Fixing The Graphics Of FINAL FANTASY XIV
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
- I've spent the past two months hard at work developing ReShade and GShade shaders to improve the graphics of Final Fantasy XIV. In this video I go over my creative and developmental process from start to finish explaining the decisions I made, the major issues I came across and the theory behind it all. Did I accomplish my goals of improving the visuals? Let me know!
Topics covered include fog, bloom, color correction, HDR injection, color blending, improved sharpness filtering, tone mapping, auto exposure, and screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO).
Download the shaders and presets here!
github.com/Gar...
Support me on Patreon!
/ acerola_t
Twitter: / acerola_t
Twitch: / acerola_t
Code: github.com/Gar...
Join My Discord Server! / discord
Music:
Joy - Persona 3
During The Test - Persona 3
Afternoon Break - Persona 3
This Mysterious Feeling - Persona 3
Fearful Experience - Persona 3
The Path Is Open - Persona 3
Sandgem Town (Day) - Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
Main Theme - Detective Conan
Muscle Blues - Persona 4
Like A Dream Come True - Persona 4
New Game - WORLD OF HORROR
Your Name, Please - Earthbound
Climax Return - Danganronpa
arrow in thumbnail drawn by thlurp
Thanks for watching!
This video is dedicated to my friend, Alotryx.
#acerola #finalfantasyxiv #gamedev #finalfantasyxivonline #graphics #shaders #reshade #gshade
For those of you coming about the GShade takedown, no need to fear, my shaders/presets will work just fine on Reshade as long as you download Reshade with full add on support. I unfortunately have to work today but when I get home I'll work on releasing an update to fix some ReShade related shader problems (they dont affect the presets dont worry) as well as update my installation guide. Check out my twitter to stay updated!
Looking forward to it!
Just wanted to thank you for all the work you put in to these man, Absolutely the best shader for gameplay AND Gposing. Your quick responses to comments is also super appreciated. Keep up the good work!
Appreciate it! Already got it working again, I don't seem to notice any difference.
Funny how Gshade shot themselves in the foot with the "No effects until update" when shutting down the server.. basically forcing everyone to just get rid of it xD
Great news!
thank you for your community work, it is greatly appreciated
CHANNEL UPDATE:
Hey guys! Putting this in a comment instead of in the video since I'm a dirty content brained youtuber that wants to maximize watch retention.
In the past month I have seen substantial growth which I honestly didn't expect to see for a much longer time. My goal was 1k subs by the end of this year lol. My plan was to create lots of shorter form, easily marathoned content until I saw this kind of growth. This has been very creatively limiting, as I could only choose topics and projects that I could reasonably finish within a few days due to how much time the script writing and editing process takes or I would have to pull multiple all-nighters to finish videos like Color Palette Compression which were a tiny bit larger in scope. Videos like this one are much more creatively fulfilling and what I would like to produce as my main series of videos; deep dives into my projects, my creative process, and the theory behind the techniques I use. In an ideal world, the 3-part grass series would have been only one video.
Anyways, my point is now that I have gotten to a satisfactory channel size I would like to transition my content away from a set schedule and go with the "when it's ready" approach. Rather than a video every 2 weeks, it'll probably be once a month so that I can make higher quality videos for you guys. This doesn't mean short form videos are going away, just that there will be more variety moving forward. Also before anyone asks, no I don't want to hire an editor, I prefer everything being done by me because I'm vain.
Lastly, I'm starting my new job next week (will announce what it is when I'm settled in) which might put a hamper on things. It's my dream to make videos full time, so don't worry about videos never coming out again lol, they might just take a little longer.
If you've read this far then I'll spoil what the next video will be about: kuwahara filters!
Thanks so much everyone for all the support these past few weeks, it made what was a pretty bad month much better.
You got this!
@@dannnnnno L
I'm excited for whatever you come up with. I've loved all the videos you've put out recently
good luck on your YT journey, sir! o7
I'm excited for it all! :D
When you went through all the adjustments at the end it dawned on me just how good your presentation skills are. Someone else might have just gone through every shader in the end result and what they do, but by living through the experimentation phases with you, we get a much better idea of why some techniques work, some don’t, and why you made specific choices. Really impressive writing tbh.
Yeah, good luck going through every Gshade filter when there's -thousands-
You managed to make a 30 minute presentation on random technical jargon about gshade extremely entertaining. That isn't to be understated. Great job on the shader and the entertainment!
This was a really informative but also entertaining video. It's impressive how much you can get out of post processing with only the final image and depth buffer. But somehow the thing that stuck with me most is the cars actually changing perspective in the taco bell section, just let's you feel how much thought went into all this.
200 hours of shader dev only to be out done by my love for taco bell
I’m a 3D artist and learnt a lot about post-processing for my works from this.
Been playing FF14 for about 8 years now, and whilst I don't use shaders (vanilla all the way, babyyy), as a game developer I really appreciate this video on a technical level. Learning more about various rendering techniques always fascinates me (and I appreciate how straight forward you present them). It also strangely helped to explain why a Skyrim shader I tried to apply years ago looked so washed out (it looked very similar to your issue with clamping the values for HDR).
The P3 music also gave me an added bonus of PTSD while watching, thinking back to all the times I lost 3+ hours of progress in Tartarus from getting insta-killed by a random encounter.
Keep up the great work!
Quick correction at 0:18, the engine from 1.0 back in 2010 was entirely different from the one made for ARR in 2013. ARRs graphics engine was from an off-shoot of an early Luminous engine that was eventually used in FF15, albeit with major changes to account for 14 being an MMO. Whereas 1.0 was made from Crystal Tools which was used for FF13.
Thanks, I had a hard time finding information about it so I just went with the release date of 1.0
I think I probably need to correct myself actually. From what I've been able to find, the team that worked on Luminous were also responsible for creating the new XIV engine, but the engine itself would likely only have minor similarities. I did however find old pdf files that Square released when they announced their intention to rebuild XIV alongside a new graphics engine.
wdl.square-enix.com/ffxiv/download/en/FFXIV_2.0_Outline_EN.pdf
But otherwise I can't find any specific source about it being branched off of Luminous. I think it may've been from an old Yoshida interview, but I just haven't been able to find it.
@@thedustyone2010 FFXIV 2.0 doesn't use Crystal Tools, though. Plus, there's the mistake that it was written for DX11. It was originally DX9 and eventually updated to DX11. They only dropped support for DX9 when they dropped support for Win32 in Shadowbringers.
@@tjl9458 I know, that's what I went over in my initial comment. 1.0 was Crystal Tools while 2.0 was a custom engine made by the Luminous team.
this must be one of the best hidden gem channels i've found in years, incredibly witty and informational
I almost didn't click on the suggested video. I thought to myself, ah just another tutorial on how to download and install somebody's shaders from online, and then boom put "fixing the graphics" as the title. But I quickly realised this wasn't the case, and as an aspiring dev (who sucks at math), this just kept engaging and impressing me more and more. I still don't get the math parts though. Maybe someday I will.
Having the word 'occlusion' being cut off by the edge of the screen when it's first introduced is absolutely brilliant.
I never knew I could be so interested in shaders before watching this channel, but you've shown me the way. I'm very very bad at judging visual aesthetics, but I can say at the very least that your story-telling skills are really good!
Me: hmm yes intriguing indeed good sir *understanding like 50% of the words*
After having used reshade for so long on various games, I found this video of how everything actually works to create the desired effect fascinating. Never mind I had absolutely no idea what the hell half of what you spoke about meant, you presented it in such a way I was glued for the whole video thinking I was a fellow expert in the field. Well done ;)
I just finally got a 4K HDR monitor after never having one before and ran across your shaders when looking into how to make the most of HDR in FF14. They look absolutely amazing, thank you so much for spending so much time on these! Don't even cost me any frames on a 4090 (~130fps with or without), which remains CPU-limited with or without shaders, so just bonus fidelity that makes detail really pop.
Asmongold just trend chasing acerola’s newest video on FF14 smh
??
@@eliajshdjddj ??
and stealing impressions to the original video
@@dominikcygan2664the post was ironic, don’t get upset. 😢
What the hell, Asmongold. I thought you were better than this, stealing Acerola’s fame.
My friend and I just installed your preset and custom shaders last night and they're phenomenal. For anyone who wants to add just a bit more color on top of it, I recommend turning on "Colourfulness" and putting it *after* all the Acerola shaders, its default settings will brighten up colors just enough to make them pop and make a perfect cherry on top for these shaders.
I loved it by default, best shader set I've ever seen. Colorfulness is quite literally all the sundae toppings.
Could you explain how to do that? This is my first shader and i would like to add more color too if possible
There's a bunch of different .fx files that can do different things if also turned on.
@@WiseFatOwl i was also wondering how to do this
Thank you for this recommendation! I checked mine and it looks like Colourfulness on my end was by defauly already after all the shaders, phew!
these videos are seriously an amazing learning resource as an indie game artist with little knowledge of the rendering side of things, your channel has quickly become one of my favorites!
I'm so glad to see your channel growing! The production quality for these is great and you deserve all the growth you're getting :D
Acerola, you're killin' it, and I'm so excited for the growth of your channel!
You're hilarious, you're brilliant, and you're providing the most engaging glimpses into graphics I've seen. Here's to your continued success
Acerola is underrated. Glad I found your channel. I don't even do programming but I find your content enjoyable.
I tried the preset, I really like the look it gives, great job.
I found the daytime lighting to be really bright though, it was straining my eyes a bit (probably just me, or some local setting)
Turning off blend+bloom helped, now it doesn't blind me but still looks cool.
Fascinating how this fixes a lot of problems I have with Shaders and also explained in an understandable way with hiccups occured on the way.
Just popping in to say: thanks for making these! I've been playing around with them for a good month or two by now and they're so much fun to use. The auto-exposure, in particular, really renewed my interest in making presets (and non-ffxiv-related editing too). Looking forward to the next vid!
First time watching a video when it’s actually “new” and it of course delivers. Thanks for the great content Acerola!
Holy, the HDR buffer is a total game changer, it allows so many things!
Good work on the shaders tuning and presets, it looks fantastic 👌
This looks good, but it is way too dark on a SDR sRGB screen. Perhaps localized auto-exposure would improve the situation? Looking forward to Fixing the graphics of Fixing the graphics of Fixing the graphics of Fixing the graphics of Final Fantasy XIV if you do end up diving into that type of Auto-Exposure
At the end of the day the presets are tuned for my own monitor and stuff, can't cover all the bases unfortunately
@@Acerola_t Your work just might be the push I needed to get an HDR monitor
@@fazlox For the record, the final output of the shaders is a low dynamic range buffer which is why all the tone mapping and stuff happens to begin with, so it would look the same on an HDR monitor as it does on an LDR monitor.
Your fixing series is so good! taking the time to explain in proper definition the problems at hand as well as the solution is just great for everybody that is learning! Thanks so much. I hope one day i get to make a super popular game and get to say it was thanks to you.
God I love your channel, you lovingly explain all of the little details that I desperately want to know and it makes me so happy
Your channel, although growing, is still so criminally underrated.
You have such an engaging way of laying out the topics you cover. Here’s to being here before you get huge!
I will never cross Acerola. Never mess with anyone willing to actually calculate the normals from the depth... They will not give up.
Excellent quality content, on point humor and exceeding technical prowess, you're a god among men my dude!
I have not understood a single word of anything you said when it came to the technical part and yet I do not regret a second spent of this video, this was such a fun watch and it had the honor of being the video to watch during dinner. Thank you for your service, sir
Thanks!
My only change to this honestly was adding Colourfulness to it at about 1.20. This is really good!
hi maverick :)
dude thats crazy, really well done, huge work and insane results. I love that you dont give up on sharing your work. People would need time to learn that you made valuable solution, thats what I'm getting from the whole story
Hey, thanks for this!!
While I'm not using it to the full extent some of the things you have created have really helped remove that yellow filter while keeping the game vanilla and enhancing it
This is EXACTLY what I have been looking for and you're a really cool guy!
This is the most interesting video I've ever sat through without understanding anything. I think that deserves a subscription.
Great video man. Looking forward to what comes next. Good luck with the new job!
I was watching and enjoying the explanations of stuff I know nothing about. And then you hit me with the Detective Conan music. 100/10
This is genuinely the most impressive thing I've seen lately. And inspiring!
Even as a complete noob it was really nice to have you explain the math and logic behind things constantly, as much as most of it went over my head I still learnt something which was nice.
I'm probably never going to use this or any other shaders, but it was very educational. Thanks bro.
I took a break from the game as the Gshade drama was going on. I'm glad I found your video as I was researching how to move over to Reshade. I appreciate your effort to explain everything in such detail! It was very informative. I am excited to try it out soon ❤
This was awesome on so many levels. Looking forward to Fixing the Graphics of Fixing the Graphics of Fixing the Graphics of Fixing the Graphics of Final Fantasy XIV
Just wanted to say that your presets are exactly what I was looking for. Just light enough to improve the game without washing everything out or annihilating everything with excess bloom. Thanks :).
Small feed back for the instructions that come with the shaders.
Provided they have GShade installed (which uh... they hopefully do if they are trying this for obvious reasons)
They can open the Gshade control panel on the desktop, go to installations, and click the folder icon on their FFXIV installation of GShade to get to where ever they have both FF14 AND gshade installed. I find this cuts out the middle man a bit. From their they can follow the provided instructions I assume.
maaaan, your videos are really good, and I like a lot your habilit to explain easily the tecniques!
The quality of your videos and explanations is great, you deserve all this growth!!!!
As always, amazing video. I will be looking forward to Fixing The Graphics Of Fixing The Graphics of Fixing The Graphics of Fixing The Graphics of FINAL FANTASY XIV
OMG I AM IN THIS VIDEO!!! BIG FAN ACEROLA!!! REMEMBER ME WHEN YOU'RE FAMOUS!!!
The goat of ff14 returns for one final appearance
I just want to say I absolutely love your content, keep it up. Hands down my new favourite coding youtuber
Being a filthy preset user with no knowledge of anything when it comes to shaders and colors and lighting, that video was a blast to watch and made me wanna try to at least learn to tweak things...But there's so many intricacies to it all, makes it so that I'll need a lot of time to work it out.
Definitely gonna use this to learn, amazing work!
Holy shit dude, you're an absolute mad lad. Going where very few have gone before: Down the rabbit-hole that is fixing ffxiv horrendous graphics. Props to you, and a /salute for your service to the community O7
I would argue that he didn't fix the graphics, just put a new coat of paint on. It kind of looks better but he's still polishing a turd. Mods have already fixed this problem and you can be damn sure my game doesn't look anywhere near that gross so I may end up using his new coat of paint just to see what it will look like on actual decent textures
Not quite what I had in mind when you said HDR, 😂. It was like 2 sec at the end. Still a fun video to watch!
I'm not sure what you mean, everything past the hdr injection is an hdr render
@@Acerola_t unless I'm not understanding, it's HDR in an SDR container, not an HDR container right?
@@Saturn2888 Yeah it goes from LDR -> HDR -> back to LDR with the tone mapping
This is a very informative video, thanks a lot
sometimes the recommendations I get absolutely nail the hammer on the head, this was great! The jokes and references were impeccable.
Thanks!
SSAO really makes a difference on the character, good work.
Nice dig on Sentinels as well ;P
Re: kuwahara filters (don't want everyone to get a notification), we've messed up with them in our game prototypes, they produce really interesting effects.
Just wanna say "thank you" for the time and effort you put into making these shaders. I knew FFXIV could be beautiful!
Thanks! More cool shaders comin soon
On top of upgrading the graphics they need to add in actual red hair. You can only get dark brown, copper, or slightly purple hair for some reason. The fucked up part is that they have a perfectly fine shade of red for highlights. I think Highlander and Roe females also need new/bigger eyes on some faces. Lastly, Roes need to have the Doman Roe color palette.
This video was crazy well made, crazy interesting and crazily engaging. I normally find it hard to sit through anything over 10 minutes, but I watched that entire video and was left hungry for more. Keep up the great work dude
Thanks! New video is in the works
Hey Acerola, love the video, will definitely give those shaders a spin soon!
On another note, how would I go about creating such custom shaders myself? I only ever used high level stuff, such as UE4 material graph/blender material graph/ unity shader graph. Basically you could say I like nodes. Where would I learn to do low level stuff and how to integrate it for example with gshade?
I learned to write shader code initially from Jasper Flick's rendering tutorial series on his website catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/rendering/
Unity and ReShade both use HLSL pretty much, so a lot of the knowledge gained from my experience with Unity was easily translatable to the ReShade environment.
@@Acerola_t Thank you so much for the answer!
The fact about the cross product of neighboring pixels in a depth map reproducing the normal map was truly a revelation for me. Amazing work
I like this video it reminds me of old tutorial videos from 90's VHS tapes.
Gleaned more about graphics & programming method for them through 1/3rd of a post-processing shader video than the entirety of the 5 months of "curriculum" and self-study I subjected myself to in the graphics section of the coding school I went to almost 5 years ago without needing to tear my hair out trying to understand formulae with little context. Well done.
Came to make my game pretty. Stayed for the easily digestible information of photographic effects. Thanks.
Thank goodness you kept going cause the first two times you 'ended' I thought it didn't look good. heheh. That's development I guess. It all comes together only at the very end.
Also I can't stop thinking that you're Frustrated Jacob.
You two are like genetic clones.
Congrats on the channel growth! Love seeing a small creator getting the attention they deserve!
Hey brah, I work in post processing and literally use reshade for proof of concepts, if you'd ever like some extra input from the theory side of "what makes games look good", I'd be happy to help. To be transparent, it pisses me off when I see people use reshade without leveraging it properly, but you did great!
The fog effect adds so much immersion to maps like Coerthas! Love it
Just found this gem of a video a definite subscribe and the shaders after following your instruction guide 🙌🏽( the onky thing missing was i had to make my own reshade-presets folder idk why) theres no way ill ever play ffxiv vanilla again. Literally re ignited my love for this game. Dungeons even the older ones feel reworked and vamped. Just walking around and exploring everything feels new. Thank you.
This is the most educational video on graphics I've ever seen and it was actually enjoyable to watch. The explanations are also super eye-opening for me because I'm pretty good with math and numbers (engineer) but had no clue about how graphics rendering or image processing used it.
ngl this is probably the most entertaining someone could've made this kind of video!! and its so informative too, great video!
I've been pissing with shaders for ages in FFXIV and never had any luck. I came close a few times but always had balance issues. I'd get them perfect in some location then a change in weather or location would reveal huge flaws. I had some I was happy with but these blow them away. I tried them out and I'm very happy! Thanks for all your hard work on these!
Yeah there's a reason I spent like 600k gil on teleports lol every time I made a tweak I would teleport to every single area that could cause problems. I had friends play the game with the shaders too for testing out dungeons/raids since I can't feasibly test those. There's still cases where my shaders look yucky, but I feel like I reduced that number of cases to as low as I could.
Thanks for trying them out!
It's really inspiring to see iteration on stuff like this! It really makes you more open to iterate more on your own work!
Figures that a deep dive into the part of my programming degree I could never get good at is what pushes me over the edge to set up shaders in FF.
I didn't understand nearly half of what you said, blacked out during all the math but when I came back to consciousness, the game looked GOOD. Thank you very much for doing the timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff, I'll gladly hit Like + Subscribe and download the shader :3
Your shaders are great! I already played with gshade, but after trying out your shaders I took them and never looked back. Later on I even won ours FC screenshot contest with "Superhero" theme, after I found a black & white option to complete the comic look ^^
Thanks so much! I'd love to see the screenshots you took!
I love your videos so much. Its so nice to see that things that I've learned in lectures are actually usable and useful (yes I still haven't written my own shaders yet but at least it's nice too see how you've implemented such effects)
never thought I'd watch a 30-minute (video) about post-graphic processing (or whatever it was about)
This has got to be the nerdiest most technical video I ever watched to completion...
You are doing amazing work and your presentation is great! Keep it up please
Good afternoon it's Ms. Nedra I gave to a ride to your hotel. It was such a pleasure meeting you I wish you all the success in the world your such a nice young man. I'm a new subscriber now! 😊 good day have a wonderful time in California.
Thanks Nedra!
I'm such a noob with this stuff. This is the very first time I've ever been able to get a shader for a game to work properly and it is gorgeous. A year later, thank you so much.
Interesting timing for this to be popping up on my recommended, considering the implosion of Gshade.
I am so excited to use this. I have never been into gpose or presets, but youtube recommended me this video and I have never been more convinced! I really enjoyed your video and how knowledgeable and enthusiastic you are. Your enthusiasm is contagious!
Thanks! I hope you like them
"Saint of the Firmament", ah, the real chad in the building.
ALSO HI MAVERICK
You.Are.Incredible! I've been using your shaders and preset on default an mixing it with my own, to my surprise there is no performance decrease. What really impressed me is your XeGTAO that is so much efficient and smoother than the others.
Instantly subbed! I look forward for your next videos too!
Thanks for trying them out! I did my best to keep the performance impact as low as possible given the overhead of the HDR injection.
The XeGTAO should hopefully look better by the time my next video releases as well to reduce the number of artifacts on certain meshes, so please look forward to it!
this randomly popped up in my recommended, and as an avid ffxiv player who hasn't found a gameplay preset i like yet... i'm very excited to try out yours! loved the in-depth explanations, and i have a feeling i'm going to adore your shaders. definitely subscribing, thanks for the entertaining video on a topic i would have never thought to be interested in!
Thanks!
24:18 Maybe I'm boring, but I like it most with just the SSAO, color dodge, and color temperature adjustment.
The whole video is very interesting to understand how much post-processing you can do with very little in-engine info. Just depth and color values. Thank you for explaining it all!
Love the conan music, feels great to listen to in the background
Truly the NileRed of graphics. Good shit
I'd never seen that coat before and went digging to find out what it was since I don't think you mention your glam at any point, and I couldn't find anyone asking or mentioning it in the comments (and if they did it must be really far down!) it's the Facet Coat of Healing, a lv 80 coat made by weavers. the closest DPS equivalent I could find was the Plague Bringer's Coat, a lv 60 top from Saint Mocianne's Arboretum as well as Pharos Sirius (Hard)! glam guys rejoice!
Someone did ask but it is very far down yeah
the glam is as you said with the facet leggings too, basic high heels and gloves dyed white, and then the ramuh ex cane
I use and abuse the facet gear for all my glams
Dear Acerola,
Thank you for making videos. I learned more about graphics watching your stuff than listening to my teachers who are supposed to teach me that stuff.
Well done.
This video is just generally a great introduction to real time vfx
Just recently found you from TH-cam recommendation. I think you deserve the title of Graphics wizard here.
These shaders look really great and you did an amazing job fixing a lot of the issues that some of the more commonly used ones had that I was previously using including shadows overlay the games menu's, I wasn't expecting to be able to run the high setting shader preset but it actually runs really well and I still get good performance, Thanks for sharing them.
I don't think I'm alone in recognizing the amount of effort and learning that went into this. Throw in the added bonus of a self-written guide and customizable shader, and you've got yourself a breakout video. :)
I happen to be working my way through the MSQs and your shaders work wonders for the beauty of the cutscenes. It feels like watching a big-budget film. I especially like that the colors aren't as yellowy and the ambient occlusion makes everything look more 3d. Also happy that you explain the settings really well in your user guide and made the variables easy to customize, since the dark areas were a little too dark for me so I played around with the gamma, exposure, and color correction settings to my liking. Big boost to the FF14 experience. Thank you!
Thanks for trying the shaders out!
This is very cool! Best of luck to you! Will wait for the next video!
3:17. I don't even play FFmmo but that fog looks like a great improvement
I can't believe I've only just found your yt channel, you are a gold mine of knowledge. Thankyou!
Thank you so much for setting all you extensive research and work as a Gshade preset for us all!
Banger video, gonna try that out at home. Thank you!
This is insane man, very well done, the final result is amazing!
Awesome video, Acerola!! Congrats on the channel growth :)