Versions of ReShade from 3.1.1 onwards have reversed the depth buffer by default.
The depth buffer is responsible for all the depth-based effects you might use, like dof, adaptive fog, mxao, etc.Â
If you are installing ReShade 3.1.1+ from scratch without any old settings carrying over you will likely find none of these depth-based effects look as you expect. For example, with dof the foreground will be blurred and the background will be clear.Â
Thankfully thereâs a really easy way to change it back to how it needs to be for TS4 (and any other game that doesnât have a reversed depth buffer).
Here is an album of pictures with step-by-step instructions.
For those who donât need the pictures (it is a simple fix after all):
Open the ReShade gui (usually shift+f2)
Navigate to the âSettingsâ tab
In the âPreprocessor Definitionsâ box find the line: RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_REVERSED
If it is set to 1 it means the depth buffer is reversed. Change the 1 to 0
Navigate back to the âHomeâ tab
Click âReloadâ at the bottom and wait for the shaders to recompile
And thatâs it! Now your depth-based effects should be working as intended.
Note 1: If youâre not experiencing any problems with the depth buffer you donât need to do this. When I upgraded to 3.1.1 I didnât need to, because my settings carried over from my previous ini files. Youâll probably only need to do this if youâre installing everything from a clean Bin folder, with no old ReShade ini files present.
Note 2: With each new ReShade installation, when you download the shaders from the github repository thereâs a chance some of them will be different from how they were when you or other preset creators made the presets you use. If something looks odd you may have to reconfigure the shader settings in the Home tab yourself to get them how you want. I just had to do this with the new mxao shader. Additionally, sometimes creators will give you modified versions of shaders with a preset, and downloading from the github repository will overwrite those modifications. Always keep backups of the files you download in case you need to swap them back in.
Note 3: Donât forget, for depth-based effects to work you must have Edge Smoothing turned off in the game settings. You do not need to turn off post-processing as well, but it is recommended to edit your graphicsrules.sgr file (found in your Bin folder) to change the ssao entries from âtrueâ to âfalseâ to avoid conflicts with the mxao shader and any other little quirks. (Turning off ssao in graphicsrules.sgr gets rid of the gameâs own ambient occlusion (which is what you add back in with mxao), and also the gameâs own dof (distance blur), so you donât need to use a mod to remove blur at the same time.)
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Hi..!!! â„ I have a little issue. so i will love to install all the reshade that you made. but sadly my deskop cant handle. so I edit photos no problem with that. but I will love if you can teach me how can a make the focus camera with reshade. like fucus in somehing and all the backgroud make it blurred? you got it? sorry if my english is not good. i dont speak it. Have a lovely, lovely day xx
Hi there!
Iâm not sure if youâre asking how to only use the blur effect in ReShade without everything else, or how to edit pictures in Photoshop to make the background blurred, so Iâll cover both!
ReShade:
Download the latest version of ReShade and install it. When it asks if you want to download the shaders, you only need to tick DOF and SMAA.
DOFÂ (depth of field) is the shader responsible for the blur, and SMAAÂ (subpixel morphological antialiasing) is ReShadeâs version of what TS4 calls Edge Smoothingâyouâll want this because you need to turn off Edge Smoothing in the game options, and use SMAA to smooth edges instead. DOF will not work with Edge Smoothing turned on, but it does work with SMAA turned on.
With only those two shaders downloaded your game will load much faster than if you had all the shaders installed.
When youâre in-game, open the ReShade gui using shift+f2. Follow this tutorial to make sure the depth buffer is set up properly for TS4.
Back in the Home tab of the gui, in the top half of the screen youâll see a line for SMAA, and a few different lines for different types of DOF. Tick the box next to SMAA and you probably wonât need to make any adjustments to it from there.
Next, youâll want to try ticking different DOF boxes and playing around with their settings until you find one you like. They are all different types, each has their strengths and weaknesses. Marty McFlyâs ADOF is probably the best in terms of quality but itâs also the one that is the most performance-heavy, so you might want to avoid that one. My pick would be gp65cj042 DOFâit gives a natural look, can give circular bokeh or polygonal depending on your preference, and isnât too heavy to run.
Take the time now to set up a hotkey for it. On the right youâll see an empty box: click it once and youâll be able to press any key you want and from that point onwards whenever you press that key again it will toggle DOF on and off. Itâs easier than opening the gui every time you want to turn it on and off, and it means you donât have to play with it on, and can just turn it on for screenshots.
In the bottom half of the screen are the controls for the shaders. This is where you change how you want them to look when theyâre enabled. Under the DOF settings youâll see a long list of things to change. At the top of the list are a few things that are globalâthey apply no matter which version of DOF you chose earlier. The easiest thing to do here is to pick auto-focus and to make it mouse-driven auto-focus. This means that the camera will automatically bring into focus whatever your mouse cursor is hovering over, and anything behind that point will be blurred.Â
If you donât want the foreground to ever be blurred (the part of the screen closer to you than the thing you want to be in focus) I recommend setting the Near Blur Curve value to a very high number. I set it to 9000, which is overkill. Youâll need to double-click in the box next to it to type in that number, because the slider doesnât go that high.
Far Blur Curve determines how quickly the blur becomes its strongest behind your focus point. Youâll probably want to keep this relatively low, but I often change it on a shot-by-shot basis depending on what I want to do.
Blur Radius controls the strength of the blur. This is the value youâll be changing most often. For wide shots youâll likely want a lower number, and for tight shots like portraits youâll probably want a higher number. Play around with it though until you find something you like.
As you go down the list youâll see you start getting controls for the different types of DOF. If you chose gp65cj042âs DOF youâll want to scroll down until you find the lines that have GPDOF in the name. Here you can change things like the quality of the DOF, how bright blurred items should be, the shape of the DOF (the bokeh, the little points of light), and so on. Play around with these settings until you find something you think looks nice.
Now youâll have a basic setup for using DOF whenever you want, by pressing the hotkey you set up at the beginning. To have the most control youâll want to fiddle with the controls regularly to make sure each picture looks right. It can be confusing at first, but over time youâll become more confident and understand which controls do what.
Blur in Photoshop (or other editor):
I used to do this when I played TS3. For example, this picture was edited entirely in Photoshop.
I used a plugin called Exposure by Alien Skin. Itâs not a free plugin, I bought it. It has bokeh control, where you can mask or select parts of an image to keep in focus, and it blurs the rest of the image. You can choose different lens types to simulate (Exposure is built to simulate particular film and camera combinations for professional photographers). Itâs an incredibly easy and very professional-looking way of getting realistic blurred backgrounds. But of course, not everyone can or wants to buy a plugin just for one thing.
As for how to do it without a plugin, the basic thing to understand is to mask off the areas you want in focus and use one of the blur filters to blur everything else. There are a few good tutorials written by other simmers on this. This is very easy to follow by @smubuh. This tutorial by @evangelisims is really exceptionally good, and explains the basics of focal planes as well as how to achieve different levels of blur in a background.
