[Emmi Coolahan]

Description:

All Natural combines a robust custom weather system that allows the use of weather types from all existing weather mods with custom versions of Natural Interiors and Real Lights in order to provide the greatest weather/environment experience possible. The three segments of All Natural will be explained below:

1. Custom Weather System

The cornerstone of All Natural is unique weather system that includes a new regional weather script to keep the weather synced on interior/exterior switching and when fast traveling and a variety of optional features to help enhance and customize the user's weather experience. All Natural also allows you to choose from only vanilla weathers or from some or all the weather types from Natural Weather, Atmospheric Weather System, and Enhanced Weather.

2. Natural Interiors

Natural Interiors was originally created by Wormheart, and its purpose was to make it so interior locations such as houses and guilds would be affected by the weather outside and time of day, and to make it so interior locations had weather sounds inside very similarly to the original “Weather Inside” mod. To accomplish this, interior windows were made transparent and the sky outside now matched the exterior weather and time of day. The result is you can look out an interior window and see a sunset, stars, etc and also have the interior lighting level change based on it being sunny, cloudy, nighttime, etc, plus you can hear rain/storm sounds from within. Sadly, Natural Interiors was never finished and had some issues. However, All Natural now includes an improved and expanded version that cannot be found outside of All Natural. Also, the Natural Interiors segment of All Natural cannot be separated from All Natural, so you must use All Natural in full to benefit from the Natural Interiors segment.

3. Real Lights

Real Lights was an incredibly ambitious project by Josef K. which aimed to replace all the fake lighting (invisible lights with no actual light source) with real lights with real light sources. For example, with Real Lights locations have candles or other light sources that emit light instead of generic white light coming from mid-air.Sadly Real Lights was abandoned long ago and has some issues with save game bloating. However, the mod has now been included in All Natural and has been recently updated to fix all the problems it previously had. The All Natural version of Real Lights is the most updated and safe version of Real Lights and no one should use the older stand-alone version. The Real Lights segment of All Natural is the only segment you can actually use independently, so even if you want to use, say, Enhanced Weather, you can use the Real Lights plugin from All Natural. Instructions on how to do this are included in the installation section of this guide.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18305 v1.1 @ TES Nexus
http://www.moddb.com/mods/all-natural-weather v1.1 @ ModDB
http://www.invision.tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/604-all-natural-weather-v10/ v1.1 @ TESA

Support patches for Nascosto Isles, Losing My Religion, and Kvatch Rebuilt are provided to bring their interiors under the control of All Natural's system.

An extensive filter supporting several other mods is also included which attaches climate data to interiors. Additional mods can be added to this, by request, but space is limited due to the number of masters an ESP is allowed to have. This limitation cannot be overcome by any means. So additions to this list will be considered on a case by case basis, and yes, popularity of the requested mod will be a factor in this.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1119930

All changelog information will be contained in the readme. Please refer there if you want to look over the struggle to get to a full release.

Original All Natural, up to version 0.6, by Chong Li.
All Natural 0.7 through to present by Wrinklyninja, Arthmoor, and Brumbek.

[Fam Mughal]

The CS edit to add weather sounds inside unsupported mods works like a charm. I was a bit intimidated since rarely do I step into the realm of the CS. Thanks to @Smooth for reminding me that the edit steps are in the AN readme. :foodndrink:

[Ruben Bernal]

The CS edit to add weather sounds inside unsupported mods works like a charm. I was a bit intimidated since rarely do I step into the realm of the CS. Thanks to @Smooth for reminding me that the edit steps are in the AN readme. :foodndrink:

Someone spends too much time making bird noises.

[Jah Allen]

For the moon luminance, my first instinct is to suggest a variation of no more than 25%, as anything greater than that seems unnatural. Meaning that a new moon would be 75% of whatever the normal night luminance is, and a full moon 100%. The 33% suggestion seems appropriate as well although to me it seems like just a little too much. Restricting it to 25% might make the feature very subtle, though, perhaps you can let the user set their own maximum variation in the ini?

[Nina Mccormick]

Call me crazy, but the fog distance system is based on a percentage of the max distance set in the weather profile, right? That should probably be explained, with some kind of chart or something that lists what the various distant fog values are.

A quick poke and it looks like setting clear, cloudy, and overcast to 0.5 works out to about the same thing as setting uGridsDistantCount to 18, which looks about right in-game.

[Jason White]

For the moon luminance, my first instinct is to suggest a variation of no more than 25%, as anything greater than that seems unnatural. Meaning that a new moon would be 75% of whatever the normal night luminance is, and a full moon 100%. The 33% suggestion seems appropriate as well although to me it seems like just a little too much. Restricting it to 25% might make the feature very subtle, though, perhaps you can let the user set their own maximum variation in the ini?

OK, I've set the default maximum to 25% and added a setting for specifying it to the ini.

Call me crazy, but the fog distance system is based on a percentage of the max distance set in the weather profile, right? That should probably be explained, with some kind of chart or something that lists what the various distant fog values are.

You're crazy! Sure, that sounds sensible, I'll draw one up sometime.

@ lorca: Finally managed to take a look at the weathers you reported. There's nothing wrong with them, their interior versions are all correctly darker than the exterior ones, which are a 'bright rain' type (ie. not very thick clouds, so lots of light + rain). If anything, your shiny floor seems to be due to a light being placed shortly above it (haven't checked in CS), as it's just that bit that has the problem. I'm not going to change anything though, just pass it off as a very well polished stone floor.

[Brittany Abner]

@ lorca: Finally managed to take a look at the weathers you reported. There's nothing wrong with them, their interior versions are all correctly darker than the exterior ones, which are a 'bright rain' type (ie. not very thick clouds, so lots of light + rain). If anything, your shiny floor seems to be due to a light being placed shortly above it (haven't checked in CS), as it's just that bit that has the problem. I'm not going to change anything though, just pass it off as a very well polished stone floor.

Ok, no problem. Thanks for checking it out. I manage to edit Oblivion's ini HDR in interiors and dimmed the brightness because I noticed that Real Lights really brightens up everything. I know RL was meant to be used in bloom mode but I like HDR so I tweak it to get the best of the two worlds.

[Sherry Speakman]

Real Lights is intended to be used in bloom mode? I've seen some really bright interiors but I always just thought that was the tradeoff having always-on light sources combine with bright exterior light during the day, I didn't know that HDR contributed to the issue. I've been hesitant to try messing with the HDR settings since I tried some custom settings one time that nearly left me blind lool. If true, I'm curious why HDR would be a problem combined with Real Lights.

[sam smith]

Real Lights is intended to be used in bloom mode? I've seen some really bright interiors but I always just thought that was the tradeoff having always-on light sources combine with bright exterior light during the day, I didn't know that HDR contributed to the issue. I've been hesitant to try messing with the HDR settings since I tried some custom settings one time that nearly left me blind lool. If true, I'm curious why HDR would be a problem combined with Real Lights.

I don't think RL is intended for bloom lighting, that's the first I've heard. There may be more difficulties using it with HDR, but that's only because Oblivion's HDR implementation svcks.

[CYCO JO-NATE]

Ok, no problem. Thanks for checking it out. I manage to edit Oblivion's ini HDR in interiors and dimmed the brightness because I noticed that Real Lights really brightens up everything. I know RL was meant to be used in bloom mode but I like HDR so I tweak it to get the best of the two worlds.

Would be very interested to know what settings you changed - I also use HDR

Thanks

[Catherine N]

Real Lights was not intended for Bloom mode. Not sure where that comes from but every indication exists that it has always been optimized toward use with HDR.

It's only the combination with interior weather lighting that has started causing the additional issue of over brightness. If there was an easy way to go about having the interior lights operate on the same timers most exterior sources are on the problem would be easy to manage.

[Stay-C]

Real Lights was not intended for Bloom mode. Not sure where that comes from but every indication exists that it has always been optimized toward use with HDR.

It's only the combination with interior weather lighting that has started causing the additional issue of over brightness. If there was an easy way to go about having the interior lights operate on the same timers most exterior sources are on the problem would be easy to manage.

Oh, ok. I got my info at Arwen website. Here's the link. Scroll all the way down where it says Real Lights. It's from 2008, btw.

http://amito.freehostia.com/Oblivion/OB-mods-Part2.htm#Enhanced_Weather

In any case, her tweak did the trick. I actually dim the HDR even further.

[Cesar Gomez]

Me too I experienced the quick-weather change while running around outside (so not on inside-outside transitions). With me it was when running from Bruma due south towards Bleakers Way. In Bruma it was still snowing. When I came to the area / boundary where the vegetation changes from Jerall Mountains to "green" again, suddenly the weather popped to become entirely sunny and clear. I then had a fight with a couple of Goblins, the weather stayed the same during the fight. Afterwards I continued my way towards Bleakers and - whooops - in a moment it started to rain! :blink:

Anyway I installed the AN Scripts.esp fix now, see if I get funky weather again. One small question: I do not need to Bash tag that for "Scripts", right? I merged it into the Bash patch. And in the load list, I put it right after Real Lights, as last of the four (?) AN .esp's. Will see how it goes.

[Poetic Vice]

Oh, ok. I got my info at Arwen website. Here's the link. Scroll all the way down where it says Real Lights. It's from 2008, btw.

http://amito.freehostia.com/Oblivion/OB-mods-Part2.htm#Enhanced_Weather

In any case, her tweak did the trick. I actually dim the HDR even further.

There's also this from the original Real Lights nexus-page:

Q: Lights are too bright!
A: That's because you're using HDR. Oblivion's HDR makes everything shine (the (in)famous radioactive carrots is just an example). I've been reported that modify [BlurShaderHDRInterior] in your oblivion.ini will solve this problem, but I take no responsibility from any damage you can make modifying your oblivion.ini! I suggest using bloom instead (that's what I do) that is far more realistic.

Personally I find using HDR with these settings under [BlurShaderHDRInterior] work quite nicely however:
fBrightScale=1.2500
fBlurRadius=5.0000

[Stephani Silva]

There's also this from the original Real Lights nexus-page:

Q: Lights are too bright!
A: That's because you're using HDR. Oblivion's HDR makes everything shine (the (in)famous radioactive carrots is just an example). I've been reported that modify [BlurShaderHDRInterior] in your oblivion.ini will solve this problem, but I take no responsibility from any damage you can make modifying your oblivion.ini! I suggest using bloom instead (that's what I do) that is far more realistic.

Lol, well how about that. Arwen was somewhat right after all. For those who want to see the difference, here are two pics. Pic #1 has default [BlurShaderHDRInterior]. Pic #2 has Arwen tweak version. The images are at the smith in Chorrol at 9:30am.


http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/9070/screenshot0pa.png

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/8938/screenshot1dmu.png

Please forget about my textures, lol. They are vanilla since right now I'm just testing mods. I'm pretty sure the HDR tweak will look better with those high-res textures.
Btw, this tweak will also affect all interiors if not mistaken. The local pubs now look slightly dimmer, sort of "loungy". I like that :foodndrink:

[James Wilson]

Pic 2 is WAAAAYYYY better! :yes:

[Lucy]

Maybe I'm weird but in that example I like the first picture more.

Totally off topic but I'm just wondering-- has anybody encountered the problem with Oblivion's refraction shader where it bleeds through everything? If I stand in front of an Oblivion gate it will make my character all distorted like the effect on the gate, and I can even see nearby gates through hills and stuff because the terrain will shimmer as well. Basically any object between the source of the shader and the camera has the shader effect on it. I've never found a fix for this and am curious how widespread it is if the handful of people in this thread are aware of it.

[Kelvin]

the problem with Oblivion's refraction shader where it bleeds through everything?

When I first started playing, I had an Nvidia card and never had that, then I got a Radeon card and had that. It seems to depend on your hardware and also (possibly) graphics drivers.

Vac

[Erich Lendermon]

Oh, wow. I just checked and the refraction shader problem is fixed for me now. It must have been the DX10/11 upgrade I installed for Civ5. Damn, I spent so long looking for a fix for that problem and it turns out I fixed it unintentionally and didn't even realize it!

I've got a Radeon 4850, so if you're still having the problem I'd suggest making sure you get the DX10/11 upgrade. I had to install SP3 for Vista and I think hunt down a specific Windows Update file to get it all installed. And sorry for the off topic posts guys, I was mostly curious how widespread the problem is (widespread enough to get a reply so quickly) and then it turned out to be a happy day for me.

And yes, I admit it, my Oblivion obsession (including ridiculous/intimidating mod guide website in progress) was interrupted by Civ5

[Patrick Gordon]

To provide a little bit of entertainment, yesterday morning, on my way to the IC I experienced http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d191/haegint/Oblivion/_Oblivion2010-12-1218-23-58-64.jpg :goodjob:

How?

Well, by sheer carelessness I disabled a couple of mods, among them some of All Natural, then rebuilt the patch. The result was this beautifully abnormal weather reminiscent of the quest involving the Cheydinhal painter.

[vicki kitterman]

Ha, reminds me of http://i52.tinypic.com/sqh92u.jpg, which happened to me yesterday. I saved and quit and when I tried to reload the save it would just crash upon loading. Not really sure what caused it, I just figured it to be one of those random errors. Though I think I've experienced fast weather switching two different times already, so I might need to do some further playing and see if there's some bigger problem.

[Damian Parsons]

Ha, reminds me of http://i52.tinypic.com/sqh92u.jpg

Ohooo.... it looks dramatic with the black sky... something unholy waiting there for you... :laugh:
I can't comment on the potential issue you may have (just clueless). However my psychedelic weather was resolved by simply switching on all those mods again that I accidentally switched off previously.

[Tyler F]

Ha, yeah at least with that purple color you can figure something's missing. Black is just... ominous. I'm jealous of your framerate, though, considering I'm relentless in my pursuit of bringing my computer to its knees with Oblivion. Seriously, I've even installed http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33635 (and if you check the comments you'll see it's not my first extra rock experience). Actually, the black skies and crashes might have something to do with Oblivion's excessive demands on my computer. I also rearranged my load order to be better organized, so there are a few possible explanations for the various problems I've had.

I do need to hunt back through these threads to find the fast weather switching fix in case it happens again and I can determine there's a real problem with that. I had the issue with the Oblivion weather not going away after leaving a gate as well; I'm impressed there's always already a fix out by the time I notice the problem!

[Alisia Lisha]

Actually, the black skies and crashes might have something to do with Oblivion's excessive demands on my computer. I also rearranged my load order to be better organized, so there are a few possible explanations for the various problems I've had.

I do need to hunt back through these threads to find the fast weather switching fix in case it happens again and I can determine there's a real problem with that. I had the issue with the Oblivion weather not going away after leaving a gate as well; I'm impressed there's always already a fix out by the time I notice the problem!

Yep. This has come up once before IIRC, and I think it was just an engine bug, something to do with not all textures being loaded by the game as it reached a limit of some sort.

http://www.4shared.com/file/EOi9cfok/AN_Scripts.html's the fix plugin.

[Steeeph]

Thanks, much appreciated. I'm guessing this should load after All Natural.esp but not way at the end of my load order like after my Bashed Patch?

I think the black sky has happened before as well. Between that and the random freezes I get once in a while as the game tries to load when I'm outside, I'm thinking maybe I should check out how much RAM, VRAM, etc. the game is using. It's possible I've gone completely overboard in my quest to make the game as pretty as possible looooool. I did install the Optimized Distant Land MAX thing as a kind of penance, though I think number of polygons isn't the issue.