*Ambient Occlusion* Can I use it for this game?

[Wanderer]

I started playing this game tonight. It is like starting an awesome adventure!
But then I got sidetracked trying to find a way to turn on ambient occlusion.

Is it an option? I cannot find it!

Thanks for reading! I appreciate any help. :D

BTW awesome game!

[AJax]

I didn't see anything in the launcher's options. Was it even possible in Skyrim?

Haven't tried yet, but reShade might do it.

Edit: trying right now.

[Wanderer]

Oh I have not played skyrim in a very long time. I don't remember it's options and skyrim is not installed on my PC anymore.

[AJax]

Ok, I got it working much faster than expected! You'll need to find ReShade's website and download their installer [the one I used is titled 'ReShade_Setup_3.2.2.exe', there might be a new one by now]

Find the Enderal Folder and select TESV.exe, then click Direct3d 9 .

Then it will ask about downloading some effects. choose yes. It will bring up a list with checkboxes. I'd suggest unselecting all then checking MXAO. [You can pick a few more, I'd suggest adaptive Sharpening, but when I tried with all of them installed I got a bunch of error codes]

After that's all finished and installed, boot up the game and you should see the ReShade layer at the top of your screen. Load your save and press Shift+F2 and follow the instructions. Turn on MXAO and enjoy! You can play around with the settings too, making the effect stronger or weaker.

Edit: didn't notice any FPS drops yet, but I haven't tested much. If there are drops, lower the settings. It's amazing how many games ReShade has helped me with.

Edit 2: getting some AO clipping when inside.. Reduce "Ambient Occulsion Amount" to ~0.1-0.3 to avoid excessive clipping. Still getting a bit but I'll deal with it.

[Wanderer]

Woooot! Thank you so much AJax!

I'll download reshade now. This is going to be awesome!

[AJax]

Yeah, Not sure why it wouldn't be working. Did you enable it with the overlay?

Honestly, while it looks good outside, when in a multi-level building I have to turn it down so low it's almost not visible anywhere. Something's messed up and allowing walls/door's shadows to clip through the walls and floors. Very distracting.

probably easier to find an ENB, though I don't know much about those. Sorry.

Edit: gonna try this one now. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/77262 Instead of 'skyrim directory, it'll be the enderal folder.

[Wanderer]

Okay I found a room with lots of rocks and turns out my settings were so high for one thing it never applied the effect. I got it looking great for the room I am in!

Darn, this isn't working well. I think it's breaking my game. I am getting shadows ghosting across the screen and even the reshade menu is glitching.

[AJax]

That ghosting is what I was talking about. Sorry. Goes to show, do testing before saying it will work lol. Might as well turn MXAO off.
If you want to fully uninstall it, delete the d3d9 files, the dxgi files, and the Reshade-shaders folder. Then verify integrity of the game.

Still working on that ENB.

[Wanderer]

I turned it off too. Couldn't get settings that worked quite right.

[Martigen]

Firstly download Reshade 4.1.1 from Reshade.me, the official site. This is why you're getting shader compilation errors, as all shaders have been updated for 4.0 including mxao.

But also note the stock mxao is deprecated - Marty, the author, now releases MXAO as part of his qUINT toolset, and the version in this is much newer with fixes and features. So install 'quint_mxao' from the thread here: https://reshade.me/forum/shader-presentation/4393-quint?limitstart=0

Finally note that Reshade 4.1.1 also includes substantially better depth buffer detection and has new tabs to select different depth buffers for use with depth based effects like MXAO, so this may also help set it up for Skyrim/enderal.

[AJax]

Thanks so much, this should help a ton.

[Wanderer]

Oh thank you! I got so caught up in game for a while there. XD

[AJax]

Thanks again for mentioning the new ReShade! It loads SO much faster, and has 'reset to default' for each setting! Great upgrade. Now I have to re-install it to every game i have lol.

Looks like it's working pretty well so far. Still need to do more testing and tweaking, but so far so good.

Edit: getting Quint's files now.

[Martigen]

No worries :) Yeah 4.X is pretty awesome. Just note (for this or any other game) you can use the DisplayDepth.fx to debug if depth-detection is working properly, and play around with reversing/inversing the detection, but to actually store the configuration you need to click 'Edit Preprocessor definitions' and set them accordingly.

Here's a guide on the Reshade forums for learning how to set up the depth buffer (and subsequently, shaders like MXAO) with any game:

https://reshade.me/forum/troubleshooting/4810-about-the-changes-in-displaydepth-fx

EDIT: I haven't actually started playing Enderal yet (though it looks great) so if you find quint_MXAO settings that work please post them here as I'd love to use them.

[Wanderer]

Once I have to time to wrap my head around this I can try to tweak it too, but I am not very experienced in it.

[AJax]

Originally posted by Martigen:

No worries :) Yeah 4.X is pretty awesome. Just note (for this or any other game) you can use the DisplayDepth.fx to debug if depth-detection is working properly, and play around with reversing/inversing the detection, but to actually store the configuration you need to click 'Edit Preprocessor definitions' and set them accordingly.

Here's a guide on the Reshade forums for learning how to set up the depth buffer (and subsequently, shaders like MXAO) with any game:

https://reshade.me/forum/troubleshooting/4810-about-the-changes-in-displaydepth-fx

EDIT: I haven't actually started playing Enderal yet (though it looks great) so if you find quint_MXAO settings that work please post them here as I'd love to use them.

Golly yet again you helped a ton. All I had to do was change Display_Depth_is_reverse to 0 instead of 1. Now the shaders know what the right depths are!

The default quint_MXAO settings look great now. I'll probably mess with the quality and stuff a bit, but it looks to be adding proper AO now. Would not have figured that out without you.

Now to test this out in other games that wern't working properly!

Edit: still getting some AO clipping inside some places, but it think it's an issue with enderal. When I turn on the vectors debug view, I can see parts of other rooms through some walls/stairs and it changes when moving around the room. I'll probably just set mxao to a hot key and turn it off when it clips, it it bothers me enough.