ENB Series http://www.enbdev.com/ SweetFX http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/sweetfx_shader_suite_download.html What is the difference between them? From what I can tell, they are both similar, both post processing shader effects. Does one or the other have any benefits over each other? Or are they similar, does using both ENB and SweetFX just apply the shaders over on top of each other, so if you have bloom already enabled via SweetFX, having it enabled again on ENB would just intensify the bloom right?
In short - Enb can offer much complex effects...kinda slow, with bugs, but true DirectX effects...and only for DirectX9 at the moment
ENB series are developed for a few select games that Boris the developer likes - mostly the Elder Scrolls series and the new Fallout series. And for those games it is tailored for it offers a lot of very advanced effects, because the injector can capture the depth texture and the scene in HDR and lots of other neat stuff that requires that the injector is written specifically for that game. SweetFX can't do all that because the InjectSMAA injector I use was only designed for one thing - to apply SMAA to games. It does this very well though - the injector is compatible with all most all DirectX 9, 10 and 11 games ever made. With Boulotaurs injector or RadeonPro you can also use it with 64bit games. ENB isn't as compatible. It can only apply it's advanced effects in a limited number of games and it only supports 32bit DX9 games. The advanced effects are also slow and require you to have a very powerful card to run at a decent framerate. In comparison SweetFX is very fast and supports cards as old as the now ancient Radeon 9500. ENB is also not as easy to configure and tweak as SweetFX. I try hard to make SweetFX as easy and simple to use. To sum up: ENB strives to implement the most advanced and impressive effects for a few select games. SweetFX strives to be super fast, compatible, and easy to use for as many games as possible.
Could also add that ENB does not only post processing, but directly changes the shader queue to apply its effects and asks some information from the games memory, which of course can then only be achieved by supporting selected games and deeply analyze them. SweetFx is a sole post processing shader collection, which depends on little Information (pretty much only the resolution and some standart input values). Effects are applied by rendering a fullscreen quad which uses a "screenshot" of the current games frame to apply color correction etc.
...I wish the SweetFX can offer Depth Of Field and Lenz FX effects...Only that I care about, with regard to visual effects, which I would like to add on some games =) ...Bokeh DoF in particular. @CeeJay.dk, is this too much difficult to implement via SweetFx? =)
ENB can apply depth of field of all kinds as it has access to the depth buffer ( I've no real knowledge of how that works). SweetFX operates on a flat image (as far as I know) so it can't apply depth of field. Ceejay summed it up nicely. You can't really compare them. ENB is tailor made by its author for a very small number of games. Most games only have 1 or 2 features, where as GTA, Skyrim, and Fallout have a ton of features. It's hard to convince him that a game is worth developing it for. He mostly uses it to enhance the graphical features of games that really need it.
@jim2point0, I'm aware of all of it...mostly...kinda =) I'm using ENB series couple of years for now as SweetFX from the beginning of it, but I'm talking about not current version as it is, but maybe any future ones...with more complex effects and, as you say - "access to the depth buffer" or whatevar something that allows DoF implementation and such =) I'm talking about...does CeeJay.dk even have any thoughts I wonder about that kind of stuff in his fx-suit?..
First I must ask .. what is Lenz FX? Can you provide some before and after screenshots. Secondly - DoF is currently impossible to make in SweetFX, because the injector has no support for a depth texture.