#reshade faq

RESULT!

ReShade being deleted was an unintended effect of other updates and is fixed in the latest version of EA App.

Hello nonny, I always go for a subtle bokeh versus the super blown out look. Ideally, I'm trying to emulate the focal lengths of an actual camera. I also use 4 different DOF shaders that can be layered on top of one another depending on the scene. Two of them are mouse driven auto focus, and the other two are static blur for items in the distance.

In general you want to focus on adjusting the following areas to control which parts of your image are subject to blur:

Near Blur Curve (amount of blur in foreground, i.e. objects closer to the camera)

Far Blur Curve (amount of blur in the distance, i.e. everything far away from the camera)

Generally, 0 = no blur, and 1 = blur. DOF shaders are quite sensitive. I do not like any blur in the foreground therefore, I usually have this set to 0 for my non mouse driven DOF shaders.

Then for the actual blur strength effect, I leave this very low too, usually around 5-10 at maximum.

Here's a side-by-side of mxao in debug mode with and without the global def tweaks. For anyone that is curious.

AO effects tend to creep into hair and gives it a crunchy appearance. If it bothers you there are a few things you can try:

Like you mentioned, you can always just turn off MXAO. Set a shortcut key and turn it off and on.

You can also try another shader like Monocular_Cues - it still goes in hair but you can get a much more soft subtle look with this shader without the obvious heavy crunch.

If you have another preset with AO effects that you really like, copy and paste those over to the preset INI.

I don’t know for certain, but it’s looking increasingly likely that EA has added some form of anti-cheat that prevents any program from injecting itself into the game process at runtime.

ReShade and gshade do exactly that. The d3d9/dxgi dll files you usually see in your Bin folder are the main files that make ReShade and gshade work. They are what gets injected into the game process. Now, when you load your game, the dll gets deleted.

Uninstalling and then reinstalling the EA App, and then reinstalling ReShade, has worked for some people, but I believe it will only be a temporary fix, and as soon as EA App gets refreshed or updated in the background it’ll start happening again.

There is a manual injection workaround which is really the only thing that might have worked, but it seems like it doesn’t in this case.

Unless we’re completely wrong about what’s causing this, it looks like it’s the end of the road for ReShade and gshade in TS4. Unless EA/Maxis can be convinced to reverse whatever they’ve done.

I’m impossibly sad. It’s still working for me at the moment, likely because I haven’t updated my game for the fairies pack and have been keeping EA App offline, but the app sometimes forces an update so it likely won’t hold it off forever.

Patch notes today say that finally (finally!) The Sims 4 is moving over to use the DirectX 11 rendering api. Until now TS4 has used DirectX 9, which has given us some limitations when using ReShade.

They're bringing the official rollout sometime in the future, but for now you can opt in to switching to DirectX 11 on a voluntary basis.

You don't need to uninstall your game or install a new version. To switch to using DirectX 11, update your game with today's patch, and then click on Manage > View Properties from the The Sims 4 game page on EA App and enter -dx11 in the advanced launch options box. You can remove this at any time to go back to using DirectX 9.

Note: the game developers have warned in the patch notes that some mods may have visual glitches until they are updated to accommodate dx11, so it may be advisable to wait until your mod authors have confirmed everything works okay

If you have ReShade installed currently for DirectX 9 you can make it start using DirectX 11 instead by finding the d3d9.dll inside your Bin folder and changing its name to dxgi.dll. No need to uninstall and reinstall ReShade, that's all you need to do. If you want to go back to using dx9, just revert the name back to d3d9.dll.

Have you ever struggled with the ReShade menu getting in the way when you're editing your screenshots? And have you ever wanted to up your virtual photography game and improve your compositions?

You only need two free shaders to improve your ReShade quality of life, speed up your editing process, and make sure you're getting the best compositions possible.

There are some people who have fully updated games, and the latest 6019 EA App version, for whom everything is working fine. We don’t know yet if a silent app update will come and break it for them, or if there is in fact something else going on.

We have to hope this will remain isolated. It’s early days, nothing is certain at the moment. I’d hate for everyone to panic before they need to.

For the moment, if you’re able to still use ReShade, then please do. Enjoy your game, try not to worry about it. I’m sure we will have a clearer picture over the coming days and weeks.

[You can also find this tutorial over at imgur and patreon]

ReLight is a premium shader for ReShade made by Marty's Mods (Pascal Gilcher). It allows you to add four new lights to your scene that help illuminate, and create realism and drama. To download and use ReLight you need to subscribe to the Path Tracers tier on Gilcher's Patreon to get access to the iMMERSE Ultimate package of shaders. Once subscribed, you'll be prompted to link your Patreon account to discord, and then you'll be granted access to his discord server, and, most importantly, to the Path Tracers discussion channel and the Downloads Level 2 channel, which is where you will find ReLight (along with the other premium shaders included in that tier). 

Be sure to also download the up-to-date free iMMERSE shader package, because you'll need the Launchpad shader and some of the other included files.

The following guide is for the older qUINT_relight.fx version of ReLight. The latest version of ReLight is MartysMods_RELIGHT.fx, released on 31st December 2023. Many of the settings have changed in the newer version, but you can still use this guide to help understand how to enable and position lights. The guide will be updated/rewritten once I've had time to properly play around with the new version. You can continue to use the older version if you'd prefer.

When you turn on ReLight in the ReShade menu you'll be greeted with these settings. Yours may look different because I've used it a lot and it remembers your last settings.

Take a look at the settings at the top.

Use Smooth Normals = On

Trace Shadows = On

Filter Shadows = On

Use Temporal Supersampling = On

Shadow Mode = Trace All

Shadow Quality = Ultra (change this if you get bad performance)

Shadow Sharpness = I have mine set around 0.65 but you can play around with whatever looks best

Z Thickness = Play around with this too. It controls how realistically shadows fall on and around objects

At the very bottom of the settings is Visualize Light Position. Turn this on so you can easily see where your lights are.

Now we can turn on one of our lights. Remember, it remembers your previous settings so yours will look different to mine the first time you use it.

Under Light 0 check the Active box.

You should see a big circle appear somewhere on the screen. If you have any object close enough to it, you should see them get brighter. If nothing is close to the circle you may not see any difference.

You can see a difference between this screenshot and the last - Shadowheart's face is brighter.

Now it's time to move the light where we want it and change it to a colour we like.

Under the Active box you'll see a row of 3 boxes containing numbers, next to the word Position. These control the coordinates of your circle of light in relation to the screen. You can place your mouse inside these boxes and move it while holding down left-click to change the value a little like a slider.

Left box = moves the circle left/right

Middle box = moves the circle up/down

Right box = moves the circle forward/back

In this shot I've moved the circle of light over to the right and a little further back so it better illuminates the front of Shadowheart's face.

Next you can choose the colour of your light.

In the row below Position you'll see it says Tint. Click on the coloured box next to Tint and it will bring up the colour picker you see in the screenshot. Choose your colour from here. Click anywhere in the main ReShade menu to close the colour picker.

I adjusted the position and the tint a little more until I had it exactly where I wanted it. You can see a darker circle now over in the top right of the screen (my mouse cursor is hovering over it to make it easier to see).

You can use the Intensity slider (directly below Tint) to control how bright the light should be.

You may need to go back and forth between the Position, Tint, and Intensity settings until you get just the right effect.

Here's a reminder of what the picture looks like without that added light. Compare it to the screenshot above to see how great our new little light has been at helping illuminate Shadowheart.

You can turn individual lights on and off whenever you want by checking or unchecking the Active box next to the light in question. It will save your settings.

Now I want to add a second light. I've moved my ReShade window over a little so I can see what I'm doing.

I turned on the Active box under Light 1, and positioned my new light where I wanted it. Look over to the left of the statue in the background. You'll see my mouse cursor, and directly above it is a tiny blue circle. That's our second light!

The further you move the light away from the camera (using the right-hand box under Position) the smaller the circle gets, because it's further away!

I made this light blue, and I turned the intensity up quite high. This has helped illuminate the statue and added nice shadows that help give it some depth.

Here's a screenshot to remind you what everything looks like without any of the ReLight lights I added.

And here's a screenshot showing how everything looks with ReLight turned on and my two lights in action. I chose a subtle effect because I just wanted to draw attention to Shadowheart's face and to the statue behind her.

When you close the ReShade menu the circles that helped you know where your lights were will go away, but the light they cast will remain. Notice how you can't see the two circles in this shot?

You can also uncheck the Visualize Light Position box if you want to hide the circles while keeping the ReShade menu open. This can be helpful if they're obscuring parts of the scene that you need to see while you continue editing.

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And that's it! You can add up to 4 lights and control them independently from one another. You can use them to just help illuminate a character for a portrait, to add drama with bold lighting, or to increase the realism of a scene with better shadows and light falling where you would expect it to. If you have a big fiery sword you can add a light to it that makes orange light cast onto the character who is holding it, which can look really cool. The only limit is your imagination.