Streamlining Calibration

Greetings,

First of all, I am very much thankful to all of the developers for all of the hard work you've put into this (I'm such a huge fan!) and I'm having a blast playing with it all! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

However, I have always wondered why no effort has been done to streamline the calibration process. It's as if you're deliberately making it difficult to calibrate games and I wonder why that is? I have used calibration hardware/software in the past to calibrate my display (Spyderco) which comes with all sort of doohickeys to make it easy, but when it comes to PP software, it's like pulling teeth. Each effect alone takes several hours to calibrate (if you're as anal as I am) given the fact that you have to jump back and forth between the settings and the game, take screenshots of each alteration to be analyzed within photoshop, all the while being extra super careful that you don't shift the game camera otherwise you have to start over again.

There's got to be a better way to calibrate games and perhaps that can be done through a built-in macro engine that automates the process?

Thanks for reading and I apologize if I sound it bit ranty (I keep skipping the game camera!)...Have fun!

[edit]

My apologies, I forgot to give an example.

As an extreme example, lets say you want to take a screenshot of every possible value of the sharp_strength under lumaSharpen so that you can find the 'most' visually appeasing setting for your filter. Well, that would take hours, possibly days at this point. But if a macro engine were added then it could be done within minutes...I'm not a coder but here's how I'd imagine it would work for the end user:

#record lumaSharpen //point to filter
#property sharp_strength //point to property to record
#range 0.10-3.00 //define screenshot range
#increment 0.1 //define screenshot increments.
#save_location C:\gameName\filterName\filterProperty\

This could all be done within a separate config file which would have to be toggleable of course. (ctrl+shift+printscreen perhaps?)

Fruitrocket wrote: Greetings,

First of all, I am very much thankful to all of the developers for all of the hard work you've put into this (I'm such a huge fan!) and I'm having a blast playing with it all! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

However, I have always wondered why no effort has been done to streamline the calibration process. It's as if you're deliberately making it difficult to calibrate games and I wonder why that is? I have used calibration hardware/software in the past to calibrate my display (Spyderco) which comes with all sort of doohickeys to make it easy, but when it comes to PP software, it's like pulling teeth. Each effect alone takes several hours to calibrate (if you're as anal as I am) given the fact that you have to jump back and forth between the settings and the game, take a screenshot of the alteration, analyze it, compare, and then take another...rinse and repeat. All the while being extra super careful that you don't shift the game camera otherwise you have to start ALL over again - since, at the pixel level, it makes more sense to start over which is annoying.

There's got to be a better way to calibrate games and perhaps that can be done through a built-in macro engine that automates the process?

Thanks for reading and I apologize if I sound it bit ranty (I keep shifting the game camera by mistake!)...Have fun!

[edit]

My apologies, I forgot to give an example.

As an extreme example, lets say you want to take a screenshot of every possible value of the sharp_strength under lumaSharpen so that you can find the 'most' visually appeasing setting for your filter. Well, that would take hours, possibly days at this point. But if a macro engine were added then it could be done within minutes...I'm not a coder but here's how I'd imagine it would work for the end user:

#record lumaSharpen //point to filter
#property sharp_strength //point to property to record
#range 0.10-3.00 //define screenshot range
#increment 0.1 //define screenshot increments.
#save_location C:\gameName\filterName\filterProperty\

This could all be done within a separate config file which would have to be toggleable of course. (ctrl+shift+printscreen perhaps?)

An autohotkey script which just changes the value in the file, saves, "presses" the printscreen button and repeats would do since ReShade reloads settings on the fly. Just give it 2 seconds between each save and probably one or two for recompiling. No need for something complicated.

crosire wrote: "An autohotkey script which just changes the value in the file, saves, "presses" the printscreen button and repeats would do since ReShade reloads settings on the fly. Just give it 2 seconds between each save and probably one or two for recompiling. No need for something complicated. "

I don't want to sound like a schmuck but, AHK is a terrible suggestion for the general populace.

crosire wrote: "No need for something complicated."

It's already way over complicated....The user base is in dire need of something that's a bit more artist friendly...Look no further than thelazy.net to see how many ill-conceived presets are being released each and every day. They're all over saturated! There's nothing original...

As it stands, it's way over complicated to the point where's it's nothing less than something that appeases programmers and programmers alone. The pivot system in Luxology Modo would be a fine example of something that's been in the oven a little too long as far as engineering goes...way over baked! This falls a long similar lines...It's like you're stroking each others egos all the while ignoring the artists that actually try to make use of it.

All I'm saying is that you show us dumb artists 'sum luv' for once...

By "complicated" I meant complicated to implement. Writing a full macro engine isn't something you do in a day or two, that's a lot of work. And automation of configuration isn't really the purpose of ReShade, there are other tools for that (like AutoHotkey), nor would it fit into the shader language well. One main goal is to keep ReShade as simple and small as possible, without any overengineering and tons of features that can be achieved just as fine with tools that are already available.
To appeal to the artist part: There are plans for an ingame GUI to edit uniform shader parameters, so to get rid of the need to tab out of the game each time one wants to change them (althout setting up parameters as uniforms has a performance impact, because they are no longer constant, so it's the job of the shader programmer to decide which ones are made configurable and which ones not then).

Hey Fruitrocket, this may help.

A while ago a chap called Ninjafada from the SweetFX thread on Guru3D made a simple DX9 image viewer. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it here.

Download: DX9IV (DX9 Image Viewer) 1.4

To use:

• Extract Reshade to the same dir as DX9IV.exe. Rename the .dll to d3d9.dll
• Take a screenshot of your game
• Drag the screenshot onto DX9IV.exe

As a DX9 viewer it hooks Reshade (or back then, SweetFX) as it loads, and displays the screenshot. You can then edit the shader configs and reload the shaders, or with Reshade I expect it will update by itself. Much quicker to play with shader settings and see the effects without the need to load a game.

However it's *very basic*. It runs full screen only. There are no key controls except Alt-F4 to quit. All it's doing is displaying an image through DX9. But it's still faster and easier than experimenting while a game is loaded.

Ninjafada made it as a stop-gap solution about two years ago. In fact I haven't even tried it with reshade, forgot about it until I read this thread, might do that now.

EDIT: Found Ninjafada's original archive, updated link above.

EDIT2: And yes, just tested and it works with Reshade Image updates just 1 second after a changing an ini file. I completely forgot about this tool, thanks for the reminder! With the new Framework and all the new shaders I have no idea how most of them look, I'm off to see how different lens flare effects work with some games

EDIT3: After having a quick play, recommend setting the following in the Global settings when tweaking, as being a still image these will otherwise remain on screen:

#define ReShade_ShowToggleMessage 0
#define SweetFX_Greeting 0

I apologize for my arrogance,

I do realize what you all do is not only extremely time consuming but takes a fair amount of personal will power since you're doing it for free.

I love you!

Perhaps ingenuity is in order to help progress the project without over-engineering it so that both novices, like myself, and professional alike can take full advantage of the suite.

As far as the implementation of a GUI goes, to be honest, I don't think it's needed since all it does is streamline edits but that's about it...

Now that I've had time to think about this a bit more and soak in what you've said, I think what we really need is some way to make multiple comparisons between multiple edits in real time without having to take multiple screenshots to be analyzed in third party software such as photoshop....

If there were some way to store the original render (as Martigen pointed out) and jump through various iterations of edits of that render, then we might actually begin to see some amazing presets that don't resort to over saturation.

Couple this with a render region (a zoomed/user defined region in which you're focused on editing) and this tool could be worth more than its weight in gold!

could AutoHotKey not do this (apart from the edit region)? presumably you could trigger the print screen ( www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/Send.htm ), wait a few seconds, read the effect file, modify a value with code, save the file, wait a few seconds (no real control over this so you'd have to experiment with the required delay), trigger print screen again and repeat.

I provided a script already for toggling values on/off whilst staying within the game

AHK is a tool for programmers and the like minded...Hippies like myself will never use it. We don't want to know how the tools work, we just want them to work while in progression of a piece without having to script/code anything externally.

Fruitrocket wrote: AHK is a tool for programmers and the like minded...Hippies like myself will never use it.

Whoa, hold on there buck. Hippies STARTED the video game generation! Using low-level programming at that, no fancy english commands ala AHK - see almost any book on Nolan Bushnell and ATARI's start in the industry. They paved the way for what we play today. Gaming journalism? Check out Confessions of the Game Doctor by Bill Kunkle, hippie absolute. To say hippies never use programming is simply misinformed.

Thank you!