FFX HD Re-Remaster 2024 (HD textures and custom shader settings by Catachrism)

Hello and welcome!

This guide is to help people learn about, gain access to, and use my contributions to FFX to hopefully get the definitive experience of the game on PC. I say this in my sincere hopes to be able to provide it.

The guide consists of two main parts to set up, the HD textures I have created and my ReShade setup made compatible with Project X.

The textures provided are large 8192x8192 and/or 4096x4096 with the intent of great attention paid to fine detail and preserving art direction. There are/will be many different textures covered but the primary emphasis is on the main characters and Aeons. There should be little to no performance impact on most PCs and no performance impact on gaming PCs. As for the other part of of this mod that is based on my personalized ReShade settings I use for the game, there may be a performance impact on non-gaming pc i.e.: laptops and integrated GPUs etc...It shouldn't be too bad as ReShade has no depth buffer access for FFX so more demanding effects like depth of field, ambient occlusion, reflective bump mapping etc...are all unusable. The effects that are used should hopefully have a minimal impact on the game's performance. On my system there is zero performance impact at 2560x1440.

The ReShade settings combined with the re-textures are intended to add depth and clarity to scenes and in general make the game feel more modern visually, without compromising the art direction or overall feel of the game. To me it makes it as great as I remember it when it came out so many years ago.

Requests and suggestions always welcome, I hope you enjoy :)

Install Video

Pre-Install Requirements

External File Loader

This allows a more stale form of modding thingslike textures and more in the game and is needed to use these texture mods.

Download link:

External File Loader[www.nexusmods.com]

Project X by Kaldaien

This is the mod for FFX which allows HD texture replacement, controller customization, soft reset, language selection, bug fixes, and more. If you aren't using it, get it.

Download link:

Project X

1 External File Loader Install

Now that we have the External File Loader mod downloaded from the prerequisites link, let's install it.

To install simply extract the contents of the downloaded 7.z file into your game directory and overwrite/replacing files if asked.

Example: "E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY FFX&FFX-2 HD Remaster".

2 Texture download and Setup

So now that External File loader is all set, we are ready to download the HD textures. Below is the list so far. I will be updating regularly as I complete more re-textures (creating the textures is not a terribly fast process so please bear with me, I will let you know if I have abandoned the mod)

Download links:

Tidus 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Yuna 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Wakka 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Auron 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Rikku 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

LuLu 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Kimahri 8k and 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Ixion HD [www.nexusmods.com]

Shiva HD[www.nexusmods.com]

Shoopuf 4k[www.nexusmods.com]

Blitz Ball HD[www.nexusmods.com]

Bahamut HD[www.nexusmods.com]

HD Snow Flakes[www.nexusmods.com]

Young Auron HD[www.nexusmods.com]

Yojimbo Summon HD[www.nexusmods.com]

Yunalesca HD[www.nexusmods.com]

HD Character Icons[www.nexusmods.com]

HD Spheres and Sphere Grids[www.nexusmods.com]

The main character textures come in 2 variants 4k and 8k. I recommend 8k, then if performance is bad switch to 4k. I have noticed no difference in performance between the 2 but I have a dedicated gaming/modding PC.

Once you have downloaded the textures simply extract them to your "mods" which was installed by External File Loader.

This should be located a few folders deep in your Final Fantasy FFX&FFX-2 HD like this:

E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY FFX&FFX-2 HD Remaster\data\mods

Once the texture mods have been unzipped to this directory, they will load in game. Texture mod setup is now complete.

3 Project X setup

Installation is to run the "SpecialK_UnX.exe" you downloaded in the install perquisites. Let it do it's things and it will install.

Now that we have downloaded and installed Project X we can replace textures.

Project X comes with a config file called UnX.ini located in your game directory. In it, we can set many things including texture replacement. Luckily it's enabled by default here so you don't need to change a thing regarding texture replacement.

However, Project X can change the language of your game, by default it's set up for Japanese audio when you install it. If you don't want this, open the UnX.ini and change the "language" setting to English, save and exit the file. (this has nothing to do with me really but I figured it's worth a heads up to avoid possible frustration of some users).

UnX.ini location example:

E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY FFX&FFX-2 HD Remaster

4 ReShade Download and Setup

Download ReShade

This version is specifically setup to work with the latest Project X:

ReShade[www.nexusmods.com]

ReShade is a software by crosire which injects post processing effects into the game adding the ability to add many current gen visual effects not normally in the game.

Now do the following:

1- Drag or copy the contents of the FFX ReShade zip file (my ReShade mod) directly into your FINAL FANTASY FFX&FFX-2 HD Remaster folder, say yes to overwrite.

Example:

"E:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY FFX&FFX-2 HD Remaster"

2- Play game as normal

More Info:

**The keyboard key "Home" enables ReShade menu and key "end" enables and disables all effects for quick comparisons and shader testing etc...**

Shaders used in the preset:

Ambient Light
-makes game look much more modern, adds illusion of depth
BloomAndLensFlares
-flares can be disable independently from bloom
Clarity
-helped with depth
Vignette
-subtle also used to add depth
HDR
-added that extra pop to the depth
FilmGrain
-very subtle but I really like these combined masks poor textures but also I just like it for this game, I did not think I would but I gave it a shot.
FilmGrain2
-this adds some motion and action to the scenes looks really cool in battle and is great in ice or desert for a blowing particle illusion.

The shader settings have been tweaked to create what you see in the screenshots.

Other effects visible in the screen shots are my HD textures, in-game Ambient Occlusion (HDAO) set to high, in game AA set to max, and color correction on.

I can see some (or many?) people not liking the film grain and lens flares the most, sometimes they look out of place, but most of the time (in my opinion) they add a lot of polish and make the scenes more dynamic, so I have left them in.

Some screens of the textures and ReShade in action:

5 Go play the game!

That's it you should be all setup and ready to go!

If you like the re-textures remember to check back here or on the Nexus for updates.

I plan on re-texturing all main characters including Jecht and Seymour, the rest of the Aeons and the dark Aeons. Also I will probably re-texture any random textures that drive me nuts like Chocobos, and any creatures I feel are seen enough and/or very low res.

Thanks for stopping by, Please feel free to ask any questions in the coments sections and I will try my best to help.

I hope you enjoy the mods!

Also for textures I don't have covered yet, or that you simply want alternatives for, check out the FFX Nexus there are some great texture modders at work there, Drogean and xinthefreefallx etc...

FFX Nexus Mods link[www.nexusmods.com]

[Aidanopus]

Hey!

Have you done any modding on the steamdeck? Am I able to follow the steps here and then port over all of my folders to my steamdeck?

Trying to get this together and running before I go on my honeymoon.

[Catachrism]

Mod is updated with new external loader system. New setup allows external loader, ReShade and UnX to all work at the same time which is nice. Overall it's more stable and more performant!

[Hoss Bonaventure]

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371 . use this. All green screens go away and you can use every mod you want. make sure to patch the launcher and ffx and ffx-2

[Catachrism]

@Wayfarer This is not from the texture mods directly, it's a known FFX issue though it may be triggered by the project X software? but there are threads you can find like this one: https://steamcommunity.com/app/359870/discussions/0/2828702372998517894/ where people seem to have found a fix.

[Wayfarer]

I love your mods. Sadly every times I install them my game get the "Green Screen During Cutscenes" problem and none of the fixs work. Other than that the game looks amazing with your work on and run really smoothly. Still, can't use it. :/

[PhD_Coder]

I really appreciate your work! Congrats!!

[Catachrism]

@bgolemba: Disable film grain 2 in the ReShade or Film Grain altogether, sometimes it gets streaky like that and then goes away, something the in the algorithm, I think it looks cool in the snowy mountains or ice levels but can be annoying.

[Caal]

I think last link for HD Spheres, it points to HD Character icons, this is the right link:
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasyxx2hdremaster/mods/65?tab=files

Great work btw.! Gonna play FFX/X-2 for the first time, I'm a huge fan since FFVII to FIX, haven't played anything else than than from Final series.

[bgolemba]

I can send short video where you can see what I'm talking

[bgolemba]

after applying all of those mods I experienced video issues, especially visible in menus.
I mean blurry lines quickly changing its direction.