Have you ever started to read a modding tool guide, or a Reddit post, or a mod description, and saw a word or an acronym that was essentially gibberish to you? Then you’ve come to the right place! A lot of these will be obvious to many, but hopefully someone will find this useful. (Please let me know if you think something should be added or, Talos forbid, if I am mistaken on any of these!)
Credits: a variety of Reddit and Nexus Forum posts, most especially this forum post and the specific articles referenced below
CBBE – Caliente’s Beautiful Body Enhancement
SAM – Shape Atlas for Men
TBD – Touched by Dibella
UNP – Unpretend(ed)
UNPB – UNP Blessed
Also, HDT/SMP/CBPC/etc are all physics for bodies/hair/weapons
Check out the Body Type Mod Category page for more information (not much more, but I will hopefully add more at some point)
I don’t know much about all of this, as I am still learning myself, but this video playlist helped me a lot in trying to determine exactly what various settings in ENBs and other INI files where actually doing: Skyrim ENB Effect Demonstrations – tapioks. It shows comparison clips of various effects turned on and off. Also, the music is super relaxing.
Ambient Occlusion – an effect that calculates how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient light, i.e. not from a direct source; essentially adds shadows where they might not otherwise have been (helpful video by Greg Salazar)
Anistropic Filtering – an effect that improves how small details appear; this eliminates Anti-Aliasing effects, but reduces blur and preserves detail even at extreme angles
Anti-Aliasing – an effect that smoothes jagged edges, essentially by strategic blurring (helpful video by Greg Salazar)
Depth of Field – an effect that simulates the ability to focus on one thing at a time
Please remember to endorse any mods you download and like, and if you appreciate all the hard work that goes into creating a mod, consider giving kudos to the author on Nexus as well (the Give Kudos button can be found on the user’s page).