A lighting mod for B&W which focuses on fantasy inspired atmospherics while maintaining realism. Warm sunlight, cinematic tonemapping, shaded foliage, pastel skies, vivid sunsets and sunrises all the while trying to keep the original vision and warm fairytale like feel of the DLC intact.
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Changelogs
Version 1.96a
Removed the Detlaff fight lighting in hopes to remove that sunset bug. Until I get a savefile before the Detlaff fight I can't figure out exactly why it happens.
Reverted some noon tonemapping. The highlights can looks a litlle too green. Gonna experiment further.
Version 1.95
Tried to fix the Detlaff fight bug.
Version 1.94
Some changes to cutscene exposure.
Version 1.93
Some color balance changes. Tried to remove some overexposure.
Version 1.92
Tried to improve the cursed fog transition.
Version 1.91
Minor changes to night lighting.
Removed some cloud files to hopefully resolve some cloud issues in the base game.
Version 1.90
Added puffy pseudo volumetric clouds courtesy of Took, Majime and Nudel.
Improved interiors during rain. No longer bright but gray to reflect the overcast weather.
Version 1.89
Some mild tree color changes.
Version 1.88
Some minor fixes.
Version 1.87
Fixed the foggy weathers. I had botched them in a previous update.
Some cloud changes.
Some bugfixes.
Version 1.86
The Detlaff final fight env now uses Serenity's nights. The mod is basically 95% complete with regards to locations and quests.
Some tonemapping changes.
Version 1.85
Now includes the Night of Long Fangs.
Greener grass for sunny weathers.
Version 1.82
Distant moonlight changes
Some color tone changes
Version 1.81
Slight desaturation to foliage and reds. Should reduce the bleeding foliage effect.
Version 1.80
Increased distant moonlight intensity.
Some night fog changes. Less blue tint.
Version 1.79
Reduced the pink highlights during mid day.
Fixed an instance of vanilla fog values for rainy weather.
Version 1.78
Improved dusk fog color and sky. Reduced the extreme bright blue fog.
Some minor bugfixes.
Version 1.77
Incorporated my HD B&W Dry grass mod with custom shading for consistency.
Dusk and dawn improvements.
Reduced brightness of blowing leaves during rain storms.
Less reflective lighting at dusk so things don't glow and some other minor bug fixes.
Version 1.75
A lot of improvements so I'll probably forget a few.
Cirrus clouds are more red during sunsets.
Improvements to the sunset transition.
Improvements to distant sunlight during almost all midday instances.
Improved rainy weathers with more translucent drops and fog. Also improved rain during sunsets. Some purple clouds thrown here and there for more dramatic effect. Brighter chimney smoke for rainy weathers.
Changes to distant fog value brightness for most weathers.
Some bloom changes.
Version 1.72
Redid the foggy weather. Much better now imo.
Mitigated the water bloom at night. Also, some vignette changes.
Improvements to night rain lighting.
Improved fire color during rainy weathers at night.
Version 1.71
Fixed the pre-mature orange sun and sunset issue.
Improvements to midday. Less vanilla.
Moon changes.
Foggy weather improvements.
Version 1.70a
Re-enabled the moon godrays at night.They were long overdue.
Some foliage changes.
Completely redid most of the rainy weather. Much more stylized and atmospheric imo.
Fixed an instance of excessive bloom during rainy weathers.
Version 1.70
Re-enabled the moon godrays at night.They were long overdue.
Some foliage changes.
Completely redid most of the rainy weather. Much more stylized and atmospheric imo.
Version 1.68
Changes to night bloom. Torches will give off better bloom now.
Some changes to distant mountain light. Increased distant light intensity.
Increased distant cloud brightness.
Version 1.67
Changes to distant lighting. Beauclair palace will be visible from farther away now.
Version 1.66
Changes to daytime (noon) tonemapping. Less green.
Changes to night moon lighting on distant structures.
Also, deeper shadows on NPCs at night. Looks less video gamey imo
Moon intensity changes.
Some distant fog changes.
Version 1.65
Increased moonlight intensity at night.
Version 1.64
Reduced water brightness.
Saturation changes to foliage.
Reduced a weird bloomy moon transition with the cursed fog env.
Version 1.63
Fixed the intense bloom during sunrises.
Changed fog back color during dawn to be more blue and less vanilla green to be more in line with the new nights.
Version 1.62
Fixed the issue where the characters were pitch black in caves during certain TODs. Now the caves and characters will both be dark.
Added bloom to the catacombs. The vanilla catacombs lack bloom of any kind.
Improved the Wight cutscene lighting and transition.
Version 1.60a
The fires would appear too red at times. Fixed them.
Version 1.60
Totally overhauled the nights and night cutscenes, inspired by the 'A Night to Remember' CGI trailer. The new nights are more fitting for the land of love and wine imo. Check the screens to get an idea for the new nights.
>Also fixed the bloom issue where Geralt's face would give off bloom.
Improved the cursed fog . Elven ruins have warmer fog while spectral fog is greener. Inspired by Minas Morgul from LOTR.
Improved almost all envs across the board.
Version 1.50
Worked a bit on the fairytale forest and cutscenes.
Brightened the junipers and cupress trees. Improved AO on trees.
Some changes to indirect lighting and fog
Version 1.48
Changed distant light to be more reaching.
Completely overhauled the foliage for all times of day.
Reduced character lighting during rain.
A lot of minor changes here and there.
Version 1.47
Reduced the Blue moon further.
Brightened the foliage at night (again). Also lessened the harsh AO on the foliage.
Worked a bit on the fairy tale lighting.
Some light edits here and there.
Version 1.46
Reduced the blue moon at night (clearly an unintentional Frank Sinatra reference lol)
Version 1.45
Completely overhauled the sunsets. Sunset timing was also fixed. As a whole, less overpowering orange and greater variation in hues in the sky, fog and clouds.
Edited some weather types. Added pollen to some clear weather types. Changes to tonemapping.
Some misc changes here and there. Changes to flares at night. They are now very subtle except for foggy weathers where they are still diffused and visible.
Version 1.42
Began work on interiors.
Overall worked on almost every env. Rain, fog, sunny.
Brightened foliage at night.
Less oversaturated sunsets.
Version 1.40
Overhauled the weather system. No longer will you see the same clouds stuck on the horizon like a static image.
A new light drizzle weather was added. No longer will you only see rain storms when it rains. It's clear this DLC was rushed.
Overall small tweaks to the sunny weathers.
Version 1.37
Changes to billboard translucency. The billboards in the sun's direction were too reactive to light, especially during sunsets. Had to find a compromise.
Saturation changes for different TODs.
Some small changes to fog and rainy weather.
Version 1.30
Darkened the shadows. In trying to create a pseudo GI I made them too light.
Changes to foliage brightness.
Version 1.25
Reduced flare intensity to more sane levels.
Version 1.1
Bugfixes.
Improved some of the envs.
Started work on the generic cursed fog env.
Version 1.0
Huge update. Heavily inspired by the Witcher 2, especially the new nights and catacombs. More atmospheric with saturated bloom and flares.
Improved all weather types across almost times type of day.
Began work on catacombs. Should feel more like crypts and decrepit tombs.
Changes to almost all parameters. AO, Clouds, Bloom etc
Version 0.98
Changes to foliage.
Improved the Wight env to be more atmospheric.
Version 0.95
Improvements to AO. Shouldn't be overly dark and inky now.
Improvements to foliage. Reduced foliage saturation by a bit.
Improvements to clouds during sunset.
Slight changes to colour balance, less yellow now.
Reduced fake character lighting during certain times of day.
Version 0.90
Fixed the folder naming issue. Mod should work out of the gate now.
Brightened the grass a bit and tried to improve the foliage in general. The dark grass made the mod look less sunny than intended.
Some changes to fog.
Version 0.85
General improvements across all edited weathers.
Increased AO all around for all weathers, especially overcast and dimly lit weathers. Part of the reason W3 looks bad in non-sunny weathers is because the AO is so weak making everything seem flat and unshaded, even on HBAO+ .
Mild edits to the fairytale env.
Version 0.80
Changes to sunny weather. Trees are now slightly darker to add some contrast to the vegetation. In B&W all the foliage sorta has the same colour which doesn't look good imo and has a monotone feel.
Edits to sunsets.
Improved foggy weather and rainy weather for more times of the day.
Began work on the Wight env. Made it more foggy and atmospheric. Increased AO as it was very bare and sparse. Also reduced the exaggerated colour and green which CDPR apparently seems to love.
Version 0.70
Reduced the pink/purple during sunny days to make the lighting seem more natural.
Increased the lighting in the distance.
Small changes to fog.
Small changes to vegetation and billboard lighting.
Small changes to bloom at night.
A few more subtle changes.
Version 0.60
Edited foliage brightness and colour. Edited AO around foliage. It was too dark around ivy. Managed to reach a compromise between coverage and darkness.
Edited weathers. Added fireflies to clear and foggy weather. Added flying leaves to rainy weathers.
Version 0.45
Improved Foggy weathers.
Edited billboards colours before sunset, they were too bright.
Improved bloom at night.
Improved some weather transitions.
Version 0.5
Improved rainy weather at night. Check images
Improvements to foggy weather.
Some slight changes to bloom for all weathers.
Version 0.4
began work on foggy and rainy weathers. Check images to get an idea. The rainy weathers were inspired by GTAV and some of it's mods along with rain in other games.
Version 0.3
Improved the transitions between the orange and pink sunsets. Should blend better now.
Improved the clouds at sunset.
Fixed the night bloom issue. Added more godrays to the moon at night.
Minor changes to global lighting.
Version 0.2
Improved the sunsets. Should appear more natural. Toned down the orange.
Changes to bloom and AO.
SERENITY LIGHTING MOD
IMPORTANT: BEFORE USING THE MOD MAKE SURE YOUR MONITOR AND WINDOWS COLOR PROFILE ARE CALIBRATED. MOST USERS WHO POST SCREENSHOTS AND VIDEOS SKIP THIS STEP AND AS A RESULT THE IMAGE DOES NOT LOOK AS INTENDED (LOOKS TOO DARK).
WITCHER 3 IS TERRIBLE IN THIS REGARD AS IT OVERRIDES YOUR COLOR PROFILE WHEN YOU ADJUST THE IN-GAME GAMMA SLIDER (YOU CAN EVEN SEE THE WHITES CHANGE WHEN YOU MOVE THE GAMMA SLIDER) IF YOU HAVE A CALIBRATED COLOR PROFILE AS MOVING THE SLIDER DEFAULTS TO THE DEFAULT COLOR PROFILE.
THE MOD SCREENS WERE TAKEN WITH THE 'PRESERVE SYSTEM GAMMA' SETTING ENABLED AND A CALIBRATED GAMMA AND WINDOWS COLOR PROFILE. IF YOU SKIP THIS STEP YOUR GAME WILL NOT LOOK AS INTENDED AND LIKE THE SCREENS SHOWN. THANK YOU.
PROLOGUE I love Blood and wine and I absolutely love the region of Toussaint. It's one of my favourite DLCs of all time and one of my favourite regions in an open world game. A fantasy amalgamated version of Southern France and Italy with knights, fair maidens, fairy tale esque castles all the while hiding dark secrets and higher vampires to slay, what's not to love right?
I actually enjoyed blood and wine more than the base game (fight me) but one thing I sorta didn't like was how the DLC looked in general (though I don't like how the Witcher 3 looks as a whole #E3NeverForgetti). When it comes to B&W, if it's not the ugly yellow tint, it's the blue dense fog inversion layer similar to something you'd find over industrial areas in China. If it's not the ugly LOD trees which are so translucent they glow in the distance, it's the awful overexposed bloom. Everything is then covered in this god awful yellow tint or 'piss filter'. The DLC is drenched and soaked in it (pun intended) and don't even get me started on the guards and their overexposed pure white torches at night. Their torches give off this overexposed white light, what the hell CDPR? That's not how fire looks.
So, I decided to look up modding envs online and downloaded the tools needed to do something about it and after some tinkering, I give you a fairly simple and humble attempt at trying to improve B&W's lighting while trying to keep it's heart and soul intact.
FEATURES Days are bright and sunny, sunrises are golden and sunsets are drenched in pastel hues of orange and purple. Colorful Witcher 2 inspired bloom. Dark, shaded and no longer bleached foliage with realistic fog and no more white torches and fires at night. And before you go 'but it's supposed to look like that, all piss covered and hazy because it's supposed to invoke a fairy tale like atmosphere'. A yellow piss filter =/= Fairy Tale (I do agree that it should sorta look hazy and bloomy though, to an extent). If you think it looks like it's actual RL inspiration, look up photos of rural southern France and Italy (which were the inspiration of Toussaint) and tell me how those look. You can always use vanilla if you like but to call B&W's vanilla lighting that of a fairy tale and invoking a fairy tale infused atmosphere reminiscent of Tuscany and the Bordeaux countryside is a stupid claim in my book.
Foggy and rainy weathers should look more realistic and grey without any exaggerated colours that CDPR seems to love. The wight mansion has also been reworked so it is more atmospheric with thick fog and mist to further heighten the mood. In foggy weathers, lights will have this foggy diffused glow like they do in real life.
A new rain shower weather was added, basically a Mediterranean rain shower. No longer will you only see rain storms when it rains in Toussaint. Apparently when it rains in Toussaint, it has to be a storm, always.
Interiors will be bright in the day and dark in the night, as they should be. Catacombs will be realistically dark and brooding. Pack a torch, or two.
The cursed elven ruins have been totally overhauled with dark lighting and fog. Overall they should feel more atmospheric and foreboding.
Anyway, rant over. Hope you like the mod and enjoy. I made this for personal use but decided to share. Don’t forget to endorse if you like the mod.
MOD TECHNICAL DETAILS I do plan to add some new features to the mod so keep it tracked. Open to comments and suggestions.
Make sure your display calibrated. By default, Witcher 3 overrides your gamma and makes the game look red. I use the 'Preserve System Gamma' as it keeps your calibrated Windows color profile in-game.
GIVE THIS MOD PRIORITY OVER MY HD TREE BILLBOARDS MOD!
INSTALLATION Simply unzip into your mod folder.
COMPATIBILITY Not compatible with other lighting mods that edit B&W. Might not be compatible with mods that edit night vision or cat vision.
BUGS Report any bugs you come across. Before reporting a bug please check to see if you can recreate the bug in the vanilla game with the mod disabled.
If it is a confirmed Serenity related bug mention the location, time of day and if there was a weather transition and if so which weathers.
CREDITS WolvenKit CDProjektRed for the Witcher game series EnvUI by rmemr The guys from the GudMods Witcher Discord for their invaluable help TookaFace, Majime and Nudel for his cloud files
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