Relighting Skyrim (RS) corrects the lighting design throughout Skyrim. The largest correction made is placing light references (invisible objects that produce light) at their sources (i.e., candles, fires, etc.). This alone corrects many vanilla issues such as sources that produce no light, light emitting from the center of two sources, light that is produced without a source, lights that don't illuminate the landscape, and much more!

Beyond correcting light placements, RS also adjusts individual light reference characteristics such as brightness (aka fade), radius, etc. This ensures the light provided by each light source matches the light one would expect from such a source. For example, a candle's light in a small room would hit all walls within that room. Therefore, RS ensures the a candle in the game behaves the same way; realistically lighting the area around it.

In addition to lights, emittance on effects such as beams, fogs, glows, mists, windows, etc. have been adjusted to emit light from the light sources they are placed around. All these effects around natural light sources, as well as, interior windows are adjusted to emit with the region's weather. This causes these effects and windows to change their color tint based on time-of-day and exterior weather conditions.

In all of this, Relighting Skyrim aspires to keep the vanilla look and feel.


FEATURES

• Proper placement of lightbulbs at their light sources
• Many more shadow casting lightbulbs vs vanilla to create the best ambience possible
• Natural, dynamic lighting that changes with the time of day and weather conditions
• Fixes lightbulbs not casting light on to the landscape in exteriors
• Retains the vanilla visual style and performance
  

Keep in mind many interiors are pushed up to the edge of the light limit. These are interiors where players shouldn't logically use spells or torches to see (homes, inns, longhouses, shops, etc). Therefore, players are cautioned that using spells or torches in these types of interiors may cause light flicker. Caves, dungeons, mines, etc., where the player may use a torch, will typically allow only one (1) torch to be present before light flicker may occur.


ALTERNATIVE VERSIONS
Bug Reports with any of these alternative versions will NOT be addressed. They are simply provided for user convenience.

Exterior / Interior Versions
These version are available due to popular requests. They include either exterior or interior only locations, respectively. These are full versions of the mod.

Window Shadows Version (no longer being maintained)
This version fully incorporates Window Shadows v7.7.5 and is a full, replacement version of Relighting Skyrim, therefore, there is no need to install the Main File with this version. There is also no need to install the Windows Shadows mod since this includes the interiors from v7.7.5 of that mod. This version is designed around the use of ENB Complex Particle Lights from ENBSeries. The following interiors have been revisited and reworked to integrate RS and WS changes:

• Angas Mill
• Angarvunde
• Battleborn Farm
• Bleak Falls Barrow
• Helgen's Keep
• High Hrothgar
• Honningbrew Meadery
• Ivarstead
• Pelagia Farm
• Riverwood
• Whiterun (minus Jorrvaskr)
  

Compatible
Relighting Skyrim is compatible with other lighting mods that solely provide or provide in combination changes to the following records that are commonly found in these mods. Since RS doesn't include any of these types of changes, these mods can be loaded anywhere in the load order in regards to RS.

• Image Space
• Light
• Lighting Template
• Weather
  

Some of these popular mods include, but are not limited to:
Other compatible mods include:

• USSEP (allow RS to overwrite any conflicts with lights/effects/etc)
  

Meshes
Relighting Skyrim now includes custom meshes to support the candle assets that didn't have an option without a flame within the vanilla assets. As such, these assets had to be created so that RS could swap them out, as needed, to correct the game's lighting vs removing them from the space. Relighting Skyrim used the vanilla versions of these assets, meaning they will need a patch for any mod that changes the same candle meshes. This pertains to candlehorns, lanterns with candles, glazed candles, and silver candles. The following mods have patches available, thus far:

• SD's Horn Candles SE
• Static Mesh Improvement Mod (SMIM) (lanterns)
  

Mesh Mods
It's highly recommended to have a foundation for the game's meshes that will fix various issues such as: meshes that lead to flicker, holes that allow light bleed, etc. The following is a list of mods that correct various mesh related issues. These mods will work for all setups, and provides a foundation of corrected meshes for any mod list to be built upon. If these mods are installed in the order listed, the next overwriting the previous, then they can be installed without really worrying about the conflicts between them. Allow other mods that change meshes from vanilla to overwrite these:

• Particle Patch (even non-ENB users should install it)
• DynDOLOD Resources (if this is being used, it should be placed here and overwritten by the others)
• Static Mesh Improvement Mod
• Major Cities Mesh Overhaul
• Enhanced Lights and FX (Meshes only! Disable the plugins! They are not compatible with RS!)
• ELFX Fixes (again, meshes only. Disable the plugins!)
• ELFX Exterior Fixes (and again, meshes only. Disable the plugins!)
• Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM - Quality Addon
• Static Mesh Improvement Mod Improvement Mod
• Assorted Mesh Fixes
• Unofficial Material Fixes
• Flickering Mesh Fixes
• Mesh Patch for Various Mods (install the patches in the order the mods are listed, above)
  

Not Compatible
Relighting Skyrim is designed to be used with vanilla interiors. As such, mods that make light place adjustments and many interior overhaul mods are incompatible with RS. Combining these mods with RS without a proper patch will likely cause light flickering, incorrect light placements, or a number of other unusual issues. However, they can be made compatible by following the steps to remove the conflicting Cells from the RS plugin (instructions below).

• Dynamic Shadows for Skyrim
• Enhanced Lights and FX
• Improved Hearthfire Lighting SE
• jkrojmal (JK) most of JK's interior overhaul mods are incompatible without patching
• Lux
• Realistic Lighting Overhaul
  

Install Relighting Skyrim with a mod manger of choice. The Main File is provided as a FOMOD installer to ease installation, and the archive's file format is BAIN. RS can be install or uninstalled at any time during a playthrough.

Uninstall
To remove Relighting Skyrim,

• Create a new save anywhere in an exterior location (it's best to use a location without any lights in the loaded cells)
• Close the game
• Use the mod manger of choice to deactivate or remove RS from the mod list
  

Let LOOT decide the load order. Place any patches after Relighting Skyrim's plugin.

How to remove interiors or exteriors
Though we have provided both an interiors-only and an exterior-only version of the mod, users may still need to know how to remove these or single interiors from Relighting Skyrim to make RS compatible with their mod lists. This is completed using xEdit and is very simple to do:

CREDITS & MORE

A word from the original authors:
Throughout this game I was bothered by the lighting...be it the fires in Dragonsreach, outside High Hrothgar, or many other places. Issues such as lights sources without lights, places where light emits from the center of two fires rather than from each one, light that just magically emitted from the middle of the room, or lights that don't illuminate the landscape. This mod aims to fix all that and more, however, some of these issues still remain (there are engine limitations). All lights come straight from a light source and all light sources produce light.

Originally I was just going to make this fix for myself but the more work I put into it I thought "hey, maybe others would like a fix for these things as well."  After 50,000 subscriptions on Steam, 10,000+ endorsements here (wow), getting to the point where I feel actually covering all of Skyrim is within reach, and my collaboration with JawZ I can assure you that this has gone far beyond anything I expected!

Thanks to all those who support our efforts and continue to expect the best :)