hi opie how're you? hope everything's going well! i wanted to ask if you would ever be open to making a g-shade presets for commission. i love the way your presets look and would def pay for one.
Hey! I don’t use g-shade, I only use reshade. However, absolutely not. There’s no reason you guys should be paying ANYONE for reshade/g-shade presets PERIOD. They’re so incredibly easy to make and I think it’s greedy as shit for people to have them behind paywalls. Like full stop. It’s just a matter of clicking some effects and adjusting some levels. And not a single one of them is groundbreaking enough to constitute payment for it. I want you to make your own and I’ll help you do it. 90% of the stuff is just a matter of preference. You adjust the levels to whatever you like or what your PC can handle. Play with EVERYTHING. Click every shader and see what it does. Play with the levels on it. And just google anything you’re not sure of. “What reshade shader should I use to brighten up my screen?” They’d tell you levels, dpx, whatever. Point is to just research everything you’re curious about.
! I use the Sunblind mod, Out of the Dark by Lotharihoe, and Northern Siberia Winds Better in game lighting. EA’s base coloring is very dull, dark and blue. So I use these mods to fix that. I also primarily use paid shaders, i.e. Marty’s iMMERSE shaders. Additionally I've edited my graphics file. You can find a pre-made one here.
ANNND ANOTHER THING! LOAD ORDER MATTERS!
If you're using Marty's shaders, then the launchpad goes at the very top. MXAO shaders come next. Then adaptive fog. After that I have RTGI and Relight. I also put SSR quint here too if I'm using it. DOF shaders come next. Then SMAA and/or FXAA come after that. Coloring and contrast effects come after DOF. Bloom effects and ambient lighting should go last.
1. Foundation [SMAA, FXAA, CLARITY, + SHARPENING]
There’s a few effects that I use for every single reshade preset. It’s the bare bones of all of them. That’s SMAA, sharpness, and FXAA. Those help with edge smoothing and clarity. From what I remember the shaders for both reshade and g-shade are relatively similar, so just try to find the corresponding one. I use both SMAA and FXAA. Might be overkill but I don’t care. You can use one or the other. They’re meant to smooth edges so they’re less jagged. I usually lower the threshold to 0.05, but my pc is pretty good. I’d recommend starting at 0.02. That goes for both SMAA and FXAA. For clarity, I just pop the clarity effect on. I don’t change anything because it looks fine to me as is. Change it if you want to though. For sharpening, I typically use CAS.fx to sharpen. Adjust the number to your liking. I usually only add a little sharpness. If I need more I add it later when I’m editing.
2. Depth [MXAO, DOF, ADAPTIVE FOG]
I usually use two different mxao shaders. The base mxao and quint_mxao. MXAO is meant for ambient occlusion and indirect lighting. I adjust my settings to my liking, but I always follow pictureamoebae’s guide as a starting point. As far as DOF, I use ADOF and cinematic dof. Sometimes together, but typically just one at a time. The only settings I usually change for ADOF is the bokeh. Bokeh is just the way the lense renders out of focus light. Increasing the bokeh will make those light points brighter. I avoid using it during day light shots because I don’t like how it looks. I typically only use it for shots at night. You can adjust the blurriness of the shader by adjusting the f-stop. The default is about 2.8. I usually keep it there or a little bit lower. I don’t like my background too blurred. For reshade you adjust it by changing the values for the near and far blur curve. You can try out Pxl's settings here. For Adaptive fog I use the default settings. Sometimes I might change the color or intensity, but I tend to not use it too often. Below are my exact MXAO settings.
3. Brightness & Coloring [DPX, Levels, & Selective Color]
Again, there’s no set levels I use or recommend. I change things up constantly. I use lighting mods, so the coloring of the game is already to my liking with that. At most I’ll slap on some DPX to brighten the screen if I feel it’s too dark. All I adjust is the intensity of the effect. Using the levels shader, I usually play around with the black point. It adds more contrast when I make it a bit darker. I like that. You may not. Adjust it to your liking. I use PD80’s selective color for most of the color grading I do in game. I don’t change much. Most times I just lower the saturation of the greens in the game and make them a bit more yellow. I like yellowish-green colors. You might not. Again, change it to whatever you like. Just play with the levels. If you don’t like them just reset the effect.
4. Lighting [RTGI, RELIGHT, ARCANE BLOOM]
I'm still new to using RTGI, but it's used for raytracing. That helps to add realistic shadows to the scene. The shader I use is paid, but you should get it. If you'd be willing to pay me for a commission, then pay the like $5 and pick up this shader. It's a part of the iMMERSE shader set I mentioned earlier. Now, my settings aren't great and I need to play with them more but this is how it looks. It may be too heavy for your pc. It will lower your fps so be mindful of that. I only use it when I film and take screenshots.
Relight is also a paid shader from the same pack. I can't offer any help with that. All of my settings are the same. I just adjust the light colors, position, and intensity depending on the scene. That shader set includes a newer version of relight and I prefer that one. I also use arcane bloom. I only use it to add a bloom effect around light sources, so like a lit lamp or a street light. Here's my settings.
This was long, but that's it. None of this is hard or complex. It's all just a matter of playing around with the settings. And searching for help whenever you need it. You can always download a preset you like and just tweak that to your liking for personal use. You don't even have to start from scratch if you don't want to. Just don't be afraid to hop in and play with the settings. Nothing is permanent. You can always start over if things get wonky along the way.
