Community Shaders

✦ WHAT IS COMMUNITY SHADERS?

Community Shaders (CS) is a free and open-source rendering framework for Skyrim Special Edition and AE. Think of it as a modern, modular alternative to ENB; but built directly into the game through SKSE, with a focus on performance, compatibility, and community-driven development.

Rather than replacing the entire post-processing pipeline like ENB does, Community Shaders enhances Skyrim's existing shaders with bug fixes, modern rendering techniques, and optional plugins. The result is a sharper, more vibrant, and more physically accurate game, often with better performance than vanilla.

New to Community Shaders? Start here:

• []Vortex Users: Grab our Official Vortex Collection for a one-click setup.[/]

  []Wiki: Detailed guides, troubleshooting, and developer docs at the Community Shaders Wiki.[/]

  []Discord: Real-time help, feature previews, and discussion on our Discord server.[/]

  ✦ WHY CHOOSE COMMUNITY SHADERS?

  • []Direct Engine Access: Built on SKSE and CommonLibSSE-NG for deep, stable integration with Skyrim's renderer.[/]

    []Fast Startup: Unified shader cache with multi-threaded compilation saves shaders to disk, so you only compile once. After that, the game launches without delay.[/]

    []In-Game UI: A powerful ImGui-based menu lets you tune every feature, weather, and effect in real time. Press END to open it.[/]

    []Open Source (GPL-3. 0): Anyone can contribute, audit, build, or fork the project. It will never go closed-source.[/]

    ✦ WHAT IT FIXES & IMPROVES

    Skyrim's renderer has dozens of long-standing bugs and limitations. Community Shaders addresses them at the source.

    []Performance: Faster terrain rendering, optimised screenspace reflections, optimised volumetric lighting and multi-threaded shader compilation with a persistent disk cache.[/]

    []Lighting & Materials: Fixed objects glowing in the dark, broken normal mapping, double-sided shading on capes and leaves, and grass/tree LOD consistency. Unlocks internal HDR rendering.[/]

    []Water & Reflections: Fixed green-tinted reflections, incorrect refraction, and shoreline blending. Includes Sky Reflection Fix out of the box.[/]

    [*]Shadows: Fixed cascade seams, high-quality filt