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Reshade 4.0.2 Primer


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Ok I spent a significant amount of time messing with reshade last night and decided to make a (took forever!) quick little  primer for people who haven't tried it yet, or for people who (like me) tried it and just had too many problems getting it to work. I solved that!

First off you'll want to head over to Reshade.me and dl the new 4.0.2 Reshade.
Now, go to where you dled it.
 

AjcUbnf.jpg

pNQyW93.jpg

 

Im0QC8m.jpg

 

 

You can uninstall Reshade by redoing the exact same procedure. This time when you click your CM exe
it will remove Reshade. No muss no fuss.

Ok. Now comes the part a lot of us have had problems with. If you follow my instructions you'll be able to use Reshade with very little hassle. My pain is your gain. READ THROUGH THIS ONCE OR TWICE FIRST.

1b.) Start the CM game you installed reshade on. You'll see this (pic below). DO NOTHING.

BrNCmUj.jpg

 

2b.) Go to the editor (easiest to just do this in the editor).
3b.) Open a map and preview it. (You can open a scenario or QB or just a flat map. Not really important for this first part).

Now this is the tricky part. Just pay attention to your old buddy Mord and I am gonna get this working for you!

While you ARE IN THE EDITOR (AND EDITOR ONLY) hit the "Home" key. It will bring up a menu. Now, when you do this, for a lot of us the screen will rotate. If it does just pay attention to the menu box you see in the picture below. It will stay still. If it gets too much you can click "Home" again and it'll take you back to normal and you can get your bearings.

I suggest skipping through the tutorial you see in the pic for now.

dEDhXHt.jpg

 

4b.) Ok see the set of tabs? Click the Settings tab. EDITED: Go to Settings: Input Processing. Set it to "Pass on all input". No more spinning! BIG THANKS to Captain Reyes! Now choose "Effect Toggle Key". Now choose a key on your keyboard that you would like to toggle the Reshade effects. Make sure it isn't something CM uses. I use Shift+F2. Ok press whatever key you are gonna use. That will be used to toggle your effects on and off, obviously,

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5b.) Now I am gonna give you some effects to get you started. These will be a good base for you to experiment with without a lot of guess work right off the bat. Ok, click the first tab that says "Home" next to "Settings" in the menu (NOT the keyboard "Home").

Now find the following and check them.

Tint [sepia]

Emphasize

FilmPass

ColorMatrix

GaussianBlur

Colourfulness

In this pic I chose all of the above and dragged them all to the top of the list so I always know where they are and I can experiment more easily. I highly suggest you do this to make it easy on you later.

JSAz3hb.jpg

 

Ok, do you have them all? Now, click the "Home" key on your keyboard.

Now, if you want to switch back and forth between Vanilla graphics and Reshade graphics you just hit the key you chose in part 4b.)

HERE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: Before you leave the editor make sure you toggle back to vanilla graphics. NEVER toggle Reshade graphics on outside of the editor, or outside of a battle.

NEVER toggle the Reshade menu ("Home" key) outside of the editor or a battle.

 

NOTE: If you screw up and do one of the above you'll have to find a way out of it. It won't damage your game or anything but it can take some trickery to get it back to normal. I've done it a bucnh of times now and am used to it. Don't panic if it happens! SEE CAPTAIN REYES'S POST BELOW.

Sounds like a lot but it's really quite easy. Once you do it for one game it won't take you long to have them all running using Reshade. And trust me it REALLY is worth it. I didn't think it was but now that I figured out not to open the menu or toggle the effects outside of the editor/battle it's a whole new world.

 

The screens speak for themselves!

 

VANILLA

WyCkrCe.jpg

 

BADASSERY!

vbD5F4o.jpg

 

Anybody that has any problems just ask and I'll do my best to help. I want you guys to experience this!

 

Mord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Mord
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Spinning can be stopped by simply setting "input processing" to "pass on all input". Yes everything what you do is also done in game but still makes things less nauseous and way easier so check your effect results.

Also when ending up in menu with enabled reshade and getting the flower power visuals simply deactivate it now with your hotkey and locate any ingame Combat Mission menu button with your cursor and click it. Your screen will become normal again, no biggie.

Edited by Captain Reyes
correction and clarification
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11 minutes ago, Captain Reyes said:

Spinning can be stopped by simply setting "input processing" to allow.

Never mind, found it (Input Processing: Pass on all input)! THANKS MAN!!!! I wish someone had told me that a long time ago! Awesome!

 

Mord.

Edited by Mord
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27 minutes ago, Captain Reyes said:

Also when ending up in menu with enabled reshade and getting the flower power visuals simply deactivate it now with your hotkey and locate any menu button with your cursor to click. Your screen will become normal again, no biggie.

Actually, I had that one figured out just couldn't figure out how to explain it. You did a succinct job of it. Thanks, twice.

 

Mord.

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To stop the spinning you want to disable 'screen edge navigation' in-game. Just hit Alt-E before you bring up your ReShade Menu. Rinse and repeat (toggling it back on once done with the ReShade Menu).

On older engines that don't have edge navigation (eg CMSF), I used to simply keep the 'Conditions' window up. It's a small windows that didn't obscure the scene completely.

@Mord, try SMAA and FXAO for smoother corners and occlusion. Also, look at the Statistics screen to determine FPS consumption on a per shader basis. Very nifty!

 

While not preference, a nice screenshot nonetheless.

 

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Cool! Thanks for those tips. I can really dig in now that the GD screen is stable. I had to stop every few minutes so I wouldn't puke! I will give all these a try. I wanna go through all the presets that are decent then delete the crappy ones. I am guessing just having those installed slows things down, even if I am not using them?

 

16 minutes ago, Howler said:

While not preference, a nice screenshot nonetheless. 

Not my best work just needed something quick to compare and contrast.

 

I am looking forward to trying Reshade with some of my older Total War games as well.

 

Mord.

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@Mord, I didn't mean to imply it wasn't 'good'. Quite stunning really and shows how few shaders are needed to be effective. @Captain Reyes and @HerrTom have a talent and you should look to them for inspiration rather than pay any attention to me. I'm more of a less is better and limit my use to sharpening with a light touch of colour transformation (usually mid-range).

I posted my current CMSF2 preset in another thread which may be of interest as it uses low FPS impact shaders. I'm pleasantly surprised at how pretty CMSF2 is out of the box.

I'm quite happy that you started this thread. Feel free to keep unused shaders as new releases/updates will overwrite them as needed. If you don't have a check in the box then it's only using disk space. Some like to use a central shader repository and run per-game presets against it. Also, get to know the 'Statistics' tab - an absolutely awesome facility. From it, you can direct edit the code of running shaders!

If you're going the use the UIMask technique then you will need to create a mask as per instructions. It's worthwhile as it will keep the bottom game UI panel free from effects. My upload limit doesn't allow me to attach mine here. And, you only need to create it once for use across all CM titles as the UI is not changed much.

Edited by Howler
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22 minutes ago, Howler said:

I didn't mean to imply it wasn't 'good'. Quite stunning really and shows how few shaders are needed to be effective.

Nah, you didn't. I was just commenting that it was a quickie. I didn't take it negatively.

 

8 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

Great stuff @Mord! Thanks for taking the time to put this guide together. I've had some trouble in the past with reshade so its great to see a well written guide on the basics.

Welcome, man! Seems it is already obsolete. Before I learned the camera trick, if I toggled off the shaders in the editor before I logged out and left the game, when I'd come back everything would be fine. Now, when I start the game back up the shaders are set to on no matter what and I get the trippy graphics shenanigans all over my menu screens. But toggling them back off and clicking on a menu button fixes it as Captain Reyes stated. Minor inconvenience.

 

Mord.

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14 minutes ago, Mord said:

Welcome, man! Seems it is already obsolete. Before I learned the camera trick, if I toggled off the shaders in the editor before I logged out and left the game, when I'd come back everything would be fine. Now, when I start the game back up the shaders are set to on no matter what and I get the trippy graphics shenanigans all over my menu screens. But toggling them back off and clicking on a menu button fixes it as Captain Reyes stated. Minor inconvenience.

No worries! This guide is very welcome, even if you yourself are still learning as you go. Having something imperfect but workable now is much better than waiting indefinitely for a potentially perfect guide in the future. Besides, you can always make a revised edition later when you work more of the kinks out yourself. I'll certainly be putting your guide to good use 👍

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@Mord, I'll respond here rather than the video/screen cap thread where you asked about depth of field so that the ReShade info is easier to reference for others. But, essentially, yes. Your use of the emphasize and gaussian blur can be considered  as such (blurring the whole then selectively sharpening an area). The joy and pain of ReShade is that many different effects can be used in combination to achieve the same look. Further, you'll soon discover that the order by which you apply said effect will result in a vastly different look.

You can easily reorder an effect by clicking and holding your mouse button and shifting it up or down in your list of presets. Load the attached preset and move the LUT around to see how apparent that can be. You can also change the LUT used to see a range of colour transformations available in this technique. Toggle the various effects used to see the difference. Get to know the Statistics tab and hit the corresponding edit button to dive right into it's code.

You can spend hours driving yourself crazy by fiddling with this or that. But, as a rule, the more recent shaders are actively supported and often combine all in one spot what earlier distinct ones used to do.

CMSF2.ini

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Thanks for this! I tried and used reshade for a while a couple of years ago, but it was wonky and I got rid of it. After seeing your screens last few days I was inclined to try again. Will go ahead right now :)

Edit: and got it working in a couple of minutes, thanks to you. Did you make any other settings in your CMSF2 screens? 

Will try out some battles! cheers!

Edited by Lethaface
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3 hours ago, Howler said:

The joy and pain of ReShade is that many different effects can be used in combination to achieve the same look. Further, you'll soon discover that the order by which you apply said effect will result in a vastly different look.

Excellent. Very good info there. I am very much looking forward to diving deep into it's power. It's a new level of modding and takes much less work! I really appreciate all these tips and suggestions, so thanks very much! Don't hesitate to add more as you think of them.

3 hours ago, Howler said:

You can spend hours driving yourself crazy by fiddling with this or that.

LOL. I was counting on it.  Modding whether creating them or using them has always been a time sink and can of worms. But this is very powerful with much less effort and far more gain. Does a lot of what BMP just manipulation can't.

 

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

Thanks for this! I tried and used reshade for a while a couple of years ago, but it was wonky and I got rid of it.

You are welcome. Guys like you were my main target. I knew there were still some of us that couldn't get our heads around it and gave up. I was hoping to get a few back onboard. It really makes taking screens fun again, along with really wowing-up the scenery.

 

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

Edit: and got it working in a couple of minutes, thanks to you. Did you make any other settings in your CMSF2 screens? 

Great! Glad it worked out for you. No. So far I just used those settings I listed. But as Holwer said there are many ways to tweak them, the order they are listed alone can can change how they display.

 

Mord.

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Thanks for the guide and in particular the way to get rid of the barf bag spinning effect.

I don't really have a super gaming PC anymore so I can't use all the super fancy effects, but just a bit of sharpening and contrast does a big difference. Try using MultiLUT instead of Tint [sepia], it gives you more color correction options and includes sepia in the presets.

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2 hours ago, IanL said:

Well that didn't work. The game will not start after the install. Bummer. Is there any known issues with installing on a note book?

It generates a log which you will find in the same directory the exe you installed for is located ( look for opengl32.log). If you're comfortable with this, you can also look for the opengl32.dll (ReShade engine) which needs to be there.

How recent is your video driver? What version of windows are you using?

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1 hour ago, Howler said:

It generates a log which you will find in the same directory the exe you installed for is located ( look for opengl32.log). If you're comfortable with this, you can also look for the opengl32.dll (ReShade engine) which needs to be there.

How recent is your video driver? What version of windows are you using?

Windows 10, with what I think are the latest drivers (updated two weeks ago) GeForce 417.22 for the GTX 1050.

Sadly since I installed the reshader the log files are gone too. Drat. Perhaps I'll try again at some point and check those out.

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27 minutes ago, IanL said:

Windows 10, with what I think are the latest drivers (updated two weeks ago) GeForce 417.22 for the GTX 1050.

Sadly since I installed the reshader the log files are gone too. Drat. Perhaps I'll try again at some point and check those out.

There are no known issues with specifically notebooks other than always making sure that the high performance GPU is running. Your GPU should furthermore be able to handle it perfectly. I do not believe this has anything to do with your driver. Opengl32.log is created by reshade in the first place, perhaps something went wrong during install.

Very seldom I´ve made the experience with some games that installing the complete shaders package may stop my game from working. Perhaps download corruption but I don´t believe this as corrupted shaders normally don´t prevent the game from launching and just throw an error message. Still you can find all installed in Combat Mission Title\reshade-shaders\Shaders they are interchangeable between installs (as all reshade files are) and by manually removing them all you can check if the crash is connected with these files.

However my experience with Reshade 4.0 is limited as alot got changed with that and it still feels somewhat "beta" to me so I keep using 3.4.

Edited by Captain Reyes
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4 minutes ago, Captain Reyes said:

Still you can find all installed in Combat Mission Title\reshade-shaders\Shaders they are interchangeable between installs (as all reshade files are) and by manually removing them all you can check if the crash is connected with these files.

Cool. Where do those files endup on the PC - I uninstalled Reshader so I cannot dig for them myself. Clearly when I do try again I will but if you know where the end up you can save me some time :)

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22 minutes ago, IanL said:

Cool. Where do those files endup on the PC - I uninstalled Reshader so I cannot dig for them myself. Clearly when I do try again I will but if you know where the end up you can save me some time :)

The absolute cruicial single file to run (or remove) the reshade plugin is for opengl based Combat Mission games:

opengl32.dll

Not crucial but naturally required and installed for visual enhancements is the folder containing shaders and some textures:

reshade-shaders folder

No later than the first game launch with reshade these files are created in CM root, will simply renewed by the plugin when not in place:

opengl32.log

reshade.ini

When you create a reshade profile ingame another ini is created in root, alternatively a downloaded one can manually placed in root and then be selected in the reshade menu:

yoursavedordownloadedpreset.ini

Basically the first two two entries: "opengl32.dll" and the "reshade-shaders" folder are required to set up a reshade plugin with all bells and whistles can be copied all over around and installed in every other CM game or opengl game.

Edited by Captain Reyes
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@IanL, the default is shaders and textures under [game root]\reshade-shaders.

shaders -> C:\Games\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2\reshade-shaders\Shaders

textures -> C:\Games\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2\reshade-shaders\Textures

reshade itself, log and ini's -> C:\Games\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2

The above assumes that your 'CM Shock Force 2.exe' is located C:\Games\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2 (i.e. game root).

To manually uninstall; delete the reshade-shaders folder and anything starting with either ReShade* or opengl32* that you find in your game root.

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Really like this program, but struggled for a while with the impact of strong effects on the GUI panel. To disable effects over the panel you need to edit the UImask.png in Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2\reshade-shaders\Textures to look like the included image. The black rectangle corresponds to the area you want excluded from shader effect.

UIMask.thumb.png.a1f053e0884d1e91d89ba7e5bc381d7b.png

Very simple, just black white, no alpha channels.

Then enable UIMask_Top in the shaders list- and send it to the TOP of the list. (Left click on effect name and choose send to top)

Enable UIMask_Bottom and send it to the bottom of the list.

This may be old news to lots of folks, but flagging it up because I struggled to get it to work- thought UIMask_Top meant the top half of the screen, etc. Now it seems pretty clueless, but there you go. The important thing is the position of the activated shaders in the on-screen list. Hope that's useful to someone.

P.S. To save anyone having to make their own mask- I THINK if you copy the above image it will save as a .png and should serve ok for all CM2 titles. Haven't time just now to check, but see no reason why it shouldn't

Edited by billy_sp
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Also here is my Nightvision effect. The original one is very grainy so I decided to update it you can see it in action in my "Night Vision Combat" gameplay on youtube. The UI is impacted by the nightvision which I personally like but with the method explained by billy_sp you can tweak this.

NightVision.fx

Edited by Captain Reyes
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On 12/18/2018 at 5:36 AM, IanL said:

Well that didn't work. The game will not start after the install. Bummer. Is there any known issues with installing on a note book?

I have the same issue.  Game doesnt start.  I dont see any issue in the opengl32 txt file that is created.  No notes of crash or a failure etc.  I think its a dx issue.  Couldnt find a similar issue in the reshade troubleshooting forum.

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