MasterEffect ReBorn official thread

templargfx wrote: To Marty

I am sure this has been suggested before (its a long thread!) but an option to supply an image mask which defines the area of the screen to apply effects too would be great (like the side by side option, just running from an image. For example a mask to stop effects being applied to an onscreen compass or health UI.

Masking is already supported (though not available in public yet) in the new split screen "shader" of the previously announced framework.

huss93 wrote: marty work on notepad ++ with a black background to rest eyes dale

I work only on windows notepad, spartanic. For some reason syntax highlighting etc confuses me and if my eyes are tired I usually quit coding.

sorry bro it is for you I di it was like a real friend

A preview of the masking along with the mask I used itself (black is masked, white areas are processed). Since weapons and cash etc change their shape depending on their values slightly I decided to make the mask a slight but larger than their area. And yes, I know the effects are too strong.

So, is Lucifer Hawk a tester for ME? Just wondering. He's lucky that he gets the newest version also, can't wait for masking!

Elimina wrote: So, is Lucifer Hawk a tester for ME? Just wondering.

No. He is a shader developer too. CeeJay, Lucifer and Marty (and me) share a repository where work on shaders is done together (or at least that's the plan), to get around the annoyance of having to decide between the different shaderpacks. There currently is a little framework in the works to easify mixing of the different shaders from SweetFX/MasterEffect and GEMFX, but it's not ready yet. Lucifer mentioned progress on adding that to the framework, but Marty added it to standalone MasterEffect too, until the framework is finished.

It looks like for the mask you just take a screen shot of your game and edit it to match the format of the mask you posted.

Would it be possible to do something similar on the fly for AO effects? Maybe do a bright pass and invert it then use that to keep AO from showing through brightly lit areas? Does the mask have to be strictly black and white or would gray areas still show the effect but to a lesser degree?

"keep AO from showing through brightly lit areas" could you maybe post a screenshot of what you mean? And yes, since I use the value of the mask pixels as interpolation factor, a grey image would result in dampening the effects. Using a gradient that goes from black to white would result in a smooth transition from original image to altered image.

Yeah, here are some pics showing what I mean. These are with Raymarched AO.

W/out AO


W/ AO


W/out AO


W/ AO


Aside from it showing through the lights I like the way it looks.

Marty McFly wrote: "keep AO from showing through brightly lit areas" could you maybe post a screenshot of what you mean?

EDIT: pictures already posted from Ioxa, but i was typing the comment as he was posting it still, here is my imput...

Im pretty sure he/she means that when a light source makes a corner bright from the intensity of the light source, the corner still is detected, therefore AO is applied. Another example when you turn on Nvidia AO in Garry's Mod, and you turn your brightness all the way up, the AO is still detected in-game so it still shows through the brightness. I do not think that a generic addon can detect the light source's brightness in all games, but correct me if i am wrong

The way the Raymarched AO works on the current version is weird.

However, i can tell that on the new version, the effect got less perceptable on bright places.

This image shows it on (Using Raymarched AO):

Also, i think its detectable (not sure, i dont code shaders), however, it would be pretty hard to apply

I think all you would have to do is take a copy of the original image, convert it to grayscale, invert it, then adjust the levels some. I think that would make a mask that could be used when blending the AO effect into the original image. It might even help keep the effect from bleeding over in areas with high contrast. But I don't know how the code works so I could be way off on this. Here is a picture showing what I'm talking about, compared to the mask Marty posted it looks like it would work.

Ioxa wrote: I think all you would have to do is take a copy of the original image, convert it to grayscale, invert it, then adjust the levels some. I think that would make a mask that could be used when blending the AO effect into the original image. It might even help keep the effect from bleeding over in areas with high contrast. But I don't know how the code works so I could be way off on this. Here is a picture showing what I'm talking about, compared to the mask Marty posted it looks like it would work.

Yes, this would work, but then the mask will only work in that specific scene because the same mask would be applied in different areas so the mask would not match up with the lighting. I dont think inverting the picture while in grayscale will be a universal fix, but it could be used to take screenshots and such for the mask that you took a picture of

So you have to make an alpha channel per game for the hud?
Very clever, seems like an easy task in photoshop with a screenshot of the game.
Can we have a hot key to disable the "mask" for games with removable huds? ( for full screen shots?)

That's not how this works. If I make AO less intensive for bright objects then everything that is bright gets lesser affected and why should a white object get less shadows than a dark one? For the shader, a corona texture and a white wall are same.

For the hotkey, is it really so difficult to disable it in the menu? I could move it to a separate technique but that's just more coding work.

Marty McFly wrote: That's not how this works. If I make AO less intensive for bright objects then everything that is bright gets lesser affected and why should a white object get less shadows than a dark one? For the shader, a corona texture and a white wall are same.

I see what you're saying, it would lessen the effect everywhere, not just in the lights.

I came up with a slightly different way of doing what I was trying to explain and it turned out the way you were saying, the effect is lessened on all lighter objects. It still turned out alright though, it at least keeps it from cutting through the lights.

Marty McFly wrote: For the hotkey, is it really so difficult to disable it in the menu? I could move it to a separate technique but that's just more coding work.

Anything that makes your job easier you need breaks too

Ioxa wrote: I came up with a slightly different way of doing what I was trying to explain and it turned out the way you were saying, the effect is lessened on all lighter objects. It still turned out alright though, it at least keeps it from cutting through the lights.

Modified AO

Looks great, what did you modify to get your AO like that?

SunBroDave wrote: Looks great, what did you modify to get your AO like that?

I took a grayscale of the original image, made it brighter, then blended it into the AO mask. It's six lines of code, if Marty is cool with it I'll post the code and tell you were to paste it.

It still looks weird in some places but it is much less noticeable. And you can raise the AO power and it still won't show through the lights, these settings just looked the most subtle to me.