SweetFX Shader Suite release and discussion thread

[Keepcool]

Originally Posted by ninjafada

you need to edit the setting file packed in the 2.0a archives
try the default one to see if it works or not



other thing
i just got batman AA and AC from steam \o/
so played a little of AC got somes bugs when using 1920-1080 not using the full width of the screen , nvm i put the 2560*1440 and it's ok
i also disable AA just in case.
but sweetfx doesnt kick in , i have extracted the 2.0a in E:\steam\steamapps\common\Batman Arkham City GOTY\Binaries\Win32
the log.log is ok like others working games
if i use the scroll lock key the game switch to windowed mode oO hm ok
pause doesn't do anything
i looked in the keybinding , pause is opening a menu in game
so i tryed to switch the keys in the injector.ini but can't find what key to use

if some batman AC players can help me here please

ps: i hate game for windows live !

You are right sweetFX 2.0 doesn't kick in... that's why the toggle "scroll lock"
doesn't work either here (Origin-ME3) also I took some pic with/without it and it doesn't change is not like SweetFX.

Even if I edited the settings file with the settings provide by "sidspyker" in his mod except to FXAA thing...

For now I'll play ME3 in the HD4870CFx with sweetFX
and in the GTX660m without it to avoid this FPS micro stuttering annoyance.

[ninjafada]

took me 2s using the search
http://forum.guru3d.com/showthread.p...22#post4447041

or you can try
http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/27/

[rgot]

[Boulotaur2024]

Originally Posted by zerowalker

I have tried SNES emulator scanline effect, but it just seem to me like it darkens every other line, which just looks, weird;S

Actually CRT emulation has become quite convincing these days :

 Click to show spoiler

I don't know about you but I really like the effect over plain unfiltered sprites

But I'm getting off topic already as right now I just need a simple blur filter included in SweetFX. I've been toying all day with Shenmue on Demul emulator, getting great results with curves/dpx/bloom... I just wish I could apply a blur layer on top of everything, like I simulated in the following screen (7x7 kernel gaussian blur applied twice in Xnview) :

 Click to show spoiler

It helps hiding the very low res textures and provides a more coherent look to the whole scene (as the polygons are supersampled and textures are not)

EDIT : ok nevermind, I got it ! I modified the sharpen code (as blur is pretty much inverted sharpen) and got the effect right. Quality of the blur isn't too great compared to photoshop (or gimp) blur though, I don't know why for the moment

[qliphoth]

A quick suggestion for CeeJay.dk regarding further color grading options, as well as some suggestions for other effects in general.

I find myself wanting two additions or replacements for Vibrance quite often. A "Saturation Contrast" effect, which would work like Vibrance but DESATURATE already desaturated colors and saturate already saturated ones with positive values, and the opposite (bringing down color contrast in the scene) with negative values. Vibrance does not and cannot provide this effect without modification, and the same is true of all the effects -- no combination can do this.
And a LiftGammaGain effect but controlling the vibrance and/or saturation curves of various light levels -- if I want bright lights to desaturate the scene and dim lighting to bring out the color, for example. You could even have vibrance OR saturation curves with a kind of toggle for each light level.

I think these two effects would be extremely useful as your vibrance has already proven to be in my various self-made presets for SweetFX. (I need these new effects, in fact, to complete my SweetFX for Pathologic preset!)

I also think there should be some way of customizing the order in which effects are applied where possible, because I often find myself disappointed with how, say, HDR clashes with vibrance in some games. And Curves doesn't seem to have any effect on brightened shadows from Cineon DPX.

As far as new effects I think would be cool, a peripheral blur would be neat. Something like Vignette but with blurring instead of blackness, perhaps even a toggle on vignette.

And lastly... I also find myself wanting a stronger bloom. Some older games without bloom at all (such as Pathologic) just can't get sufficient bloom flares with the current effect, no matter how I tweak the settings. (That, or the bloom is getting eaten by the other effects.) Instead, I find bloom tends to brighten the objects that emit light while having no effect at all on their immediate surroundings.

An excellent illustration of this is to go to an area in Dead Space 2 with candles and try every bloom setting from highest to lowest, any width -- it doesn't matter. The brighter parts of the scene (such as the white candles) will get brighter still, and the darker parts will not be affected unless you force the whole scene to ridiculous levels of bloom power -- I had to try 36, which made the game something like fullbright in the old quake games. More importantly, it appears to be impossible to get Isaac's RIG gauges to have any kind of actual blooming into their surroundings, only into themselves. This seems to be very weird behavior.

Just some suggestions, hope you can see fit to include some of them!

[Marcel]

Originally Posted by zerowalker

Do you use SMAA + Downsampling?

Isn´t both the same thing, but downsampling is a more, forced way?

And how do you do with HUD and UI with Downsampling?

Cause it becomes blurry and messy for me when i use it.

for downsampling i make only custom resolution in Nvidia Control panel.I have created a lot of resolutions. When the game is demanding on hardware i use only lower downsampling. Sometimes just added only 10% horizontally and vertically.

1920x1080 + 10% = 2112x1188. But most often I use 2560x1440 Luma nice sharpen image. For downsampling + SMAA i use this settings.

SMAA

/ SMAA Anti-aliasing settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/

#define SMAA_THRESHOLD 0.05 // [0.05 to 0.20] Edge detection threshold
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS 80 // [0 to 98] Determines the radius SMAA will search for aliased edges
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG 10 // [0 to 16] Determines the radius SMAA will search for diagonal aliased edges
#define SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING 0 // [0 to 100] Determines the percent of antialiasing to apply to corners.

[Marcel]

After four months, I returned to Skyrim

ENB+SweetFX(Tonemap,DPX,Curves, Lift Gamma Gain)

 Click to show spoiler

[kaicooper]

Marcel

dame baby..so goooooooood

but i hate this game..but really ur screenshots amazing

[DerSchniffles]

Well I got BF BC2 lookin much much better but for some reason I cant get it to work on Alan Wake or Blacklight Retribution. Ive tried editing it via notepad and with the configurator to no avail. Kinda sucks and im not sure what to do. Anyone else try it with those 2 games?

[(.)(.)]

No reason for it not to but if it's not then there must be a reason....
In saying that though, it's working for me on Vista x64.

Just dragged an dropped into the same place as .exe is all i done.
What does the log say or do you get an error massage.

Edit: lol, massage

[(.)(.)]

Have to say that this SweetFX tool is just as much fun to play with as the games themselves and i find myself a little more willing to go back and finish some of them just because of the effects like sharpening and color correction make some titles easier to play/see.
Cheers CeeJay
Arma2 Operation Arrowhead - this game/sim what have you, is indeed awesome.
Just a simple tweak of sharpness and vibrancy + HDR (HDR is left at stock 130/87 i think it is).

...again you know the drill, maybe darker than in-game.
Resized to 1600x1200

 Click to show spoiler

heres the config as it is at the mo, will update soon-ish.

 Click to show spoiler

/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Choose effects /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/

// Set to 1 for ON or 0 for OFF
#define USE_SMAA_ANTIALIASING 0 //[0 or 1] SMAA Anti-aliasing : Smoothens jagged lines.
#define USE_LUMASHARPEN 1 //[0 or 1] LumaSharpen : Also sharpens the antialiased edges which makes them less smooth - I'm working on fixing that.
#define USE_BLOOM 0 //[0 or 1] Bloom : Makes bright lights bleed their light into their surroundings (relatively high performance cost)
#define USE_HDR 1 //[0 or 1] HDR : Not actual HDR - It just tries to mimic an HDR look (relatively high performance cost)
#define USE_TECHNICOLOR 0 //[0 or 1] TECHNICOLOR : Attempts to mimic the look of an old movie using the Technicolor three-strip color process (Techicolor Process 4)
#define USE_DPX 1 //[0 or 1] Cineon DPX : Should make the image look like it's been converted to DXP Cineon - basically it's another movie-like look similar to technicolor.
#define USE_LIFTGAMMAGAIN 1 //[0 or 1] Lift Gamma Gain : Adjust brightness and color of shadows, midtones and highlights (avoids clipping)
#define USE_TONEMAP 1 //[0 or 1] Tonemap : Adjust gamma, exposure, saturation, bleach and defog. (may cause clipping)
#define USE_VIBRANCE 1 //[0 or 1] Vibrance : Intelligently saturates (or desaturates if you use negative values) the pixels depending on their original saturation.
#define USE_CURVES 1 //[0 or 1] Curves : Contrast adjustments using S-curves.
#define USE_SEPIA 0 //[0 or 1] Sepia : Sepia tones the image.
#define USE_VIGNETTE 0 //[0 or 1] Vignette : Darkens the edges of the image to make it look more like it was shot with a camera lens. May cause banding artifacts.
#define USE_DITHER 0 //[0 or 1] Dither : Applies dithering to simulate more colors than your monitor can display. This lessens banding artifacts (mostly caused by Vignette)
#define USE_SPLITSCREEN 0 //[0 or 1] Splitscreen : Enables the before-and-after splitscreen comparison mode.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ SMAA Anti-aliasing settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/

#define SMAA_THRESHOLD 0.12 // [0.05 to 0.20] Edge detection threshold
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS 16 // [0 to 98] Determines the radius SMAA will search for aliased edges
#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG 6 // [0 to 16] Determines the radius SMAA will search for diagonal aliased edges
#define SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING 0 // [0 to 100] Determines the percent of antialiasing to apply to corners.

// -- Advanced SMAA settings --
#define COLOR_EDGE_DETECTION 1 // [0 or 1] 1 Enables color edge detection (slower but slightly more acurate) - 0 uses luma edge detection (faster)
#define SMAA_DIRECTX9_LINEAR_BLEND 0 // [0 or 1] Using DX9 HARDWARE? (software version doesn't matter) if so this needs to be 1 - If not, leave it at 0.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ LumaSharpen settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
// -- Sharpening --
#define sharp_strength 2.60 // [0.10 to 3.00] Strength of the sharpening
#define sharp_clamp 0.035 // [0.000 to 1.000] Limits maximum amount of sharpening a pixel recieves - Default is 0.035

// -- Advanced sharpening settings --
#define pattern 2 // [1|2|3|4] Choose a sample pattern. 1 = Fast, 2 = Normal, 3 = Wider, 4 = Pyramid shaped.
#define offset_bias 1.0 // [0.0 to 6.0] Offset bias adjusts the radius of the sampling pattern.
// I designed the pattern for offset_bias 1.0, but feel free to experiment.

// -- Debug sharpening settings --
#define show_sharpen 0 // [0 or 1] Visualize the strength of the sharpen (multiplied by 4 to see it better)


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Bloom settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define BloomThreshold 20.25 //[0.00 to 50.00] Threshold for what is a bright light (that causes bloom) and what isn't.
#define BloomPower 1.446 //[0.0000 to 8.0000] Strength of the bloom
#define BloomWidth 0.0142 //[0.0000 to 1.0000] Width of the bloom


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ HDR settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define HDRPower 1.30 //[0.0 to 8.0] Strangely lowering this makes the image brighter
#define radius2 0.87 //[0.0 to 8.0] Raising this seems to make the effect stronger and also brighter


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ TECHNICOLOR settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define TechniAmount 0.11 //[0.0 to 1.0]
#define TechniPower 2.8 //[0.0 to 8.0]
#define redNegativeAmount 0.88 //[0.0 to 1.0]
#define greenNegativeAmount 0.88 //[0.0 to 1.0]
#define blueNegativeAmount 0.88 //[0.0 to 1.0]


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Cineon DPX settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define Red 8.0 //[1.0 to 15.0]
#define Green 8.0 //[1.0 to 15.0]
#define Blue 8.0 //[1.0 to 15.0]

#define ColorGamma 3.5 //[0.1 to 2.5] Adjusts the colorfulness of the effect in a manner similar to Vibrance. 1.0 is neutral.
#define DPXSaturation 3.5 //[0.0 to 8.0] Adjust saturation of the effect. 1.0 is neutral.

#define RedC 0.36 //[0.6 to 0.2]
#define GreenC 0.36 //[0.6 to 0.2]
#define BlueC 0.34 //[0.6 to 0.2]

#define Blend 0.2 //[0.0 to 0.1] How strong the effect should be.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Lift Gamma Gain settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define RGB_Lift float3(1.000, 1.000, 1.000) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust shadows for Red, Green and Blue
#define RGB_Gamma float3(1.000, 1.000, 1.000) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust midtones for Red, Green and Blue
#define RGB_Gain float3(1.000, 1.000, 1.000) //[0.000 to 2.000] Adjust highlights for Red, Green and Blue


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Tonemap settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define Gamma 1.1 //[0.00 to 2.00] Adjust midtones

#define Exposure -0.10 //[-1.00 to 1.00] Adjust exposure

#define Saturation 0.30 //[-1.00 to 1.00] Adjust saturation

#define Bleach 0.00 //[0.00 to 1.00] Brightens the shadows and fades the colors

#define Defog 0.000 //[0.00 to 1.00] How much of the color tint to remove
#define FogColor float3(0.00, 0.00, 2.55) //[0.00 to 1.00, 0.00 to 1.00, 0.00 to 1.00] What color to remove - default is blue


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Vibrance settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define Vibrance 0.15 //[-1.0 to 1.0] Intelligently saturates (or desaturates if you use negative values) the pixels depending on their original saturation.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Curves settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define Curves_contrast 0.30 //[-1.0 to 1.0] The amount of contrast you want

// -- Advanced curve settings --
#define Curves_formula 7 //[1|2|3|4|5|6|7] The constrast s-curve you want to use.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Sepia settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define ColorTone float3(1.40, 1.10, 0.90) //[0.00 to 1.00, 0.00 to 1.00, 0.00 to 1.00] What color to tint the image
#define GreyPower 0.11 //[0.0 to 1.0] How much desaturate the image before tinting it
#define SepiaPower 0.58 //[0.0 to 1.0] How much to tint the image



/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Vignette settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define VignetteRadius 1.00 //[-1.00 to 3.00] lower values = stronger radial effect from center
#define VignetteAmount -1.00 //[-2.00 to 1.00] Strength of black. -2.00 = Max Black, 1.00 = Max White.
#define VignetteSlope 8 //[1 to 16] How far away from the center the change should start to really grow strong (odd numbers cause a larger fps drop than even numbers)
#define VignetteCenter float2(0.500, 0.500) //[0.00 to 1.00] Center of effect.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Dither settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
//No settings yet, beyond switching it on or off in the top section.

//Note that the checkerboard pattern used by Dither, makes an image harder to compress.
//This can make your screenshots and video recordings take up more space.


/*-----------------------------------------------------------.
/ Splitscreen settings /
'-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#define splitscreen_mode 3 //[1|2|3|4|5] 1 = Vertical 50/50 split, 2 = Vertical 25/50/25 split, 3 = Vertical 50/50 angled split, 4 = Horizontal 50/50 split, 5 = Horizontal 25/50/25 split

Now where did i put my copy of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter II.

[raj7095]

Originally Posted by qliphoth

A quick suggestion for CeeJay.dk regarding further color grading options, as well as some suggestions for other effects in general.

I find myself wanting two additions or replacements for Vibrance quite often. A "Saturation Contrast" effect, which would work like Vibrance but DESATURATE already desaturated colors and saturate already saturated ones with positive values, and the opposite (bringing down color contrast in the scene) with negative values. Vibrance does not and cannot provide this effect without modification, and the same is true of all the effects -- no combination can do this.
And a LiftGammaGain effect but controlling the vibrance and/or saturation curves of various light levels -- if I want bright lights to desaturate the scene and dim lighting to bring out the color, for example. You could even have vibrance OR saturation curves with a kind of toggle for each light level.

I think these two effects would be extremely useful as your vibrance has already proven to be in my various self-made presets for SweetFX. (I need these new effects, in fact, to complete my SweetFX for Pathologic preset!)

I also think there should be some way of customizing the order in which effects are applied where possible, because I often find myself disappointed with how, say, HDR clashes with vibrance in some games. And Curves doesn't seem to have any effect on brightened shadows from Cineon DPX.

As far as new effects I think would be cool, a peripheral blur would be neat. Something like Vignette but with blurring instead of blackness, perhaps even a toggle on vignette.

And lastly... I also find myself wanting a stronger bloom. Some older games without bloom at all (such as Pathologic) just can't get sufficient bloom flares with the current effect, no matter how I tweak the settings. (That, or the bloom is getting eaten by the other effects.) Instead, I find bloom tends to brighten the objects that emit light while having no effect at all on their immediate surroundings.

An excellent illustration of this is to go to an area in Dead Space 2 with candles and try every bloom setting from highest to lowest, any width -- it doesn't matter. The brighter parts of the scene (such as the white candles) will get brighter still, and the darker parts will not be affected unless you force the whole scene to ridiculous levels of bloom power -- I had to try 36, which made the game something like fullbright in the old quake games. More importantly, it appears to be impossible to get Isaac's RIG gauges to have any kind of actual blooming into their surroundings, only into themselves. This seems to be very weird behavior.

Just some suggestions, hope you can see fit to include some of them!

some very good suggestions here, especially the one about being able to switch order of shaders and peripheral blur. usually i find that hdr tends to neutralize the effects of smaa in some situations. it would be nice to rearrange the order so smaa is applied in the end. as for bloom, i also agree that it tends to be too weak sometimes. great work with version 2.0a btw ceejay.

[jelbo]

Originally Posted by Boulotaur2024

Actually CRT emulation has become quite convincing these days :

 Click to show spoiler

I don't know about you but I really like the effect over plain unfiltered sprites

Woah now, that shader looks nice! Which one is it exactly?

I'm very interested in how these shaders look applied to pc games. Adding scanlines would be.... awesome! Here's some example pictures of shaders applied to Super Mario World. More (unreleased) examples here.

But I'm getting off topic already as right now I just need a simple blur filter included in SweetFX. I've been toying all day with Shenmue on Demul emulator, getting great results with curves/dpx/bloom... I just wish I could apply a blur layer on top of everything [...]

That'd be sweet.

[TonyTurbo]

Massive Kudos to the driving force behind SweetFX, you guys have come up with something that's a jo behold. I'm having so much fun messing around with my games, it's like looking at super high def lol. For years I've just been underwhelmed with how my games look so washed out, and no matter what I mess with in the game settings, I just could not find a way to make my graphics pop. I've only really spent a day on these, but what do you think so far? I'm sure I can go alot further and achieve alot better, but right off the bat I'm seeing a huge difference in image quality. Any tips guys? little more of this or a little less of that? The screenshots do it very little justice IMO, when playing the game it looks nowhere near as grainy and sharp.

Thanks again all involved.

ORIGINAL


SWEETFX


ORIGINAL


SWEETFX


ORIGINAL


SWEETFX

[Loboxxx]

Skyrim, "only" SweetFX2.0 :Tonemap+Vibrant+sharpness+FXAA

 Click to show spoiler

Merry Christmas!

[TheTrain]

Originally Posted by Marcel

Risen 2

DPX,Tonemap,SMAA,Luma,Curves

 Click to show spoiler

What settings for this sir?

[ninjafada]

no one can help me with batman AA and AC, game crash at start in dx9 with all files in Binaries , in game AA disable

[gridiron whirlw]

Nice shots everybody.

Sleeping dogs graphics are so damn good, that I actually like it better without sweet fx.

[Boulotaur2024]

Ok I added a very simple/stupid blur effect into Sweetfx :





I just adapted the Sharpen complex you can find all over the web and removed the sharpening stage (like I said I had zero HLSL knowledge until yesterday),
and voila you got a (low quality) blur usable in sweetfx.

Unzip this archive into your game folder to add a new Blur.h and overwrite your existing SweetFX_settings.txt and Main.h
You can tune the blur radius by modifying the blur_strength variable in the SweetFX_settings.txt file included in the archive


EDIT : Resident Evil 4 in Dolphin (x4 upscale + Sweetfx blur/bloom/curves) :

 Click to show spoiler

[sidspyker]

How do I reverse the split screen? I want the horizontal 50/50 split screen effect to show the change on top half instead of bottom, any ideas?
CeeJay.dk

This is the code for it and I don't know C or C++.

// -- Horizontal 50/50 split --
#if splitscreen_mode == 4
return (tex.y < 0.5) ? myTex2D(s0, tex) : colorInput;
#endif


EDIT - Nevermind, figured it out.

Change it to colorInput : myTex2D(s0, tex);

[Wanny]

Originally Posted by gridiron whirlw

Nice shots everybody.

Sleeping dogs graphics are so damn good, that I actually like it better without sweet fx.

I find that Sleeping dogs looks too bluish in day time. Another case where day/night settings would be awesome. Maybe some features that detect sky colors/brightness?

[jim2point0]

Originally Posted by sidspyker

EDIT - Nevermind, figured it out.

Change it to colorInput : myTex2D(s0, tex);

You could also just reverse the sign

#if splitscreen_mode == 4
return (tex.y > 0.5) ? myTex2D(s0, tex) : colorInput;
#endif

[sidspyker]

Originally Posted by jim2point0

You could also just reverse the sign

#if splitscreen_mode == 4
return (tex.y > 0.5) ? myTex2D(s0, tex) : colorInput;
#endif

I hate you ._. lol okay seriously, as mentioned before I haven't done C and C++ so I was well let's say...overwhelmed and just asked, then I started understanding it a bit. Now I'm using:
return (tex.y < 0.3) ? colorInput : myTex2D(s0, tex);

To help a friend get rid of the white gradient in AC: Brotherhood, see the weird white on 1/3rd of the screen?

[ninjafada]

still can't understand why both batman crash with sweetfx

nvm i tweaked the cartoon shader to use it with castle crashers:

/*------------------------------------------------------------------------------
						Cartoon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

float4 CartoonPass( float4 colorInput, float2 Tex )
{
  float3 CoefLuma2 = float3(0.0126, 0.3152, 0.2722);  //Values to calculate luma with
  
  float diff1 = dot(CoefLuma2,myTex2D(s0, Tex + pixel).rgb);
  diff1 -= dot(CoefLuma2,myTex2D(s0, Tex - pixel).rgb);
  float diff2 = dot(CoefLuma2,myTex2D(s0, Tex +float2(pixel.x,-pixel.y)).rgb);
  diff2 -= dot(CoefLuma2,myTex2D(s0, Tex +float2(-pixel.x,pixel.y)).rgb);
  
  float edge = dot(float2(diff1,diff2),float2(diff1,diff2));
  
  colorInput.rgb = saturate(colorInput.rgb - edge * 1.5);
	
	return colorInput;
}

now i gonna add the others shaders to tweak it a little more ^^

wip:

[4hwgenxx]

someone has ever made a config for "GHOST RECON FUTURE SOLDIER"??? Thanks and i miss the "PRESENTATION" section, so here i am!!!! =) I love this forum!!!! But i never registrered until now!