I want to make my game pretty!

[Presto]

I've been playing this game and modding it for over a year now but I'm still a little lost when it comes to making the game look amazing. Insane graphic cards aside, how do people make the game look like they do in pictures like those found here http://paparoach-slowdown.blogspot.com/

The characters are incredibly smooth and shiny, am I missing out on a lighting mod or am I not running the game in high enough textures? My characters look very nice but I'm always amazed how amazing they look in other peoples games.

[gregathit]

Well it depends on what all you have installed. MBP with high rez texture packs really do add some eye popping looks on the chicks. As to lighting, OBGE and such sure don't hurt for eye candy but they can crap out your frame rate if you aren't careful.

Guys like flingingfeces have made some movies that just made my jaw drop! He was the main reason I finally dumped all my excuses for not installing MBP.

[Presto]

I have MBP installed so I think its just a matter of the lighting. The "shine" the characters have to them seems to be what I'm missing. Although I do question how that look works in game and if this is just done for the sake of making screenshots look amazing.

[gregathit]

For lighting this is an interesting read:
/>http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/other.html

And donkey posted a guide that also may be of use (see post number 1 for link):
/>http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=1273

[me3]

well since u got an insane gfx card i´d try nvidia inspector with OBGE - with these bits u can have hardware aa + OBGE aa

antialias compatibility 0x20410045

ambient occlusion compatibility should be put to default : elderscrolls by default

4x msaa + 2x sgssaa makes it realy smooth - texture filtering LOD bias needs to be set on -.500

for 4x sgssaa it would be -.1000 aso ...

antialiasing mode : override any application setting

no flickering when running around

unlike with only OBGE aa , renders pictures just without motion , great for screens but not for playing

omg after typing that wall of text i thought of making a screen so i will not remove it lol here it is

hope u can understand the crap i wrote , english isnt my native

good luck

edit : activate ingame HDR aswell - hardware aa isnt working in inventory after obge has shaders loaded

[Endiness]

Anyone use More than almost everything visble? If so, what's the fps impact?

[gregathit]

Crawling......

If you want screeshots....Great

If you want to play......Nope.

[Kayin]

You might want to learn about resolution itself to make Oblivion prettier. Oblivion by default has really crap, low resolution 512 textures, so here are the proper sizes to looks for.

Armors - 1024x1024 or 2048x2048

Environment - 2048x2048 or 4096x4096 if you have a really good card

Characters - 2048x2048 facial textures and 4096x4096 body textures.

The HGEC body has 4096x4096 textures readily available that are easy to find on the Nexus. This body type also has all the variety when it comes to armors, namely from other countries. As far as skin textures go, many popular races like the Synx, DK High Imperials, etc. have high resolution 4096x4096 textures as well, so it's easy enough to take them and use the textures on whatever race you wish.

Well, easy if you know enough Photoshop to match up skins so they look right. When making really nice characters, there's something you need to edit in your Oblivion INI file that turns off the skin tone changing in character creation. Your character will look 100 times better if you edit your skin tones through an image editing program like Photoshop instead of the game which does a really poor job at it anyway.

[Endiness]

I'm going to try to playing with those settings for awhile, but it stutters quite a bit from camera movement outside. It's nice to play without the blurry AA filters of OBGE again.

Edit: Forgot. I should mention that sphere grid supersampling transparency makes it look exactly like NormalFilterAA.fx shader(well less jaggies). I used 8x AA and Multisampling transparency.

As expected, fps didn't really improve with sli, but the stuttering was somehow significantly reduced. On the plus side, my second card is no longer being taxed enough to overheat lol.

[gregathit]

Looks nice Endiness!

[me3]

hm as i dont use self shadowing , r they looking more smooth with the sgssaa filter ?? im satisfied with forced ambient occlussion , maybe its just a placebo but i think the game looks different with or without it . and give it a try with sli disabled maybe it will reduce stuttering as it seems ur second card isnt realy used , im not sure bout that.....

edit : oh and sgssaa isnt bluring that much like normal filter aa , to me at least , maybe another placebo , just makes textures less flickering

edit 2 : gah wasnt reading properly , u said u had no sli enabled aswell.....