Aokili

PBR vs Vanilla Skyrim

Added 2025-08-01 09:56:03 +0000 UTC

Over the last months I've gotten a few questions about PBR.
PBR is a shading model that is consistent between different software like Blender, Unreal Engine, Substance Painter and so on. This take out the guesswork when creating materials in a different program.
I create the materials in Substance Painter. Since Skyrim is a ancient game it's shaders are no longer used in the video game industry. That means i have to do a lot of guessing when converting the color values and parameters.
In Skyrim most objects look like plastic and are quite static with baked in reflections. With PBR you can see far more detail in the highlights and reflections are dynamic, they change with the time of day for example.
I've added some images so you can compare.
Obviously PBR requires Community Shaders and is incompatible with ENB.