Marty McFly's Ambient Obscurance (MXAO) with IL

Seriously MXAO is the gift that keeps on giving. I can't even begin to describe how much MXAO has transformed my experience in state of decay.

MXAO makes the game straight up spooky! Im no reshade professional. I just set it to what i think looks cool. Thanks marty!

screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/124819

And its also unbelievable how little of an fps hit it has. Keep doing what you are doing!

Haha thanks for the feedback, it really suits the game, I must say. Have you tried out the new beta in one of the earlier posts here? Scroll back a page or two for version 3.1.0

[Sorry for posting this here, i feel bad cluttering your thread with unrelated stuff but i wanted to ask you specifically and i didn't know how else to contact you directly]

Hey Marty i've been a huge fan and user of your shaders for a long time and i wanted to say thanks. i'm not sure if you're aware of how many people appreciate what people like you and crosire have done for PC gaming. Also, the fact that you guys do all this work for free is really admirable. I'm loving your mxao/GI shader btw, so thanks for that too

Ass-kissing aside i was curious if you'd have any insight on a topic regarding bloom... Im admitedly a novice when it comes to this stuff so sorry if this seems like a ridiclous question, but do you know if it's at all possible to control bloom triggers using a depth buffer? For instance, i'm trying to add a lot of bloom to a game (witcher 3 in this instance) but i want to avoid blooming the sky/clouds/sun. So is there a way to implement a bloom shader that "ignores" everything past a certain depth point?

Also, on a different but slightly related note, would it be possible to limit the amount of bloom that is applied to an object after a certain level of brightness? Almost like the opposite of how "bloom threshold" usually works. So there would be (theoretically) two thresholds; the first one prevents darker colors from getting bloom and the second threshold prevents brighter colors from getting bloom, while everything in between would recieve bloom like it normally would...Efectively creating a limited window in which bloom is applied.

Anyway, thanks again for everything you do.

Depth masking for bloom is surely possible and cool things can be done with it.
About bloom thresholding, it's important to know that the treshold of bloom is on the input so what you ask for won't solve that issue you have. But what can be done is using a different blending mode than just plain color + bloom, one could use screen blending mode which is result = color + bloom * (1-color) so the bloom is dynamically reduced if the source color is bright already. If you worry about overexposure, a post-tonemap can be done to retain brightest details.
In my own preset for Witcher, I just disabled the ingame bloom, that gives you way more control about the bloom because you don't have the original one interfering with your visuals.

Hey thanks for the response thats great to hear that depth based bloom is possible. Honestly i thought it was pretty unlikely, but i thought if anyone would know it would be you. Also thanks for the insight regarding the use of screen blending mode and post-tonemapping as techniques to refine bloom implementation, i'll definitely look deeper into using those. Just to clarify, when you suggest using "screen blending mode" am i using that by selecting the "screen add" option in the "iBloomMixMode" drop-down (screenshot included for illustration) or is it something completely different?

Finally, i hate to ask this and obviously you have every right to tell me to fuck off, but would adding a depth mask feature to an existing bloom shader be relatively quick/painless for you to do? I know your hands are full with MXAO/SSAO so i completely understand if you don't want to spend any time on this, and you don't owe me a damn thing, but I have literally no idea how i would do it myself. Either way, thanks for the friendly insight so far.

imgur.com/a/D0i6X

Don't want to touch existing tech with such a singular thing. Yes, that blending mode is correct, that's as closest as you can get, except going higher on original color luma. Maybe when I release my own bloom code, I'll do what you ask for, depth masking is already done.

robgrab wrote: Fantastic work, as usual, Marty! I tried 3.0 on Divinity Original Sin 2 last night combined with the game's built in AO and the results were amazing! Performance was much improved too. The only problem, which I know can't be fixed in a post process AO solution, is the bleed through in menus and transparent surfaces. It's a minor inconvenience in what is otherwise a near perfect solution. Keep up the good work!

Could you please share your MXAO settings for Divinity Original Sin 2?

For everyone experiencing "posterized" AO on Windows 10 and DX9 title, it's "fullscreen optimizations"; disable in properties of game exe. Spent the last hour dissecting MXAO to try to find what's wrong, turned out it's just Microsoft fucking up. Again.
Again.










Again.

Marty McFly wrote: For everyone experiencing "posterized" AO on Windows 10 and DX9 title, it's "fullscreen optimizations"; disable in properties of game exe. Spent the last hour dissecting MXAO to try to find what's wrong, turned out it's just Microsoft fucking up. Again.
Again.

What would be the solution for win7? Seven - The Days Long Gone posterizes MXAO regardless of shader settings. As a side effect, the sample radius has to be set ridiculously high for AO to even show up.

Not sure if the problem is the same as no other game does this.

Never had it on W7 to be honest. If you need to crank up the radius values, that sounds like a weird depth buffer that cannot be properly linearized with current tech.

For some reason screenshots came up either full magenta or black, so I had to take photos.

The first two shows two highest quality settings. Maximum has large lighter grey shadowing while ultra mostly eliminates it but othervise shows only solid grey occlusion.
Image 1
Image 2

For some reason the indirect lightning shows correct color gradients instead of posterized colors. Also, note the set sample radius and how small it actually is in game. Lightning amount is raised up just to make it clearer to see.
Image 3

Well.. So much for nice looking spoilered image links. I guess, dropbox doesn't support those, or am I just stupid?

Marty McFly wrote: For everyone experiencing "posterized" AO on Windows 10 and DX9 title, it's "fullscreen optimizations"; disable in properties of game exe. Spent the last hour dissecting MXAO to try to find what's wrong, turned out it's just Microsoft fucking up. Again.
Again.

Yeah, its that "overlay" crap that MS began using starting with Creator's Update. There is no such thing with Anniversary Edition/Update.








Again.

MonarchX wrote:

robgrab wrote: Fantastic work, as usual, Marty! I tried 3.0 on Divinity Original Sin 2 last night combined with the game's built in AO and the results were amazing! Performance was much improved too. The only problem, which I know can't be fixed in a post process AO solution, is the bleed through in menus and transparent surfaces. It's a minor inconvenience in what is otherwise a near perfect solution. Keep up the good work!

Could you please share your MXAO settings for Divinity Original Sin 2?

Bump!

Could someone suggest some working settings for Divinity Original Sin 2?

Tojkar wrote: Seven - The Days Long Gone posterizes MXAO regardless of shader settings. As a side effect, the sample radius has to be set ridiculously high for AO to even show up.

You might want to try out Pirate Kitty's shaders to get at least some form of AO. I've got similar issues with RiME and Alien Isolation and in both cases PK's AO works fine.

Try editing the shader and setting the DepthColor from RGBA8 to RGBA16F.
I have the same problem on Mania Planet and that fixes it, it only happens on depth-dependable effects and only on certain games.

Changing format did not have any effect with this game. Also I should add that TTS option is too broken with the game. Enabling it disables AO while leaving GI intact.

Marty McFly wrote: Haha thanks for the feedback, it really suits the game, I must say. Have you tried out the new beta in one of the earlier posts here? Scroll back a page or two for version 3.1.0

Is the 3.1.0 beta out? I found the post you were talking about but no download link, I understand if you haven't released it yet.

I must say, MXAO definitely helped the Source Engine look more up to date, especially with IL

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On:

@Marty McFly

Any chance you could fulfill this request from a few months ago? reshade.me/forum/shader-discussion/3513-...-of-field-help#23853

sambow23 wrote: I must say, MXAO definitely helped the Source Engine look more up to date, especially with IL

I agree, the IL implementation in this shader is definitely pretty damn impressive.
Nice screenshot btw, would you mind posting your IL settings?