Tales of Zestiria Visual Revamp Mod

[Crache]

What it is:

• This is a standalone packaged ReShade setup finely tuned specifically for Tales of Zestiria.
  
• It is non-destructive, so you can install it and uninstall it without difficulty.
  
• It can be toggled on and off during the game if you dislike it in some areas.
  
• Is tested for 1920x1080 on a Geforce GTX 660 Ti. If your resolution or hardware is different then your results may vary. :)
  
• It works well with Kaldaien's TZFix 1.4.4 thanks to his recent improvements.

How it looks:

You can see a comparison gallery here which is from the first sections of the game, so there is nothing critically spoilery. Use the cursor keys to switch back and forth.

• https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6qSRWcJ4yUMblhFUUh4T2ZBR1E?resourcekey=0-lJf39xMgjC9GrPxzIxqutw&usp=sharing

What it does:

Cleans up the visuals:

• Cinematics are now gloriously clean!
  
  • Watch that opening cinematic again for the first time.
    
  • You can now take screenshots during cinematics and get decent results.
  
  
• Slightly boosts colors:
  
  • They no longer look as washed out/dirty.
    
  • Rich colors pop more without being oversaturated unnecessarily.
  
  
• Unwanted dull filler textures have been toned down:
  
  • The map screen is now a pleasure to look at.
    
  • Several bad repeating wall textures have been thwarted.
    
  • Reduces the visual competition for important details.
  
  
• Improved edge anti-aliasing with SMAA

Improves lighting and shadows:

• Lights are slightly brighter. Shadows are slightly darker.
  
  
• Objects now have ambient occlusion, so many structures and rock formations give a better sense of depth and presence.
  
  
• Textures react to the light they're in:
  
  • Lights cause texture details to become highlighted in some areas.
    
  • Many shadows now look more appropriate as details soften within them.
    
  • Water in dungeons appears murkier.
    
  • Fog now obstructs details better, so you're not seeing crisply through distant fog.

Textures have been enhanced:

• Important details are now clearer:
  
  • Primary details received a selective sharpen pass, increasing their contrast.
    
  • A subtle lumasharpen pass rescues some blurry details.
  
  
• A selective grain has been added to textures rather than the screen:
  
  • Gives them the appearance of being higher resolution than they are.
    
  • Keeps the user interface and characters looking clean.

Subtle camera effects:

• A very gentle blur at the top and bottom of the screen:
  
  • Details toward the center stand out more.
    
  • Nearby ground detracts less from your character.
  
  
• A gentle camera slip after sudden action (toggle with Insert key):
  
  • Adds subtle dynamics to some cutscenes, without being distracting.
    
  • Gives section switches in the menus some movement characteristics.

How to install it:

NOTE: I highly recommend you not use Nvidia DSR resolutions if you have them enabled and set the game to the lowest tolerable resolution to start with, then adjust upward from there based on performance. 1920x1080 would be ideal. You can also disable FXAA in-game if you'd like.

• Right click on Tales of Zestiria in your Steam library, then click Properties.
  
  
• Uncheck the option to enable Steam In-game Overlay, as it can cause severe visual issues. You can try leaving it on if you prefer it, but remember to disable it if things look too dark.
  
  
• Then, select the Local Files tab and click Browse Local Files.
  
  
• Download it by clicking the download button on the following page:
  
  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qSRWcJ4yUMS1VOd21UT3lzYTQ/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-J7bFgWtEFx9AlIj3gBwY1w
  
  
• Unzip it into the game directory. You're done.
  
  
  • If you are asked to overwrite the ReShade directory and you haven't previously installed this mod, then you should entirely delete the existing ReShade directory before extracting this one to remove old mod files.
    
    
  • If you are asked to overwrite D3D9.dll and it was just another post-processing mod, then you can overwrite it. However, if you are using Kaldaien's Fix and you want to use both that and this simultaneously, you'll need to do a few extra steps.
    
    
    • Extract the D3D9.dll from the zip file into a different directory and then rename the extracted dll to ReShade32.dll.
      
      
    • Move ReShade32.dll into the main game directory, next to the pre-existing D3D9.dll which you did not overwrite.
      
      
    • Edit d3d9.ini like so (add these lines to the top of the ini):
      

      [Import.Reshade]
      Architecture=Win32
      Filename=ReShade32.dll
      Role=d3d9
      When=Proxy

      
      
      
    • Further down in the d3d9.ini, you'll need to modify the Render.D3D9 section to set ForceD3D9Ex to false:
      

      [Render.D3D9]
      BackBufferCount=-1
      ForceD3D9Ex=false
      HookType=0
      PreRenderLimit=-1
      PresentationInterval=-1
      TargetFPS=0.0

If it crashes:

• You might have some missing dependencies which ReShade requires. Installing the Microsoft DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010) should resolve that:
  
  • https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=8109
  
  
• If that doesn't fix it, then it might be that for some reason ReShade can't access the Depth Buffers and these shaders require them. You could download the Reshade Framework from http://reshade.me/ and experiment with some shaders yourself to see if you can come up with something that works for you and doesn't crash.

How to use it:

• Press Scroll Lock to toggle it on or off.
  
  
• Press Insert to toggle the Camera Slip.
  
  
• Press Print Screen to save a PNG screenshot.
  
  • Screenshots are saved in the Tales of Zestiria game directory.
    
  • The Steam screenshot key won't capture the effects from this mod.

NOTE: If you have f.lux installed on your machine, you might want to disable or close it while playing Tales of Zestiria as it will adjust the color temperature of your display and the results in game might be undesirable.

How to uninstall it:

If you find that the game crashes or your GPU can't handle the extra shaders, it's simple to uninstall.

• Right click on Tales of Zestiria in your Steam library, then click Properties.
  
  
• Select the Local Files tab, then click Browse Local Files.
  
  
• If you just want to disable it, you can rename d3d9.dll to d3d9_disabled.dll
  
  
• To uninstall it entirely, delete these files:
  
  • d3d9.dll
    
  • ReShade.fx
    
  • ToZ Revamp README.txt
    
  • ReShade directory

Known artifacts:

When developers are creating a game, they can adjust the shader parameters dynamically to fit the active scenario. With shader mods you don't have this luxury (though it is technically possible). Thus, shader mods typically have to have their settings adjusted to work passably well across the entire visual range of the game on average.

This often leads to some areas looking better than others or unwanted artifacts showing up. For this particular mod there were several issues encountered, but managed to trade in some distracting artifacts for less distracting artifacts. If it bothers you, then you can toggle it off in these scenarios. These are the remaining ones that I'm aware of:

• Moderate: Distant shadows might appear over fog in some areas. (dungeons)
  
  
• Moderate: Some slight shadows might appear over skits on occasion. In some cases it can feel like an enhancement to them, while in others it might be slightly distracting. Usually tolerable, but you can toggle it off during skits if it bothers you.
  
  
• Minor: The mod applies to the Steam Overlay, so achievement and message popups might be blurry. Since the game doesn't use any fonts this small, it's not an issue there, but with the small font used for Steam it can make them hard to read if it's toggled on.
  
  
• Minor: A few letters of some text might be very slightly darker than others at times.
  
  
• Minor: The main section in the in-game menu may show some dark ring artifacts after a few seconds, though other sections are fine.
  
  
• Minor: A gentle light ring might show up in the bottom right of some cinematics if you pay close attention.

[The Answer]

Thanks for this! Honestly I thought the original was great to begin with, but this one's just perfect. I'll be trying this out tomorrow, I'll just install it for now. Is there a way for the reshade to work with steam screenshot? Or do I have to upload it manually? It's fine either way, but I just wanna know if it's possible. Cheers.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Benjigascar:

I thought the original was great to begin with, but this one's just perfect.

Yeah, I didn't think it looked bad, but this just feels much closer to its true potential. Other than being washed out, I thought the coloring was fine so I mostly left the colors in-tact with only minor adjustment.

Originally posted by Benjigascar:

Is there a way for the reshade to work with steam screenshot? Or do I have to upload it manually?

I haven't looked into it extensively, but I don't think so. However, it is possible to place screenshots into the game's Steam screenshots directory, name them a particular way and then Steam will recognize and upload them. There might be a tool to automate this, but I haven't looked.

[The Answer]

Originally posted by Crache:

I haven't looked into it extensively, but I don't think so. However, it is possible to place screenshots into the game's Steam screenshots directory, name them a particular way and then Steam will recognize and upload them. There might be a tool to automate this, but I haven't looked.

Hmm, never knew that such a method exists. Okay, I'll try it out and look into it a bit more. Thanks for the tip!

[Crache]

Originally posted by Benjigascar:

Thanks for the tip!

No problem!

[Nextwave]

I really like this. It adds some depth to the surroundings that was missing before.

Thanks for your work on it.

[Ruthlessbob]

i like most of it but i really dislike the camera slip is there a way to get rid of that alone?

[Crache]

Originally posted by Ruthlessbob:

i like most of it but i really dislike the camera slip is there a way to get rid of that alone?

Reinstall it from the new link above and then you can press the Insert key to toggle the camera slip.

[Rythm]

Installed it will try it soon thank you for this.

[ahaah202]

Hey OP thank you for sharing this!
I have a question, does this conflict with sweetfx? Will one override the other or can they work complementary?

[Ruthlessbob]

uninstalled and reinstalled from clicking link again. insert is not stopping the camera slip. every time i open menus it slides to middle from bottom right and its giving me a headache.

[Crache]

Originally posted by ahaah202:

does this conflict with sweetfx?

This already uses some SweetFX, however if you want to apply a separate set of SweetFX shaders you could snag my Tales of Zestiria GeDoSaTo package here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/351970/discussions/0/490123938432693922/

Then you can apply the settings from your existing SweetFX setup into the GeDoSaTo ones. Just make sure you select the "Tales of Zestiria" profile under the post-processing before you edit it. Then launch Tales of Zestiria while it's running and it should inject after ReShade.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Ruthlessbob:

uninstalled and reinstalled from clicking link again. insert is not stopping the camera slip. every time i open menus it slides to middle from bottom right and its giving me a headache.

Sorry about that, I see what happened. When I re-uploaded it, both files had the same name and I made an assumption about the sorting order and accidentally deleted the one I just uploaded before copying the link to the same old one back into the post. :P It should be good now.

[ahaah202]

Thank you, I will be sure to check it out

[Ruthlessbob]

Thank you so much. Honestly i expected nothing but if you really put that function in cause of just me you are one hell of a guy.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Ruthlessbob:

Thank you so much. Honestly i expected nothing but if you really put that function in cause of just me you are one hell of a guy.

Eh, it weren't no thang.