  • In vanilla refraction of the water doesn't carry up to the edge of the shore. I tweaked this value a little bit so the water looks wavy right up to the edge.
Requirements


Recommended

  • Water Caustics
  • SkyVRaan (for the underwater rocks and plants only. Delete the .dll patchers and disable or delete VRWaterColor.esp )