¶ Welcome to the Community Shaders Installation Guide
This guide covers all installation requirements and recommended processes for an install of Community Shaders into a vanilla Skyrim install.
This wiki is powered by the Nexus Mods documentation system and maintained by the community. For more advanced information, see the GitHub Developer Wiki.
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¶ Requirements
- Skyrim 1.5.97, VR, or latest AE version (Steam/GOG). 1.6.640 and other non-latest AE versions are not officially supported
- GPU capable of DirectX feature level 11_1. See TechPowerUp if you are unsure
- Intel Integrated GPUs are not supported
- Windows 10 Creators Update or later (Linux users see NaK)
- Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable
¶ Required Mods
¶ Installation
Please use a mod manager. Either Mod Organizer 2 (MO2) or Vortex. If you are unfamiliar with either of those mod managers, there are many great tutorials on YouTube that tell you what they do and how to use them.
If you have never modded Skyrim before, check out some starter guides such as A Dragonborn's Fate.
Before starting:
- Remove any incompatible mods as listed in the FAQ
- Verify that you meet all of the requirements. Install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, if it's already installed, the installer will let you know
- Configure your Skyrim to run in borderless windowed mode. In
SkyrimPrefs.ini, setbBorderless=1andbFull Screen=0. If you use Display Tweaks, inSSEDisplayTweaks.inisetFullscreen = false,Borderless = true, andBorderlessUpscale = false
If you are using Vortex and not playing VR, the easiest way to get started with Community Shaders is by installing the Community Shaders Collection. Note that this collection includes all features, which may be demanding on some hardware. You can selectively disable individual Community Shaders features after downloading the collection.
Otherwise, do the following:
- Install all required mods as listed above. Note that Engine Fixes has 2 parts, one of which requires manual installation
- Install Community Shaders. That Nexus page is the only officially supported build
- Install additional Community Shaders features. These are also listed on the Nexus page. Only features with the CS branding are officially supported by the development team. CS features should not have any file conflicts which each other, if they do, you have done something wrong.
That's it. Fire up Skyrim via your mod manager and you should see a "Compiling Shaders" window on the top left and a welcome banner for Community Shaders. Before you dismiss the popup, ensure that you are satisfied with END as the default menu key. If not, click the area on the popup that shows the menu key and hit the key you would like to rebind it to. Once all shaders are compiled, you have successfully installed Community Shaders.
If you do not see the welcome banner or the "Compiling Shaders" window when you start the game, if your game is a black screen, or if it crashes, please refer to our FAQ. If the FAQ did not help you, then please post in our Discord Server.
¶ Post-Installation
At this point, your game will look very close to vanilla. If you want to further improve your visuals, check out the Vanilla Setup Guide. If you were previously using ENB, you may want to read the ENB Migration Guide.
If you are using Lux, you should reinstall Lux but unselect any "optimized" meshes. CS Light Limit Fix replaces these meshes. If you choose not to remove those meshes, you will have reduced performance.
If you were previously using ENB Lights (a.k.a. particle lights), please read the ENB Migration Guide. Particle Lights are not supported with CS and must be replaced with an alternative.
¶ Updating
If you use the Community Shaders Collection, you should not update individual Community Shaders features and instead update the entire collection once an update for the collection is released.
Whenever Community Shaders updates, some of the additional features will require an update as well. These are not optional updates, if you decide to update Community Shaders, you MUST install the feature updates as well. Both MO2 and Vortex support the ability to check for updates from the Nexus, you can use that tool to determine which parts of Community Shaders need an update. Note that not every feature will require an update. To update, it is as simple as downloading the new updates and re-installing the mods as you would for any other mod. If you are lost, there are guides online that can walk you through updating mods with your mod manager. Please also review the FAQ to see if any features were made obsolete with the update, and check if any requirements have changed. In the case that a feature is made obsolete with an update, it must be removed from your mod list if you decide to update Community Shaders.
Once Community Shaders and its features are up to date, you can launch Skyrim. You should see the "Compiling Shaders" pop up on the top left. Once that is finished, you have successfully updated Community Shaders.
If you do not see a "Compiling Shaders" pop up, then you must manually delete your Disk Cache. Navigate to the following path according to your mod manager:
- MO2:
Overwrite/ShaderCache. If you don't know what the MO2 overwrite is, please watch a guide. - Vortex:
Skyrim Install/Data/ShaderCache
Once you have located that folder, delete it. Only delete the ShaderCache folder, not the Shaders folder. To verify that you are looking at the right folder, inside the ShaderCache folder should be more folders that eventually contain .pso and .vso files. Now try starting Skyrim again.
If you still do not see a "Compiling Shaders" pop up or if you are encountering other issues, please refer to our FAQ. If the FAQ did not help you, then please post in our Discord Server.
¶ Contributing
Community Shaders is community-driven. Contributions to code, documentation, testing, and shaders are welcome!