Getting ReShade/SweetFX 2.0 (PC) working, a (somewhat) simple guide

Since there was talk about ReShade/SweetFX when I joined the ventrilo chat yesterday and since I know getting ReShade and/or SweetFX running with ESO is somewhat less straightforward than for most games, I thought I'd post a guide for it here along with my own SweetFX preset. Hopefully this is helpful for someone.

First off, for those who do not know, ReShade/SweetFX is a tool that applies post-processing graphical filters to games running dx9/dx11 letting you tune the visuals of a game further with (relatively) low overhead. This includes things such as color- and gamma-correction, anti-aliasing (smaa/fxaa), sharpening etc. In this guide we'll be setting up Sekta's SweetFX settings, which simply apply a LUT (Lookup Table) to the game to make it slightly more colorful with virtually no overhead at all by mapping certain colors to other colors.

We'll start by getting two files:
1. ReShade Framework 1.1.0
2. Sekta ReShade configuration

Unpack Reshade framework into a folder of its own somewhere, away from the game directory. In this directory, you can delete the following files*:
Extract the Sekta configuration zip into a second folder, and then copy the following files from the resulting folder into your ReShade folder, overwriting as necessary, after which you can delete the Sekta folder again:
Now, download the rename.zip file attached to this post and extract it into the folder cointaining the ReShade folder itself, then run the 'rename.bat' file it contains. All this extremely simple batch does is to automate the renaming of all .h files in the various sub-directories to .shader, which is necessary or ESO will crash on start-up. You also need to rename ReShade32.dll to dxgi.dll (if you're on 32-bit eso), or ReShade64.dll to d3d11.dll if you're on 64-bit (delete the one you didn't rename), after which you need to look up the following two files:
Open them in your text editor of choice and do a simple 'replace all' of
You are now nearly done! Copy everything from the folder you extracted the ReShade framework into <Elder Scrolls Online**>\The Elder Scrolls Online EU\game\client. If everything was done correctly, next time you launch the game, you should have ReShade running (there'll be a text in the upper left corner for a short while showing this). You can toggle the ReShade effects on/off with your Scroll Lock key.

Now, I've also enclosed a copy of my personal setup for ReShade's copy of SweetFX in the attached ReShade-Karanax.zip file, which contains my SweetFX.cfg and a backup copy of the untouched SweetFX.cfg file. This configuration applies the following effects:
Now, this looks good on my primary monitor but might not on yours as it depends on how bright it is, how it does colors etc. To judge for yourself, here's a before and after screenshot of the filters applied:

Before:


After:


If this setup is to your liking, extract ReShade-Karanax.zip into <Elder Scrolls Online**>\The Elder Scrolls Online EU\game\client and it'll be applied. However, the beauty with ReShade is that if you want to tweak it, you do not need to restart the client. Instead, just edit your ReShade\SweetFX.cfg file and enable/disable/tweak values at will and the framework will recalculate the effect once you save the file again.

And that's it. Enjoy!

** Wherever the game got installed. [/i]

Just gone over the installation instructions and they work like a charm!
Enriches the colours in the game without hindering my graphical performance, even with my loooooow gfx settings in game this application of settings really bring out some gorgeous colours in my environments. Some examples of my own experiences below

Load Screen Before


Load Screen After


Coldharbour Before


Coldharbour After


Coldharbour Shiny Water Before


Coldharbour Shiny Water After

Thanks a lot. Hope you don't mind, that I've put a link to this guide (author's name included obviously) into my own performance/quality tweaks topic. It perfectly covers the area I skipped there (as I have no experience with sweetfx). Well done!
Actually, I think I'm gonna check this out now. Cause screens you and Wolf have posted above clearly show quite big difference.

Hemaka wrote: Thanks a lot. Hope you don't mind, that I've put a link to this guide (author's name included obviously) into my own performance/quality tweaks topic. It perfectly covers the area I skipped there (as I have no experience with sweetfx). Well done!
Actually, I think I'm gonna check this out now. Cause screens you and Wolf have posted above clearly show quite big difference.

Cheers! I don't mind at all, and I'm going to have to go check out your topic myself.

Outstanding guide Karanax! Been trying to get SweetFX to work with Windows 10 for ages until now - works like a charm - huge thanks for taking the time to post a guide for us all

Deserves a sticky!

Krysalan wrote: Outstanding guide Karanax! Been trying to get SweetFX to work with Windows 10 for ages until now - works like a charm - huge thanks for taking the time to post a guide for us all

Deserves a sticky!

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm happy to be able to help with something.

garethsarge wrote: ha ha I think this might have been sparked after our little convo last night... I have followed all the steps and loaded the game but there is a patch so waiting for that to finish before I can try it. Will let you know how it works.

Big thanks for the help anyway very easy to follow instructions

Gareth.

That's pretty much it, yes. :laugh:

Anyway, I'm glad it helped you out! I'm still fiddling with my SweetFX.cfg - Vibrance in particular seems like a very easy way to make colors 'pop' a bit more without making everything oversaturated, plus it can be applied in different strengths to r/g/b separately. I've upped it to 0.7 at current, with floats still at 1.3 for each value, and it looks pretty nice. Playing a bit with dithering too, but not sure how much it does.

Belazarus wrote: I would also add guys, the screenshots don't really do it justice - you really do need to "See" it to notice the difference. Colours look much brighter and deeper.

Yeah, I was thinking that I couldn't really see any difference...

Was thinking of showing off my current configuration anyway, so here, have some before and afters:

Before:

After


Before:

After


(Full album is at http://imgur.com/a/ga8xW )

This configuration makes shadows deeper and darker, colors pop a lot more without necessarily over-saturating (on my monitor) and while as a whole the game gets slightly darker, it simply looks better to my eyes. As usual, if you want to use this, just download the attached file, unzip and replace the relevant file under ReShade\ with the one you've got here.