The Big Ol' Retroarch Shader Thread

[TakaraMiyuki]

It probably is the sharpness setting.

I've always used these shaders in 2160 and never had any problems.

[siatienco]

@Zombeaver I love your Shaders, thank you for making them!  Question, in your screenshots, where did you get the Overlays?  Like for the SNES, Genesis, etc?

[neil9000]

3 minutes ago, siatienco said:

@Zombeaver I love your Shaders, thank you for making them!  Question, in your screenshots, where did you get the Overlays?  Like for the SNES, Genesis, etc?

 

[siatienco]

15 hours ago, neil9000 said:

 

Much appreciated!  

[siatienco]

Hello again all.  Does anyone have a preferred shader they use depending on which console they're emulating?  I've been alternating between Esper and Ghost, when checking out SNES games, but just curious.  Also, any recommended one to use for GameBoy Advance?

[Elhora]

Wow, super shaders.

Just a question, i'm using some of them, but i wish i could turn off the vignette in your shaders, as when i'm playing my real Sega Genesis on my CRT there is no vignette, i'd like to feel the same.

 

[Zombeaver]

You can't (or couldn't). Some of the shader passes have to be specifically altered to remove it.

I went ahead and did that for the basic versions of each preset. That doesn't include alternate scaling versions or the different sub-versions (sharp1, sharp2, etc.) but I would imagine this would still be sufficient for most people's needs, for the time being anyway. They're in a new "No Vignette" subfolder. I'll never be convinced that those look as good/better but to each their own

Zombs Shaders 4-23-20.7z

Esper:

Esper - No Vignette:

Junker:

Junker - No Vignette:

Ghost:

Ghost - No Vignette:

Neuromancer:

Neuromancer - No Vignette:

Razorgirl:

Razorgirl - No Vignette:

Snowcrash:

Snowcrash - No Vignette:

Decker:

Decker - No Vignette:

[Elhora]

wooooooowwwww.... that makes my day !  Its Xmas before Xmas....

being noob to Shaders, what "fast" and "sharp" means ? (i mean for example what is the diference between "shadername" and "shadername-fast" ?)

[Zombeaver]

"fast" in shader terms usually means less accurate but less hardware intensive

It's important to understand that there's a difference between shaders and shader presets however. My set is a collection of presets, which are a series of shaders (some of which I've customized from existing shaders to alter their appearance). I have alternate versions of some of my presets like Neuromancer-Sharp1, Neuromancer-Sharp2, etc. which use alternate settings (like altered scaling/resolution parameters which make the image sharper) or in some cases alternate shader passes to change the look slightly.

[Syhlas]

@Zombeaver

Is it cool if post some shaders I've been working on here or would you prefer I started my own thread?

[Zombeaver]

Not at all! Go for it!

[Syhlas]

Cool, I'll probably post sometime over the weekend as I'm currently in the middle of making screenshots and setting up my GitHub for it.

Thanks!

Edited April 24, 2020 by Syhlas
Blank space

[nyckrazy]

Hey Zomb, Can u make a "slang" version of razorgirl?? I cant use the cg shaders when i play psx games in the beetle core.

[Zombeaver]

5 hours ago, nyckrazy said:

Hey Zomb, Can u make a "slang" version of razorgirl??

Nope. The presets are made up of shaders that don't exist in slang form.

5 hours ago, nyckrazy said:

I cant use the cg shaders when i play psx games in the beetle core.

Yes you can, you just need to use the software renderer (not GL / Vulkan). They don't work/look correct unless the content is at native resolution anyway.

[HyperspaceMadness]

Hi All,

I wanted to let you know about the latest HSM Mega Bezel Shader, it adds an automatically generated bezel with reflection and manages screen scaling and a bunch of other stuff.  it's evolved a bunch since @Lordmonkus posted about it a while ago. It can now handle aspect ratios automatically, and has presets for Guest-Venom, Guest-SM, Easymode and Royale.

If you are interested the main thread for the shader development and access to the files are here:

HSM Mega Bezel Shader Feedback and Updates

 

 

[Zombeaver]

I've been messing around with Reshade combined with Retroarch shaders lately with fairly good results I think. It does have some limitations in that if the content is very bright to begin with this will make it pretty washed out, but it looks good with medium to low brightness content, especially in cases of high contrast. I'm still trying to dial in numbers to make it more universal. I could make a separate preset specifically for darker content but that's not really ideal. What I have now works pretty well outside of situations where you've got a whole screen of whites, but it's not perfect.

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

No shader:

Esper:

Esper + Reshade:

FXAA shader:

FXAA shader + Reshade (with SMAA + FXAA passes enabled):

I made a couple presets. These are selectable via the UI (by pressing PgDn) and choosing them from the drop down list at the top. End toggles Reshade on and off. "Hazy" is the default, and what's used in all the above screenshots.

"Contrast":

"Dramatic":

"Hazy":

"Warm":

I've also added in some UI (overlay) mask options which you can toggle with the .vbs (or .bat) files in the ZombsReshade folder. By default, the entire screen will be affected by Reshade, including overlays. You can make a black and white image named "UIMask.png" and place it in the ZombsReshade\reshade-shaders\Textures folder to indicate what portions of the screen will be affected (white) and what won't (black). I've made several for my needs which you can use an example. The .vbs files toggle between them. I have it set to "UINone" by default, which affects the entire screen. I swap between these automatically by setting up separate emulator entries for things like "Retroarch - Vertical" and telling it to use an alternate startup AHK script (you'd need to adjust the SetWorkingDir path to wherever the ZombsReshade folder is, either with absolute or relative paths like I have below):

Alternately you could... just leave it on UINone, let it affect your bezels if you use any, and just not worry about it.

But, you know, I'm picky and all that...

Anyway, here they are if anyone wants to play around with them. Just place them in the base Retroarch folder. The video driver needs to be set to GL.

ZombsReshade.7z

 

[BLACKOUT-MK2]

Hey @Zombeaver just wanted to say I'm really thankful for all the work you've done here. I got into Retroarch recently and your shaders are by far my favourite!

[Zombeaver]

You're very welcome! Glad you're enjoying them

[lilbud]

I love how the Esper shader above looks, but I noticed it's only for GL. Is there anything similar for D3D11 or Vulkan?

[Paultimate]

These are great. Any chance at 4K, or did I read wrong about these being 1080p?

 

Some feedback, im seeing a lot of highlight blowout, mainly in the reshade versions. It might be worth considering pulling back a few notches on highlights (or if there is a function, expand the dynamic range artificially so pure white (or any pure rgb color e.g. 255 would be pure red) in game matches pure white on screen, and anything less than that is given a more proper value that doesn't round up) to regain game detail. One of the obvious examples is the clouds in Metal Slug. I feel like it should be possible on those games as their color pallet is not expansive and can work well with dithering and d.r. tricks. 

Edited September 25, 2020 by Paultimate