Best tutorials for SweetFX and graphic tweaks?

Hello.

I've been looking through presets for Elder Scrolls Online and tried a good chunk of them so far. They look better than what the game has normally and appreciate the creators for making them but I'm still feeling like I could do better for my PC. Problem is I have no idea about actually tweaking SweetFX or anything else when it comes to this stuff.

What are some, if any, best suggested sites, videos, etc. for a complete newby to learn how to make it work best for their personal PC? I've also heard about different accompanied software other than ReShader (can't think of name) and like to know what are the differences and why can some do more or less than others? In the end I'm aiming to make my games look their absolute best and use my PC at it's max so whatever works without it breaking. Info is appreciated. Thanks.

Hiro1221 wrote: What are some, if any, best suggested sites, videos, etc. for a complete newby to learn how to make it work best for their personal PC?

I'd say the best way to get started is to just go through the effect configuration and play around with the values to understand what effect they have on the game. Each option usually has a detailed comment on what it does, so that should give you a pretty good overview.

Also, I see this confusion quite often, so to clear it up once more:

Hiro1221 wrote: I've also heard about different accompanied software other than ReShader (can't think of name) and like to know what are the differences and why can some do more or less than others?

ReShade isn't accompanied software, it's the core injector SweetFX runs on (the DLLs you find in the download), so, no ReShade = no SweetFX.
There were some other injectors which could inject an older version of SweetFX into some games, but they are highly limited (no OpenGL support, no D3D8 support, D3D9 and D3D11 required different shaders (dealbreaker), no depth buffer access whatsoever, etc.) and as far as I know none of them is still continued.

This brings me back to my Idea of making a thread dedicated to better in-depth explanation of shaders and using them.

Lets be honest here, a little one line sentence describing the effect doesn't always do it justice. I for one didn't learn how to edit stuff that way. It was trial and error for me.

I just haven't really got around to making one yet. I was thinking of doing like a thread where I start off with describing one effect for newcomers and then people can add in like maybe I cover lumasharpening and the next person covers Vibrance etc.

Maybe even the shader devs could get involved too. Back when GEMFX shaders got brought over to reshade I had absolutely no clue how to use Lucifer's Adv. motion blur shader so I asked and got much better descriptions of the settings than what was present in the actual config file.

Any ways just an idea that has been floating around in my head for a bit.

I'd appreciate a tutorial or least some tips here and there. Since you're here though, would happen to have any experience playing around with Elder Scrolls Online and/or WildStar? I'm using ESO as my "benchmark" for how much quality I can get out of a game since it already looks pretty decent. WildStar is something I'd probably like to make work more but they changed the way the game loads their DLLs now apparently so standard way of installing SweetFX is no longer doable. If you have anything you could share about these games I'd like to hear it or even simply some basics into getting started using shaders to work for you. Thanks.

Thanks for the info. When you say "mess with the settings" what and where are these settings I can tweak? Also, can you do the tweaks while in-game so can see what's changing? If not, there some way to do this so I'm not going in and out of the program just to see one tweak at a time?

With your nice explanation on how SweetFX is an injector and not a software, do you know the difference between GEMFX and SweetFX? GEMFX is the one I couldn't think of that I heard about being an alternative which it's main benefit is having an actual UI for tweaking. Haven't messed with it yet and would like to know what one may be best to use before I get into SweetFX. Don't want to get use to SweetFX to only find out GEMFX is better.

Hiro1221 wrote: Thanks for the info. When you say "mess with the settings" what and where are these settings I can tweak? Also, can you do the tweaks while in-game so can see what's changing? If not, there some way to do this so I'm not going in and out of the program just to see one tweak at a time?

Depends on which shader package you are using. SweetFX has its options in the SweetFX\SweetFX_settings.txt file, Framework has various configuration files (.cfg) found in the ReShade folder. Settings for the MasterEffect package are found in MasterEffect.h.
ReShade supports hot-reloading of all shaders, so as soon as you modify one of the shader files and hit save, ReShade will grab that and recompile. To make proper use of that run the game in window (or borderless window) mode, open your favorite editor and edit the config files. Each time you hit save you'll see the changes applied in the game instantly.

Hiro1221 wrote: With your nice explanation on how SweetFX is an injector and not a software, do you know the difference between GEMFX and SweetFX? GEMFX is the one I couldn't think of that I heard about being an alternative which it's main benefit is having an actual UI for tweaking. Haven't messed with it yet and would like to know what one may be best to use before I get into SweetFX. Don't want to get use to SweetFX to only find out GEMFX is better.

No, SweetFX is no injector, this is what I was trying to explain. SweetFX is a collection shaders. Those shaders alone are pretty useless, so it needs an injector (which is software) to inject them into a game, so they actually do something. ReShade is this injector.
GEMFX was an injector too, but it also came with some shaders out of the box. However, the GEMFX author (LuciferHawk) is now part of the ReShade team and the maintainer of the "Framework" shader package you can download on the homepage. So there really is no reason anymore to use the standalone GEMFX injector: the ReShade injector is a lot more powerful and all shaders GEMFX came with are part of that "Framework" package now (plus a lot, lot more, including all SweetFX shaders).

OK got it now for what they do. Thanks.

With all that said, ReShade+Frameworks are the best tools to make a game's graphics be at it's best (or put the best "lens" over a game) and there's no need for SweetFX since Frameworks has it's tools + more? If this is the case, why would anything else be suggested? I never heard of Frameworks until you mentioned it or even seen anyone post anything about it. Always SweetFX+GEMFX or ReShade or do certain games require certain injectors? Though I would think there are workarounds for any game out right now.

ReShade works with pretty much everything, no workaround required. Main reason the Framework is not as popular is because it is relativly new, while the other, dated options have been around for quite some time now.

Constantine PC wrote: This brings me back to my Idea of making a thread dedicated to better in-depth explanation of shaders and using them.

Lets be honest here, a little one line sentence describing the effect doesn't always do it justice. I for one didn't learn how to edit stuff that way. It was trial and error for me.

I just haven't really got around to making one yet. I was thinking of doing like a thread where I start off with describing one effect for newcomers and then people can add in like maybe I cover lumasharpening and the next person covers Vibrance etc.

Maybe even the shader devs could get involved too. Back when GEMFX shaders got brought over to reshade I had absolutely no clue how to use Lucifer's Adv. motion blur shader so I asked and got much better descriptions of the settings than what was present in the actual config file.

Any ways just an idea that has been floating around in my head for a bit.

I just want to heartily second this idea; since discovering reshade and the world of injected post-processing shaders a couple of months ago, my knowledge has slowly evolved by gleaning little snippets of wisdom here and there and trial and error knitted together in a rather pathetic, threadbare quilt of semi-ignorance. It's like panning for gold: a whole lot of pain-staking sifting taking place for each nugget found.

Unlike gold however, sharing our nuggets will not make us poorer. We all have our nuggets; it would be great if there were a nugget central where we could all deposit our collections perhaps organized line by line of the settings files -- people could post screenshot comparisons, fps comparisons -- I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of pieces of fool's gold in my collection.

For instance, what brought me here was scouring these forums trying to find a detailed explanation for the smaa predication settings and maybe a more general explanation or theory as to why predication is ignored by preset authors. I'm just baffled to see that the ratio of curiosity about this to the large # of people using smaa seems to be shockingly small.