The Big Ol' Retroarch Shader Thread

[Zombeaver]

Retroarch gives us tons of cool shaders to work with; so many that it can be a bit overwhelming and hard to know where to begin or what will suit your needs best. I thought it would be useful to create a thread for discussing various Retroarch shaders where people could show examples of specific shaders and potentially provide tips and tweaks for others. @lordmonkus, continuing our previous tangent on the subject, I messed around a bit with CRT-Royale-Kurozumi to see what I could do to tone down the bloom effect. It turns out quite a few of the passes have an impact on this effect. Passes 2-4 and 8-10 all directly affect it. I messed around with all of them for a while and ended up settling on a simple adjustment of pass 10 - "crt-royale-bloom-horizontal-reconstitute" by changing it to a scale of 2x. No more ugly gray smears! Default: Adjusted: Setting Changed:

[Lordmonkus]

Very interesting and I must say I really like it :) Here's a couple of shots I took using the opening intro of Streets of Rage 2 which is a perfect test because of the black background and text which really highlights that glow in it's worst possible case scenario. This might be worth posting over on the Retroarch forums in the shaders section, Kurozumi himself has posted over there in the thread for his preset and is very receptive to suggestions and adjustments. Kurozumi-Default http://imgur.com/S23yB2y Kurozumi-Modified http://imgur.com/1mBsd9t

[Zombeaver]

I just wish there was a way to use the bloom from Easymode-Halation - it's the only one that actually looks very good to me because it's noticeable but unobtrusive. The way it blends with the surrounding area just looks so much better. I'm tempted to try swapping in the bloom shader file from it into Kurozumi. I don't even know if that'll work or if it'd look any good, but it's worth a shot I guess. I like this edit more than the default but I don't want to just get rid of the bloom entirely, which this nearly does.

[Lordmonkus]

You could probably do it by replacing pass 10 in Kurozumi to the bloom pass in Easymode-Halation. Do you know which pass in Easymode is the bloom ?

[Zombeaver]

I looked at the CRT-Easymode-Halation shader in Notepad last night - it's actually pretty short. It's only 5 passes. I can't recall which one was for the bloom by memory (and there weren't any comment lines in the file) but I'm pretty sure one of the passes had "bloom" in the name. CRT-Royale-Kurozumi on the other hand is practically a novel. It's insanely massive. I don't actually know if simply swapping out pass 10 would even work because based on my testing it's affected by more than just that pass. Passes 2-4 and 8-10 all affected it. It's probably actually pass 2 that would be the one to change because all of the subsequent ones seem to involve various types of blur being applied to the bloom.

[ALIE]

cool but i gotta ask because shaders is one thing i dont fully understand yet:) are they all included in Retroarch? and how do i apply them

[Zombeaver]

Yep, these are included in Retroarch via the Online Updater menu. Just hit "Update CG Shaders" and "Update GLSL Shaders" and it'll download/update them all. When you open up a core just go to Quick Menu -> Shaders -> Load Shader Preset -> CG Shader or GLSL Shader folder -> and then dig through the various categorized subfolders. "CRT" is probably where you'll want to start. Note, however, that the shader above is in the "CGP" folder and is only in the CG Shader folder.

[Lordmonkus]

Ok I opened up both presets in notepad, Easymode-Halation is really simple to read and Kurozumis is a novel like you said but to be fair to Kurozumi he did put some comments in there to at least help explain most of it. For shits and giggles I fired up the Kuorzumi preset and went to pass 10 and replaced it with the horizontal blur from Easymode-Halation because in Kurozumis pass 10 is a horizontal blur. This really did not have the effect I was expecting at all. Everything turned a shade of purple, LOL. This might be one of those things worth asking Kurozumi himself about over on the Retroarch forums. I am going to go get some food and I will have a tinker around with this more afterwards.

[Lordmonkus]

Analog Shader Pack v3 Released. The user solid12345 over on the Retroarch forums has released his big pack of shaders. This adds a big pile of new shader effects for people to try and find that perfect look. Here is the link to the forum post with the download link over there http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6577&p=44473&posted=1#post44473 I'm gonna go through them all now and see what I can find that I might use.

[Zombeaver]

Damn, this day just keeps getting better. I saw your post over there haha

[Lordmonkus]

Shameless copy and paste of my thoughts from my post I just put over on the Retroarch forums. LOL. Ok I just went through most if not all of them and the 2 that really stuck out to me the most was the Wega RGB TV and the Vintage Atari TV ones. The Atari one looked especially cool when loaded up with Atari 2600 games. The Wega one looked like it could be a contender to replace Royale-Kurozumi but I will need to do more playing to see what I really think of it but it has an interesting look. The rest are definitely not my style but I am sure they will appeal to someone which is the beauty of a pack like this. Most shaders in it won't appeal to everyone but there is a very strong chance there will be something in there for most people.

[Zombeaver]

Good call on those two. I tested quite a few and most just aren't my thing. I really dig the Atari one for 2600 games. I'm probably going to edit out the curvature though - never been a big fan of that. Wega RGB does look pretty good, but I'd still put Easymode-Halation and the edit of Kurozumi above it. I just keep coming back to Easymode for my all-purpose shader. All subjective of course

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah very subjective. I really like Wega RGB but it feels a bit "dark" (feels like the contrast is a tad high) but I am giving a good try though to see if I can get used to it. Kurozumi is still my favourite but maybe I will switch.

[alexis524]

lordmonkus said Analog Shader Pack v3 Released. The user solid12345 over on the Retroarch forums has released his big pack of shaders. This adds a big pile of new shader effects for people to try and find that perfect look. Here is the link to the forum post with the download link over there http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6577&p=44473&posted=1#post44473 I'm gonna go through them all now and see what I can find that I might use.

If i update my shaders in RA itself, will what that user released be included in the update, or would i have to dl them and move into the appropriate folder in RA?

[Lordmonkus]

I am fairly certain you will need to download manually and put the "Analog Shader Pack version 3" folder with all its contents in the "shaders\shaders_cg\" folder. This is what I have done and it works for me. Then you can navigate to \shaders_cg\Analog Shader Pack subfolder and browse for the presets.

[kmoney]

I feel like Royale-Kurozumi looks the best as well. I do think that it looks best with integer scale turned on although I cannot stand loosing that extra screen space. Crt Easymode Halation looks good with integer scale turned off but Kurozumi wins out with me always in the end. I am curious if you guys use Kurozumi with integer scale on or off?

[Lordmonkus]

I always have integer scale on but I also have a 1440 monitor so the bars on the top and bottom are very small compared to a 1080 monitor. I turned integer scale on out of habit from previous scanline shaders looking weird so now it's just on all the time. Kurozumi is tough to beat especially at higher resolutions (1400 and up). @1080 though other shaders will (again depending on personal preference) look better.

[Zombeaver]

I have integer scaling turned off. The lost screen real estate annoys the shit out of me. I'm on a 1080p monitor.

[alexis524]

good deal. I'm fairly new to RA, and just browsed their forums with with looks like a few more shaders. Will see what I can grab and experiment with. Thanks for the direction lord

[solid12345]

Weirded, I joined and posted yesterday, now my account and postings are gone and had to make a new one?  Anyway thanks for the support on the analog pack.