KuroTenshi's Textures and Shaders improvements (Downloads on January 25th or 26th)

KuroTenshi's Textures and Shaders improvements (released)

Hi !

As I spend quite a lot of time to make this, for myself at first, I decided to share my work.

1) A (customized) Reshade preset, that adds extra visual effects, contrast and details as if textures were totally redone. And the whole thing keeps (almost) the initial atmosphere (a little more cinematic), and fixes some lighting glitches (blue reflections on walls).

- Improved GodRays
- Added Tiltshift to blur screen edges when in high altitude
- Added Gaussian Anamorphic LensFlare for flares and lights
- Improved Bloom
- Brought out textures details and added depth to textures (to simulate relief)
- Gaussian Blur to reduce aliasing (I may use Bilateral later)
- Rather genuine colors (a bit more contrasted)

I strongly recommend to force Anisotropic Filtering 16x from your video card settings (Nvidia or AMD Control Panel).

I made a light version, where I removed tiltshift and godray effects, as they can be nuisance and take a lot of FPS. The UI is now clear, and as it already eats 8fps, I advise it to most. With optimized textures, you'll save VRAM (and stuttering) and textures will look far more detailed.

Download : Watch Dogs Reshading 2.0

Light version : Watch Dogs Reshading 2.0.1 Light

The Toggle Button is the ScrollLock key and PrintScreen for Screenshots.

CALIBRATION TO 0 !

Unpack the archive in Watch Dogs/Bin directory.

2) A reworked texture pack, that aims to be a balance between High Textures and Ultra. A render close to ultra, with less memory usage.
I played with textures formats, graphical reworking, and reduced texture resolution.

- Only Ultra textures are modified
- About 800 textures are replaced.
- Reworked landscape textures (diffuse, normals, and sometimes masks)

Download :Optimized Ultra Textures

I finally took time to test the textures. I am really pleased, even more with the Reshade Preset (that I need to optimize). There is no more VRAM use peaks (no more stuttering) and render is even better than Vanilla, while keeping mipmaps. Relief Mapping is kept.

FEEDBACKS AND PERSONAL IMPROVEMENTS ARE WELCOMED

The screens below use anisotropic filtering 16x, Max settings, SMAA Temporal, E3 Lite V2.2 (from txgt) with PC's Deferred Lighting.

The first with Vanilla Ultra textures and no Reshade. The second one with Reshade (more effects) and optimized ultra textures (the blur at edges is caused by the Tiltshift effect).



Special Thanks to txgt (and other people which products were used in) and to The Silver for his advices regarding texture normal mapping.

 

Textures looks great actually but it is so sharp it pops up in front of you. Please share your settings when you are finished tweaking it.

 

In fact my tweaks are done. I just forgot them at home to upload them. But I'll share.
I don't understand what you mean by "pop up in front of you".

Maybe the comparison is too harch ? Or maybe is it the GIF format ? It's smoother in game.
The comparison is only the Reshade preset. My textures are already in use even when disabled.

If somebody can further improve my tweaks, I would be really pleased as I don't find this perfect either. Still too vivid. I think it's related to HDR as It's ok in other places.

 

Looks great mate and a kiss of HSV will tone down the vivid

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll test that tomorrow !

 

Finally fixed the over-sharpness and the colors via HSV. It's still not perfect but close to E3 Lite V2 (or Vanilla). In E3 Lite, blues reflect on walls that I consider a bug. I masked it.

Otherwise, is there somebody that knows how to modify the name of the thread ?

 

You mean when you look up while standing in the shadows all the walls become blue? It's not my bug. It's the cheap ubi graphical tricks. That's why they made the sky so pale in Vanilla.
In fact in my E3 Lite v2.x I made second Clear weather preset with paler sky and colder sunlight. The paler sky is achieved by setting fCloudy="0.2" in windycity.xml. That preset is usually active before and after the Stormy weather. So with that preset the walls are less blue.

 

@txgt : Wahooo ! I didn't think Ubi could keep something so awful !!!!! Nevermind, I "fixed" it.

 

GTA V kinda has the same what ever the sky colour is the ground reflects.

The GTA V Overall mod i am working i have came a cross this problem especially when changing from rain to Clear. The nice blue sky makes the puddles ultra blue. but toning down the reflections fixes it a bit.
See the puddles and sky in the evening smog

 

Finally the version 1.4 of the reshade preset is correct, despite a bit too vivid.

After 3 entire days tweaking...

 

Improved Reshade Preset with HSV. Feels more realistic, better balanced, and rather close to E3 Lite (a bit colder and sharper, no more blue reflections on walls).
Nights are now a lot less yellow/orange !

Watch Dogs Reshading by KuroTenshi 1.5

 

Nice

 

I though about that. I'll upload it for 05/02/2016.
Keep in mind that it's an optimized pack. Quality is slightly lower than ultra textures.

 

Exacelt : I saw a strange render, so I was seldom to publish it. Do you want to test and give me a feedback ? I suspect a "bug" in WD's engine.

I launch the upload.

Meanwhile I restarted from scratch the reshading. I'll continue to polish it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6bqejwh54x44ph1/Watch Dogs Reshading by KuroTenshi 1.6.7z?dl=0

 

Link to textures pack : https://www.dropbox.com/s/ztlzlg463d3tfuh/Optimized Ultra Textures by KuroTenshi.7z?dl=0

 

Graphics should stay close to ultra with these textures.

And obviously, far better with the Reshade preset.

 

Without Reshade I don't think. It's made to be used with Reshade, to get better graphics than vanilla ultra.

I modified diffuse textures to make them more sharpened and contrasted, recreated normal maps, and reduced by 1/3 the image dimensions.
I used too a new compression format, used by DirectX 11. The purpose was a quasi lossless compression (less details lost than the usual DXT5)

BUT Watch Dogs is NOT a DirectX 11 game. The base of the game, for all plateforms, is the PS3 version ! That's why it's so badly optimized and downgraded.

Watch Dogs's engine gave me the illusion it worked (while in fact my textures were simply ignored). When I realized that, I recompressed the textures to DXT5, for them to work.

That the reason I was not really proud to present them at last, despite having worked hard for weeks (months ?)

But I didn't test a lot as I was really angered for having been fooled for several months.

 

I still hope for feedback, expecting my work is of use.

 

Does this mean the original file you had uploaded, the one with the 2gb+ patch.dat file, has that bug? If yes, what exactly is that bug?

 

Link fixed. My bad !

@rafnagood : Yes the bug was there. I have been fooled as a Sweetfx Preset was already in use.