This fact is that a particle will emit ENB light even if its texture is set to full transparency, if the rest of the conditions are met. Now there is one very important fact which allows us to create particle systems ONLY dedicated to light emission: meaning particles which are INVISIBLE on the screen but emitting light. I have posted here all the details I know Also there are some shader flags which prevent a particle from emitting light. However since this encompases MANY particle effects, only those without "greyscale texture" settings emit light - since these are typically used for glowing effects which you'd expect to emit light.Īll other particles do NOT emit light. "Normal" light particles have no subtextures. This of course means that any particles which use this type of animation will emit light even if they aren't really fire particles. "Fire" particles are those which have subtextures, since this is how fire is animated (essentially these particles use textures which contain several frames of a flame animation which is "played" on the particle during its lifetime). Here Boris came up with these rules (he's looking at the other end of the pipeline but below are the rules as seen from our point of view, which is the nif files):
Now we do not want ALL particles to emit light, so ENB needs some way to figure out what particles should emit light. One is called Complex Particle Lights and the other Complex Fire Lights but in fact both work with particles. There are two types of ENB particle light effects. It also helps to know some basic terms like interpolation, boolean variables etc. This guide requires some basic understanding of NifSkope? and editing nif files, as well as how RGBA colors work. So the goal of this guide is to shed light on the practical application of Skyrim particles in light of their use as ENB light sources.Īlso special thanks to mindflux, Rudy and anybody else at the ENB forums who has been able to help me with this arcana (and Boris of course). There are many small things and quirks not mentioned anywhere. However what all these settings do in practice I've learned through many hours of experimentation.
I do recommend reading it first before proceeding with this text. I learned a lot about the basics of Skyrim particle systems from this guide? although it's for Oblivion and some things have changed. Likely I will rewrite/expand the guide over time. If anything is not clear or not well explained ask and I will clarify. If you believe any of the information below to be incorrect and you have data to prove it let me know right away. I apologize for the somewhat rambling style however at the moment I just don't have the time to be a literary master. Initially it will mostly allow you to edit the values of already set-up particle systems since adding/removing nodes can be a bit tricky, I may in the future add a guide which focuses on those details. This guide focuses on those Skyrim particle system values which are important to complex particle lights, however it can also be used as general particle system guide.