Skies Above Weathers and ENB is a modern preset with over 120 custom ENB weathers,  plus new and improved ENB Shaders and updated Visual Weather FX.  The ENB shaders are based on Silent Horizons and Kitsuune has updated them throughout for Skies Above.  Mangas weather effects from Vivid Weathers are also included, with new combinations and FX.

The games illumination is meant to be a mixture of photo-realism (daytime), and fantasy (sunrise, sunset, nights).  Combined with historic pastel overtones, and updated modern visual FX, this ENB provides a comprehensive, reliable overhaul to Skyrims weather. 

Skies Above is designed for gameplay, with playable nights, reduced rain/fog weathers and clear bright sunny days like NLA and PI CHO ENB where you can feel the sunlight around you.  Cloudy weathers brings light mist over the hills and are more dynamic with improved cloud shadows. Sparkling aurora sunrises give way to hazy days, glowing sunsets with rudyesque dusks and dawns. Foggy days (and nights) make use of synced Game Volumetric Rays (GVR aka vanilla god rays), thanks to EVLAS.  There are other addons like morning fogs over lakes, drifting distant fogs, volumetric mists and more.






Over 120 custom ENB weathers - Every weather has its own ENB *.ini file which means every weather is unique, with distinct regional variations improving weather dynamics throughout. Increased diversity in Visual weather FX has been combined with updated vanilla snow and rain shaders.

New Weathers - New regional weathers with a wide palette, including clear, cloudy, fog, rain, overcast and storm. Oblivion weather during Helgen attack and high fantasy weathers for the Forgotten vale including updated thundersnow. New weathers for Apocrypha, Falmer Valley and Solstheim like dust peach, full screen orange sandstorms, blowing plain dust GVR, blowing wet mist GVR, haze filled ashstorms, new soul wisp storms in the Soulcairn with Volumteric rays and Lightning.

Uses the latest ENB features - Ambient Occlusion, Imagebased lighting, Skylighting and Subsurface scattering plus SSSAO. Complex Terrain parrallax, Complex particle lights, ENB rain Wet Surfaces, Complex parralax, Improved cloud shadows, Distant shadows, and Normal mapping shadows.

KreatE - KreateE is a new weather tool from Kitsuune that allow you to edit the games weather values in real time via an IMG UI interface. You can control Clouds, Weather colours, DALC, Image Spaces, Cell lighting, Vanilla god rays, and much more. Skies Above utilises KreateE extensively and is a hard requirement.

Game Volumteric Rays - (vanilla godrays aka GVR) were updated for SSE and thanks to EVLaS, they are used througout Skies Above, resulting in Moon synced Volumetric rays , deeper more realistic shadows at sunrise, hazy sunshine trying to break through the fog from above and thick foggy shafts of light at sunset. Ambient lighting was corrected alongside KreateE which allows realtime tweaking of weather values like DALC, Weather colours etc. You can try it out here on Kitsuunes Discord.





KITSUUNE SHADERS

Skies Above ENB contains an updated collection of advanced shaders from Kitsuune. They include...

Advanced DoF - Updated version of Marty McFlys DoF Shader with Mouse click, AutoFocus, Manual and Bokeh custom textures

Real Time HDR Color Grading -  with DNI seperated brightness, contrast, RGB saturation

Lens Effects -  with Anamorphic Lensflare, Starburst Lensflare, Ghost Lensflare, Chromatic Aberration, Selectable Lens Dirt, Lens reflections

Sunsprite Lens Flares -  Ring, double ghost, hoop, starburst and anamorphic Sunsprite Lens flares

Human eye Frazetta Moire pattern - Simulation of sun glare on the human eye

Underwater shader -  with improved underwater wave refraction

AGIS -  (for Nighteye users, fade to black etc)

AntiAliasing - Skies Above is provided with TAA as its currently the best option available. You can also choose from FXAA, CREAA, SMAA

Scalable sharpening -  with unsharp mask, setup for TAA

Letterbox -  customisable with extended vignette

OTHER ENB SHADERS - Reforged Bloom, Grain, Chromatic Aberration





OTHER FEATURES

LUTs - Custom LUTs provide a multitude of alternate overlays to completely change the look of your game.

New Aurora textures - From True Draconis and Rammcoid, updated and tweaked

Upscaled cloud textures - Where required 2k textures were Cupscaled to 8K

Improved particle meshes  - Edited meshes with ENB compatibility tweaked for Skies Above

Snow and Rain FX - The vanilla snow shader has been improved thanks to ENB and snow weathers have been updated throughout Skies Above.  Mangas excellent FX are also put to good use with particle snow, distant rains, drifting fogs and full sky dust storms. Rain values have been adjusted for size, transparency etc to match up with ENB Rain/WetSurfaces for landscape and characters.

Location Weather - This has been expanded and now covers Dungeons, Ice Caves, Mines and DwarvenRuins. This allow for seperate control of sensitive interior fog values which are required for many interiors where they provide fake illumination.

There are TWEAKING notes below for users after more performance



PRESETS, FILTERS AND LUTs



Nord Blue - A shader preset that gives everything a colder Northern Skyrim feeling with the lighting geared towards the blue end of the spectrum




Colour Filter - this allows you to define a specific colour range whilst desaturating everything else,and gives off a cool dark souls vibe




Monochroma Filter - a highly adjustable Black and White filter, and it can be tweaked to create several different styles Example1 Example2





LUTs - Skies Above contains several LUTs (Look Up Tables) which you can adjust to suit your gaming style, and it's possible to transform the default lighting into something more aged like original Skyrim.





LUTs are powerful filters with different moods, from dark to light, you can make it your own, and create your perfect ENB, suited to your playthrough. They have been adjusted and balanced in line with the other LUTs. In addition, you can adjust the amount, or weight of the LUT with DNI seperation. Adjust them in game at ENBEFFECTPOSTPASSFX - You can see a full comparison gallery here.










COMPATIBILITY and PATCHES

Skies Above ENB was designed around LUX and ELFX Enhancer and also looks good with WS, ELE, RLO etc.  Skies Above ENB can be easily tweaked for other interior lighting mods like Windows Shadows with a few clicks in the ENB GUI by TWEAKING

The patch list is stickied in the comments section and listed in the downloads section.

Skies Above ENB is designed to be used in tandem with its weather plugin, your mileage may vary.

Skies Above is INCOMPATIBLE with Smoother Skies and anything that alters Imagespaces, Lighting templates, Cell lighting etc

Other significant mods used in screenshots include ENB Light 2, Myrkvior, Happy Little Trees K747 saturation tweak (original - edited), Grasses of Galen K747 (my own WIP summer grass mod), Really Blended roads redone K747, Brighter Fluffy Snow K747, Majestic Mountains K747, Embers XD, and Water for ENB SSE. These files and more are available in my Discord server here > Kojaks Pad 




INSTALLATION, REQUIREMENTS and MANUAL SETUP




Failure to set your graphics card to full range or incorrect monitor calibration, leads to a poorly lit/over exposed, desaturated, washed out image.
Therefore It is essential that you have set things up correctly and you must set your Graphics Card set to Full Range

* Full range setup guide here for either Nvidia or AMD

* Monitor Calibration - Correct monitor calibration begins by resetting your monitor to default, then go to Lagom LCD and ensure you setup everything correctly, in particular Black level which you should check here. If its still too bright/wrong during 81a at 1PM, try TWEAKING it



REQUIRED SOFTWARE AND SETUP


* ENB LETTERBOX IS ENABLED BY DEFAULT. TO DISABLE IT, go to ENBPOSTPASSFX and click the checkbox or manually set enbseries/enbeffectpostpass.fx.ini/>LETTERBOX PILLARBOX</|- Box - Enable Letterbox / Pillarbox=false

* The ENB GUI Hotkey is SHIFT+END. This ties into KreateE which uses END as default, it works well together. If you wish to change it, edit enblocal.ini/[INPUT]/KeyEditor=35 (END key) or 13 (PAUSE key) You can get the full list of keycodes here

* ENB Parallax shaders are disabled by default. To enable it set enbseries.ini/[EFFECT]EnableTerrainParallax etc=true

* ENB ComplexGrass i currently disable at launch, I then enable it in game, sometimes it gives me an FPS boost.

* ENB Terrain Blending is enabled by default.

* ENB Complex Material is disabled by default.

* ENB Depth of Field is enabled by default. Disable it in game OR set enbseries.ini/[EFFECT]EnableDepthOfField=false

* Human eye sunglare fx are disabled by default. To enable them go to ENBSUNSPRITE.FX and change TECHNIQUE to Eye Sunsprite. You can alter Moire intensity, blinking and more

* Skies Above default utilises ELFX and ELFXEnhancer. LUX users should download the optional files and overwrite as directed.

* ENB Binary SSE (News/Download/TES Skyrim SE/v484 or later then copy d3d11.dll and decompiler_46e.dll into your game folder)

* KreateE - Instally normally to mods folder, then open up Skies Above KreateE preset mod folder.  Add a new folder called KreateE then move the preset folder into it, so the correct path is KreateE/Presets/Skies Above.  This is necessary because MO2 doesnt recognise the Kreate folder and removes it.  Once in game open KreateE (END key) goto presets Skies Above and select LOAD

* ENB Helper

* EVLASS Skyrim Underside or DynDOLOD 3 Underside plus SSE-Terrain-Tamriel-Full-Extend.esm

* EVLASS  - MANUAL SETUP -  SKSE/Plugins/EVLaS.cfg float VLMaxRange = 200.0, TimePoints Default = auto, PerformancePreset Default = none. A pre-configured Evlas.cfg file is also available in the downloads section.

* RASS - Disable everything, except, Breaths, Wetness Raindrops only and camera visual effects swimming. If you also use Wet and Cold, disable Breaths, Drips for Player and NPCs. I also disable W&C Snowy/Strong Winds for the player and disable Blizzard Blind and Snowy for NPCs. The rest is user preference.

* No Sunlight through mountains or MM More accurate collision, (they both contain the required double sided mesh flag)

* ENB Particle Light Mods from Nexus - Get them all, srsly m8, see if yeh fail at that, ahm sending Falconhoof roond to deal wi yer wee Jester ploblem.

* ENB Light

* Picta Series - Improved Sky Mesh

* Storm Lightning SSE - MANUAL SETUP -  MCM Enable Snowy Sheet/Fork, Enable Cloudy Sheet/Fork and set Advanced/Default Flash Distance to 4096










INI SETTINGS



LOAD ORDER



TWEAKING

Open the ENB GUI by pressing SHIFT and END in game.

Most interior lighting mods are compatible with Skies Above ENB out the box, but if you need to adjust the interior brightness levels, edit the value at ENBEFFECT.FX/HDR COLOR GRADING/Interior - Exposure (F-Stops)

You can adjust day brightness by editing ENBEFFECT.FX/HDR COLOR GRADING/Day - Exposure (F-Stops). Default is 1.875 which is bright, rich and plausible for a Northern summer day . Exposure 2 is more intense, like the equator sun  i.e. FN ENB/TKV6. If you would prefer something closer overall to vanilla Skyrim try Exposure 1.6 or alternatively there is my other SOLAS ENB where the lighting levels are close to vanilla brightness.

Users may also wish to edit the Apocrypha Sun intensity for lore reasons etc and you can do this by going to the weathers window/sky and setting sun intensity to 0 for all Times Of Day (TOD)

You can adjust night time darkness levels by editing Exposure (F-Stops).  Default is 2.3 or for darker nights, try 1.5. Skies Above nightime darkness levels are mixed, with light where required for gameplay, however there are some darker nights included Example1 Example2. You can play with the other values like saturation, contrast etc.

For Darker Dungeons etc, you can edit Skies Above ENB location weather for Dungeons\DwarvenRuins\Mines\IceCaves\ and adjust ambient\point lighting intensity interior day\night. This is a global weather that affects all Dungeons etc addded to enbseries\_locationweather.ini

You may wish to disable some of the ENB flares, e.g. Sunsprite/Anamorphic (narrow horizontal flare on the sun) or Lens/Starburst/Interior/Night (X shaped glittery sparkles in interiors  - see Blackreach)



To open the KreateE tool, press the END key. Open the Preset window/Skies Above/LOAD. then in the weathers Window, go to managed Weathers and scroll through till you see "current or override" and select it. You can manage a large number of weather variables, including all weather colours, DALC, ambient, skies, vanilla godrays, Imagespaces and more. For more support  with KreatE you can visit the KreateE Nexus page by clicking on the KreateE logo above.






PERFORMANCE




MEDIA & VIDEOS

Media contributors should use Weather Control Centre (WCC), which allows you to cycle through weathers via hotkey. 

Skies Above ENB weathers are synced at ENB TOD which means you should cycle through weathers at either 1AM (ENB TOD Night), 7AM (TOD DAWN) 8 AM (SUNRISE) 12.30PM (DAY), 6PM (SUNSET) and 7PM (DUSK).  You can set these times up via console with a hotkey/macro or using a bat file named "wthr 1.txt" located nest to SkyrimSE.exe containing `set gamehour to 13` then enabled in game via console key/bat wthr1 

This way, you can cycle through weathers via hotkey whilst using another hotkey to go straight to the best time of day for viewing. Saves a lot of time, gives you a superior overview, has a heap of other features and is a must have for anyone reviewing weather mods.  I put over 1500 hrs into Skies Above and it's not easy to convey that much information in a video...but with WCC you can ;)

Weather Control Centre should be setup like follows:
 Activate show weather message on change
 Activate cleanse weather on change

WCC is available on the files page, under miscellaneous.

Note:
Sometimes the clouds bug out when changing a weather and they vanish. First, try Release overriding weather.  If that doesn't work,  try setting the game to 7 am etc, which should force a natural weather change. When you see the clouds working correctly again, wait one hr to let it complete. You can keep going back to 7 am etc until a weather appears with the clouds you need.

You can also console the weathers in the old fashioned way with this complete list of weather ID's




CREDITS, SPECIAL THANKS

Credits are due to Kitsuune, Looping, Rudy, MangaClub, Confidence Man, Boris, MindFlux, Zilav, Sheson, Ramccoid, Nox, Lagom LCD, The Daedric Doll, and Bethesda. Also want to thank Boris, Sheson, MrNeverLost, Conspiracydawg, Rucka, ElSopa, Dunc001, JonnyWang, Odin, TrueDraconis, AlinSorin, SA547, ModderForka, Smokeybear, and Winedave.


I've worked hard on this for years, with NLA K747 (LE), NLA SSE K747, SOLAS, and now Skies Above. Combined I've put thousands of hours into this, and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of my wife and I owe her a special thankyou, because she somehow still puts up with me spending such a ridiculous amount of time doing this. To all the wives, partners, friends and people who support our hobbies, thankyou, they allow you, and me, to keep doing this, and it's much appreciated :)