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1

Questions & Tutorials / Re: How-To Guide: Get ReShade working with THUG Pro

« on: March 03, 2018, 02:32:44 pm »

Out of curiosity, what are your system specs like? I use ReShade for most of my games and don't usually have any drop in performance unless I'm careless about what shaders/settings I use.

For reference I'm on:

- Windows 7 64bit
- 8GB RAM
- Intel i5 4460 (3.20 GHz per core)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (2GB VRAM)

Not a power machine by any means, but I don't play ultra modern AAA titles (and don't do streaming or video recording of any kind) so it works perfectly for my needs. I've found that it's usually a matter of experimenting a lot with in-game and ReShade settings to get a good balance, though obviously much older setups will have a harder time.

2

Questions & Tutorials / Re: How-To Guide: Get ReShade working with THUG Pro

« on: March 03, 2018, 10:17:48 am »

Yeah, ReShade is amaaaazing and can really breathe new life into older games. Certain shaders and combinations of shaders can definitely obliterate performance even on a beefy machine, and a lot of it depends on the game itself.

If you want to get really far down the ReShade rabbit hole there are tons of custom shaders out there that you could try that may give better performance with the same functionality. All you do is pop them into the \reshade-shaders\Shaders\ folder and put ReShade back into Configuration Mode, and it *should* auto-load them.

For my own system I'm currently using the stock HDR, Levels, LumaSharpen, and TiltShift and it maintains 60 FPS except in very rare conditions where it has a brief microstutter. I haven't tested every single level with it, so there may be some that tank... but that combo seems to work pretty well for my hardware at least, and gives enough options to really customize the lighting and colors. Some of the shaders I typically use in other games just don't work very well (or at all) in THUG Pro (such as AmbientLight or the various DepthOfField options), but I'll probably dig around for custom shaders at some point to really squeeze every bit of performance out of it.

If you want to try my settings to benchmark your rig, you can copy my settings over the existing ones in the .ini file that you created during the initial ReShade setup stuff. Here they are: https://pastebin.com/LgxXAF48  NOTE: Because I don't use the UIMask shader (yet) the top score/special meter part of the interface will be a bit blurry. If you don't want that, just turn off or adjust TiltShift.

The rule of thumb I usually use is no more than 4-5 shaders at once, so finding the right combo to give me the options I crave can be tricky and requires a lot fiddling around with the individual shader settings.

**EDIT**
Ah crap, I just realized I forgot to mention one of the steps in my guide... which is the reason some of the shaders don't work or have very poor performance. Will edit the guide, but:

TURN OFF THE GAME'S ANTI-ALIASING! Run the THUG Pro launcher and turn the "Full Screen Anti-Aliasing" option off. After doing that, the DepthOfField shaders (and some others) will work, and performance will be better across the board. Totally forgot about that step... sorry!

3

Questions & Tutorials / How-To Guide: Get ReShade working with THUG Pro

« on: March 02, 2018, 02:41:16 pm »

Hey there everyone, thought I'd write up a quick guide on how to get ReShade working with THUGPro since it doesn't seem to be listed anywhere (at least not that I could find with extensive searching).

If you don't know what ReShade is: it's a 3rd party shader injection utility that lets you go nuts with visual effects in games. If you've heard of stuff like SweetFX or ENB, then you know the general idea. However, ReShade is amazing compared to something like ENB because it's able to do a lot of changes to the actual 3D rendering, rather than just increasing saturation/brightness. That means you can do stuff like depth of field, proper lighting tweaks, etc.

Note #1: you will need a fairly modern computer for this to run decently, and even then most of your performance will be dependent upon which shaders you use.

Note #2: a lot of the shaders won't do anything (except drain performance) in THUG Pro. You'll have to play with the in-game menu to figure out what works and what doesn't.

This guide assumes you don't know ANYTHING about using ReShade, so feel free to skip the later parts if you have experience with it.

DOWNLOADS YOU'LL NEED BEFOREHAND:

- ReShade - https://reshade.me/#download
- ENB Injector - http://enbdev.com/injector_generic_v0006.htm

INSTALLING RESHADE:
1. Run the downloaded ReShade installer. It should be named something like "ReShade_Setup_3.1.1.exe"
2. Click the big "Select Game" button (don't do the "hold ctrl for manual blahblah" thing)
3. Navigate to the THUG Pro installaion (NOT THUG2's directory). It should be located somewhere like: "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAMEHERE\AppData\Local\THUG Pro"
4. Select "THUGPro.exe" and click Open
5. Click the radio button to the left of "Direct3D 9" on the ReShade installer
6. Say "Yes" to the pop-up that asks to download a collection of standard shaders
7. Keep all the shaders checked on the next pop-up and click "OK"
8. Close the ReShade installer when it's finished (just click the X in the top right)

CONFIGURING RESHADE FOR ENBINJECTOR USE:
9. Nagivate to the THUG Pro folder. It should be located somewhere like: "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAMEHERE\AppData\Local\THUG Pro"
10. Rename "d3d9.dll" to "enbseries.dll"
11. Rename "d3d9.ini" to "enbseries.ini"

INSTALLING ENBINJECTOR:
12. Open the downloaded ENBInjector .zip. It should be named something like "enbinjector_v0006.zip"
13. Unzip "ENBInjector.exe" and "enbinjector.ini" to the THUG Pro folder. You can skip the other files.
14. Open "enbinjector.ini" in a text editor
15. Change "ProcessName0=tesv.exe" to "ProcessName0=THUGPro.exe" (without the quotes)
16. Change "ProcessName1=SkyrimLauncher.exe" to "ProcessName1=" (without the quotes)
17. Change "ProcessName2=CreationKit.exe" to "ProcessName2=" (without the quotes)
18. Save and close the file

RUNNING THE GAME:
19. Run "ENBInjector.exe" and leave the window open
20. Run the THUG Pro launcher
21. Turn off the "Full Screen Anti-Aliasing" option (otherwise certain shaders won't work)
22. Run THUG Pro

If you did this right, you should see a grey bar at the top of the game with info about ReShade... which means ReShade is now working! If you DON'T see that bar, then you did something wrong. Double check the instructions to figure out what you missed or did incorrectly.


CONFIGURING RESHADE INITIALLY:
The first time you run the game with ReShade enabled it will take awhile to load all the shaders and will run at sub-optimal performance. That's because you are in "configure" mode... once you set everything up and switch to "performance" mode it should run better and only load what you're using on each start of the game. Here's how to get through the initial setup:

1. Press SHIFT+F2 to open the configuration screen in-game (this is also the hotkey combo you use to close the menu)
2. Click "Continue"
3. Click the red plus sign on the top right
4. Type the name you want to use for your config file in the small pop-up
5. Press enter
6. Click "Continue" (we'll deal with config stuff later)
7. Click "Finish"
8. Click "Settings" at the top of the menu
9. (Optional) Bind a key to the "Effects Toggle Key". I suggest the "Pause Break" key if your keyboard has one. This will let you turn ReShade effects on and off at will, which is helpful for comparing your changes
10. (Optional) Click the checkbox for "Show FPS" in the "User Interface" section. This can help a lot when testing how your settings are impacting the game

You're done! Now you can play with all the shaders and their settings to see what they do. When you've set everything up you're going to want to go back into the "Settings" menu and change "Configuration Mode" to "Performance Mode". You won't be able to add new effects while in Performance Mode, but the game will only load what shaders you need and will generally perform much better. You can always go back into "Configuration Mode" later.


Big note: EVERY time you want to play THUG Pro with ReShade you will need to start "ENBInjector.exe" first and leave it running in the background. If you want an easy solution, here's what I do:

1. Make a new .txt file somewhere. Doesn't matter where, just pick a convenient spot.
2. Open it in a text editor
3. Paste the following inside:

Code: [Select]

start "" "%LOCALAPPDATA%\THUG Pro\ENBInjector.exe"
timeout /t 1
start "" "%LOCALAPPDATA%\THUG Pro\THUGPro.exe"
4. Save and close
5. Rename the text file to have the .bat extension. Example "foobar.txt" becomes "foobar.bat"

Now when you run that .bat file (you may need admin privileges) it will open the injector, wait for one second, then open THUG Pro. Super easy stuff to help automate the process. If you prefer using the launcher, you can change "THUGPro.exe" in the file to "THUGProLauncher.exe" and it'll work just the same.

EXAMPLE:

With ReShade (slight tilt shift, some color vibrance stuff, HDR, etc... the blurred score is because of tilt shift)


Without ReShade